July 29/15 14:19 pm - CC Forums - Is This The End?

Posted by Editor on 07/29/15
 

The CC Forums, our discussion area, has been around a long time - since 1997. The original version we built ourselves, and ran it that way until it began to collapse under its own traffic; at which point we moved to the third party program we use now.

It used to be one of the few discussion areas in the Canadian cycling community where everybody went, including provincial and national federations, officials and riders.

However, the online world has changed with the myriad opportunities available through social media. Now, when someone wants to provide an opinion on some facet of the cycling world they have Twitter, Facebook, blogs and more. So, the usage of the CC Forums has dropped significantly - although I can guarantee that if I check at anytime of the day or night, there have been 10-15 people checking it within the previous 15 minutes.

This brings us to a decision point: do we keep paying the fees required to continue the Forums or do we let it die?

The cost isn't particularly high, but it is a cost (in time to monitor as well as monetary). It is a service that we have provided for nearly 18 years and I would be sorry to see it disappear, but I have to be pragmatic.

So, our decision is that if it is to continue then it needs to be at least partially community funded. We are not talking about a lot of money - if we can get support from the community of at least $300/year ($25/month) then we will pick up the rest and keep it going. But we need to decide soon, so if you are interested in supporting the Forums in some form, let us know at news@canadiancyclist.com.