What is up with FPN?

[D Armstrong]

When I wrote my posting last night, the FPN membership had been listed at just over 78,000. Today at about 2 p.m. it was around 76,000. An attrition rate of 4% per day gives them what, about 25 days until the final whimper?

And obviously they are going somewhere.

[PointyThings]

I am convinced that the one thing which can stave off this decay process is commerce. If people can make it profitable, they will be motivated to find or create new content. Is this in any way morally suspect, or sleazy? Not at all. Fountain pens themselves would not exist if someone had not decided to develop them commercially. Some of the most beautiful and influential examples of 20th century printing and typography were done specifically as advertising by companies selling type.

By quashing, or controlling, commerce, FPN has really "cut off it's nose to spite it's face." Fountain pen lovers want to buy pens, and need to buy ink and paper. They love it. To remove that from the equation limits the board's usefulness to it's members. And it cuts off some of the best sources of information out there: vendors and repairers.

And it's not that it is vastly expensive, because it isn't. But elsewhere is free. And elsewhere is friendly. So as a result, it simply pays better and is more satisfying to put the effort elsewhere.

For the past several years we've seen commerce bashing from FPN. Which is offensive for those of us are more into buying and selling than trying new ink colors every day and posting about it.

I've been on several other hobbiest boards over the years and have seen how the issue of selling on a board seems to push the buttons of many board owners.

If the sales posts are free, then it usually comes with restrictions about not abusing the privilege (namely, volume of sales and "professional" dealers).

Some of the larger hobby boards (often those owned by corporate interests, like magazines) simply go right to the paid classifieds model. They want their cut of the money.

But there's a great deal of hypocrisy going on with that model.

Large, well-trafficked boards exist because of active contributors/posters. They generate the content that draws visitors from the search engines, gets them involved and keeps them coming back.

Without contributors, a board dies. And this content is created by members for free.

So why get upset at the buying and selling?

The board owners want to make some money from the board? Fine, find a model that works. Sure, I'd like to make a few $$ to offset my costs for FPC, but I haven't found a model that is appropriate at this time, given the levels of activity we have (love to have much more activity first). And whatever I do, I'm not removing privileges that exist for members currently just to create a paid model.

IMHO, I think the issue of commerce on a board should be directed by the ACTIVE membership. If your serious contributors walk away, then your board is dead.

If selling activity is contrary to the wishes of a large portion of your active membership, then maybe it needs to be restricted.

But if they don't have a problem with it, maybe they even LIKE commerce on the board, then stop worrying!

Of course, there will always be people who abuse any free privilege, such as the idiot who posts their entire inventory of pens on a board, but this rarely happens. That's where the admins and mods step in.

Ultimately, what matters is the health of the board and happiness of your members.

Somewhere along the line, the arrogance of FPN's admins/owners took precedence. And it's been downhill ever since.

--Karl

[sargetalon]

Well, I must say, with FPN crashing we have had quite the flood of vintage pen postings at The Fountain Pen Board, and this thread at FPG is one of the chunkiest to develop so fast I've ever seen. Will be curious if everyone playing more at these two boards will stick around if/when FPN actually manages to achieve a stable platform again.

regards

david

I came to FP Geeks as an FPN refugee. I only knew of FPN when I started collecting over the last 6 months because they were always the first listings that came up with the google search. So glad to have found this board and others in my search for an alternate fix. I definitely plan to stick around, even if FPN comes back online intact.

[david i]

When I wrote my posting last night, the FPN membership had been listed at just over 78,000. Today at about 2 p.m. it was around 76,000. An attrition rate of 4% per day gives them what, about 25 days until the final whimper?

Hi David,

Not certain on this. Putting aside that all boards have a hefty bunch of inactive members, I have doubts that 4% per day would even know how to de-register. Indeed, as an Admin on an IPB message board, I can fully delete members, but don't even know offhand how to de-register from outside the admin panel. I wonder if FPN is purging seemingly dead accounts.

best regards

David

[david i]

I suspect that both Karl and I are pretty mellow on the "selling thing"

-d

[KrazyIvan]

When I wrote my posting last night, the FPN membership had been listed at just over 78,000. Today at about 2 p.m. it was around 76,000. An attrition rate of 4% per day gives them what, about 25 days until the final whimper?

Hi David,

Not certain on this. Putting aside that all boards have a hefty bunch of inactive members, I have doubts that 4% per day would even know how to de-register. Indeed, as an Admin on an IPB message board, I can fully delete members, but don't even know offhand how to de-register from outside the admin panel. I wonder if FPN is purging seemingly dead accounts.

best regards

David

That would be my guess. Probably a bunch of spam accounts.

[ethernautrix]

There is more to the story because as I remember there was a particular thread that was the breaking point.

I remember that... :-)

[CS388]

When I wrote my posting last night, the FPN membership had been listed at just over 78,000. Today at about 2 p.m. it was around 76,000. An attrition rate of 4% per day gives them what, about 25 days until the final whimper?

Hi David,

Not certain on this. Putting aside that all boards have a hefty bunch of inactive members, I have doubts that 4% per day would even know how to de-register. Indeed, as an Admin on an IPB message board, I can fully delete members, but don't even know offhand how to de-register from outside the admin panel. I wonder if FPN is purging seemingly dead accounts.

best regards

David

That would be my guess. Probably a bunch of spam accounts.

Good point, KrazyIvan. Seems likely behaviour, during a clean-out.

