Three and a half years ago Auto Guide/Vertical Scope bought planetisuzoo.com. Since then it seems like the community has been hung out to dry. Yes, there is still good content being created. Yes, there are still new members joining and participating, but there is zero management on or really of the forum. AG/VS is basically just keeping it running; which is fine but the site is operating on dated software, everyone who was a moderator hasn't really visited the site much since it was sold and there is no one really around to do things like pin good posts, or encourage things like RoT's, and generally just keep an eye on the forum to encourage it to grow.
In North America Isuzu's are at their newest 15 years old and were never super popular to begin with. But one of the best ways to keep old vehicles running and keep people interested in them is for them to be able to easily find information about them. This forum is still the internet resource for anything related to Isuzu 4WD vehicles. But its a shadow of its former self and stunted from growing do to lack of ownership. No one that controls the forum actually really cares about it, its just another one of their thousands, and I highly doubt a profitable one at that. I would love to buy the site from AG/VS, but I doubt very much that they would be willing to sell it. So in lieu of that, here are some things that I'd like to see the current owners do:
1) Get some new moderators who can actually help manage the site! Simple things like pinning outstanding posts would be phenomenal! (Why are nasty610's Spring and Shock threads not pinned, for example?)
2) Upgrade the forum software! They did this once, then we had an outage and they reverted back to the old software. It would be nice to have a more modern interface and search function.
3) Listen to the users about changes (things like re-categorizing the forums to be more vehicle specific or having subject headers) or allow the new moderators to have to power in the forum to make these kinds of changes.
Maybe I'm just yelling at the wind here, but does anyone else feel the way that I do? Would anyone else be willing to take on a role and an Admin or Moderator?
In North America Isuzu's are at their newest 15 years old and were never super popular to begin with. But one of the best ways to keep old vehicles running and keep people interested in them is for them to be able to easily find information about them. This forum is still the internet resource for anything related to Isuzu 4WD vehicles. But its a shadow of its former self and stunted from growing do to lack of ownership. No one that controls the forum actually really cares about it, its just another one of their thousands, and I highly doubt a profitable one at that. I would love to buy the site from AG/VS, but I doubt very much that they would be willing to sell it. So in lieu of that, here are some things that I'd like to see the current owners do:
1) Get some new moderators who can actually help manage the site! Simple things like pinning outstanding posts would be phenomenal! (Why are nasty610's Spring and Shock threads not pinned, for example?)
2) Upgrade the forum software! They did this once, then we had an outage and they reverted back to the old software. It would be nice to have a more modern interface and search function.
3) Listen to the users about changes (things like re-categorizing the forums to be more vehicle specific or having subject headers) or allow the new moderators to have to power in the forum to make these kinds of changes.
Maybe I'm just yelling at the wind here, but does anyone else feel the way that I do? Would anyone else be willing to take on a role and an Admin or Moderator?