TMF USA closing all non financial boards

[nimnarb]

Mods and board owners, just passing this on. Many posters up in arms and they don’t appear as yet to be interested in a subscription fee to continue. All sounds familiar eh until TLF came to the rescue but might there be something of interest for you, as if you need all the extra work.

[AsleepInYorkshire]

The business model that was TMF didn't really generate the margins they wanted.

One has to respect that morally they tried to take the high road.

But the free lunch is over. There are plenty of other social chat websites available.

I recall decades ago that the UK Lootp community would invade the US Lootp. Hedy stuff

AiY(D)

[UncleEbenezer]

One has to respect that morally they tried to take the high road.

AiY(D)

Hardly.

They were part of the great land-grab of the late 1990s that enclosed the previously-free Usenet commons. Only a small part (they're not facebook, let alone google who did the real damage to Usenet), but it's not exactly moral high ground.

[stevensfo]

One has to respect that morally they tried to take the high road.

AiY(D)

Hardly.

They were part of the great land-grab of the late 1990s that enclosed the previously-free Usenet commons. Only a small part (they're not facebook, let alone google who did the real damage to Usenet), but it's not exactly moral high ground.

UncleEbenezer, with the greatest respect, could you translate all that into something we could all understand? I vaguely remember the word Usenet but have no idea what it is. I did use the internet in the late 90s but it was all work-based. However, I do admit that TMF changed significantly from when I found them c.1999.

I saw the internet as being the great game changer for communication. Consumer sites would bring rogue traders to heel, resident associations would get the councils they wanted and parents would share info and make schools solve problems before they'd started. Of course, all this was just naivety on my part and it just didn't happen. Today, it's even harder.

Steve

[UncleEbenezer]

UncleEbenezer, with the greatest respect, could you translate all that into something we could all understand? I vaguely remember the word Usenet but have no idea what it is. I did use the internet in the late 90s but it was all work-based. However, I do admit that TMF changed significantly from when I found them c.1999.

Steve

Reply sent as PM.

[SalvorHardin]

Mods and board owners, just passing this on. Many posters up in arms and they don’t appear as yet to be interested in a subscription fee to continue. All sounds familiar eh until TLF came to the rescue but might there be something of interest for you, as if you need all the extra work.

IIRC fool.com did introduce subscription fees for the boards in the early 2000s and kept them for a couple of years. Don't think they were much of a success.

Fool.com's financial boards have much higher traffic than fool.co.uk could ever get. America has a much stronger culture of share ownership than Britain has ever had.

Lots of people in Britain think that you're a bit odd if you actively invest in shares, especially foreign shares, instead of housing and cash.

[stevensfo]

Mods and board owners, just passing this on. Many posters up in arms and they don’t appear as yet to be interested in a subscription fee to continue. All sounds familiar eh until TLF came to the rescue but might there be something of interest for you, as if you need all the extra work.

IIRC fool.com did introduce subscription fees for the boards in the early 2000s and kept them for a couple of years. Don't think they were much of a success.

Fool.com's financial boards have much higher traffic tha fool.co.uk could ever get. America has a much stronger culture of share ownership than Britain has ever had.

Lots of people in Britain think that you're a bit odd if you actively invest in shares, especially foreign shares, instead of housing and cash.

Yet my mum was advised to do just that by the Halifax in 2007, after my father died and she got everything from his SIPP. One of the few times when I have praise for a bank. The portfolio they put together was/is pretty good and she hasn't looked back since! Quite a lot is in foreign shares and all well diversified. If lots of people find that strange in 2022, what does that say about the great British public that have taken back control?

Steve

[XFool]

TLF gets a mention!

https://boards.fool.com/sadness-and-regrets-35095852.aspx?sort=whole#35095852

[Mike4]

There are plenty of other social chat websites available.

There are, but every single one of them I've ever read has been populated by large proportion of idiots/muppets/bigots. TMF/TLF have been a shining star of an exception where intelligent posters turning up tend to thrive rather than fade away and stop posting.

Can you nominate a few of other the social chat sites you mention that compare favourably with TLF please? I've never found one. Muchly thanks.

[didds]

There are plenty of other social chat websites available.

There are, but every single one of them I've ever read has been populated by large proportion of idiots/muppets/bigots. TMF/TLF have been a shining star of an exception where intelligent posters turning up tend to thrive rather than fade away and stop posting.

Can you nominate a few of other the social chat sites you mention that compare favourably with TLF please? I've never found one. Muchly thanks.

as an exception that proves Mike4's rule maybe, I'm on an excellent rugby referee's forum. But I perceive it is not the norm.

didds

[AsleepInYorkshire]

There are plenty of other social chat websites available.

There are, but every single one of them I've ever read has been populated by large proportion of idiots/muppets/bigots. TMF/TLF have been a shining star of an exception where intelligent posters turning up tend to thrive rather than fade away and stop posting.

