Delta News Web Forum Ends
With considerable regret I turned off the Delta News Web forum today. The forum has been a part of the DNW almost since its beginning nearly eight years ago.
As much as I like the idea of online discussion among community members, the inescapable fact is that the forum did not pay for itself.
On the cost side, it takes time to administer the forum. Simple things like registration problems, lost passwords and other issues don’t take much time individually, but they collectively add up.
Moderation is important, and it also takes time. The moderators have regularly cleaned off spam and other garbage. That happened almost daily. Each one required thread deletion and user banning to keep the spammers from returning. Then, there were negative and inappropriate posts that came along from time to time and they needed to be dealt with as well.
With the forums gone, there are still several ways you can talk to the community through this medium:
As much as I like the idea of online discussion among community members, the inescapable fact is that the forum did not pay for itself.
On the cost side, it takes time to administer the forum. Simple things like registration problems, lost passwords and other issues don’t take much time individually, but they collectively add up.
Moderation is important, and it also takes time. The moderators have regularly cleaned off spam and other garbage. That happened almost daily. Each one required thread deletion and user banning to keep the spammers from returning. Then, there were negative and inappropriate posts that came along from time to time and they needed to be dealt with as well.
With the forums gone, there are still several ways you can talk to the community through this medium:
- Start a blog -- If you have a blog and regularly post to it, we will consider adding it to the Delta Blogs Aggregator, if you are a current or former part of the Delta Junction/Ft. Greely community. It's easy to start your own blog. We use Blogger, but there are others, too.
- Comment on news items -- all Delta News Web news items have a "comments" link at the lower right hand corner of the individual news item where you can add your comments. These are moderated and reasonable comments will be posted.
- Submit a news item -- we will consider all news items for possible publication. You can find email contact information at the bottom of every page of the DNW.
- Post a calendar item -- if you have an event to let the community know about, you can post it to the community calendar. While it is not necessary to have an account, we recommend that you obtain a free account so you can manage your own event listings.
posted by David in Alaska at 2/07/2007 08:38:00 AM
11 Comments:
Thank you very much for having the forum up as long as you did, but you are right that "business is business>". It was well appreciated while it lasted. Hopefully someone local can host another forum that can be as easy to use as this was. Again, thank you for hosting the DeltaNewsWeb forum.
GOOD DECISION, publishers, managers, and moderators...some obviously had too much time on their hands, and the forum content
had become almost entirely composed of contentiousness...there
are, as outlined above, alternative
forums and means of communication
available...
but the $64,000.00 question remains! who posted as SourDough?
I'm going to miss it!!
This is a sad day in Delta, that this forum had to close. I will miss it too. It may have been contentious at times but that is normal when you get a bunch of people together with different opinions and ideas, but I found that it was also informative and even gave me a laugh now and then..
I understand why the decision was made, but it will be missed!
You will be greatly missed. Thank you.
Thank you for all your hard work moderating the forum, David. You are truly a blessing, and your presence even from afar is appreciated!
CornerPoster loved the forum, thanks for the time you spent keeping it up for all these years and dealing with all the spam & other "user related problems:.
PS: Dave you might want to update your copyright date to 2007 on the bottom of your webpages, I could be an electronic editor.
Thanks for the effort you've put into keeping the News Web going. I can appreciate the time it takes to keep a forum going. We will miss it, though.
You may remember me, from the times you visited Frank & Jan Burris.
Just when I finally figured out how to access your forum, its gone, I will miss part of it but the problem with anonymous forums is that there is no way to control the mob mentality of the public. Too bad I will miss this forum.
Thanks Dave and Crew.
Woollymammoth
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