June 8th, 2016 at 3:15 AM
I still make it every now and then. It's been... slow. Not a whole lot goes on here these days but I keep it up anyway, and plan to keep paying the bill on it. I still have plans someday but it's gonna need a bit of a reboot. 
The real problem is that nobody has enough invested interest to keep it going. With the original concept I had in mind, I think it had a lot of potential, and even though it technically was (as much as I hate to admit it) a "general discussion" forum, making it centered around the creative arts aspect of it I feel made us unique, and our atmosphere was certainly a little more permissive, laid back, tight knit, and focused. I found some other forums in the creative arts niche and most of them never really made it anywhere near as far (and if they did, they were anything but laid-back in their atmosphere), but at the end of the day, once it was all set and done, we ended up becoming just like every other general discussion forum more than anything else. No, we never had IPB and the amazing features that come with it, but the average everyday writer doesn't really care. Likewise, the average photographer or graphics designer or programmer or whatever is fine with MyBB and its simplicity. And the design isn't ugly, but people would find reasons to criticize it anyway. On one hand I'd have people paying me for the theme and on the other I'd have people say nothing other than that the site was trash because of the theme that I spent countless hours designing. Our loyal members cared about nothing other than the community, but you know, people looking at advertisement threads elsewhere don't really see the essence of what we were on our front page for their first visit to the site.
At the end of the day, it just became a little disheartening. Communities aren't about the software, or the statistics, or the design. I ran a little simcity community that has kinda changed courses way back in the day, before the days of Makestation, and honestly, that community ran and got significantly bigger than MS running off of phpBB2. Needless to say the community is no longer in my hands, nor is it still on phpBB2, but it just goes to prove a point. I think people care more about the community than they do about how nice it looks. And when it becomes the other way around, that's when your userbase will jump ship for ridiculous reasons such as a better theme elsewhere. And that's what I'm afraid forums have kinda become. Nothing unique about them anymore in many, many cases.
With that said, MS at its core is still a concept that is close to me at a personal level, and honestly, probably more so than ever. I would love to be able to reboot it, given the opportunity, but opportunities to make new communities out of nothing have become fewer and farther between as forums have, well, I guess, become a little more mainstream and a little less unique over the years. It's just not the same playing field that it once was years ago.
The real problem is that nobody has enough invested interest to keep it going. With the original concept I had in mind, I think it had a lot of potential, and even though it technically was (as much as I hate to admit it) a "general discussion" forum, making it centered around the creative arts aspect of it I feel made us unique, and our atmosphere was certainly a little more permissive, laid back, tight knit, and focused. I found some other forums in the creative arts niche and most of them never really made it anywhere near as far (and if they did, they were anything but laid-back in their atmosphere), but at the end of the day, once it was all set and done, we ended up becoming just like every other general discussion forum more than anything else. No, we never had IPB and the amazing features that come with it, but the average everyday writer doesn't really care. Likewise, the average photographer or graphics designer or programmer or whatever is fine with MyBB and its simplicity. And the design isn't ugly, but people would find reasons to criticize it anyway. On one hand I'd have people paying me for the theme and on the other I'd have people say nothing other than that the site was trash because of the theme that I spent countless hours designing. Our loyal members cared about nothing other than the community, but you know, people looking at advertisement threads elsewhere don't really see the essence of what we were on our front page for their first visit to the site.
At the end of the day, it just became a little disheartening. Communities aren't about the software, or the statistics, or the design. I ran a little simcity community that has kinda changed courses way back in the day, before the days of Makestation, and honestly, that community ran and got significantly bigger than MS running off of phpBB2. Needless to say the community is no longer in my hands, nor is it still on phpBB2, but it just goes to prove a point. I think people care more about the community than they do about how nice it looks. And when it becomes the other way around, that's when your userbase will jump ship for ridiculous reasons such as a better theme elsewhere. And that's what I'm afraid forums have kinda become. Nothing unique about them anymore in many, many cases.
With that said, MS at its core is still a concept that is close to me at a personal level, and honestly, probably more so than ever. I would love to be able to reboot it, given the opportunity, but opportunities to make new communities out of nothing have become fewer and farther between as forums have, well, I guess, become a little more mainstream and a little less unique over the years. It's just not the same playing field that it once was years ago.
