I've mentioned this to Andy and a couple of the moderators before. It's not a moderation issue-- they're doing the best they can with the cards they've been dealt.Nords. What is the directional problem?
The root cause of the problems is that the board is getting swamped by search-engine optimization. This quiet little neighborhood bar has been turned into a mosh pit.
Here's a concrete example. Last month I added a new FAQ archive entry for veterans because we've had several new active-duty members complaining about being retired early. (In the military, that's a bad thing caused by medical problems or disability injuries.) This is the first time in over four years of membership that this has happened. It turns out that E-R.org is one of Google's top search results for the phrase "military early retirement". The problem is self-imposed.
[rant] (This part can be skipped. Scroll down to the bottom for the conclusion.)
Here's some more opinions. It seems to me that moderator turnover has been a bit high over the last six months. Perhaps it's a phase but I wonder if it could be the workload of daily posting volume, hundreds of users online at once, and the extensive discussions about whether to moderate a poster or just to ban. That was one of my (many) moderator issues and it's hard to see how it could be improving.
The board's software and servers are struggling to keep up with the traffic and the ads. A couple years ago I could snap through a few pages of posts, but now my connection has to wrangle with Google's adservers before grudgingly coughing up a page. It's actually easier/faster to spawn off a couple dozen windows (on a WinXP PC!) that it is to sequentially click through threads. I've learned to compose/edit offline instead of on the website. Yeah, it's being managed better and it's getting faster-- but it's nowhere near what it used to be. We're victims of the herds of eyeballs being driven here by SEO and held hostage to adservers.
The crowds have diluted the user experience and driven up the frustration level. I've grown to rely on E-R.org as a huge reference resource, a powerful decision-making tool, and a great community. I couldn't imagine a day without everyone's support, but lately the signal:noise ratio has dropped so low that it renders everything tremendously more difficult. I even have a separate invitation-only military social group helping with ER topics because I don't want to have to deal with all the trolls & personality conflicts that I'd get on a public part of the board.
Speaking of crowds, a few years ago it used to be hard to find over a dozen veterans here. Today my social group invitation list had over 90 on it.
Other dissatisfiers are growing. Even with one of the board's bigger "Ignore Poster" lists, the constant sniping & pecking is wearying. Judging form my "New Posts" summary, at least 25% of the threads are on my "Ignore Soapbox" or "Ignore threads by ignored poster" list, but the remaining relentless reciprocated diatribes tend to make my responses more grumpy than helpful. I rarely see a new question about ER, let alone a thoughtful discussion generating new insight-- and in fact I've been spending way too much time organizing the ER info we already have. Maybe it takes a huge crowd of newbies a while to find the FAQ archive.
I've realized that I've been slowly rebuilding my own infrastructure. While E-R.org has its drama and issues, Raddr's board (Raddr's Early Retirement and Financial Strategy Board :: Index) has been quietly plugging along for years without ads, spam, or banning. (Note that many of Raddr's regulars used to be long-time E-R.org regulars.) It's fast, too! Away from discussion boards, I've tapped into other social networks around my island. Other posters (like the Kaderlis, Bob Clyatt, SamClem, & Tomcat98) are regular e-mail correspondents and we rarely convene over an E-R.org thread anymore. I'm starting to ponder questions that I don't want to ask on E-R.org, so now I use other discussion boards for questions that asked here would invite too much trolling.
I'm learning to learn to live without E-R.org. I no longer feel like a proud member or have any customer loyalty. When I've shared feedback in the past I've felt that too much of the response has been "reassure & ignore". I'm tired of swapping PMs & e-mails with other long-time members who've felt mistreated.
E-R.org is strolling down a trail that's littered with injured or dead ER discussion boards. For example, a couple years ago Morningstar's Vanguard Diehards suffered for months from overwhelming traffic and ineffective moderation, an ideal environment for infections like H0cus. Several abrupt software changes disrupted everyone's routine. Ads bogged down the board's speed and the search feature didn't work well. Then over a third of the membership decamped to start up the Bogleheads board. Morningstar finally started paying attention to the problems, but things didn't need to get as bad as they got and VD has never recovered.
