I would not have to say it but I think Reverb is right. As an ingeneering teacher I work with young guys for twenty years and see same thing as you. Not really optimistic for the futur but I am not an optimistic guy at all. I became old, I think it was better before, Socrate said same to Platon. So if some guys want to make this place alive, in good direction for my taste, I have to help them as I can.
Everysurfer whining about negativity and trolling has to be one of the most laughable things I’ve ever seen. This is a guy who earned himself an incredibly rare permanent ban from another surf website for his on-line bad behavior and trolling.
Well we have just seen what Mike does not need . Sways is an internationally known website , Mike has nursed and built up Sways at his own cost of both time and money and deserves to make money off it , but the consensus is that times have changed and Sways will never be what it once was , in my opinion Mike needs to incorporate the good suggestions about modernizing the site and monetizing it , pair the site down to make it easier , less time consuming for him to manage , put some money in his pocket and go surfing , because if he doesn’t it will be ALOHA. Sways . Good luck Mike and thank you .
Apparently, if Mr. Miller starts posting again, Swaylocks will rise from its ashes and return to glory.
gbzousa is 100% correct. The bottom line is things are definitely in the balance here…and I’m figuring out what to do. Luckly I tend to measure two or three times before I cut. But a cut is coming…
I’d like to respond to a few things that have come up in this thread.
First, I appreciate all the feedback. There’s some really thoughtful, heartfelt comments out there. Thank you for taking the time to write them up. They definitely help tip the balance in favor of keeping this thing alive.
Second, Huck. Holy shit man. I am truly heartbroken for your loss. Puts everything into perspective. I have a family and I don’t know how folks with that magnitude of loss carry on. I hope you find peace of mind if you haven’t already.
Third, moderators and moderation. I did imply in my comments that our moderators and moderation needs improvement. Let me be clear – I think our moderators have done a great job given the tools (very few) & resources (ZERO PAY) they have. It’s a 100% thankless job and I 100% agree with the less-is-more approach. Both philosophically and practically, I would never want the level of intrusion being requested in some of the comments around here. I 100% believe in the internet being a free speech platform and that trolls will be trolls.
I meant to follow up on my comment about “improving moderation” by saying it’s been a long time wish to make moderation on Swaylock’s more decentralized, algorithmic and less human based. By that I mean in an ideal system, it would not be dependent on a centralized human authority making decisions, but rather depend on the wisdom and actions of the crowd. But that’s a hard thing to engineer, and till then, we’ve had to rely on humans and I’m very happy with the job they’ve done.
And that’s all I will say about moderation in this thread. If anyone wants to continue opining about past and future moderation of Swaylock’s, including useful suggestions for improvement, please do it over here in this thread
And that’s all I’m gonna say for now…I want to keep this thread open to keep fielding ideas on how I might change Swaylock’s to avoid the fate identified by gbzousa
While I continue to measure, I’m going to fire up a Patreon account. Please stay tuned for that…
Love reading the site but the menus and layout have never worked well on a smartphone. Currently I have to be in Landscape mode to navigate on a Samsung Galaxy. It took awhile to figure that out, and I’d just move on rather than get frustrated before I did.
I had a very successful university website/webpage that I created in 2003 to make my publications (and literature I found useful) readily accessible to the public. My site was bare bones, not pretty and certainly not flashy. It grew from 1,500 publication downloads/month to 30,000 publication downloads/month in 2 years. I retired a few years ago and without my management traffic slowed. However, the site has been preserved by the university for the last 7 years as an information archive. (But as insurance, I uploaded my most popular publications to a site for research professionals too.)
I collected download and visitor data. Speed of website access and fast publication download time caused the rapid growth. Content and speed was what kept them coming. I focused on that.
It might help to evaluate which subforums are not generating significant traffic and streamline by eliminating them.
The subforums have no bearing on the speed of the site. I could have one forum and the speed would be the same. It’s the underlying platform & infrastructure.
Do they affect cost of operation?
Not at all.
Apparently my assumption was incorrect.
I thought server storage expenses were significant.
I did not have to pay for server storage.