Also like david i's point re seemingly dead accounts.
Many people join such networks to ask "How much is my pen worth?" - and then never come back. Why carry all that dead weight?

[david i]

There is more to the story because as I remember there was a particular thread that was the breaking point.

I remember that... :-)

You are one I actually miss. You should pop over to FPB, just so I can give you occasional grief

regards

david

[Jimmy James]

Just a couple thoughts here.

I think most people draw a significant line between the moderators (like Shawn) and the admins at FPN. I have rarely seen anyone have a problem with mods, but I hear about problems with admins like we've heard in this thread. I'll stress I've been a member for years now with no problems personally. I therefore can only spectate like anybody else.

Additionally, I think FPN felt itself pretty much dragged into the commercialization of the site. I don't think it's something they wanted, but either somebody realized a board with tens of thousands of members is a GOLD MINE (I doubt it is) or else they got the sound advice that for liability and other reasons it makes sense to make it an entity in and of itself and that if people are going to use that entity for commercial purposes, the board itself should get some sort of cut.

[D Armstrong]

I wonder if FPN is purging seemingly dead accounts.

But...I thought they were all horribly busy, slaving away at server regeneration, code purging, greasing the over-under oscillators, etc. You would think they simply wouldn't have the time right now to do basic spring cleaning. Hmmm.

[PointyThings]

Additionally, I think FPN felt itself pretty much dragged into the commercialization of the site. I don't think it's something they wanted, but either somebody realized a board with tens of thousands of members is a GOLD MINE (I doubt it is) or else they got the sound advice that for liability and other reasons it makes sense to make it an entity in and of itself and that if people are going to use that entity for commercial purposes, the board itself should get some sort of cut.

Nothing wrong with board owners generating some revenue for their efforts; just do it in a way that doesn't alienate your contributing community members.

Running paid display or banner ads is a tried and true method, especially if you have the traffic to justify your ad rates (I don't have enough traffic to justify selling display ads at this time, so I don't offer them).

Premium memberships, dealer showcases, etc., are also fine. Just don't cut the existing member benefits to create them.

[sloegin]

Before it went down again FPN linked to their hosting company thanking them for their support. Take a look for yourselves. Even with the most expensive package it is still a fraction of the $25,000 claim. Where is the extra $14,000 going?

[david i]

Before it went down again FPN linked to their hosting company thanking them for their support. Take a look for yourselves. Even with the most expensive package it is still a fraction of the $25,000 claim. Where is the extra $14,000 going?

Did it seem reasonable that the max package covers their bandwidth? Might be a custom package...

Which company hosts them?

regards

david

[sloegin]

Did it seem reasonable that package covers their bandwidth? Might be a custom package...

Which company hosts them?

regards

david

The word take in my second sentence is a hyperlink to the company. 10 terabytes a month of transfer, I doubt it.

[Imahawki]

My guess would be they are on a custom package. They might even require multiple servers. Bandwidth and disk space are rarely the problem. With the forum I run I was constantly using too much CPUs with all the queries that forum software generates and my forum is TINY TINY TINY. My forum is about 225MB on disk and uses very very little bandwidth but it would still peg a shared server. I had to upgrade to a VPS and I've still had slowdowns. This is a forum with about 50 active members. Forum software is a hog.

[thagbert]

This photo was taken outside the building housing FPNs servers.

[dannzeman]

About this time last year, I had a handwritten post simply titled, "Good Words" on FPN.
It had received, I would say, mostly favorable comments, but because the post had a "religious" element, a few members took exception to it, and cited the "prohibited topics" clause in the Chatter Forum.
Now, I was never really contacted by anyone from FPN Admin regarding the post, but a couple of members who I guess considered themselves "the thought police" gave their opinion, and in MY opinion needlessly started arguing with those who defended me.
Anyway, I just got so annoyed by the whole thing, I took down ALL my handwritten posts from photobucket just for spite - which I sort of regretted. But after I got to cool down a bit, I started handwritten posts again - in earnest. Right now, I have over 1,400 images in photobucket I could just delete...blip...and all gone from FPN. But I won't, because others just might find them helpful - if FPN ever gets running again (and it would just just take too much of my time). I will not be doing any significant posting there anymore either, I feel like my work there is done..off to greener pastures.
Thanks for having me here.

Manny, please feel free to post that content here. We have no limitation on such topics of conversation.

[fountainpenkid]

About this time last year, I had a handwritten post simply titled, "Good Words" on FPN.
It had received, I would say, mostly favorable comments, but because the post had a "religious" element, a few members took exception to it, and cited the "prohibited topics" clause in the Chatter Forum.
Now, I was never really contacted by anyone from FPN Admin regarding the post, but a couple of members who I guess considered themselves "the thought police" gave their opinion, and in MY opinion needlessly started arguing with those who defended me.
Anyway, I just got so annoyed by the whole thing, I took down ALL my handwritten posts from photobucket just for spite - which I sort of regretted. But after I got to cool down a bit, I started handwritten posts again - in earnest. Right now, I have over 1,400 images in photobucket I could just delete...blip...and all gone from FPN. But I won't, because others just might find them helpful - if FPN ever gets running again (and it would just just take too much of my time). I will not be doing any significant posting there anymore either, I feel like my work there is done..off to greener pastures.
Thanks for having me here.

Manny, please feel free to post that content here. We have no limitation on such topics of conversation.

I love handwritten replies to topics!

[dannzeman]

This photo was taken outside the building housing FPNs servers.
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