Nostr Web Client

Yeah, I get why it dried up. Most of it is AI. The forum was super active for 15 years and in the past two years I've lost more than half the traffic, and so did my competitors. I built that traffic over nearly 20 years, and poof, it's mostly gone.

And that's ok. I get it. My business model changed several times over the years and I had to adapt to survive. But too many factors came together at this point to make it interesting to continue, and I was ready for a change a few years ago anyhow.

So no hard feelings, no sadness, just excitement to be free to pursue other things. It was just disappointing to find out that so many people were around for so long but mostly didn't say anything in the forum. They enjoyed reading it and now they're sad I'm closing it down. I wish they would have engaged more when they had the chance. I'll make sure to stay active here on Nostr. I won't forget the lesson.

Telluride 3mo ago 💬 1

Is it worth archiving read only?

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Discussion

Mountain Man 3mo ago

I pondered what to do for probably three years and couldn't come up with a viable solution.

I thought about keeping it open, read-only, but the community forum was the heart of the website and it would die. The online training program wouldn't function, and I couldn't send driver applications to companies. So, basically, it would become an old blog and forum that would slowly die but had to be maintained.

The other thing I want to do is pass the torch to the next generation. If I kept it open, it would continue to garner traffic and hold others back.

I'm permanently archiving everything, and some long-time members are starting a new forum on Discourse. I'm thinking about trying to do something with the materials, because a lot of it is fantastic stuff, but not sure what to do.

Finally, I'm concerned that I could eventually run into some kind of legal issues. Maybe I missed a tiny technicality somewhere along the way and it comes back to bite me. You never know.

So I just decided the best way to end it would be to save it all permanently, thank everyone, and put it up on the shelf like a trophy, knowing it was a legendary pilar in our industry for a very long time.

I will always think of ways to reuse those materials. I may end up allowing others to use them on their websites if I find someone who seems to have a similar ethos as we had.