Well, I have ranted about that often enough in response TO rants about my machine gun posting: Yeah, I have posted on RAFO more than anyone (Camilla is the only one whose total is even within a couple thousand,) mostly on the CMB, but am still a hair under 10K even here, and it did NOT take me 3.5 years to reach that mark at wotmania. Even then it only took two years to get ANOTHER 20K despite getting there literally in wotmanias last days, when it was less active than ever.

That was Grand Central Station compared to this CMB. I have slowed way down (especially the last few months) and am only hyperactive by COMPARISON. I know there is FB and such, the BMB is RAFOs intended centerpiece and the WoTMB gets most of the action whether anyone likes it or not, but... wow....


Huh, we are nearly the same age then; I never realized that, and am not sure I like it, all things considered.

Looks like you are right about the rest though. Usually that is dismissed with references to dedicated social media sites that did not exist a decade and a half ago, but I do not really buy that. At the risk of idealizing something whose genesis I did not witness, wotmania stuck together because its membership developed unique qualities in it they could not find at the various geocities and similar sites. Qualities certainly not present at Facebook or MySpace, with the generic LCD aspects wotmaniacs tend to abhor. Maybe we have moved past the need or desire for that, or get as much as we need of it by staying in touch with those we met at wotmania and chose to keep in our lives on some basis. I prefer that theory to believing it general disillusionment.


It would be, had I not already made pretty much the same rough estimate on a different basis; instead it is just confirmation, though still appreciated for that. Like I say, it is taking me nearly twice as long to total 10K as it did at wotmanias lowest ebb, and all but about a handful of people are still working on 5K: The number I never deigned to acknowledge at wotmania because it was too low to merit mention.


I had hoped for a BIT more AMoL traffic, but since TWoT has been the red headed stepchild here from the start I cannot say I am surprised.


I still hope for the best, but have been increasingly convinced for a while this might prove a case of "be careful what you wish for." Shedding most wotmania Admins, Chat, WoT and "spec fic" (a term I still consider redundant) in general leaves little BUT a listless hulk. The CMB has about half RAFOs posts, and look at it. The WoTMB is next with about a third as many, but was only grudgingly included in RAFOs creation, and many will still be overjoyed to see it fade away with the last books release (90% of non-wotmaniac RAFOlk will not be pleased to see it go, which must be SOMEWHAT ominous.) The BMB, RAFOs focus, still lags slightly behind it, and the TV&MMB slightly behind that. It has about as many posts as The GMB and RPGMB combined, but that is only 27K. In 3.5 years.

I will say the last time I checked the BMB and TV&MMBs share of RAFOs had grown significantly since the first year, but cannot be sure if that represents real growth or the CMB and WoTMBs rapid decline. I cannot help recalling the discussion a few months ago about whether maintaing the MB splits wotmania developed was wise even though RAFO has NOTHING like the same traffic. Reckon we shall see, but purging everyone and everything deemed undesirable has not exactly paid huge dividends thus far. We can preserve the interface with a different default color scheme (that was easy enough to remedy ) but there is a limit too how much of wotmania we can shake off our shoes and still maintain any but a superficial link to the past.

On the other hand, shaking things off ones shoes is pretty much the exact opposite of preserving, let alone reliving, the past. Onward and upward, and hopefully we do not meet a Russian meteorite along the way.