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The day the Forum died

Allen Stark

The Forum died for me 4/3/18. It has been resurrected a couple of times, but it seems to be on life support.

4/3/18 my wife got her hip[ replaced and while I was in the waiting room I logged on the the Forum and it wasn't there and there was an ambiguous message. It finally came back to  no fanfare and we were told it was a necessary update. Activity on the forum was low. It was updated again to more fanfare but activity was still low. I inquired about it and was told Forums were an outdated system. This surprised me as the other forum I frequent (for DnD) has gone though similar updates and is vibrant. I am' repeating again on the Forum, my theory and solution. When the Forum was vibrant anyone could post and we were getting posts from all over the world. One person from another country said it was THE best source of information for masters swimmers. Now it is restricted to posts from USMS members only saying it is a perk of membership. It would be a much better perk if it was a vibrant  site and good marketing for USMS. Imagine asking about finding a workout in another country and having someone from there answering. That used to happen. 

I know USMS staff monitor the Forum, please open it up, I can practically guarantee it will not drop enrollment. Has anyone said ,since 4/3/18, "I'm joining USMS for the Forum.". Open it to the world and someone might.

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  • I completely agree, Allen. I remember when everything changed too. There was always lots of interesting discussion. Then…………..crickets. Almost nothing when things changed. Sometimes WEEKS without a post here. I suppose the decision to change things had to do with money. Discussion forums do actually need human intervention for maintenance. Years ago, I was a member of the RUNNER’S WORLD discussion forums. The RW forums were even more active than the former iteration of the USMS discussion forums. There were paid subscriptions, and free memberships participating in them. Then, they (RW) announced that they were selling off the discussion forum, and some of their other online services to ACTIVE.com. It was probably no more than ACTIVE buying for access to the contact info of all those users, and they never had any intention of keeping the forums going. Eventually, a year or so I guess, the discussion forums were completely eliminated. We (users/members) were told it was for financial reasons. An entire active, vibrant online community eliminated. There is one thing I will point out about non-paying membership in discussion forums. I am also currently a member of the BIKE FORUMS — discussion forums for all styles, and aspects of bicycling. I use the free membership, but it’s opened up to people all over the world. It’s fun, and very active…like the old USMS forums. But, because the forum is open to the non-paying public…it gets a lot of riffraff. Every now and then it’ll get hacked into, or a fraudulent free membership, and the forums will get inundated with unwanted posts that are advertisements for any number of things. It’s very distracting. It always gets cleaned up, but obviously that takes time for someone to do. And I’m sure it costs the forum owners some money to have it done. So, there is some advantage to allowing only paying members access. But the result is an almost useless service. I just can’t say if keeping it open only to paying members outweighs giving access to the public. But it is certainly more interesting with more activity. — Dan

     

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  • I completely agree, Allen. I remember when everything changed too. There was always lots of interesting discussion. Then…………..crickets. Almost nothing when things changed. Sometimes WEEKS without a post here. I suppose the decision to change things had to do with money. Discussion forums do actually need human intervention for maintenance. Years ago, I was a member of the RUNNER’S WORLD discussion forums. The RW forums were even more active than the former iteration of the USMS discussion forums. There were paid subscriptions, and free memberships participating in them. Then, they (RW) announced that they were selling off the discussion forum, and some of their other online services to ACTIVE.com. It was probably no more than ACTIVE buying for access to the contact info of all those users, and they never had any intention of keeping the forums going. Eventually, a year or so I guess, the discussion forums were completely eliminated. We (users/members) were told it was for financial reasons. An entire active, vibrant online community eliminated. There is one thing I will point out about non-paying membership in discussion forums. I am also currently a member of the BIKE FORUMS — discussion forums for all styles, and aspects of bicycling. I use the free membership, but it’s opened up to people all over the world. It’s fun, and very active…like the old USMS forums. But, because the forum is open to the non-paying public…it gets a lot of riffraff. Every now and then it’ll get hacked into, or a fraudulent free membership, and the forums will get inundated with unwanted posts that are advertisements for any number of things. It’s very distracting. It always gets cleaned up, but obviously that takes time for someone to do. And I’m sure it costs the forum owners some money to have it done. So, there is some advantage to allowing only paying members access. But the result is an almost useless service. I just can’t say if keeping it open only to paying members outweighs giving access to the public. But it is certainly more interesting with more activity. — Dan

     

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