Originally Posted by
Scream And Fly
Oh no, not another one of these posts... :nonod: :leaving:
I only have one answer for now, and for all-time: Life changes, people change, people come and go, and life goes on. I am a member of many message forums for cars and other things, and some of them I have not posted on in a while. But that has nothing to do with anything on those sites that drove me away.
Why must it always be attributed to a failure of this site? This site is a community of people helping people - there is no one single authority that creates and distills content here. If something seems different and if members perceive that as a negative effect, then the proactive members that care enough to take active steps to help it will ultimately determine the trajectory of this site. This site belongs to all of us. It's up to all of us to maintain it. If there's an issue, please contact me and let's fix it. Many members here will attest to the fact that I will contact anybody to work out disagreements and other issues.
And then there's this:
Says who? Are we all expecting a community of robots that just acts all submissively? I understand that some people can grate on others. There's no such thing as any forum or community that does not have this happening. If somebody takes time to follow other interests or has other things in life occupying their time, again, it's somehow seen as a failure on the part of S&F. I won't blindly and ignorantly say that nobody leaves the site because of a specific issue with somebody or some reason, but I also don't see the above reasoning to be a universal answer to why the average post counts of a member might be lower than usual.
There's no such thing as an online community - be it here, Facebook or wherever - where there will be no disagreements and friction between members. I believe the community of members here to be one of the most helpful and well-mannered of all online forums. Nobody is "fed up" to any serious degree, and believe me, in nearly all cases, if there's such an issue, they contact me. Most members that care enough to have invested a great deal of time here do so because of a love for boating and sharing their experiences. That love of boating and camaraderie will almost always transcend member-specific annoyances, and they'll usually care enough to contact me if there are issues concerning them.
I have absolutely no problem at all with people noting changes - that's part of the site, and I've always been guided on this site by the thoughts of all of you. But I also feel that the "what happened to the site" threads just do not contribute in any way whatsoever to helping the site. After all, this site is about its members, never about one person. How about, "let's try to do this..." or something similar if there's an area needing improvement?
Finally, just because some people are not regularly posting, that doesn't mean they're not on the site.:smiletest:
Greg