Maintenance Mode Concluded

No,funded by donation so I suppose the community. p2pindependentforum.com/post/41844/thread

The only sensible way to fund a forum is to put up advertising slots which you sell through advertising websites and people bid for ads on the site and you would get lots of bids from financial P2P people on a site like this and given the traffic that comes through this site it could easily net a few hundred a month. However as I see it the problem is that the forum is hosted on a free proboards platform rather than being totally independently hosted. My forum was using free PHPBB software and hosted on my own server and obviously there is a cost to that but the advertising I got in from the various banner ad slots I inserted between posts and at the top and bottom meant that it paid for itself 10 times over.

I have no idea who the banned members were and I have not seen this so-called new forum where they hang out and to be quite honest and with all due respect to the person's involved I am not interested. Besides I am quite sure it is not beyond the wit of the said person's to rejoin the forum using different email addresses and IP addresses etc.

Storm in a teacup.

However I reiterate my support for the administrators and moderators who put in hours of unpaid time and get very little in the way of thanks. Of course they are human and may not get everything right but that doesn't mean that people who benefit from a free website like this should feel able to attack them and criticise them. They should be grateful for the fact that there are people out there who are so selfless that they are prepared to give up their time to benefit others in this way.

As regards the argument that decisions should be transparent and open in accordance with normal Justice laws I would just say that this is a free to use internet forum and is not a court of law and that analogy does not apply.

Membership and usage of this forum is a privilege and not a right and it is a privilege that can be withdrawn at any time by any administrator should they see fit, whether their decision is right or wrong. That's life. And no, don't worry, I am not touting for a role on the forum staff. Having run an internet forum in the past it is not an undertaking I would get involved with again and that is why I respect those who do. Do not criticize somebody unless you have walked in their shoes.

chris I think that referrer links are more likely to create conflicts of interest than a fixed annual fee. Simply because platforms can then increase/decrease what they pay per referral. Platform A pays £100 per user whereas Platform B pays £10. The mods could then be suspected of treating Platform A more favourably.  

    
  
   

100% of the advertising revenue accrues to ProBoards, who provide the forum platform for free.  That's their business model.  They aren't about to share the revenue with anybody.

GeorgeT 's point is that if you do it independently on your own server (using free software) you get to keep the revenue.  The downside is you have to maintain it yourself, which would be more work for somebody. 

Also, I doubt that it would be possible to migrate this forum across.  My impression from a quick google is that ProBoards don't allow it (because their business model is to trap you), so it might be necessary to start again from scratch.

Yes but that's only the content, not the database, and it would be in breach of ProBoards T&Cs.  Plus my impression is they might have counter-measures in place. 

As I see it the paying debate has been prompted by alleged bad behaviour. Whether paid or not paid, I can't see how mods could ever practically manage fast moving problems particularly at the weekend, if stuff is kicking off late on a saturday night do we really expect mods to all be there to confer and manage it without shutting it down?

Here's a curveball. My user name makes me readily identifiable. If you wish you can google me and rock up on my doorstep/phone me up to hurl abuse at me if i overstep the mark. This makes it all much more 'face to face' ie try to be polite to people and avoid inflammatory posts. Much like road rage where normally mild mannered people become anonymous behind the wheel, anonymous conversations seem doomed to descend into mud slinging. Maybe those who make this forum nasty should be given a choice of using their real name, it might concentrate their minds.

For those that expect mods to 'show their reasoning', do you really think that'd be the end of it? Nahhhh, the mudslinging would start all over.....

Jack P

I have to disagree with that. I was away during this episode, and do not know the detail, and it seems I am not allowed to know. But it seems that some people are banned and another forum has been started in competition. Who gains from that? Not p2p lenders.

The way I see it is that, unfortunately, those who are responsible for running the forum have failed to manage a small problem, and the forum has been damaged. Some of those banned have been caught in a collective punishment without due process or transparency. Or that's how it seems to me, in my ignorance.

Sure, there does seem to have been bad behaviour (unspecified), with which the moderators could not cope. But as well as addressing the bad behaviour, the forum staff need to address their own collective failure to manage it, and need to try to put Humpty Dumpty together again. Writing new rules, without consultation or consent, which give arbitrary powers to act without explanation, appeal, visibility or debate, is a desperate act unbecoming of this fine forum. For me, the forum belongs to the contributors, and to be a moderator is a privilege.

Personally I have never had a post moderated, except for quoted posts from others, but if I get banned for naming a character from Alice in Wonderland, then it was clearly time to go anyway.