This may come as sad news to most people that know me (online), but I will be leaving the two primary forums I hang out at the most, Webmaster-Talk and the Steve Pavlina Forums.
Despite the current situation, the reasons for my absence from each community are different.
Steve Pavlina
I have learned a lot from Steve from blog posts like “How to make money from your blog” and “10 reasons to never get a job”. The forums were also a place where I gained knowledge.
But, I felt that my ideas for growth of the community were too often being ignored. I don’t want to say here that his staff is being arrogant or egotistical or anything, I just got the impression that my suggestions were being pushed aside, and the community wasn’t too fond of accepting any ideas for growth or improvement.
I may still visit Steve’s blog every now and then, but I feel I’m finished with his forums for awhile.
Webmaster-Talk
While also learning much from this community over the past year, as a couple of other WT members have stated, the changes made the forums too commercial, with additions like money making categories, and more specifically, the addition of the “point game” contest, where members receive points for certain stats then win cash prizes. The changes were just too gimmicky for my tastes.
At first I didn’t mind the merger, as I didn’t know what to make of it, but then I started to analyze it more. As much as it pains me to say this, Webmaster-Talk is beginning to look more and more like Digital Point (not that something like this could happen overnight, but….). Unfortunately, I fear that this will be the end result if they continue down this path, only concerning themselves with things like increasing registration rates, post counts, and branding.
Also, I do not agree with springing drastic changes on the members (even major active members such as myself), without allowing them to have the slightest bit of input. It doesn’t feel right to be left out of the loop.
The Future
Whether I return or not to either one, I don’t know for sure, more than likely not. However this doesn’t mean I will stop writing great blog posts or networking with those that I already know. If I choose to make a few posts anywhere else, they’ll probably be at the iHelpYou Forums, although it won’t contain anywhere near the frequency of posts as the last places, due to these previous experiences. So for the most part, I’m done with forum posting on others’ website communities.
My current forums have virtually no activity, and they also require my attention. I will probably be focusing more of my attention on my Conspiracy-Forums, growth has been very slow over the past five months, and I need to nurture and write for it better. Also, I don’t want to exclude other Conspiracy members from offering suggestions and feedback, so feel more than welcome to tell me what you like or don’t like about my boards, and I don’t want to make major changes or sell out without hearing what the rest of the community would think about it (even if it’s not that big at the moment). They are social in nature, after all.
Rather than going all over, creating threads, and telling everyone that I won’t be posting anymore and leaving forever, I feel it’ll be better if we just part ways quietly, things will go over more smoothly this way. Thanks for everything though.
You’ll be missed James
I think Webmaster-Talk has become more commercial, but I don’t think we’re at the Digital Pointless stage yet and I doubt we’ll ever go that far. I think we’ve still got a core collection of members who are sensible enough not to let the forum get to that stage.
I hope you’ll return sometime in the future anyway.
Dan
goodbye and good riddance
what a drama queen… oh, I’m leaving the forum… I must let the rest of the world know about it by writing a press release
I like the flourish at the end: ‘I feel it’ll be better if we just part ways quietly,’
Of all the people we could have lost, you’re one of the worst. To be without, that is; I’m sure you know I’m not trying to insult you.
You’ll be missed, but I’ll follow your blog, naturally, and poke my head into your forum … although I’m not participating in any conspiracy. At least none that I can talk about in public.
I understand your reasoning, and don’t blame you at all. I hope being able to focus more attention on your own forum, and other interests, winds up being a good thing for you; I’m sure it will.
Thanks a bunch Dan and Forrest
(I’ll still remember, Dan, when you gave me my first TP points, for making the blog organization suggestions,
great times)
I’ll keep checking out your blogs too, some great stuff you guys come up with.
Hopefully you guys can use your great moderating skills and keep the community from turning into it as quickly as it may happen.
@Andy,
Dude, you need to lay off the DP kool-aid, coming onto MY Blog, and insulting people you don’t even know (some forum communities actually CARE about their members). I feel I’m giving you a reasonable warning here.
Personally I think that the suggestions that you’ve made at WT have been great and I’ve told you as much. From what I’ve seen they’ve been well received and taken into consideration, if not always adopted. I think that if you expressed interest in being a mod there you’d get it. I’d vote for you. The shape the transition takes will be shaped by the long-termers anyway, who have a more vested interest if only in longevity. In any case, the place won’t be quite as EEEEEVIIIILLL without ya.
Well I am sorry to hear this James. I fear that some of my favorite WT members will start to drop out because of the reasons you stated. I do wish you well and all that you do and maybe I will here from you soon.
Thanks Tim and Phil
I appreciate the feedback (for my WT suggestions, among other things). And in the time being, I am carrying the evilness to IHY, as some may have noticed.
I’m not sure if other members will also leave or not, they’d have to make their own decisions about that.
I may check out your guys’ websites too, if you ever update them that is, to keep in touch.
Maybe one day blogging will spark your interests. Tim, you have some *really* great designs and blogging would be a great way to communicate with people who would be interested in them (I think Kandi mentioned somewhere over at WT that you could earn a great deal off of your designs).
And Phil, well just by judging from your posts over at WT, you’d make a great blogger too.
I left WMT a while back, however I do visit it regularly. I found that the forum became too commercial and a lot of spammers are just looking/offering get rich quick schemes.
Another reason I left was because it was almost the same threads every single day without any new interesting questions been asked. n00bs didn’t bother using the search feature, ie, how do I increase my PR? However if they used the search feature they would soon realise that PR was not important.
But oh well, forums have their time and people must move on.
Well hamsey, if you thought Webmaster-Talk was commercial before, just look at it now.
