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Who's Running This Place Anyway?

22K views 81 replies 13 participants last post by  JoeIsuzu 
#1 ·
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?
 
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#28 ·
SRN said:
Vertical Scope got back to me when I asked how much to buy it, $25,000. Which is about what I anticipated.
Absolutely preposterous. They contributed WHAT to the site that would justify that kind of profit? ZERO.

The only possible reason to price it that high is because they think someone might actually want it.

It would be amusing if everyone just removed all their posts, and left these greedy yahoos high and dry, with only the content THEY contributed (ZERO).
 
#29 ·
JoeIsuzu said:
SRN said:
Vertical Scope got back to me when I asked how much to buy it, $25,000. Which is about what I anticipated.
Absolutely preposterous. They contributed WHAT to the site that would justify that kind of profit? ZERO.

The only possible reason to price it that high is because they think someone might actually want it.

It would be amusing if everyone just removed all their posts, and left these greedy yahoos high and dry, with only the content THEY contributed (ZERO).
That, or they paid a substantial amount for it, and want their investment back.
 
#30 ·
mudoilngears said:
JoeIsuzu said:
SRN said:
Vertical Scope got back to me when I asked how much to buy it, $25,000. Which is about what I anticipated.
Absolutely preposterous. They contributed WHAT to the site that would justify that kind of profit? ZERO.

The only possible reason to price it that high is because they think someone might actually want it.

It would be amusing if everyone just removed all their posts, and left these greedy yahoos high and dry, with only the content THEY contributed (ZERO).
That, or they paid a substantial amount for it, and want their investment back.
You really think so? I got the impression they took it off Tad's hands for nothing but a promise to maintain it, in return for the ad revenue.

I wonder if Tad would fill us in. Anybody have contact info for him?

Jack
 
#31 ·
I don't know, but if so, why wouldn't he have approached someone on the forum first? Surely he would have known that some of us would have been willing to maintain it? I would think he would let it go to some who cared, before going to AutoGuide if there were no remuneration.
 
#33 ·
JoeIsuzu said:
If not for the load of collected knowledge that's here (contributed by AutoGuide: 0%; members: 100%), I'd vote to start over with a new site.

Jack
Agreed
 
#34 ·
JoeIsuzu said:
Absolutely preposterous. They contributed WHAT to the site that would justify that kind of profit? ZERO.

The only possible reason to price it that high is because they think someone might actually want it.

It would be amusing if everyone just removed all their posts, and left these greedy yahoos high and dry, with only the content THEY contributed (ZERO).
JoeIsuzu said:
I got the impression they took it off Tad's hands for nothing but a promise to maintain it, in return for the ad revenue.
While I don't disagree with your sentiment, they are a company in the business of making money. I have no idea what Tad sold the site for, but I've had a handful of friends sell forums to VS and other like companies over the years, and every one of them got at least $10,000 for the forum. Now I don't know Tad, and I joined the site a little late in the game (2012), but I'd be surprised if he just handed it off for nothing. And while I doubt that ad revenue directly from Planet Isuzoo is very much, my guess is that they approach advertisers with a basket of sites. You want to advertise on heavily trafficked sites like Off-Road.com or Pirate4x4, then you also will advertise on PI. So if you figure the revenue from that, then you take the ~$10k they paid for the site (adjusted for inflation), cost of hosting, maintenance (which has been limited), and then tack on a percentage that is pure profit, its easy to see why they'd say $25k to buy it.

The beauty of owning a forum, and why companies like VS are wildly profitable, is because they really don't have to do a damn thing. User's create the content that drive people to the site and all they really need to do is make sure the site isn't broken. They can even get saps (like me) who would be willing to become moderators just to keep the community that we've invested time and effort into vibrant. If I had the money back in the early '00's I'd have been all over this business model and by now I'd have an office in the Cayman's too.

But I digress. Planet Isuzoo is stuck with Vertical Scope. So our options as users are really either to push them to grant some active users moderator rights and to upgrade the software, or to walk away. Personally, I think PI is a very valuable resource and worth trying to maintain. I replied to VS with my concerns about the forums current state and we'll see if they reply.
 
#35 ·
@SRN -

Good post. But even a LITTLE effort on their part would go a long way. And if they had not set the expectations the way they did, I'd have no quarrel with them. I might be disappointed, but that's not the same as feeling like you've been lied to.

Jack
 
#37 ·
Yeea, I experienced same issue. I registered, wrote a couple of posts that didn't show and gave up. And then suddenly after 10+ days I received a few e-mails with information that posts got approved, and new ones started showing up.
 
#39 ·
And the spambots are back. There's one that has successfully posted three separate topics, I think in Vietnamese. I reported the first one, but apparently nobody saw my report. And then another spam post appeared today (this one in English, from a different user).

So this is how it all ends for the Planet?!?!

Jack
 
#42 ·
SRN said:
I'm in touch with someone at VS. they say they're willing to make a couple of us Mods. Just waiting to hear back on that.
The more they can get done for free, the less it will cost them. There really isn't a polite term to describe how they'll be taking advantage of moderators.

Jack
 
#43 ·
JoeIsuzu said:
SRN said:
I'm in touch with someone at VS. they say they're willing to make a couple of us Mods. Just waiting to hear back on that.
The more they can get done for free, the less it will cost them. There really isn't a polite term to describe how they'll be taking advantage of moderators.

Jack
As long as the content is preserved, at least something comes of it.
 
#44 ·
So if every active member voiced his opinion of Vertical Scope and AutoGuide in his/her signature, it would then appear on every post they've made. I wonder how long it might take for all those opinions to start showing up in search engine results (like Google, Bing, etc.).

Jack
 
#47 ·
JoeIsuzu said:
mudoilngears said:
They'd probably just disable signatures.
You're assuming they're even paying attention? ;)

jack
If it's something that might hurt their interests, yes. If not, no, not a chance.
 
#48 ·
JoeIsuzu said:
SRN said:
I'm in touch with someone at VS. they say they're willing to make a couple of us Mods. Just waiting to hear back on that.
The more they can get done for free, the less it will cost them. There really isn't a polite term to describe how they'll be taking advantage of moderators.

Jack
The biggest complaint is that the site is withering because of lack of attention. Having new moderators will help keep the site running smoothly. Sure, they'll be doing free work for VS, but I'd like to think that's out of a desire to see PI continue to survive and maybe thrive a bit after a period of stagnation. That's my motivation to try to work with the owners to keep it going and preserve this information so that people can keep these awesome vehicles on the road. And lets face it, if you're on the forum often enough to want to be a moderator, it's not too much more work to delete spam, help move topics to relevant sub forums, etc, etc.
 
#50 ·
SRN said:
Looks like they listened! I got Moderator access today.
mudoilngears, if you're still interested they're willing to give you the rights as well.
Sure!, work your magic. ;).
 
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