Community updates

With the holiday season coming and the year coming to a close, I wanted to take time to check in with everyone, share a few thoughts about where we are as a community, and talk about some changes and plans for the future.

Current state​

Over the last 2 years the average active member count has gone from 125 to 95, which is not good a good sign for a community as small as ours. I take responsibility for this as I've not invested much time in improving the user experience after the first year I first took over the site.

Most of my effort has been spent on areas like spam prevention, cybersecurity, and e-mail delivery, which I'm happy to say have not been issues.

Financial costs have played a part in my motivation to keep improving the site. The subscription fees to keep adding new features and maintain what was installed stacked up quickly in the first two years I took over and hosting providers have steadily increased prices over the last few years on top of that. I've not had the energy to address this the last few years, but I'd like to try to fix that with a fresh set of eyes over the holidays.

Future thoughts​

I have a personal check-in date of May 2029 to re-evaluate if I have the energy to keep maintaining the server and the website. Unless there are unforeseen circumstances that come up between now and then, I'm committed to keeping the site online for the next 2.5 years.

During that time I want to check in twice a year to see what can be improved.

A thank you to our volunteers​

Moderating an online community is often a thankless job. It involves making difficult decisions, handling disagreements, and dealing with situations that most members never see.

While I've continued to keep things running behind the scenes, nearly all of the day-to-day keeping the community healthy has been handled by @Cubitus the Chatty and @ShinyXOXO. I want to recognize their contributions as well as @shiny3stripes for graciously volunteering their time.

If you've found value in this community, I'd encourage you to take a moment to thank them.

What's coming next​

I was fortunate to meet a web developer recently who is willing to volunteer their time for the next few weeks to help address issues that I think have frustrated both volunteers and members alike so I'll be working with them based on what I know, but your feedback would be valuable if there are problems or inconveniences I'm not aware of.

Some changes they already put in-

1. Automatic clean up of empty albums
2. Better gallery storage indicators
3. Better upload experience to list existing albums
4. Automatic titles, descriptions, and tags for media using AI where appropriate

A few ideas I have in mind to work on with them-

1. Tools to review NSFW usernames and profile pictures
2. Auto comment moderation using AI where appropriate
3. Auto moderation of NSFW media posted in SFW sections
4. Tools to track people making multiple accounts

A word about community conduct​

I also want to take a minute to revisit expectations on the site and that I will be taking a harder stance on several things as new tools allow me to.

• This is a community site open to the public and is meant to be a welcoming place for everyone who abides by the rules
• Content creators are allowed to make one forum post to advertise themselves in an appropriate section
• Business solicitation through private messages is not allowed
• Rude and offensive behavior such as threats, demands, insults, and sexual advances will not be tolerated in public or private
  • If this behavior takes place in private, include a copy what was said in the report
  • There may not be an immediate action, but if I see a pattern I'll make sure it's addressed
• Making multiple accounts is not allowed
• Suggestive and explicit profile pictures are not allowed
• If you don't like someone, but they're not breaking any rules, use the block feature on the site
• The report system is meant for rules and guideline violations and using reports for bogus reasons repeatedly will lead to a ban
• Disrespectful behavior towards a staff member is an immediate ban
• Make proper use of the NSFW and AI categories

I don't bring these up to flag them as major issues, most people have been good about following the community rules and I thank those who have.

I'd like to hear from you​

Last thing: I wanted to do a simple, temperature check poll below open to everyone.

I'd appreciate the quick click to tell me how you'd rate your overall experience on the site.

Feel free to be honest in your rating. I know there's been a lot of room for improvement.

You're also welcome to share constructive thoughts, suggestions, or concerns in the replies.

Thank you to everyone who continues to make this community part of their online life. I hope you all have a safe and healthy holiday season, and I look forward to seeing how our community develops in the future.

(And yes I did ask ChatGPT to help me format this because I'm know it does it better than me 😂)

I'll add my $0.02. Back in the day when I used to frequent this place (mind you I didn't think of registering for whatever reason), it was a hopping place. I believe a lot of the decline is in major favor of other social media platforms. Forums are an old school (heck, I'm old enough to remember using dial up Bulletin Board Servers (BBS)) way of socializing and sharing content. Folks have moved on from forums to other media outlets with instant gratification and downloaded apps. Something that a mere forum doesn't really accomplish.

