[Duke]

Originally Posted by TKDLady

I guess maybe we need a bit more meat on our bones, so to speak. But to be honest, I come here to get away from it all for the most part. There are times I need help with things but I like the friendship and easy banter we all share. I hope that never changes.

Originally Posted by Vautrin

As long as you don't come up with a module here that reads all the posts out loud, I think we are not like that.

Openness and banter are important aspects. Makes people feel at home, and also helps to distract them from the everyday conundrum. But, when a topic pops up for support, we need to remain dedicated to the TC, and remain on topic as much as possible. The odd off-topic post in such a thread is no biggie (sometimes laughter is a good medicine).

Personally I'm starting to think all the open banter is sewing the seeds of our downfall. We're simply not attracting our target audience and we're not even close to what I visioned when I put us online almost 4 years ago. Instead of becoming a self help resource we've turned into a Funny Farm and to be completely honest, I'm nearing my wits end with it.

Don't get me wrong, the banter, lightheartedness and fun is all necessary but it really shouldn't be throughout our forums. If someone is really hurting what possible reason could they have for coming here and bearing their soul to a goof forum?

Regardless of whether or not any of what I've said is accurate I can definitely state one thing for a fact; I setup Lifesupporters.com as a vehicle to deal with my own personal issues and to give others a similar vehicle to do the same. Today, if I were searching for a fun community with a great bunch of caring, supportive and fun loving people I'd register in a heartbeat but if I were looking for a place to understand depression, abuse, addiction, recovery, infidelity, rape, self esteem/self image, etc., I'd definitely continue my search.

The past 4 months has been the busiest here in site history with an average of over 10,000 unique IP's/month and we only attract an average of one member/day with this month trailing off to .5 members/day.

Regardless of what anyone thinks we are not going forward, we've stalled and the signs are all pointing to a downhill slide. The worst part of this is that it's 110% all my fault but I'm tiring of this place and coming back is becoming a chore instead of fulfilling as it once was.

Sorry to hijack the thread folks but in all honesty this site is a full 180 from where I thought we'd be heading and it's wearing me down.

Please don't PM me about this because I'm working on a post to explain all the above but it's a novel so it's taking longer than expected. I hope to have everything available to you all sometime this weekend but I'll warn you now, its open, honest and very much to the point.

The point is this, if we can't segregate our forums so fun stuff is in one area and issues are in others, properly titled and indexed, we will die a slow and painful death. If this growth trend is indeed stalling and continues to fall off I won't be able to watch it happen, not again. I've simply sunk in wayyyy too much time, money and passion into getting us here so I can't bear to watch whats happening now.

Again, I'm not blaming anyone here other than myself so there's no reason for anyone to take anything personally.