Steve,
Sleeping well, but with one eye partially open.
Paul,
Were it to become too successful, it might end-up being spoiled.
My personal view is that Madmodder, because of the unique type of content, will always have a fairly large turnover of active members, all because it is based around a multitude of different types of projects.
Projects finish, and the member has no more interest, so disappears, then you have the dreamer projectologist, who has a dream of making something, gets fed up and again disappears. Then of course you have the general interest lookers, who after a time, pass thru the phase and goes in search for other pursuits.
I don't know if anyone has the figures, but I think you will find, there is a core group of people, who will stay around permanently, and of the other members, I think there is a large number having no interest after say six months, moving on to pastures new.
So really when it all boils down to it, even though it looks like the forum is growing at a very healthy rate, we are also reducing in active members at the same time.
Going by the numbers you see on other sites, say 30K+ members, if they were all active it would take you a week just to make a post, as the forum would be in massive turmoil continuously. But it very rarely happens that way.
You see some of the older sites having many thousands of members, but only one or two new posts each week. A sure sign that most registered members are long gone, and the core members are talking to themselves.
So in my view, advertising is required to keep us above the attrition rate.
I for one don't like talking to myself (I tend to answer back).
Of course these are my thoughts, and Paul has raised a very valid issue.
Has anyone else got anything constructive to say about whether we should be advertising or not?
John