I'm old school and prefer forums over social media. I don't have social media and I will never use it. Mainly because a majority of forums, a user can talk to the owner of the forum. Good luck with talking to the CEO of a social media platform. With that being said, now that we are in the mid-2020's, a lot of the rift-raft has went away making forums a niche place for much cleaner activity. I see this in a bunch of forums I belong to, in fact, I now moderate some of those forums I've been on for a very long time. As a moderator of those forums, since people have flocked to social media, my job has been much easier. Only thing we as moderators need to worry about are the same problems listed above.

Another issue with this place is the lack of traditional wind pants manufacturers are (not) offering. I remember the days of going to JC Penny, Macy's, and brand name outlet stores (Adidas/Nike) and being able to buy wind pants. Including the more off brand stores like Walmart, K-Mart, etc. Lots of colors, both lined and unlined variations. Yet it is quite fascinating when I wear my wind pants out in public people ask me where I get them or if there is something like them new. I always have to tell them, "good luck" or only used on Depop, eBay, etc. I was in Dicks Sporting Goods last week getting something, and I got preoccupied looking for wind pants. They didn't have any wind pants, and they are a sporting goods store. Where I'm getting at with this, is how are we supposed to have a forum, when the products aren't even being made main stream any more. Sad, but true. And yes . . . . I've been considering making my own line of simple unlined nylon wind pants in two colors, black and navy blue since no one seems to want to make them. I already have the templates for XS all the way to XL sizes and I've made a pair copying a pair of vintage 90's Nike's for fit. It's just getting the business going with time as I work two full time jobs, amongst living a life.

The only portion of what I really don't like what I see mentioned, is the verbiage: The report system is meant for rules and guideline violations and using reports for bogus reasons repeatedly will lead to a ban. Many of the other forums encourage the use of the report system, even if it gets abused, we hash it out in a PM with the user. Any of the forums I moderate we've had discussions on this very topic, and we have a standing rule that we'd never outright ban someone from using (or abusing) the feature. Yes, it is annoying as a moderator to get the notification of a "Report" in queue, but we'd always hash it out. Granted most of the time we are dealing with our "Approval" queue with duplicate or akismet flagged accounts. Outside of that, it is your forum, you can moderate it how you like and you asked for our thoughts, and I solicited my thoughts on that topic.

Otherwise, thanks for keeping this place going, and I would hate to see it go as many forums have. I get it. It is not cheap having a web server along with keeping up on security updates, SSL certs, and renewing the forum software for updates. If anything, I might suggest offering a way to give donations. Do a Paypal link to get a few bucks. I'm sure folks on here would be very inclined to donate to keep the lights on, I certainly would.

I’ll say the pop up ads on here are INSANE these days. I referred a creator and she came here and was instantly turned off because she couldn’t even move around the site because of them and I knew exactly what she meant when she was telling me about it.

Thatguy2278 said:

I’ll say the pop up ads on here are INSANE these days. I referred a creator and she came here and was instantly turned off because she couldn’t even move around the site because of them and I knew exactly what she meant when she was telling me about it.

Click to expand...

I appreciate the feedback on this. When I put the ads in they were setup for auto placement and I turned off my ad blocker to test how it looked and they didn't appear problematic to me, but I've not checked on it since and no one has mentioned it being an issue before. I'll check today on this and see how it can be improved.

Wow, a nice and impressive statement!

@windpantsguy And I'm old-school too, agreeing to most of your points. Sounds like US? So in Germany its nearly the same situation with new produced clothing. You can still find some kind of them in sports stores f.e. Decathlon, Runners Point and so on but most of them got technical style, rain clothes and such stuff and over this mostly not that shiny.

So maybe someone noticed there are actually people still sewing that stuff, me too. I know one from CA still doing shiny clothing (and selling).....and yes I have patterns too but as I had the idea to sew more and sell them, I noticed I would have to charge an amount what less people are willing to pay f.e. Twinkx.com.... that's not reliable in my eyes. I personally need 4-6h per pants, Sewers in Ger get ~15€ per hour + Fabrics.... But if someone ask for it I would sew a custom for a friends price....

I think we'll stay a niche for a while but that's ok to me, I don't want to be mainstream 😉.

About the report..... Come on, you know, soup isn't eaten as hot as it's cooked. 😉