I'd be willing to bet from the subject line you know who this is. Zappit has told me a little about you and I stealthily poked around your forum a bit. I think the merger would have some benefits for both parties, but I fear that it may not be exactly feasible.
Because I'm an analyst, let me get all numbery for you.
Total Users - Halforums 1019, SF 489
Threads - Halforums 15003, SF 3451
Posts - Halforums 725233, SF 40985
Posts in December alone for Halforums was 6033. We average about 6350 posts each month (6350.833 if you want to be exact). It would literally take us 6.4 months to match what your group has done. This is not being mean or trying to one up you, it's to show you the stark numbers. The reason for that is...
I can see a lot of benefits for both places, but way, WAY more benefits for you. You had stated that you'd want to keep your brand and url - which totally makes sense considering it's the forum of
spiderforest.com! Hell, changing it to anything else would be stupid. But here's the thing. You would gain a large influx of users who already know each other and interact well. You'd get an influx of posts, topics, readers to your comics...you'd be getting a second
life!
Now look at what we'd get. Removal of our branding. Removal of our URL. Yeah, we'd get hosting, but that benefits only me, not my folks. About the only thing we'd all get that we don't have now is a purpose. Right now we're just a forum that exists because we know each other. There's hardly any new folks coming in because there's no actual topic. You guys have a purpose - the comics - that we lack. I totally get that. In fact, we tried at one point to be a webcomic host like you are. Didn't work for us.
And there's one other thing that we'd lose. The ability to just do stuff. Like the other day I saw an addon that I wanted to try out. So I did. Has it caught on? Nope. But I tried it anyway because at the time I thought it was cool. We'd be losing that autonomy and freedom that we have right now. And would we be able to merge DBs or would we lose our post history? Or would you lose yours (if we went with the Xenforo platform instead of phpBB? I'd really, REALLY hate to lose our history. And I'll bet you would as well.
So while I thank Zappit and think his heart is in the right place, I don't see a real benefit in this for us. You? I see a lot and I can see how you would be very excited for it. But frankly you'd be giving up nothing and getting everything while we'd be getting nothing while giving everything. And that's not fair to my users.
I truly hope I'm not coming across as insulting because I don't mean it that way. I'm trying to find a solution that would be beneficial to everyone and I just don't see it. I think Zap is a good guy but not sure he thought this all the way through. He sees his two favorite places coming together with rainbows and puppies and not thinking about how you would feel being associated with one of the top searches for "minotaur penis" on Google. We used to be #1 but then the movie "Your Highness" came out & dropped us to #9. Stupid Danny McBride.
Anyway, if you have ideas or thought of something I'm overlooking, please feel free to discuss. I haven't shut down anything yet because I hadn't spoken with you, but I thought it only fair you knew from whence I came thought-wise.
Your in Forumability,
Dave
would mean we're no longer us, you know?
