Why They Keep Coming?

I received an interesting email last night from an AOC member asking me what’s happening to the AOC forum. He was asking why many other former active members are no longer posting and it seems all the latest postings are non-Alphard related crabs (not literally), and the moderators are not doing their jobs properly. Well I guess I don’t really know the answer to that as my membership was removed since I wrote this post. Well I can only think that the old AOC forum is still pretty loosely organized and to quote this member comment below:

“It'd transpired to me that they had came to some sort of mutually beneficial agreement among the hypocrite, admin & the appointed moderators. Some will be benefited socially, while other seeking publicity, business or financial gain. Nevertheless, some of the crabs were good for a laugh. Never ever have i seen such a disorganized forum!”

I guess what they have done so far is to put on a new coat of paint but leave the interior untouched.

What is more interesting to me is that after some offline discussions among the members of the old and new AOC forum, the common understanding is that once the old forum ownership and administration have been fully transferred to a new team, the majority will move back to the old forum. The URL of the new forum will be redirect to the old forum. This was done about a month ago and I think it is a pretty good arrangement for the benefits of all. I don’t expect anyone to be looking at the new forum at all since then. In fact I haven’t been monitoring the new forum since early October.

Recently I had to remove the redirection so that I can access to some information. Before I knew it there is already new member registered with the new forum on the hour I removed the redirection! That keep me thinking why not keep this new forum open for a while and see if there are other will come to the new forum. Well I just checked and there are five more new members registered. And some members continue to post in the new forum as recent as last Friday.

I don’t want to know why but I guess it is the choice of those members are making to visit which forum. Is the reason why they prefer to post in the new forum because they have the same sentiment like the member who emailed me? I guess I will never know as I don't have the motivation to re-register to the old forum. For those who are registering now, do they even know that there is the existence of an old AOC forum.

I still keep in touch with many of the active members of the old and new forum and I regularly join in their TT when time permit.

I wish to highlight here that almost all active members of the new forum have since moved back to the old forum so the new forum is really inactive now. It is really up to the new team in the old forum to do a better job of house cleaning and to actively promote their existence. I know a group of active members had very grand plan for the formation of AOC but somehow the current state of the forum seems to have derail that dream.

Update: I just found out today that there is a high cost associated to the transfer of the domain. Apparently some members has to pay a big sum of money from their own pocket just to facilitate this transfer. It looks like there will also be recurring cost on a yearly basis. I find it hard to accept but it is the decision of the new team. Well this all could have been avoided at all as the new forum has a very low maintenance cost that is almost negligible.