Sold

I figured this was going to happen sooner or later, bikeforums.net has been sold. It's perhaps a surprise that I should even write about this at all, given that I've rarely ventured there over the last two and a half years. Nevertheless, as one of the earlier ones to join that site, it was interesting to watch it's development since early 2000, and to observe just how accurately on-line communities reflect the same issues as other communities.

According to the messages on the site at the time, that forum was originally started because many of the on-line fora around in those days were full of semi-adolescent trolls with little more to do than get involved in flame wars, spam, or just generally disrupt the flow of the board for the other users. Joe figured he could build a better forum, and he did. While I might look at the forum now and wonder why I spent so much time there between 2000 and 2004, the fact is that it was an extremely entertaining and informative place. I was even happy to accept the role of moderator when asked in December 2002.

Toward the end of 2004, however, I could see things changing, and not always for the better. The traffic was increasing to the point where moderators would have had to spend more time online than they probably would have liked to keep the place in order, the sort of flamers and trolls* the forum had been set up to avoid were arriving among the exponentially increasing traffic. I was also starting to feel as though just about every topic had already been argued back and forth enough times to lose my interest, and at the end of 2004 I advised Joe to find another moderator because I wasn't going to be around much anymore.

Even by then I got the impression that he was starting to lose enthusiasm for the whole project, and I couldn't really blame him. I have no idea what price he got for the forum, but I hope it was a good one. While I think the place has gone downhill in recent years (probably a direct function of it's popularity, which ruins most things), at it's peak it provided a lot of enjoyment and knowledge for the many who used it, and the fact is that nothing has really replaced it. That said, I doubt if I'll ever get involved in a lot of those discussions again regardless, these days I really don't see the point.