The death of motorcycle fourms

[gcode]

https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/why-are-online-motorcycle-forums-drying-up-and-dying

Interesting with many parallels to eMC

[mkd]

I remember a popular bike forum decided to charge membership fees. Lol. Bad business plan.
 Directly into the waste bin of history.

Can't remember the name of the joint..

Advertising based revenue model is kinda obvious as it's been sustaining periodicals forever.
 Kinda makes me wonder if eWC embracd that model as a revenue source with resources of instead of woke political censorship and ultimate cancellation.
 Thanks to the powers that be, putting this forum together.

[neurosis]

I've belonged to a few motorcycle forums over the years.  I stopped visiting them after getting rid of the motorcycles. 

I don't know if there is a better place to get information now? I notice that the article mentions Facebook and Instagram. Facebook has turned in to nothing more then one ad after another. The way they organize their threads are horrendous. It almost makes them impossible to follow.  I think that Instagram is more photo driven and not a great place for information?  I don't have an Instagram account so I don't go on there much.

I remember when I was involved on about a half dozen OffRoad forums and about the same number of fishing forums back in the early 2000's.  Almost all of them have disappeared or only get about 20 posts a day max. I left most of those forums because they became sorta like CNCZone. They added so many forums and sub forums that some of them became impossible to navigate and it ruined the experience.

I might just be too old, but I still miss usenet.   It was a one stop shop for anything and there were some great news readers out there that were amazingly customizable.

[gcode]

This one is not a forum, but I think they've just cut their own throat
Machining Cloud
They just went subscription... $149/year  MONTH !!!
I think they tried to make their money as a sales broker..
build the your tools, download the models and buy them all from the same source
I can't see people paying for access to their website.
Unless they've improved things dramatically, it usually wasn't worth the trouble, even when it was free

[neurosis]

Unless they've improved things dramatically, it usually wasn't worth the trouble, even when it was free

It's still a bit convoluted.

It's come in handy a few times, but it's no where near $129 ($149 after rebate ends) a month handy. And that's just for the Premium subscription which has limitations.

I'm not sure how they justify that price.

[Tim Johnson]

This one is not a forum, but I think they've just cut their own throat
Machining Cloud
They just went subscription... $149/year..
I think they tried to make their money as a sales broker..
build the your tools, download the models and buy them all from the same source
I can't see people paying for access to their website.
Unless they've improved things dramatically, it usually wasn't worth the trouble, even when it was free

Almost all of the tool makers on that site also have models on their own site available for free.

[YoDoug]

This one is not a forum, but I think they've just cut their own throat
Machining Cloud
They just went subscription... $149/year..
I think they tried to make their money as a sales broker..
build the your tools, download the models and buy them all from the same source
I can't see people paying for access to their website.
Unless they've improved things dramatically, it usually wasn't worth the trouble, even when it was free

Not many users will be willing to pay that fee. IMO, the proper business model is to show the tool MFG's that there is enough benefit for them to want to pay a fee to have their tools on Machining Cloud. However a lot of tool MFG's have built their own really nice websites that are easy to search and buy from. We use a lot of Iscar, Harvey, and Helical Solutions tools. They have great websites. I haven't had to look through a paper catalog, or even a pdf catalog in a few years.

[gcode]

$129 ($149 after rebate ends) a month handy

I misread that.. I was thinking $149/year and I wasn't biting
I can't think of any way to justify that kind of money.
The front page says you get "feeds and speeds" in the Premium subscription
I don't recall the old site doing anything like that

[YoDoug]

As far as the death of motorcycle/car/specialty forums, I think there is a couple other factors involved.

1. When they are small, they are often too cliquey. Add to that the general fact that the prolonged anonymity of the internet has brought out the worst of people for a long time now. You create a profile to ask a specific question only to be insulted or berated by resident forum a-holes.

2. Youtube. In the past I used to find myself ending up on Subaru forums/etc looking for specific troubleshooting of issues. There was a forum for every car out there. It seems more often now there is much better content on Youtube. I think as more mechanics got tech savvy and figured out how to monetize content on YT, the less need to go to forums and search through the BS to find it. Nowadays it doesn't matter what you are trying to fix, a car, motorcycle, boat, house, etc, there is a Youtube Video that will help.

[neurosis]

I don't recall the old site doing anything like that

I'd set up a couple of Kennametal high feed mills about a year and a half ago.  I remember it giving me recommended speeds and feeds but they were the mfg recommendations.  I'm not sure if they have something better now?

It say's that I'm on a "premium trial" but I can't select any tool other than Kennametal and Widia.  That's not very useful to me, even as a "trial". I told them to cancel/remove my account.

[gcode]

I told them to cancel/remove my account.

I think I'll leave mine open for now
The whining and groveling emails that show up in a couple of months
may be entertaining 

[Smit]

If you're looking for how to do things you can find almost anything on Youtube now so the benefit of how to forums isn't as great as it used to be.

[gcode]

My initial propose with this thread (before I hijacked it with the Machining Cloud post)
was to start a discussion about what a sad shadow of itself eMC has become.

It's kind of depressing going there sometimes
I can't even get my daily email summation anymore.
First my email provider started sending it to Spam, despite me whitelisting it,
now it doesn't even make it to the spam folder.

[JParis]

My initial propose with this thread (before I hijacked it with the Machining Cloud post)
was to start a discussion about what a sad shadow of itself eMC has become.

At this point, I'll not be surprised if in the near future it get's killed off all together with the exception of their "Educational" forum which will be just for customers...

Maybe I'm wrong but time will tell I guess

[RobertELee]

Like Neuro said I've had a half dozen or so fishing forums that I frequented that are shells of their old selfs or completely gone. One that literally had thousands of posts per day and the owner got greedy by splitting it up into two sites to double the ad revenue, users ran from that place. I looked at it just now and there were 4 posts yesterday. 

On another the owner got fed up with all the drama and just stopped supporting it, it has since died.

Another the owner and a handful of mods (all married) were going on fishing trips together and picking up random girls to pass around and using the site to secretly hook up and chat with them. I got caught in the middle of that one, and somehow the wives mysteriously found out what was going on...

Others just died a long slow death, they blamed Facebook...