After gathering feedback from you, the readers, we have decided that we have to close down the Freezenet official forums.
About a month ago, I asked for your feedback on what you wanted to see out of the Freezenet official forums. This in response to the CMS (Content Management System) breaking due to an internal update on the server. It led to a reassessment to how Freezenet assets were performing in relation to how much work goes in to maintaining them. After the assessment, I concluded that the forums was not performing well enough to justify the amount of work needed to maintain it as well as keep the forums spam free (which is a huge task in and of itself).
What I personally wanted to hear is feedback that maybe this move was too hasty. Maybe I am overreacting to a problem. People are interested in the forums. People are interested in interacting with others. Instead of social media platforms exploiting their personal information in every way imaginable, they’d rather have something that allows for that communication without demanding every intimate detail of their personal lives.
Disappointingly, that is not what I got.
Instead, the feedback I got was that people have no interest in being a part of any kind of community. They get their communication fix just fine on places like Facebook and Twitter. Speaking to other like minded people just isn’t something people are in to any more. After a month of listening, this is the message I ultimately got.
So, the ultimate decision, which was made by you, is that the forums should just close down. Put it out of its misery as it’s not worth the effort. I’ll be abiding by the community decision and follow through with this.
The next question is, what is the plan for the ultimate closure? Well, there are elements that need to be preserved – specifically, the oddities section. That section is exclusively tied to the forums. I’ll be undergoing a process of converting that to WordPress format in the form of monthly postings backdated to the respective months. From there, WordPress versions of Podcast scripts will get converted to the new links. Everything will ultimately get dumped into the Miscellaneous section of this site.
Once that process is completed, the forums will get wiped. While it is also an option to simply retain the forums for archival purposes, the problem is that this also inherently soaks up server resources. So, in order to save on those resources, closure is the better option of the two – especially given how little activity the forums got in the first place.
After that, I’ll put up a page explaining what happened to the forums in place of where the forums were originally located. The page will detail where the forums went and why the decision was made to remove them.
Now, what about the future of the forums? At this point, I am not opposed to having a forum on the site. If there is interest in having a web forum on this site, I’ll be open to re-opening a web forum again. I believe that this technology has potential to bring people together. Again, I need feedback saying that this is the direction users want to take the site. So, if the community wills it, the forums will return.
Sadly, this means the legacy of file-sharing and technology discussion forums will ultimately die on Freezenet. While it is sad to see a nearly two decade long tradition come to an end, I can also be proud that I extended the life of this tradition by three additional years.
At this point in time, I have no timeline on when the conversion process will complete, but if there’s anything you want to save on the forums, please save it now.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
