The future of Getcrafty?

[brdgt]

Some of us moderators have been talking amongst ourselves and we decided it was time to share our concerns about the future of Getcrafty with the members of the community.

Although some great things have come out of Point of Impact's management of this site (especially spam fighting tools), overall we feel like they have completely abandoned our site.

They never return our PM's and the number of problems the site has continue to accumulate with no response from them. It's frustrating for us to field your problems and have no way to fix them or even get the people responsible to fix them.

We have decided to draft a letter of concern and wanted to include anything that the members had to say about this as well.

[Craft Forums]

[Cindy]

I have been a member here for quite some time but have noticed that lately there is not much participation on this forum. Where has everyone gone? I come and see no new post for days. It appears that this forum is nearly dead which is very sad. This has been a wonderful, friendly site for a long time. Can this site be saved? What are others thoughts?

[cassie]

YES YES YES!

I've always wanted to bring this up but never wanted to appear offensive. But yes this site has gone down hill.

I first found get crafty a few years ago and it was amazing! It was packed with inspiring people and projects and tons of blog posts and I checked it pretty much every day. Now it hardly ever occurs to me to check it and when I do, there's like 3 new posts.

I miss the columnists and interesting articles and tutorials! I'm up for being a columnist! The blogs are abandoned these days, they used to be a brilliant source of inspiration, maybe it needs to be advertised that they are there for use? Maybe the whole thing needs to be advertised more?

Also, I've said it before but I still think if we have avatars showing in the forums it would really help the community aspect.

[chris9999]

i am not a veteran here, but i like this forum very much.Sad that it's so quite here.It's a great forum and i don't want it to be closed.Maybe something new as smiles, avatars can save it and return old members back.It's nice but more colors can bring more life.It's just a thought.
On the other hand, we (members) are also responsible for this default.It's sad, but it's true.Hope we manage to break the silence and give getcrafty a leg up :)

[researchasaurus]

Well I'm old school. I remember the old glitter forums, the split with supernaturale and all that...

If you click on the People tab up above, you see a ton of porn trolls have joined this site. Admins should definitely be dealing with that!!

Sorry things have gone downhill.

Heidi

[brdgt]

We've begged the site maintainers to allow us access to deleting accounts outright (so you wouldn't even see those nasty spam usernames in the peoples section) but they have completely ignored us. At least they allow us to screen all first comments - keeping spam posts out.

[quixotic]

So it's been a *long* time since I've posted anything here...but...reading this (and then taking a look at the "people" section) just makes me sad. :(

I think part of solving this problem may be to figure out why people are going other places and why? ie., What makes Getcrafty different? For me, I think the fact that it is cozier than other places was what drew me to it, and all the feisty creative women that inspired me along the way.

It's not the same place I found in 2001, but there are so many lovely people that I would have never ever met thanks to this site, so it would be so said to see it go. I think one question to ask is, What do we/you want Getcrafty to be?

[bricore]

I am sorry to hear this...

I haven't been on here a ton but I did enjoy reading other peoples post when I did get time.

Dora Renee' Wilkerson

[Astrid]

It sure would help if all the technical problems were dealt with. Sure there is a lot of competition from other cool forums, but I agree GC has a unique set up and I still like to come back here. Email notification of follow up comments has been out of order for a long time. No wonder nobody comes back to discussions they started or took part in and run off to better sites! Recently I had some emails though. Can someone confirm this problem has been fixed? And what about posting pics to your album? I haven't even checked if that's been solved now since I reported it ages ago. I've stopped using the blogs here not only because I have a 'real' one now (since my blog isn't really about crafting), but also because I find it handy to use the pics from my own album here; and on top because people just seem to use it for advertising their shops. Despite warnings! Who acts against this?
I still get many visitors on my blog through GC! It proves there are still a lot of people lurking around here. So, GC start treating them better and they'll become more active too!

[Muddymay]

I guess my question would be what is the root of the problems and how do we fix them? I'm madly in love with GetCrafty, as obviously those of us still on here, are. It really is ashame that the site people aren't helping out.
Is there anything we can do as members?