For you real old-timers, the advertising revenue of Motley Fool's ER board got so bad that they started charging for access. Most of their membership promptly moved to RetireEarlyHomePages and Dory started E-R.org. REHP also developed moderator issues (mostly around H0cus again) and today Greaney's ER discussion board is a ghost town. Same growth & troll issues with ES' NFB ER board.
[/rant] [Conclusions & recommendations.]
Meanwhile Raddr's board keeps on chugging. He's never tolerated trolls or conducted "experiments" on his users. He's not there to make a profit-- he contributes research and he's actually an ER himself. The software hasn't been updated in years (that's a good thing). There's no advertising or search-engine optimization. He doesn't even accept financial contributions. While he could fall short of the paragon of virtue that I'm ascribing to his board, it's a straightforward example of what E-R.org used to be and could still become. Everything that could be fixed here is already working at Raddr's board. However that's fundamentally at odds with a revenue model built on SEO.
I thought Raddr's board was an anomaly until I found a similar board in my neighborhood. It's run by a tech geek with vBulletin software, all the features we have here, and a similar crowd of moderators. It's fast and reliable despite a Mainland server. The difference is that it doesn't advertise or practice SEO. The admin is driven by a true sense of community-- the kind involving park potlucks, holiday get-togethers, and photos of ourselves-- not advertising revenue.
I'm not leaving E-R.org but, like many of the long-time members, I'll be spending a greater part of my day elsewhere. And now that I've found hassle-free replacements for what I used to get from E-R.org, it's hard to care what happens to it. I've devoted a lot of time and effort here, but it's hard to see how more could pay off. If I do decide to say goodbye, it won't be through a revolving door-- it'll be final. I don't particularly care to get to that point but some of you have seen me do it with other boards.
Returning E-R.org to "the way it used to be" would probably cost a lot of eyeballs and advertising revenue, even without a recession. However I feel obligated to offer the following suggestions, even if it's only to salve my own conscience:
One change that could be made right now, IMO without impacting overall SocialKnowledge.net traffic, would be to split off the Soapbox into its own separate forum. Get it off E-R.org and give it a separate URL. Find a way to automatically include membership to everyone on E-R.org (or just tell people to take it there!) and maybe the vocal minority raising a ruckus here could be encouraged to go to the Soapbox. In my opinion it'd be like getting Howard Stern off the public airwaves and giving him his own little pornpen on satellite radio. He does his thing with less visibility, different revenue, fewer public restrictions, and all his hardcore fans where no one else has to deal with him. You know it could be the Web's premiere political & current events discussion board. It'd make moderator life a lot easier around here.
Another change would be more visible moderation. I think more publicity of the moderator process is a good thing--announcing who's been banned, who's been temporarily silenced, and who's at the top of the "Ignore Poster" lists. Too many posters have been confused about what's appropriate or what policies are in effect. Too many other posters seem to be getting away with too much until they suddenly disappear.
Finally, special posters get special privileges. Long-time contributors, where the consensus is that they've proven their worth, shouldn't be subjected to admonitions or infractions or troll ankle-biting, constant revisions to signatures & avatars, or other annoyances. We're not a bunch of newbies still learning how to behave in public. We're not turning into whackos or abusing our special powers. Us old-timers remember how we used to link to an Amazon donation page for Bob's book, how we used to link to the Kaderli's website, and how we used to be linked here by REHP and other websites. If you want us to hang around, make us welcome. If we're not made to feel welcome, we can take a hint. We can help, or we can let the newbies fumble around figuring it out for themselves-- like ERs were doing here a decade ago.
I don't know what led The Fashion Spot to leave, but I doubt that they were generating E-R.org's revenue. However if E-R.org is cut loose someday, I hope someone of Raddr's philosophy takes over the board before it's too late.