A friend and I were talking last night (also a .Net member) about the longevity of our companies and the issue of .Net popped up.

The question he asked me was "How many more years does .Net have left in her"?

After going over the matter, the answer was pretty complex I felt It comes down to 7 options.

1) The internet/Seahawks for some reason no longer exist.
2) Someone buys it, just to shut it down (Happens all the time in business)
3) Some smart person who has plenty of time gets pissed and trolls it (with 100ish memberships using 100ish different PCs) until no one wants to be here.
4) People get bored with it and .Net drys out
5) Lack of funds to operate.
6) .Net changes websites again
7) Some odd government takeover of websites (Example...China)

Every member and their dog will say ".Net will last forever" but that is not realistic.

Due to history I am thinking a website change could be the answer, in 10 years.

So how many more years do you think .Net has and how will it be brought down?

Spokane wrote:3) Some smart person who has plenty of time gets pissed and trolls it (with 100ish memberships using 100ish different PCs) until no one wants to be here.

Prelag.

lol I think prelag is gone, or Zeb would still be in counseling!
Oh how I wish he was still here! I would beat his ass at something just to prove I am prelag worthy

Well this website had made numerous changes in the (oh crap I just realized this) 15 years it's been around. it started off as seahawks98.com and turned to .NET in 2000. So honestly, although I understand forever is not feasible as NOTHING is forever, possibly not even the universe itself, I do believe it will make it well past 10 more years.

1) The internet/Seahawks for some reason no longer exist. The Seahawks will never allow themselves to get in a position they were in during the "dark years," and the Internet ain't going anywhere. Ergo, they and the internet will last through the foreseeable future.
2) Someone buys it, just to shut it down (Happens all the time in business) Rock would never let that happen.
3) Some smart person who has plenty of time gets pissed and trolls it (with 100ish memberships using 100ish different PCs) until no one wants to be here. Been done before. Prelag was thwarted, and so will any future Prelag wannabes.
4) People get bored with it and .Net drys out Sure. I'd say when pigs fly, but we've all seen that Geico commercial, so I'll just say when our colors turn to piss and black.
5) Lack of funds to operate. We're getting better with this, not worse. See the Ebay and Amazon links in addition to donations.
6) .Net changes websites again It's survived several website changes and has gotten better over the course of its history.
7) Some odd government takeover of websites (Example...China) Highly likely. In fact, I'd put a ton of money down on that if I were you.

My two cents.

Speaking from my experiences with a few other messageboards, I think the only ways this site goes down would involve:

1. A long, LONG period of abysmal play from the Seahawks, reducing even the most die-hard fan's interest in discussing the team (note that I'm not saying the fan would start following other teams, but that they just wouldn't want to post/read much). Imagine Cardinals' level ineptitude for a couple of decades. When you reduce the membership and the activity, leaving just a handful of people starting new topics or exchanging ideas, a board's death isn't far off. My other main board has about 20 total folks that post anything on it anymore (down from several hundred daily participants), and it can go days without new posts from anyone.

2. The NFL determining that the copyright note at the bottom of the page isn't enough and pushing for even stricter rules so that all online discussion of its teams occurs on its official team sites. I'd see this as the most likely avenue, as the NFL seeks out more and more revenue streams ("There are millions of folks talking about our teams on external sites! Why not force them to talk about our teams on our sites, where we can advertise to them the latest team-branded crap?").

volsunghawk wrote:Speaking from my experiences with a few other messageboards, I think the only ways this site goes down would involve:

1. A long, LONG period of abysmal play from the Seahawks, reducing even the most die-hard fan's interest in discussing the team (note that I'm not saying the fan would start following other teams, but that they just wouldn't want to post/read much). Imagine Cardinals' level ineptitude for a couple of decades. When you reduce the membership and the activity, leaving just a handful of people starting new topics or exchanging ideas, a board's death isn't far off. My other main board has about 20 total folks that post anything on it anymore (down from several hundred daily participants), and it can go days without new posts from anyone.

2. The NFL determining that the copyright note at the bottom of the page isn't enough and pushing for even stricter rules so that all online discussion of its teams occurs on its official team sites. I'd see this as the most likely avenue, as the NFL seeks out more and more revenue streams ("There are millions of folks talking about our teams on external sites! Why not force them to talk about our teams on our sites, where we can advertise to them the latest team-branded crap?").

They tried the #2 route for several years during Todd's tenure.

I know the NFL is not the least bit interested in having the fans have any conversation or information that doesn't come from/through them but have about used up that avenue.

The last thing they went after Todd about was the blue color used for the background. Finally at that point Todd told them to piss off as the color blue is in the public venue.

I don't believe he heard from them again.




My personal opinion is the only thing that will kill the site is the 15-20 year old sports exspurts out there that prefer to interfere and argue finally becoming so overwhelming in numbers they chase away all the people that like to just discuss the team.

8) rock's wife tells him to stop messing around with that damn website and it withers on the vine.