Can you nominate a few of other the social chat sites you mention that compare favourably with TLF please? I've never found one. Muchly thanks.

as an exception that proves Mike4's rule maybe, I'm on an excellent rugby referee's forum. But I perceive it is not the norm.

didds

I'm on an excellent fish keeping forum. It has a very active worldwide community.

AiY(D)

[Mike4]

There are plenty of other social chat websites available.

There are, but every single one of them I've ever read has been populated by large proportion of idiots/muppets/bigots. TMF/TLF have been a shining star of an exception where intelligent posters turning up tend to thrive rather than fade away and stop posting.

Can you nominate a few of other the social chat sites you mention that compare favourably with TLF please? I've never found one. Muchly thanks.

as an exception that proves Mike4's rule maybe, I'm on an excellent rugby referee's forum. But I perceive it is not the norm.

didds

I'm on an excellent fish keeping forum. It has a very active worldwide community.

AiY(D)

I think this might be the key. Specialist subject forums. I post a lot on the canal world forum and there are some pretty clever people there too, although quite a few there who, um... aren't.

Find a specialist subject forum e.g. finance, fish, boats, rugby, whatever, and there will be intelligent chat there nothing to do with the raison d'être of that particular forum. Go to Facebook, Twitter or any of the general 'social' sites and you're in trouble.

Mind you the 'Politics' board on the canal forum used to cause all the same trouble as the politics board here, until normal posters learned how to remove it from their 'new posts' feed.

[XFool]

I'm on an excellent fish keeping forum. It has a very active worldwide community.

Now there is a very obvious thing one could say at this point. So I won't say it.

[DiamondEcho]

The business model that was TMF didn't really generate the margins they wanted.
One has to respect that morally they tried to take the high road.
But the free lunch is over. There are plenty of other social chat websites available.
I recall decades ago that the UK Lootp community would invade the US Lootp. Hedy stuff AiYD)

I recall opening a board on TMF.com back in the 90s called British Invasion. Where we US-resident Brits 'virtually' invaded Washington and re-took the USA for the Queen. [This was funnier before Trump and recent events in DC]. IIRC I might also have been associated with a short-lived board named The White House or similar, which naturally fell to the British Invasion over the course of some months.
I believe the supposed 'Yankies' on tmf.com, all Anglophiles themselves, then subsequently opened a counter-invasion board. Many of us used to be acquainted with each other, with periodic socials etc. Very Silly + fun times.
Having known many of the TMF.com crowd I am quite sure if we in the UK can rescue/reserect the .uk boards, then they will be able to do similar over there and good luck to them.

[XFool]

Across the pond.

As mentioned previously, TMF - US has now closed non-financial boards on their site. In the case of the US I would guess this is collateral damage resulting from their ongoing Cultural Wars. Here is an explanation posted earlier this month from TMF2Aruba on this topic:

https://boards.fool.com/boards-no-politics-policy-35124372.aspx

[88V8]

...I would guess this is collateral damage resulting from their ongoing Cultural Wars.

I bet the politics-related boards/posts here account for 90% of the moderation. But it surprises me, on the whole, how little real aggro we seem to have on this forum.

V8

[Lanark]

Hardly.

They were part of the great land-grab of the late 1990s that enclosed the previously-free Usenet commons. Only a small part (they're not facebook, let alone google who did the real damage to Usenet), but it's not exactly moral high ground.

I don't think you can give any one company credit for killing off usenet, it was killed off by spammers flooding every group with junk. I think the turning point was around 2000 and by 2010 it was dead.

[servodude]

Hardly.

They were part of the great land-grab of the late 1990s that enclosed the previously-free Usenet commons. Only a small part (they're not facebook, let alone google who did the real damage to Usenet), but it's not exactly moral high ground.

I don't think you can give any one company credit for killing off usenet, it was killed off by spammers flooding every group with junk. I think the turning point was around 2000 and by 2010 it was dead.

Not even AOL?

[UncleEbenezer]

Hardly.

They were part of the great land-grab of the late 1990s that enclosed the previously-free Usenet commons. Only a small part (they're not facebook, let alone google who did the real damage to Usenet), but it's not exactly moral high ground.

I don't think you can give any one company credit for killing off usenet, it was killed off by spammers flooding every group with junk. I think the turning point was around 2000 and by 2010 it was dead.

There's an issue of cause and effect there. A brief quote from the article I referred you to in a PM, which describes google's central role in leading to the circumstances:

The community mindshare had been grabbed, except for old-timers. Search had been lost gradually and the community, like a boiling frog, had failed to react to incremental changes and create an alternative. In the face of such trends, the will to put much effort into other things like newsreader development and combating the rise of spam, also waned.

[Lanark]

UncleEbenezer makes a good point that Google probably did more than anyone to drive the stake into usenet.

It probably would have died anyway, but google's actions drove traffic and likely attracted all the spammers.

We do still have an archive which is outside Google's clutches:
https://www.usenetarchives.com/