And like the others, I certainly don’t blame you for leaving either. Sometimes I just wished people would read sticky like “HTML Resources” or “Why Toolbar PR isn’t Important” before creating those “Where can I learn CSS for free” or “Next PR Updation” threads.
Also, it’s good to see you on my Conspiracy Forums.
I know they don’t have as much activity ATM, but I’ll work on creating more quality content and threads to discuss in, so it’ll be more interesting for current members and potential new ones (No “Point Games” or prize-winning gimmicks for me 
).
James I mentioned it to you in the email, but I’ll say it here as well. You will be missed and I do hope you’ll return. I know the merger at WT may seem all about being commercial, but there are reasons for the changes. The contest is just a marketing thing to generate buzz. It’s obviously not going to last forever. WT has held contests in the past and probably will in the future if Tim and Lee think it will help bring new members and attention to the forum.
A part of the reason for the new Marketplace was to help reduce some of the spam offers we get. It’s not as though people weren’t posting those offers as it was. Having to pay a few dollars should cut down on the more spammy offers. It also allows the mods to delete any thread advertising that is outside the Marketplace. The new Marketplace is also separate from the rest of the forum so it would be easy enough to avoid if you don’t want to see it.
As far as the new forums about making money I think those will be good for the forums. They are subjects of interest to people building websites. We already had forums about AdSense and AdWords so this is really more of an expansion.
I don’t think any of the above means the forum has to become more like DP. The character of a forum is based on the community. It’s not all about the forum topics or whether there’s a Marketplace.
The truth is things change and WT had to change if it was to continue to operate. The forum needed more members and it needed new blood. I hope you’ll come back, but I’ll understand if you prefer not to. You certainly have that right, but you will be missed.
Hey Steve,
), I was replying to your email just as you commented. 
What a coincidence (or conspiracy
As I said in my post I’m not (and I don’t think I can be 100%) sure that I’ll never return, but I don’t see it happening in the near future.
I know I wasn’t apart of the forum when past contests were held, so I had no idea about those which took place for sure (or maybe I was thinking that they were past the gimmick stage, and the quality posts and dedicated members would have been enough).
Actually too, I have no problem with the marketplace changes, they look pretty good, and I never came to WT to sell my work or promote my services, so those changes didn’t influence my decisions.
About the money making, I feel having a whole category dedicated to it may be a little over-the-top. I mean, as you said, we already had the adsense/adwords forums, along with the ecommerce and general business and miscellaneous IM forums (which often contained topics about generating online income).
I don’t think WT will automatically turn into DP because of those changes, but it sure looks like a step in that direction. I know it’s the community that makes the decisions on how it’s shaped in that regard, but those changes seem to beg similar posts and inquiries (and I have nothing against EF or its community, the two just don’t seem like they belong together, IMO).
I know forums change over time, but as I said in my email, it didn’t feel right to exclude dedicated members from the changes (as necessary or unnecessary as they may have been).
Funny that we were writing at the same time. I’ll reply to your email a little later. I haven’t read it yet.
I guess I look at it that AdSense is just one aspect of making money online. In fact many would say it’s the least useful way. I haven’t had a chance yet to go into those forums in any details so I’m not sure what’s in there at the moment, but I think it’s going to be good we can discuss other forms of monetization. I know some of it might come across as spammy to some, but I don’t think the specific form of monetization is automatically a spammy thing. AdSense is a good example of that. You have it here, but I’d hardly call you spammy. At the same time there are plenty of MFA sites that serve no purpose beyond the ads.
I think topics like affiliate marketing and direct ad selling are legit topics to discuss and I think a lot of people will be interested in them. They don’t have to be about spam, though I do understand your concern. Monetization wasn’t really the expertise of most at WT, but those from EF do know more about it and I think they can teach us all a lot. I know I’d like to make more money from blog given all the time I put into it.
The other thing with me is every forum I belong to discusses topics that don’t interest me. I just stay out of those forums. I may not like them, but I know other people do.
I know you didn’t say you’d never return and I do understand if you need to be away for awhile. I do hope you’ll be back though.
While I certainly don’t think that adsense or “making money online” itself is spammy.
And I actually believe adsense is a great way to make money online. It challenges you to write great blog posts (or website content for non-blogs), and after you have the initial traffic base and network in place, generating clicks and income is easy.
While topics like affiliate programs and the like may be legit topics, as you said, WT didn’t really feel like the place to be discussing them. Giving them their own special emphasis seemed to be a bit too much for me. I mean, what if the staff decided to create more Forums about even more topics that weren’t in our interests.
I do see your point though about staying out of forums that don’t interest you, but then again, they are on the same website. For example, topics about SEO and PR often spill into the Google Forum. So I think it’s inevitable that MMO topics will spill into other sections of the site as well, there’s really not much escaping it.
Talk to you in a bit
I am sad to see you leave but I can understand why.
Perhaps it is not the owners intention to make it that much more commercialized, but when you integrate a commercialized forum into the existing one, it will naturally become more commercialized. It is sad for me because now when you go to “New Posts” it is mostly marketing, SEO, affiliate links, and the like. I don’t like having to go to the main forum page, mark all the forums I don’t like as read to view the newer posts for the site. It’s becoming too much of a hassle. It may not end up being just like DP, but it may end up looking like it.
I enjoy your blog and hope to see you again either on WT or another forum
I know what you mean, James.
Now that the focus of WT has shifted to those topics you mentioned, it’ll be even more difficult to find the posts you’re interested in when helping others out. And I think (setup-wise) it pretty much already looks like DP. All that’s left now is that its up to the posters whether they want to turn WT into a DP clone or not.
Thanks for the comments, too, and remember I do have my conspiracy-forum project I’m working on ATM, along with a reply every day or two over at IHY, but as I said, for other forums, I won’t be posting nearly as much as I did at WT.