There was a bar in my town that a small group of locals were regulars in. They sat there everyday smoking and making sarcastic comments to anyone new that came in and making them feel unwelcome. Every conversation that came up, they disagreed, were combative, and knew more than anyone else. The owner felt like they were his core business and the locals wielded it for even greater power. The locals eventually choked the business out making it their private club and the bar went out of business.
I’ll just leave this here.
This is a good example of putting a false value on certain regular customers or forum dwellers.
- Our local room has a few characters, regulars who are abusive to anyone they play in house leagues and drive some away. People come for fun and a challenge, not to pay money for an unpleasant evening.
- As this applies to AZ, many who frequented this forum don't visit and the more that it is dominated by a few and in some cases with little or nothing to contribute or simply to argue or criticize, it drives even more people away.
I've always been a vocal supporter of AZ, but the last 6 months especially it sometimes feels like a private blog run by the same handful of people.
The Aiming Forum was rendered useless by trolls, the sales forum died a few years ago, and if you use the "New" search button to retrieve the latest updated threads/posts, you often find that NPR posts dominate.
Maybe forum platforms have run their course and there is no turning-back from Facebook, but I would encourage the powers that be take a hard look at their goals and how they envision the future of AZ, make changes and rules and enforce them.