So, hypothetically speaking, let's say that there's a forum somewhere on some topic, let's say sewing, where over a period of almost a decade, zillions of users have accumulated vast amounts of useful information about all aspects of sewing. Then the sewing forum gets sold to some putzes who have no interest in sewing community and confidence is very, very low that the forum will survive. How could the sewing community somehow ensure the preservation of the vast amount of community knowledge amassed in that forum? And how could this happen in a way that might avoid conflicts with the Terms of Use of the putz forum owners?
Depends first if you have access to the "internals" - the database, etc. It's quite easy to move the whole forum to a different host, maybe make it read only as a reference archive. If you don't, then archiving the forum from the "front" by accessing every page, is not an easy task! You could hope it's already archived: Internet Archive
A gbmini stated, without access to the back end it is darn near impossible. Even with access just going through the many years of acquired experience and removing the superfluous information such as the "me too's" found among the gems would require a dedicated team. In this particular case I do believe the putzes that bought the sewing forum want to see it survive and even prosper. The current confidence crushing events are merely an anomaly and while there may be some loss of confidence by a small but core group the sheer size of the sewing forum combined with the skills the previous owner had in search engine optimization still make that sewing forum the massive behemoth that is almost to big to fail. Still attracting more new sewing enthusiasts a day than any of the more nimble sewing upstarts attract in 10x the amount of time. However, there is nothing that prevents the individual sewing enthusiast from gathering the combined knowledge of individual topics, summarizing them and sharing that summary with other sewing fans.
Dont say something is TOO BIG to fail... GM did...and so did Chrysler... infact...they imploded due to being too big...
That big sewing forum ain't goin' away any time soon, but if/when it ever does, it could just disappear as if it never existed. In the meantime, if you've ever posted a how-to on a good pattern or complicated stitch, consider copying the good stuff into a new, built for M/A thread here. If you know someone else who's done anything similarly useful, encourage them to do the same. Please do so quietly though, behind the scenes...plenty of us normally post the same things on multiple forums and no one complains about that, but I wouldn't want someone to decide we're poaching. Also, don't let the fact that a topic has been covered elsewhere (on ANY forum...doesn't have to be just the behemoth) keep you from starting a discussion on it here if you think M/A seems a good place for it.
Usually when I post good stuff about sewing personally, I post it to my own sewing blog, and then link to it from any relevant sewing forum. Alas, not many folks do this. As well, it assumes that my blog will live at least as long as the forums which reference it. But this retains my IP rights to the stuff I write...
We had the same thing happen to a Ford Truck forum a few years ago. For some reason this company thought they wanted to buy the forum and site (I still don't understand it) and the thing went straight downhill. Now if I built a site from scratch, such as Nathan has done here, and I know he feels a certain amount of responsibility to the MINI owners he's serving, why sell it. Well, the money, I do understand that. But what would a big entity get out of owning a forum? Just what as I missing? I was a moderator at the truck site, and we tried time and time again to save it. Meetings and conference calls with the new owners, all to no avail. I just don't understand the business principle of paying money for something and letting it flounder. I'm glad my bodyshop doesn't follow that philosophy!
Why sell, sometimes its more than the money, a site like this a lot of work and often times owners get burned out. The bigger entity often these days is a forum aggregation type company. They buy many forums, often covering the same niche. They gain advertising revenue. Rates at a certain sewing site pretty much doubled for new advertisers. There is also economy of scale for the back end. Site are quickly moved the new owners servers lowering that cost. Management is centralized, there is a certain sewing site where the site manager also manages over 100 sites. Usually the sites are in the same vertical as well. A company such as Internet Brands controls over 100 auto/truck sites. For a big advertiser such as Tire Rack they can now get on all these sites without having to deal with 100 site owners. I contacted Tire Rack and even with an "in" there I was told M/A is insignificant to them, they would not pay, but I could join their affiliate program. In effect, giving them presence but only getting paid if there is sale that is driven by a link from the site. That puts me in the position of pushing the members to use the link on the site when they purchase instead of going direct to Tire Rack. That is not how I like to run the site and I'm damn sure ya'll don't want to see me asking you to clikc that link instead of going direct. For some niches it works, Corvette, Mustang and sites such as that can attract the likes of Summit and Jegs, but put that same advertising on a Fiat site...not so much. These large operations also see economies of scale in software purchases too. As many of you know I work with a very small team that creates many of the features this site has, we sell to other sites as well. We dream of the day someone like AutoForums, another big operator, comes to us and says we want your Garage product on all of our 150 sites. Of course that is sold at a discounted rate the individual site owner will never see. I've also seen instances where the big operator buys up a smaller one for one site that is doing well. They then focus on that one and leave the others to die, pointing the members to other sites in the same niche they own. They buy some of these to close them and kill off competition. Want some real fun, download the annual report for Internet Brands. Look at the income generated from selling advertising, its in the millions. Coming back to the sewing site. As I've said in a previous post, the work done by the previous owner has that site show 1st in almost every search for patterns, sewing machines and the like. An upstart comes along and can barely get a foot in the door for the same terms. The quality of the site since the new owners came along has dropped, but for the majority of the members they don't notice those little things. New members still stream in as the site is so dominate in a search that it looks like that is THE site for the subject. They have no idea of the history, don't care usually and have no idea the quality is now mediocre. So many of the same types of sites they frequent are also mediocre so these new members have no idea of what a quality site really can do for them. If we look around at the M/A membership very few are new to MINI and even less started here and not somewhere else. M/A membership is driven by word of mouth, not so much by search engines.
That's a great explanation Nathan. The real funny thing about advertising on a forums such as the sewing site, is that members get real frustrated at the ads and start shying away from the site as a whole. That's exactly what happened at the Ford truck site. Lots of ads, slowed down the site and members left in droves. Granted, new members came along, so I guess the new blood maintained a membership flow, so the advertisers see a steady flow of ad clickers. And I guess as long as advertisers are buying spots on the site, the new owners really don't care. Sure seems like a bass ackwards way to look at things. Besides, ain't much for sewing. But knitting, now there's a sport! Either way, thanks for putting that M/A card in my bag at the Dragon last year! It's been a good addition to my MINI addiction!
Late on the discussion here but Blimey you could always try an offline browser and capture the site. I have a great twisty roads site archived on my hard drive. I used a program from Blue Squirrel (been a Clickbook user for years) to download it all. It's been a while but it was either their Grab-a-Site or Web Whacker program. It took a while and took a few tries to setup how deep into links I wanted it to follow. Works well enough to access the site when offline. Like in the middle of nowhere planning the next twisty route on a laptop.
Most of that knowledge is still within our heads. A lot of us learned about sewing over there. I know more about sewing than I do about business, and that's what I went to school for.