A few of us have been around long enough to remember a time when this was the only quality surveyor's discussion board. The option was one run by a magazine. The initial activity level on the one operated by the magazine was good but then it began dwindling. As that level of participation dropped the number of new threads dropped until there were only three or four new threads per day to catch the interest of those who dropped by. The magazine killed the discussion board as it was not producing enough income to fund itself.
We do not want this to happen with this site. You who only read but never add material to be read by others need to speak up.
Still waiting on my roasted Llama.
Proof that there are a few of us who go back a long time.
Sold all of the llamas but could "borrow" one from a neighbor.
We have reached the limits of our knowledge. Especially you young guys!
I have to be honest. The new format just doesnt work as well for me..But I will start a NEW THREAD!!!
I agree about the new format. I really liked the way Surveyor Connect was setup.
I agree with dmyhill.
There is a lot of amusing chit chat on Reddit r/Surveying and plenty of high fives for career achievements, but you have to dig for the technical substance.
The technical substance is here, on this site. Nowhere else. Quality over quantity.
I do not understand why the volume of new threads went down with the new format. It seems easy enough to me.
This is about the 4th time I've logged in since the format change. Honestly... the new format is horrible. I can't follow it and don't understand the layout. There is no value in this forum anymore. Sorry...but just being honest. It will die if left in this format.
N10,000, E7,000, Z100.00 PLS - MO, KS, CO, MN, KY
I have to say that every time the site has been revamped, I have liked it less.
I understand the reasons for needing to upgrade the platform as time goes by - I remember Wendell saying the old platform/system was becoming too slow - not secure - not optimized for smart phones - etc - and I am super grateful for his mega volunteer efforts - but like I said - each upgrade has made it less personal, friendly and easy to navigate for me. But I still use Excel from 2000 and Cad from 2007, so there is that...
I like sites where it's easy to spot SUMMARIES of new threads and threads I've marked as being ones that I want to follow. The initial view in this place has so much text from selected posts that I can't spot what's interesting. (How do they get selected? I don't know, and if someone tells me, I won't remember.)
I will echo the comments about not liking the new format. It is time to pull the plug on whatever life support this site is on.
agree with above. I do not like social media but do like professional online discussion.
myself and many others go back to Mark Deal's original site with robust discussions. my take is that it cost money to host these sites and that the host needs income from advertising. I get it.
I have promised to meet up with several surveyors on this and predecessor sites whom I call friends but have never met in person - I hope to before we are all gone.
Wendell, you likely know where this site is going. Just look at the metrics. Not sure what the fix is.
I just wanted to chime in as an advertiser. I've been using RPLS.com for a short time but truly appreciate the valuable discussions and connections it fosters within our industry. While I understand concerns about the current activity, I believe in the community that's built here and am committed to supporting its growth.
If there's anything I can do as an advertiser to help encourage more engagement, please let me know. Let's work together to keep RPLS.com vibrant and continue to serve as a hub for surveyors everywhere. I am sure Wendell would be happy to hear any suggestions. Do you think the layout is the main issue, or are there other factors that should be considered?
Looking forward to more great conversations!
I don't really have a problem with the site as far as usability but I've been around message boards for 25+ years and find them all easy enough to navigate. If I had to guess I'd say the site simply isn't known about by most surveyors. I don't think the censorship helps either; why talk about 70% of the survey stuff I might find interesting because it's politics adjacent when I could go elsewhere and talk about 100% of it?
My practice for navigating the site as formatted today is to click on Activity Feed then look at the little bell symbol indicating notifications. That lists new threads since my last visit and any comments that have been made to a thread I have started. That is a good start. Then I scroll down through the Activity Feed results looking for comments in other threads.
This, of course, seems to be an upside down and backwards approach to searching for comments of interest. But, as I check in twice or more daily, at the current rate of new comments this is not a burden. If I were to only check in once per week or less frequently, this would not be a practical approach. Then I would go to each category of posting to see what is available.
My concern is the sudden disappearance of too many regular contributors who have kept the site lively and entertaining as well as educational in recent years. I truly miss their attendance here.
@bstrand I totally understand where you are coming from. The problem we had in the past (before your time here) was that any political discussions became extremely mean-spirited, rude and even violent. I spent several years trying to make it work -- when you have users threatening violence against your family, you tend to want to find ways to make that stop. I tried to keep those discussions here as long as I could until it became too much of a chore to moderate it. The very personal threats and profanity-laced emails and phone calls didn't help either. I had a young daughter in the house at the time and I was literally concerned for her safety. My wife and I can handle ourselves but that was just too much.
On top of that, the day I decided I'd had enough, I received SO MANY messages of support and thankfulness that I felt like I had done the right thing.
If I could believe that this site wouldn't spiral into another tailspin, I'd consider allowing it again. However, managing this website is definitely not my full-time job and it operates in the red, so I really don't need the extra work or stress. This site is here because my heart is in it, but I can't allow it to pull me away from my regular work that supports my family.
When I relaunched this website as RPLS.com and in this new format, I knew it was a bit of a risk, and I made that clear leading up to it. I've been striving to bring it to a place where it's not running in the red anymore. We did operate at a profit for a couple of years when we had big advertisers, but those advertisers have since disappeared based on problems they were having in the industry. What I'm saying is that it wasn't because of anything that happened here.
I have since resigned myself to realize that it will never be profitable -- there are many reasons for that, but I know that part of it is because I don't have enough time to work on it to get it there. If it was my full-time job, perhaps it could be profitable. But my heart is in it, and I don't want to let it go. It sure helps though to have the monetary support that I do have because it pays for some of the hard operating costs.
All of the above is the long way of saying that I agree with the sentiments that it was better before. This new format was a shot at taking it to the next level and seeing if it could become profitable. It's been almost a full year now and I see that we probably need to step back and consider that its best format has always been a simple forum.
Don't get me wrong -- the traffic here is higher than it's ever been, and it has been growing quickly. This month, we reached 20 million pageviews in a 30-day period for the very first time. Our biggest source of traffic is Google search results. Could participation be better? Sure! But perhaps returning to a simple forum format would allow that to happen.
Don’t get me wrong — the traffic here is higher than it’s ever been, and it has been growing quickly. This month, we reached 20 million pageviews in a 30-day period for the very first time. Our biggest source of traffic is Google search results. Could participation be better? Sure! But perhaps returning to a simple forum format would allow that to happen.
That is outstanding to hear, the traffic.
The revenues are just hard. You need such a huge volume of traffic to make money. I hear you saying that there are ways to make money off the brand but they all would require a full time job making that money. So while it isn't worth zero, it isn't the MOST profitable use of time. We are grateful that to be your hobby! Please take no offense to any criticisms of the site. No offense is intended, only honest feedback.
And...no politics is good. There are lots of places to discuss politics. For those that want that, consider that the places that allow that pretty much create silos and echo chambers for people in a certain way of thinking. When talking about surveying, I want the opinion of a Harris or a Trump voter...I want them both.