Site Management What's the reason why you gave up on your site?

[Tracy]

Tracy, I buy your argument.
But I also believe that if you are not running ads and if you end up shutting down your site because you can no longer pay for the maintenance, it is better to run ads and make the site self sustainable, if not making profits.

And that's why I have commented that I realize that at some point if a site gets large enough, it will generally be commercialized in some manner. That can either be with ads, sponsorships from niche related businesses or even subscription. But once that happens, it's no longer a "free" site as in some manner the end user is going to be forced with dealing with additional burden of ads or similar. But that might also be a difference in how you and I define the word free.

My point was, it seems that way to many are more concerned with how they can make money now than how providing a service. I have to wonder if that's the difference between having the internet be a core life involvement like it is now for society and it being something new and world opening when it started out for use by the public back in my era.

But for some, the philosophy hasn't changed that much since the days of the BBS other than more people were interested in participation in a long form format and they aren't today. I remember my first "real" system to run a multi-node BBS cost me around $4000, and that was 1985 dollars, which would be around $11,700 in todays money, and that was a direct payment cost. And that didn't include the 3 telephone lines at around $12 each for each node. And I was not the only one to do such... and most of us (other than the porn related sites) were free to use as we ran the sites because we enjoyed it.

 

[joelr]

My point was, it seems that way to many are more concerned with how they can make money now than how providing a service. I have to wonder if that's the difference between having the internet be a core life involvement like it is now for society and it being something new and world opening when it started out for use by the public back in my era.

I definitely think you're on to a good point, which is that the web - and it's users - are maturing.

 

[Tracy]

I definitely think you're on to a good point, which is that the web - and it's users - are maturing.

I don't know if I would call it "maturing"... but maybe being more concerned with using it for their ultimate benefit? 😉
I realize my position is somewhat an an outlier now. Even the old heads seem to be more concerned with either breaking even or making money instead of the pie-in-the-sky altruistic attitude of providing data for free.
The sad thing is now that way to often the costs of providing that data is well above what it used to be. In the bad old days, a forum alone would suffice. Now you need so much more to draw users to your content. And that frequently comes at additional cost. In the long run, it basically is determined by the attitude of the one setting the site up. And we are all adults in the room and realize that if a site takes off, there is a point that most individuals pocket books will not be able to support it and finding methods of financial income will have to be considered. But usually when that happens, it's easy enough to explain to your users why you have reached that point. When you tell them that the monthly outlay for a site is $XXX.YYY (or more) a month that was coming out of your pocket, most will not have a problem with the least intrusive method of garnering income to support the site.
The problem that a lot have are starter sites that jump immediately into the deep end of ads and such... and they fail to provide much content.