Hi,
I want to begin by thanking everyone for their comments. They are much appreciated. The overall vibe that I got from you guys is similar to what I have been thinking ... the site went downhill community-wise roughly a year ago, after the majority of the DevShed crew left, and Big_K stopped having the time to devote that PFO needed. When I acquired PFO, it got a new DaniWeb-inspired skin. However, the community, already rather downhill, wasn't strong enough at the time to overcome a new skin without losing a part of its identity. However, it doesn't have to be this way. A color scheme doesn't define a community. And we need to put effort in, together, to realize that
I'm going to try my best to rejuvinate the community. However, I want you guys to realize that online communities are 100% evolving, and therefore that means that there's always going to be fresh blood and there are always going to be those old timers and there will always be an evolving group of regulars. It's all about having a healthy mix ... Very few people stay addicted to a single forum for 10 years of their life, and the most die-hard PFO addicts will eventually move on (real life takes priority, etc). Therefore, there will always be a need to bring in fresh blood ... Besides, otherwise it just gets boring
Therefore, I just want to make you guys a little less nervous about DaniWeb members coming here, or seeing new faces and saying that makes it no longer PFO, etc. As long as there is a healthy mix, that's the best that you can ask for, and it was always going to happen regardless of whether Kyle was still running the site or not. My expert opinion (as the owner of a forum with a quarter million members and a half million posts) is that PFO was never active for a long enough time to fully realize the complete lifecycle of an online community. Then, when it started to happen, as it inevitably does, the core community wasn't strong enough at the time to maintain its sense of identity through the process. People are going to come and go all the time ... and then some of them might even come back a year or two down the road when their lives are less busy ... that's just the nature of it. But what shouldn't happen is everyone leaving all at once
We're going to fix that.
That being said, I want to thank Infinite Recursion for starting his thread about what we've all been up to lately. I definitely think that it's a big step in the right direction to getting everyone to know each other again.
Cheers!