The middle of the line

A few weeks ago, I found a web forum for the town of Rugby at http://www.rugby-town.co.uk/

It was very new, and had not seen many users, but I signed up and tried to join in. I also contacted the owner to see what he was intending to do with it. He replied to say that he ran another forum (some kind of spirituality/new age thingy that really isn’t my bag) and wasn’t sure if he’d get the time to keep the town one going.

Looks like the forum was removed last week. I can see why – it had about 10 members, and a total of about 30 posts last I saw. No-one other than me and the admin appeared to have logged in since early June. Without some effort on publicity and encouraging users, it was likely to wither away anyway, unfortunately.

I would like to see a web forum. Crawley has had one before, but the last one was removed because the owner didn’t want to have adverts on it, but couldn’t pay to get an ad-free service. The neighbourhood of Maidenbower, on the edge of the town, has however had a thriving community forum for some years, with local councillors using it and a fair range of discussion. The local newspapers have used it as a resource, and it is also used sometimes to organise community events.

However, I don’t think I have the time to set one up and run it (if people do use it, then you need fairly constant moderation). Besides, I have a political affiliation and I don’t know if it would go down well for some ‘incomer’ with an agenda to be seen to be running something like that. But what if no-one else will do it?

In the meantime, I might as well remove the link from the list on the right…