Future of the CPUK Forum

[daveq]

Hi folks

As you know, this forum is maintained and funded by the Carnivorous Plant Society, a UK charity. We have done a lot of work this year to reduce the forum costs - re-platforming to much cheaper hosting, removing unnecessary customisations and bringing the application of updates to the site in-house rather than paying a third party to do it. However maintaining the forum still costs the charity about £200 each year.

As trustees of the charity we have been considering whether this continues to be a good use of the Society's funds. The vast majority of activity on the forum these days is EU plant sales (effectively providing a free marketplace for sellers), from which the charity receives no revenue and which does not contribute to the charity's purposes. Most discussion, news, and sharing of advice etc. has naturally migrated to social media where the Society also has a presence and which does not incur hosting/management costs.

While some have commented previously that they don't want to use (e.g.) Facebook and there should be more discussion here, that's not something we are really in control of. Unfortunately there is a negative feedback loop whereby as the amount of genuine discussion here reduces, people visit less frequently, and therefore the amount of discussion reduces further.

What are your views on the future of the forum? Here are some options we could consider:

• Close the forum and delete the content
• Close the forum and archive the forum content (from the categories of enduring interest, e.g. not sales) to a static platform so it continues to be available, but without the ability to create new posts (this would require some work but would significantly reduce future costs)
• Introduce a charging mechanism so that those posting for plant sales are contributing to the running costs

We welcome your ideas.

[Marcel van den Broek]

This forum porvides a service and serves to share information, so I would certainly leave content available.

However, this forum is also very valuable to communicate open days, European and international meetings and open days.

While the UK numbers are lower due to all the problems caused by Brexit (and that works both ways!), this is still important information as people still visit/participate even if buying and taking something home is more difficult (untill the politicians see the light/voters kick them out and start rebuilding).

I can understand the problems an UK based society with mostly (but not exclusively) UK members has with funding this forum, though the cost you mention are suprisingly small).

I would therefore advocate your third option as this still is one of the most used sales options and I think it is fair if you charge for that.

I would make a difference between  a sale of some seeds at 2 or 3 euro or pound  a portion ( which I would keep free) and the sales i see that charge over 100 euro or pound for a plant. Charging the same fees as ebay or other less moderated and less reliable platforms is with those commercial pricing