[HPFGU-Feedback] Risti says it well.

[Heidi Tandy]

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 10:31pm, whizbang wrote:
> I wish I had said all that.  Carefully thought out and well
> explained.
>
> I would like to add that the really good forums are not free, but a
> couple, and proboards.com comes to mind quickly, have been given
> high marks as free boards.  As in yahoo groups, there is advertising
> on the pages.  But perhaps it would be possible to try one hpfgu
> sister board in this type of forum as an experiment and see if it
> works out well.  We might discover that there's room for both types
> of board to function well.  As they will each attract those who are
> most comfotable in the format of the board they've chosen, there
> could be less frustration for all involved and more room to grow.
>
> And who knows?  Perhaps a way will be found to move to a better if
> for $$$$ forum eventually.
>

Just a little fyi: I am a mod for fictionalley.org and we have message 
boards for a wide range of discussion topics. It costs approximately 
400$/year for the discussion boards, including updates of our backend 
software and server costs. We solicit from our users year-round and are 
saving up for our own server right now. The format works well for 
discussions that are segmented by topic or theme but it is impossible to 
read everything, but that may be because we have approx 33,000 
registered users and about 6000 unique visitors in any given week to the 
discussions.