Sup fellow fighters,
Long time no see. Thought I would drop by to see the old site and see whats going on. A few of you probably remember me, most of you probably don't but I was the keen red headed fella who stalked the site incessantly for a few years with a custom ZX-12R. This site was the shit, a bunch of smart arses, giving each other crap, talking bikes, riding bikes and having a general good time.
Unfortunately the operative word here is "was". I mostly dropped by to see if things had changed since the last time I decided to stop coming here.
Hmm not really.
12 odd posts in the main Streetfighters Talk section this year, the rest possibly hidden behind a paywall that I have no intention of coughing up dollars for.
When I joined this site it was constantly updating, new stuff popping up all the time. Shit, I'd sit there hitting refresh just to see what was new. Times have changed, last time I was here (couple of years ago) I had posts deleted because I was trying to sell some stuff (at a loss to me) because I wasn't a full financial member. Lets forget the time spent behind stalls setting up, selling shit, promoting the website. Sour grapes from me? Maybe. I don't really give a fuck. I've moved on. It's just a bleeding shame that such a great site has become a shadow of its former self. The fact that I am still in the top 20 of posters two years since my last post is proof that this site has really wound down.
What do I reckon caused this? Segregation of the site. Having paid and unpaid sections turns newbs off faster than a fat kid on veggies. Ask yourself, why should a new guy sign up and cough up the dough to see the members section when people wont even spend 99 fucking cents on an app these days.
People advertising shit on this site to buy/sell drove traffic here, but then the "members" section was created and you had to pay to sell stuff or see the "special" sections. It used to be that new people would check the goods and maybe move on, but others would stay and contribute, adding to the forum. Now you almost have to be a financial member just to give shit away (check turbokats post).
Really do you think that shit works? I always thought the point of a Streetfighter was "I crashed my bike but I'm too hard up to put the original plastics on". Paying to get access to this site is antithesis to the core of fighting. Pay for a site? You may as well be riding a ducati.
I'm not saying I have the answers. I know Si has bills to pay to keep this site running, but I'm telling you that this site has losts its relevance to the streetfighting community.
I didn't write this post to stir shit. This is just my honest assessment of the state of play. There was a golden era for this site, and pardon me for saying, but this ain't it. How do you fix this? Remove the paywall. This site was always hard to get on board with considering the way newbs are often treated. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, it's just one of the idiosyncracies of the site but who is going to pay to be called a fuckhead no matter how nicely it is said.
How do you make this site financial? Ads. Yep its a dirty word but it works to a degree.
Add a donation button with a metric - i.e. We need x amount of dollars to maintain the site. Sure it's close to begging but its got more honor then asking people to pay for information that is free on the internet.
Sponsored rides, get a group of ASFers together for a ride, throw the hat around and there is months worth of bandwidth.
Not saying this is the be all and end all of ideas but its INCLUSIVE of new members rather than EXCLUSIVE.
Right, the rum is wearing off, time for a refresher.
Flame on guys'n'girls.
I hope this is taken as constructive criticism... haha yeah.<
tl;dr; the site has gone to shit since charging people. fix it so it's inclusive and not exclusive.