Pescatoral Pursuit wrote:
Sorry this place has become pretty dead in the 4 years I took a hiatus. I don't know if it's because of the pain in the butt to upload pictures, a few pedantic members, or perhaps bad moderators?...
Things have indeed slowed down here a bit for sure as several of our older big-time contributors have sold their TI/AIs, have simply moved on, and sadly, at least one has passed away (RIP @tonystott). Covid probably didn't help either, boating wasn't easy at crowded docks during the covid scare years and many went into seclusion and gave up their recreational interests for a while rather than be near people, but things are now returning to normal. Additionally, I think younger people now buying Hobies perhaps go to Facebook forums first rather than conventional ones such as this, probably because they grew up with Facebook (ugh). It's a shame because the abbreviated format there does not work as well as these forums. I could have never published my lengthy, detailed motor reviews there. And if you want to remain anonymous on online forums for your privacy and security, Facebook is not the place to be as everyone there knows your actual name and based on things you may say, can find out exactly where you live. I imagine many on conventional forums are not cool with that.
Uploading photos here requires a bit more work than on other forums, but this is a Hobie-owned non-profit community forum with no ads. Hobie is probably not willing to spend a lot of money on server space hosting thousands of photos or upgrading its rather outdated format. IT costs for that would be considerable and would need to ROI. However, once you take a little time to learn how and find a free place to put them such as Imgur, uploading photos is not all that difficult. Simply click on
Img in the edit panel and then insert the image's URL. Anyone can do that.
As to the moderators, Matt Miller did an
incredible job here for many, many years. Now that Matt's
recently retired, he is very much missed. We really have yet to hear from the new moderator(s), but I've never had any issues with this forum's moderation. Much less intrusive and fairer than many other forums. You rarely see moderator-involved issues here and the forum runs very smoothly.
As for pedantic members (such as myself
), you'll find them on every forum in existence.
Online forums require a lot of patience with all kinds of personalities, but most of the people here are awesome.
All told, I feel this forum is still very valuable. Who knows, it may return to its former popularity, but even if it doesn't, many of us here still call it home.