IMO
Swaylocks can’t promise a negativity free environment. Swaylocks can’t promise a troll free thread.
but… Swaylocks can offer a forum to share and discuss, free of charge, with interested people around the globe. And while there are a lot of shades of gray, we do not tolerate anything and everything - if a line is crossed, we will move a thread, lock it down, or edit where we see fit. The line is subjective, but we all know it exists, at some point. We try to err on the side of tolerance for different opinions.
Everyone has a different point of tolerance, but my observation, for what its worth, is that if you can ignore the negative comments you will without fail be infomative to and appreciated by plenty of others. Don’t think cuz of one or two negative comments that everyone is in agreement, just try to focus on responding to the comments you enjoy responding to, don’t waste your energy on the rest.
This place is priceless, I would have to be dead, blocked, or the website shut down, in order for me to stop coming here.
100% Huck!! The unspoken spirit of Swaylock’s!!
Except this part…
will be changing…
Swaylocks is the only public forum/BB I visit anymore. FB groups are mostly social noise and get boring fast. I’ve been a member of several public forums/BBs since 2006. All except Swaylocks have died for one reason or another. I think Swaylocks is a valuable place of information.
However, if you start charging members to participate, the dynamic changes substantially. Moderators “work” for free – a thankless task… There have been, and still are, members who could charge consulting fees for the information they post – that doesn’t include the cost of writing time. Will they be willing to pay to continue providing free consultation?
The high traffic on my university website was likely because the publications could be read and/or downloaded for free. Had there been a charge for public access, traffic would have dropped substantially.
Fortunately, I was paid to develop and maintain the site. And the university hosted (hosts) the site with their software and server at no cost to me.
I understand your dilemma. It would be a shame to lose a classic forum like Swaylocks.
No.
Maybe it could be set up so that those who are just here to ask questions could pay a fee. Those who answer questions could be exempt from fees, or maybe even compensated. I have an app called JustAnswer where I get advice on appliance repair. I pay a small fee, and the techs who answer are compensated. If I don’t like the answer from one tech, I can go to another. And I rate them when I’m done. Maybe swaylocks could borrow some of those features. (But there are no public threads, only private consultations - so I would definitely like to keep the public threads here if possible)
justanswer.com - check it out
I recently had to replace a faulty fan on my refrigerator. I paid a minimal fee to get advice on the repair, which would have been almost impossible for me to figure out without the guidance of a tech, so I was very happy to pay a small fee. I didn’t even know what the problem was, only that my very expensive and not-very-old refrigerator wasn’t working. I talked with a couple techs, and got two very different answers. I went with the one that sounded most likely to me. He referred me to a you tube video (not his video, but he provided the link). I watched the video - it wasn’t the same model fridge as I had, but close enough I could figure out what I needed to do. I bought the part, and used the video to guide me in the replacement project. The fridge now works great again, and I saved a very expensive repair bill, or an even more expensive new refrigerator. I think people who need guidance on value or history of their vintage board, or advice on a repair, would gladly pay a small fee to get the info they need.
So here’s a thought - maybe specific question threads could charge a fee, and those who consistently provide valid answers could be compensated in some small way. Or maybe everyone pays a small fee to participate, but those who consistently contribute in a positive way are compensated accordingly.
Heck, even just a link to contribute voluntarily wouldn’t hurt. Look at all the money gofundme raises, people WILL donate voluntarily when they believe in something. A link to a finances page could show a chart representing cost of operating side by side with current donation status to keep everyone apprised.
Just thinking aloud (i.e. with my keyboard)
I have a feeling people would wade through a blizzard of ads before they’ll pay a subscription to a forum. The two other forums I know of who started collecting from users followed two paths.
One, a forum for diesel-powered 80’s Datsun/Nissan pickups - possibly relevant here due to what I would imagine was a relatively small population of users, went under shortly after switching to a mandatory paid subscription.
The other, a homebrewing forum (probably also starting with a larger base than the datsun forum) started offering an ad-free subscription that may have included something like a branded hat or T-shirt. They are still in business. Their model seemed similar to Surfline - you could still use the forum for free but the screen had constant pop up ads. A paid subscription cleared those away and gave a better experience.
I’d be worried about a paid-only setup at this point chilling any resurgence of traffic that might otherwise be possible with a website refresh. But I’m not in marketing and don’t know the first thing about running or maintaining a website.
The one thing I’d like to see is the ability to block people. I get tired of seeing the same old ignorance from certain quarters.
Yeah me too.