The hits just keep on coming as user after user complains about this or that and, frankly, I haven't seen much change around here since day one - with the two exceptions of restored historical (hysterical?) threads and the backing off of the initially hyperactive moderators. While I do believe that Active will make an effort to improve things here, I have not seen them jumping through even the easiest hoops to retain those that made CoolRunning's forums so successful.
So... Is it time to gather our forces and find a new home? I propose at least a few days of proactive discussion (trying to keep pointless bashing of the ******* Active ****-heads to a minimum) followed by a multilateral collective action that results in our little group sticking together in the new year either here or elsewhere.
Bottom line for me is that I have no particular allegiance to Active or even to the CoolRunning legacy
except that I want to see the group of people that formed there sticking together. If we can stay somewhat united, I don't think it matters that much who hosts the wall on which we draw our graffiti. Without a consensus to convene elsewhere, I truly believe it's our best interest to keep posting here and work with Active to make this the best alternative.
But, if we can collectively work it out and plan a move, I'm also not convinced we couldn't succeed elsewhere.
So I see the many repeatedly pointed-out advantages to moving...
- Absence of login issues
- Better forum features - signatures, etc.
- Absence of a feeling of being a slave to a for-profit advertising vehicle.
- Possibly better training log (for those who use it).
But I also see disadvantages...
- Absence of a profit-driven overseeing entity that may be willing to make investments. How long do we believe some of these other boards will be around?
- Lack of a tie to a wider formal community including training plans, race results, articles, etc. Do the other forums have more than a bulletin board to offer?
- Lack of any sense of required decorum allowing discussion to degrade to sophomoric rhetoric. Who takes responsibility for whacking the trolls?
- We loose all those historical threads we complained so much about when they were missing.
The biggest issue I see is that I think a big draw to CoolRunning's forums, at least around where I live, was that it was, and still is, the biggest repository of local race results. People went (and still go) there to find their results and then ended up browsing the forums. The site had a reputation for having training plans and useful articles available. This kept a continual influx of new people coming into the forums - without which, over time, I expect they would have dwindled and died. I'm skeptical of our ability to sustain any sort of dynamic community without such a draw.
So let the debate begin!!! I'm calling on the "power users" here (primarily those appearing in the "Top Members" list to the lower left) to voice an opinion. What do
you think we should do? What options would
you support?
