by Mal Grey » Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:37 pm
Sorry to hear of the loss of a great resource.
Interested to hear other's experiences of the "self-publisher". I also had an approach, which I declined, to publish some of my (few) reports on SH. I declined, but was pestered in an odd tone until I got fed up with it and said 'no' more strongly. That was actually a major factor in me stopping to visit and post on there. I wasn't aware of the larger story there, nor that some were being published without consent!
I find Forums far superior in content, searchability and depth than FB groups, though am guilty of being in quite a few (mostly canoeing orientated). I find the Scottish hills/walking/touring ones particularly poor at times, well described by others above. There are exceptions: All Things Cuillin is a great resource with plenty of mutual respect, mostly because its "curated" properly, which clearly takes a lot of time, by Adrian Trendall between guiding on the ridge.
I keep an eye on the viewing figures & post figures for Song of the Paddle, as I've been on there so long. It feels that views are still high and similar to what they were, but the numbers of active posters & replies is far fewer. For example, I once worked out, maybe a decade ago, that most "blogs" (Trip reports) got replies from around 10% of the views. Now its maybe 1 or 2%.