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Originally Posted by sigmagirl2000
does the traffic here even make such an endeavor worth the cost and hassle? This board has made me lifelong friends, given me countless hours of reading and smiles.
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I suppose there's a number of ways to look at it. My largest "cost and hassle" is time that I put in. It's often not much time, but depends. Not counting time posting in the forums but rather time working on the back end of things that keep GC running. Just a very rough guess, maybe 20 to 50 hours in the past 6 months. But the 6 months prior to that was many hundreds of hours. Financially, it's not significant but funds being tight does make it more difficult.
Another way to consider if GC is "worth the cost" might be the question: What is the value of multiple lifelong friends for many people? Not sure exactly how many but probably a lot have made lifelong friends here. Also, the countless hours of reading and smiles that you described, I would guess there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands, from over the years who would have agreed. It kinda makes my work on GC seem worth it. But I do often think about if all the time and energy put into GC is worth it for me personally.
Sidenote: Before GC I had started a real-time chat network that got quite big. Early on I received an email from a guy who said he met his wife on my chat network. Said that he had my chat network to thank for him having his family, wife & kids. That was a big realization for me how impactful the Internet was going to become. I was already convinced how important the Internet would be in the future (this was back when people were still asking daily what the Internet/web/www was), but to hear from someone and having them thanking me so much because they met their wife in my chat and they now have kids seemed to take it to the next level. That probably impacted me quite a bit way back in the day... maybe that's partly why I do what I do, I don't know.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sigmagirl2000
However, over the last several years, it’s become
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Not sure quite how to best & most accurately describe this. We've had so many times over many years going almost back to the beginning of GC where any number of members had similar views/complaints and even differing views/complaints.
Back in the day I did try to help sort out issues & disagreements between GCers. When the site was much busier these issues were overwhelming and very time consuming. All this took me away from projects that I probably should have better prioritized which would have benefited GC much more.
My general thoughts & conclusion regarding these issues are that people are different and some people are going to clash with each other. I think it's probably just human nature for people to disagree at times.
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Originally Posted by sigmagirl2000
However, I’m almost concerned to revive gc if it’s going to
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This is somewhat related to your first question. I really must try to revive GC, otherwise what's the point of any of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by sigmagirl2000
Please don’t let this message read as I am not grateful, I’m just scared that
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Your concerns are understandable.
I think it might be important to mention that my goals with GreekChat are not ideological but rather just to maximize use and enjoyment of the platform.
I believe there are technological solutions that will offer some improvements even directly related to some of the issues & concerns you mentioned. Maybe completely or just partially, not sure at this point. The upcoming new forum software will likely enable for some solutions that will be useful in improving your experience on GC. Will probably improve things for everyone.
All I can really say in summation regarding all this is that my overall goal is to improve things as best I can within some reasonable limit of time & expense.
Hybrid Mode
