Although the MACH board has probably been great for the website because of hits,
Take any board in the top 50 list and consider what a small percentage of the total traffic it represents for the site. This board was not a "whale".
Zeev's board is a whale and they're really good folks there who have very high-quality trading talk. I'll always bend over backwards to accommodate them because they've earned it and of the few requests they've made, none have been unreasonable or come even close to compromising the principles of the site.
I think part of the problem was that some people, the moderator included, overestimated this board's worth to us as a business and expected to be able use that misconception as leverage.
it's been the major source of dissension among the community for many months.
Though "right vs. wrong" is higher on my list than "what's good for business", "right" is also "good business".
I was really put off pretty quickly by being told "IHUB has a chance to be a great site" and most especially "Do you think I don't understand about how you make a lot of your revenue?"
Such comments typically come from people who haven't set foot outside their grove and think they're the forest, not comprehending how huge the forest is.
That comes across to me as "Do what I demand or you're going down the tubes." I've heard it a thousand times. Often by people who will start a competing site to put us out of business, proving themselves right. The DGIV "Rocketeers" being a glaring example.
Anyway, few individual boards "make" the site. There are tens of thousands of boards here. And if one board is doing a lot of noisy traffic where people are unlikely to click ads because they're just jumping rapidly from post to post, we actually lose money both long-term and short-term.
And if they're denting the reputation of the site in the process, the long-term effects are worse.
AI
