No, not the same - merging them would attract more new posters as it would have more visibility. So far both sites have a very limited number of active posters and topics and both sites are relatively quiet.
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I donât know what caused me to check FTC out today, but I went to the site and noticed they are now openly soliciting donations to help keep the ship afloat. I canât imagine that is a good sign given the relatively newness of the site and the low monthly loss(es) they are claiming.
I think thatâs been up for a while. If I understand their Patreon page, theyâre receiving in donations $126 or $140/month.
The way I read it they were currently losing $ 40. per month, expected to increase to $ 140 loss per month. I completely understand spending $ 140 per month sucks, but it doesnât seem like it should have been unexpected given the venture. Especially launching as a âfreeâ service.
But not necessarily a bad sign, mon ami.
Iâm a long term user of another (non food) forum, run not for profit. It raises some money from a kickback from Amazon on any purchases made through a link from the forum to the company. But most comes from donations, mainly from the regular users. Maybe once or twice a year, the site owners offer a casual reminder that donations would be welcomed - I cough up a few pounds at that point but, otherwise, Iâm afraid I rather take it for granted.
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Yes, that message has been on the site for quite some time. I guess I donât understand why his asking for financial support is an issue. FTC seems to have much less activity than HO, and to the extent that it has value for its users, whether or not a loss was anticipated doesnât seem relevant⌠to me anyway.
Itâs certainly not relevant to me since Iâm not an active participant there, however if I were it would call into question the potential longevity of the site. The other thing that comes to mind is the Chow debacle which took place once their focus changed from being a user friendly blog/user/community based platform to an advert and click bait platform it currently is. Just kind of seems to fly in the face of what these new communities were based on (in my opinion) the finer qualities of the âold chowâ.
Youâre most certainly entitled to your opinion. It just seems unnecessarily negative IMHO. I post on a very high traffic wine site that has ads and charges a fee if you want it ad-free. Doesnât seem to cause any concerns. I suppose Iâd rather have FTC exist with a financial support request than not exist.
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Did the wine site charge a fee when you started contributing? If I were a new comer to the FTC site that message would certainly be something of concern to me, because it gives off the feel or vibe that the site is having financial difficulties and that would make me question if I wanted to contribute.
I could completely understand if they had a link; âDo you like what you see here? Click here to see what you can do to helpâ - or - something along those lines rather than a highlighted banner on the top of EVERY page soliciting money. Perhaps because you are use to it doesnât phase you, but for me checking in for the first in a long time, it was very off putting. I can only imagine it would be similar for someone visiting the site for the first time.
The banner goes away if you click the upper right hand corner, and stays closed when you open up other pages, whether or not youâre logged in
The wine site didnât suggest a contribution to avoid ads until the number of ads grew to the point where users were finding them intrusive.
My own reaction, the first time I saw the FTC banner, was to feel a degree of disappointment that the guy who started it was not able or willing to monetize it any other way. I donât have a problem with the support request showing in the banner. Not sure what you mean by âon every pageâ as I only see it on pages listing post titles. Regardless, I guess the idea of contributing to something that could go away is off-putting to some. I tend to just participate for what something provides to me now.
We may just have a different POV here.
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Yikes.
People are here and people are there and some people are here and there. Hopefully, neither the two will merge.
Happy eating.
