Important News!!

Absolutely. It’s not a case of the money has run out, the banks/creditors are banging at the door.

It’s a case of we’re not making enough profits to make it worth our while, so we need some subs to make it worth our time. As owners, they are perfectly entitled to do this.

They invested €200k, that pot reduced to under €100k at end of 2022 (not clear how much of the expenses included interest or fees paid to the owner, could be 0, could be more). Then net current assets went back up to €170k by December 2024 after two profitable years. So they’ve plenty to play with, but seemingly are worried that could disappear without subs.

Ignoring moderation (there are some genuine gripes, but some of the comments re modding are people acting the goat), I think the views of mods on this whole plan is really the most valuable/interesting to hear. You guys/gals don’t know everything, but you know more than the rest of us. You don’t have any monetary incentive, but you (generally!) have the good of the boards.ie at heart.

With 14 posts in a 2 hour period you have certainly dominated discussion here. Personally I think should look for some other discussion forum where your comments would be more than welcome and who knows you might be lucky and find a sloth appreciation thread.

Thread stuck.

Edit: Unstuck now. I think the bouncers were just dragging an idiot out the door.

It's an interesting comparison in terms of moderation policy. AAM has a MUCH harder moderation policy. For example, this thread, with its beautifully vague thread title, wouldn't have lasted 10 minutes on AAM before being either deleted or at least given a sharp instruction to make the thread title detailed and relevant.

Chat is really not encouraged on AAM. Last time I looked, the chat forums were the same ten people who've been talking to each other there for the last 20 years, largely agreeing with each other's right wing economic views.

Fair play to Mr B in funding it himself though, it is a valuable tool, in its own niche.

Thats not a issue with just boards though.

I use adblocker all the time but its because sites don't do a good job of vetting advertisers - scam ads, mobile game ads in particular (Youtube mainly).

And those of us who feel boards has had its day are supposed to feel bad we don't join the floundering sheep handing over money for a woebegone site?

When the people.in charge can't even get the message out clearly concisely and bloody properly, how do people expect them to keep this place going.

Maybe they're so ingrained in this place that the thought of looking for another occupation is too difficult to consider.

This echo's my sentiments.

I've been on boards for such a long time but there's no doubt in my mind the introduction to Vanilla has really done so much damage to the forum.

I can understand the thinking behind moving away from vbulletin and wanting to keep the site alive but is the site really alive with so many users leaving because of Vanilla? It's just a pale in comparison to vbulletin.

The modding isnt helping either but Vanilla is the main culprit

I've been really torn about subscribing or not but I just couldnt pull the trigger due to Vanilla and thinking if you're going to continue with Vanilla you're setting yourself to fail.

If the pitch was yes we're suffering due to Google’s algorithm changes but we know the problems the site has, we want to make changes including moving away from Vanilla and here's our plan……

Id be onboard for subscribing in a second