Saw something similar happen to a board I used to admin. Site was hugely popular but the owner lost interest and the look and functionality of the site grew stale. at the same time his main competitor kept their look fresh and went out of their way to attract viewership with regular parties/events underwritten by sponsors. Several people tried to buy it from him but he just couldn't bring himself to let it go. Sad to watch it die like that.

(pink slip from rock coming in 3...2...1)

.NET is the Twinkie of the internetz.

How old is Radish?

When Rock sells it to Scout.

I'm not sure how long it would survive if the 49'ers, cowboys, and stealers win the next 10 SB's.

The most likely reason is that the NFL becomes a remnant like boxing in the next 100 years.

What a weird thread to start. I think .NET will last forever. Or at least until the apocalypse. So does my dog.

I think it's an extremely interesting topic of conversation, and certainly one I've had several times. I believe that any one of the reasons you posted are possible, though in my own opinion this is the most likely specific reasons for the site "ceasing to exist":

* Some legal situation causing an injunction which ceases the site from being available - Your example used the Seahawks as the cause, but that's no really a concern anymore (for some of the reasons Les pointed out, but more notably that we're now looked upon favorably by the FO). A more likely scenario would be an entity suing the site for defamation of character, and an idiot judge doing something really, really stupid like approving an immediate injunction to cease and desist the site until the trial.
- Mitigation: Someone would simply purchase a new domain name and word would get around that ".net is now at newdomain.com until this gets sorted out". We've seen this exact thing happen twice, and it didn't end up killing the site, but it could.

* The site begins having major outage and performance issues, causing people to become frustrated and seek out other sites - One of the reasons we've been able to accommodate a readership that has grown exponentially over a 3 year period is by treating this "hobby" as a business and continually reacting to growing needs by building a bigger, stronger supporting host platform. But even with the donation/associate platform helping with costs, the numbers of users and views recently grew to a staggering number not even we could have anticipated.
As you all saw, the site's current platform simply couldn't accommodate that many users (during the Harvin & Avril news) and the platform is a top-notch Amazon web services system. 3+million page views a month isn't something we can accommodate using the standard shared server/storage/DB methodology, so decisions have to be made in order to build the new site out as a tier 1 website, rather than the current open-source platform. As was eluded to earlier, the large amounts of time and energy people are putting into site migrations, tweaks, rebuilds, and restores for no monetary compensation isn't sustainable at these levels. So as a business, either I need to adapt, or eventually the site will reach that scenario.

* A major change to the operating structure is implemented by ownership, causing community backlash that eventually leads to a mass migration to another board - This would be a major change to rules like "it's against policy to say anything bad about the team, the players, or AbsoluteNET and anyone doing so will be banned". Another version might be that we decide to start allowing advertising in every way, shape, and form and people have to put up with banner ads, pop-ups, and ads that say you cant view this topic until you watch an 8 minute infomercial about erectile dysfunction titled "What to do if you're a PEhawk".

These are the causes I see as the most likely, though you all should know I've always tried to do everything in my power to avoid these pitfalls. I'll always be loyal and committed to the site and the community so I have no intention of allowing those to happen, but business has to adapt and there will always be a chance that the decisions I make on how to adapt turn this place into the Seahawks version of Myspace.

What's open-source software got to do with whether a website is considered tier 1 or not? Some of the largest websites on the internet use entirely open-source software. SourceForge, for instance, has 2 million downloads per day. (Unless I'm misinterpreting what you meant?)

Sarlacc83 wrote:The most likely reason is that the NFL becomes a remnant like boxing in the next 100 years.

This. I've been wondering about this for a while and thought about opening a thread on it. Football will eventually be replaced by something, the questions is just when or how. Boxing was replaced by MMA and baseball was replaced because, well, it sucks.

You mean all we have to do for long term protection is ban Absolute?

What's the bad news?

RolandDeschain wrote:What's open-source software got to do with whether a website is considered tier 1 or not? Some of the largest websites on the internet use entirely open-source software. SourceForge, for instance, has 2 million downloads per day. (Unless I'm misinterpreting what you meant?)

I'm trying to make an argument sound more legitimate by dazzling people with my tech-talk that actually has no bearing on the ultimate point. You have a problem with that, Mr buzzkill?

2 weeks

RockHawk wrote:I'm trying to make an argument sound more legitimate by dazzling people with my tech-talk that actually has no bearing on the ultimate point. You have a problem with that, Mr buzzkill?

That's Captain Buzzkill to you, Mark.

RockHawk wrote:I'll always be loyal and committed to the site and the community so I have no intention of allowing those to happen, but business has to adapt and there will always be a chance that the decisions I make on how to adapt turn this place into the Seahawks version of Myspace.

This is the best thing I could have read on this board. I was once part of a board that was thousands of people strong and had hundreds of great posts a day that was a lot like .net is becoming. Then the owner got into a couple of other websites that peaked his interest more. He left a mod in charge who was basically John Morgan. It took about a year and half for even the most dedicated of us to finally leave after the owner finally sold off the site because of people spam bombing the site due to the head mod to finally shut the site down for good. So, thank you Mark for these words. That scenario has been in the back of my mind.