Sorry for the sappy title but I have a serious question. Have you ever been a part of a wonderful website that had a booming community than all of a sudden it turned into a ghost town? If so, what do you think caused the downfall? Has this ever happened personally to one of your own sites? What were your thoughts on the matter when it did happen to you?
I have been a part of a sports forum where the owner and a bunch of moderators left just because they were too busy with their lives. I had a good connection with those guys. The new staff members were not as dedicated and did not update the forum much so a lot of people including me left.
It happened to one forum where I was an admin.
The owner decided to shut the place down suddenly, one day and decided to start over on some custom platform.
There was a naruto forum which was very active/successful a few years back. It was the first one I actually stayed at, and was active on. There was lots of discussions around the series itself, but slowly the interest died down. The activity dropped considerably, and the once loyal members left one by one. It's quite sad actually. I learnt a lot from that community, and met so many great people.
I think everything looks better in retrospect. People scrutinize the present and look fondly upon the past most of the time. I could say this forum was better a couple years ago, but let another couple years pass and I'll probably say the same thing about the time period we're currently in.
Both were sites I joined in 2005 (~6 months apart though). For both the reason they fell apart because the staff left.
For one, the admin left shortly after I had joined but we got by because we had another admin to handle things. But when they also got busy and left... We suddenly couldn't do things really necessary to make the site keep going. So in late 2009 I started considering making my own site. (Which I did in 2010 and we've been continuing ever since then.)
That site was then closed/archived in 2013 after sitting stagnant for 3 years of only sporadic activity.
The other site, also had the main admin leave. But there were still other admins However we were busy with our own sites and felt like it would be a waste of our time/effort in to rebuild their site when we both had our own fledgling sites to focus on which needed us more.
And I'm kind of witnessing this in a third site right now where I'm just a member (non-staff). I'm not sure if I want to stick around or not. The staff team has been hit with some unfortunate circumstances right after opening and hasn't really been around much. Which given what happened is fair. But at the same time... The site is dying because no staff around to keep it going.
I've sadly had this happen before. I was an administrator of a forum for a little over a year, and the forum is now falling apart. It's somewhat sad to watch something you helped build slowly die.
I was apart of this awesome general discussion forum once and then they made the stupid decision to sell it and now it's some random stupid website, so sadly it's all a memory. 🙁 It's kind of sad, but most forums have a limited lifetime, and for those forums that go on without closing down for years deserve some kind of award. 😛
Yep. I was once a member and then staff on a medium sized promotion forum that was really growing and active, but then the owner had a lot of other projects that he couldn't seem to manage and ultimately the forum got neglected and it became a ghost town with only staff posting. He said he would put more time into the forum and never did. In the end the forum was sold, the new owner was upset that the forum wasn't active anymore after only a few weeks, and he closed it.
Almost every admin forum I was a member of ended up like this (bar The Admin Zone and the forums that got merged into it). Great for a few weeks, then got sold off to someone who did sod all with the site and let it fall to ruin. Admin Addict, Admin Talk, Admin Forums... they all went the same way.
may because of its content? Not up to date content may cause people get away and find another one more suitatble to them. And moreover, nothing can remain forever, even the champion! So, just move on and make something new, fashionable.
