justin_le said:
Let me clarify that for me the issue isn't whether or not I see ads myself, or if the core/paying members of ES see them. It's the principle that I or others would be contributing information for free and for the general benefit of the community, only have that information 'cashed in' by a forum owner or add click recipient for their own monetary gain, even though they weren't the ones to produce the valuable information in the first place.
EXACTLY!
If my personal work and contribution goes towards helping Joe's-douschebag-ebike-box-shuffler company to sell parts because somebody wants to read my thread, then I'm out (and removing all posts and hosted images). That's simply how forums collapse. Your core players, your core contributors, your 5% group that makes 99% of all useful content packs up and leaves, because the entire reason they were making such a wildly strong contribution effort is because it's about the non-commercial, non-polluted, free exchange to help grow the e-revolution.
The ONLY way you draw such a powerful and strong core member group and forum content is because the posts and articles and write-ups are gifts to the members and the community. They are NOT NOT NOT going to be advertiser bait to lure buyers to get exposed to ads. This is WHY forums collapse. I will crawl over broken glass, and spend hundreds of my own dollars to make a thread that freely helps the electric revolution and the community to advance. If it was on fire, I wouldn't even piss a forum out if it's purpose is to assist some box-shuffer to make his margin. Speaking of that, who are the companies that blast forums with ads? The ones that f*cking suck, the ones that are in it because they saw $$'s over their eyes, the ones that can't draw sales from the community based on merit and contribution, so they blast ad's out instead.
All day my email inbox has been filling with people offering contributions and help if I want to make my own forum for ebikes. I would be fine contributing a few thousand bucks myself (and I worked for MS datacenter development for 5 years, I know exactly what it costs to run an almost pure text forum like this, it's dirt cheap aside from the labor time.) However, the last thing I would want to do is make a new forum, I love ES, I have loved ES everyday for years, and I love this community. If ES is going to change into something that leverages my work and huge time investment to be the bait for a marketing machine, then POOF! All the work/text/pics are gone, most of the core member group would follow this, most of the emails I got today all ready had people wanting to do it now. A new forum is created, the core members move over and remove what made ES great, and new non-commercial forum is born that will never become a marketing machine.
Not any sort of a threat, just the simple reality of how it goes down if you try to turn the gift of people's work and insight into bait for a marketing machine.
And to the folks emailing me about a new forum and quitting and deleting posts etc, I'm super slammed at work, will likely work all night, and I'm racing an endurance event at Thunder-Hill this weekend, so if I don't get back to you all, I'm not ignoring you, I appreciate the input and commitment, I'm just too busy to reply until Monday.