cornwall - 10:16 am on May 26, 2010 (gmt 0)

I assume that the reason that Brett has provoked this discussion is that user numbers has declined/nose-dived/meltdown. So I assume WebmasterWorld is, to that extent broke, I know not whether broke financially or broke figuratively.

Can it be fixed? I have no idea. I do not know how bad the problem is, but it must be bad for the panic button to have been pressed.

It is similar to the soap marketing business that I used to be in. You have to define your market, you defend your brand, promote it and make small regular changes to keep your market. You get to a point where the product can no longer be sustained, and at that point you, milk the brand to extract the max amount of profit, and let the brand die. At at the same time launch a new "improved " brand under a new name

I have been here at WebmasterWorld on and off so long that I donated before there were walls. I have been here long enough to remember Brett saying Adsense would not work. So why do I rarely drop by these days?

It may be that I have not anything to learn here on Adsense, I have a nice regular income, and do it my way. I have long since got bored with writing posts on Adsense to try to help, its the same thing over and over. I am not interested in whether payments have now been received this month in Timbuktu, nor the burblings of posters who want to be the current Google execs best friend. Basically nothing to attract me to Adsense forum. I appreciate the heady days when we were all learning is over. Can a new presentation take over?

It may be that the easy fixes on search engine placement no longer exist, we do not have monthly Google dances. You have lost that market

It may be that Software cannot be discussed (ban on these things) , so if I am wanting to buy something new, I get no help here.

I put the odd post on Foo, but that invariably gets (unjustly) moderated. The implementation of TOS has descended to the level of a bureaucrat mindlessly enforcing rules without questioning the rules.

So to sum it up "people like me" have drifted away. What is in WebmasterWorld for us? It is broke and it needs fixed, and the fix is not really by changing the colour scheme, it is a radical business reassessment of who your market is and how you can make the site appeal to them. I think you would find it difficult to bridge the gap between the "Muppets" and "the Professionals", you may have to go for one market or the other. You may have to just let this site fade away and launch a series of new sites for specialist markets, which may be the way forward (spin off each forum effectively, if you have little movement of users between forums)

...and don't shoot the messenger, but I would be surprised if this post too is not moderated! In the past criticism has not been tolerated, and perhaps that has been your greatest problem.