The point for me is UKE admins idea when he started UKE was to get the touting WGs, pimps and white knight fanboys off here and onto their which worked with loads though not all of them.
Yes and there was a gap in the punting market which that model could fill and undoubtedly it did at first. However general 'off topic' discussion sections on specialist forums are notoriously troublesome (as we know here also)
When those topics then dominate the board to the detriment of the specialist subject, then you have sown the seeds for problems. When in addition the topics become more and more trivial to the point of "
what did you have to drink today" etc then you invite huge numbers of pretty meaningless posts, which to begin with seem fun, but then become tedious and lead to a further decline in the forum. The forum also mutates into more of a trivial social media platform with 'Friends' etc. This leads to an escalation of cliques, which in turn causes conflict between rival cliques but more especially conflict with newcomers.
I joined it back it 2019 not long after I returned to punting and began posting on UKP. I found that if you posted on UKE, but then left it a day or so to check back in, there were often pages of posts to wade through in order to consider replying and that the topic had meandered in many different directions. I hadn't posted much anyway, so I pretty much gave up.
I logged in again in August this year and was surprised my account was still active? .... although my posts had largely gone, as it seems topics had been deleted. It appeared little had changed but I saw a topic I felt I could give an opinion on and so decided to post. The keyboard warrior cliques descended. Pick on the (perceived) 'newcomer'. Accusations of returning banned troublemaker etc.
They were largely a pretty poor calibre of warrior and I've been around that block many times and so dealt with them accordingly, and they withdrew to pick on someone else. Others would have reacted badly to the provocation and likely banned... which was what the cliques/warriors wanted. Not a welcoming forum.
I was surprised Oldadmin took it over again but he did. Perhaps its implosion was too soon after he passed it on?
Now from personal experience I can tell you he is one canny operator. At around that time, he started a poll asking "
should the forum be closed to new members"? He even voted 'yes' himself
(as I say very canny) The masses also voted almost exclusively 'yes' wanting their own select club and clearly not thinking through the consequences, especially the SPs. Without new members a forum will eventually become very stale and instead of picking on the newbies, of which there aren't any, the cliques have to increasingly turn their attention more and more upon themselves.
Its always a shame to see forums decline, but sadly I have witnessed a fair number over the years. As others have posted in this thread, I too suspect the owner is 'managing' this decline?
