I remembered you stating that the board was in a death spiral, so I searched on your username and the word “spiral” and located your the post in just a few seconds.
Another interesting thing I remember about the pay-to-post era 15 years ago was a bunch of people here (a few of them still active) stating that they couldn’t afford the $5 annual fee. No joke.
I believe it was mainly an ethical concern.
On my part, I said, “Fuck ethics. This is a pretty cool place.”
In many cases yes, but some here felt that the $5 fee was prohibitively expensive:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4658694&postcount=25
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4658603&postcount=18
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4658846&postcount=29
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4658570&postcount=17
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=4659291&postcount=43
It’s not the money, it’s the hassle. We are in an era of instant-gratification, I-want-things-to-work-instantly attitudes. People won’t want to go through the trouble of paying a fee, no matter how big or small, to use a message board.
I’m also surprised it’s still around. I’ve been visiting this site regularly for over 20 years now. It was also my first board, so I guess the habit just stuck.
It costs close to zero dollars and likely turns a very small profit (I pay to be here as do some others). I have my own domain that I don’t do anything with and could set up the whole thing again in a few hours on my own if I wanted to. The technology is close to free or at least inconsequential. The only thing that matters is the quality of the posters and material. That is much harder to replicate.
I’d say the main thing is some sort of management shake up and someone gets a case of new manageritis and starts making changes for the sake of making changes and decided to shut the SDMB down to prove they’re ‘doing something’
About 8-10 years. And then it will come back as a Zombie Board…
Insert your favorite “brains” or “lack of brains” comment here. 
When you click on the latest post and this is all there is.
Congrats, Racer; nice finish!
Oh, wait! I’m gonna have the postultimate word.
I spend a lot of time lurking, and I value The Dope for its informative and entertainment values. Hardly a session goes by for me when I think “Wait, who just said that?”, and back up to see the poster. Very often it will be a name I’m unfamiliar with, and I’ll see that they have posted thousands of times. As a counter to that, I’ll see an unfamiliar name with dozens or hundreds of posts.
So, I’d guess that the core will shrink to some critical (heh) number, and newbies will drop in to take the place of those who drop off. And become the current core.
At least, I certainly hope so.
Dan
You all are scaring me. I already survivor one board death this year (snopes) and would like this to last a bit longer.
I guess I need to post more. Not even .5 posts a day.
And think about donating.
Well, I retired a couple years ago and I’m sure my posting average has gone up since then. Include me in the list of those posting at the heat death of the universe. I’ll bet there’ll be a fair number of us left making jokes (“Heat death of the universe, film at 11”) and commenting about how previous heat deaths were better, etc.
The xkcd forum continues to be down after the intrusion discovered at the beginning of Sept. It was already fairly moribund. If it was brought back at this point it would be … moribunder(?).
The guesses of five years seem pretty credible, although I certainly wasn’t expecting the end of the IMDb boards, so as others have said: if someone in management gets a bug up their butt it could be much sooner.
That’s stunning to me that you remembered someone’s comment from 15 years ago. Well played.
I think we should be asking, what do you want to see more of on these boards?
I’m a new member. I’ll do what I can to keep the boards alive. What would it take to keep you interested? More GQ questions? More GQ answers? More debating? More elections? Less politics? More physics? High-brow humor?
… need I visit the Pit?
I didn’t think there was a financial component but if there is, I could pick up a membership. I should probably do that anyways, I use this site so often.
~Max
SDMB will last until we finish counting down from 1,000,000 dammit!
That board is down so much because they removed the link to it from the main comic page. Well that’s the reason it’s dropped so precipitously.
Not necessary. I never visit the Pit and don’t miss it.
The main advantage in becoming a member is that you don’t get ads. At least that’s the reason I keep my membership. But it also means the Board doesn’t get the revenue from showing those ads, so it’s probably close to a wash for the Board financially.
If you want to support the board, try encouraging others to join.
I fully expect that 50 million years from now there will still be a Straight Dope with threads like “Upcoming Solar Extinction - The Legacy of Trump”, “Best Used Time Machine?” and “More Annoying Commercials”.
The Dope will ride on, as long as there exists in people a desire to post in left-wing echo chambers.
-Just Another Guru In Drag