The future of ZeroGain

It is with some regret that I would like to announce that I no longer wish to be the owner/administrator of ZeroGain. There are a number of reasons for this:
- my interest in HiFi has declined to the point where IMO it's no longer sufficient for running a forum dedicated to the subject.
- it's my view that the forum has become stale and I'm no longer interested or motivated enough to try and do something about it (assuming there even is anything that can be done). I'm not going to speculate on the reasons for the decline of ZG. Everyone will have their own views. Some may disagree that it's in decline.
- I'm currently dealing with two or three very difficult and complex personal issues whose outcome will have a very significant impact on my life. I'm not going to elaborate allthough I will say that my declining interest in hifi is perhaps a symptom of these issues. In the grand scheme of things hifi just isn't that important. Also since I need to give these issues my full attention I can't devote the time required to ZeroGain to run it properly (and it will be months rather than weeks before these issues are likely to be resolved).

There are a number of potential options:
1. Close the forum and leave it as a read-only archive for some period of time (months perhaps) before finally removing it entirely.
2. Hand the administration and chief moderator duties over to someone else but I remain owner of the domain. I could remain the owner of the vBulletin software license until it's expiry later in the year.
3. Hand the whole lot over to someone else. The new owner would take over the zerogain.com domain name and be responsible for all hosting etc. etc.

I personally would like the forum to continue but not at any cost. I envisage something in between options 2 and 3 to be the most likely immediate solution with full transition to option 3 at some point in the future. I'm not in a desperate hurry to do this and will want to ensure that the forum's new owner will take good care of it. I'm fully aware that an active forum with 1000+ members that hits the top spot in Google searches is potentially worth some money, either as an entity in itself or as a source of future advertising revenue. I never wanted to make any money out of ZeroGain and I don't want to now. I would want to ensure if possible that any future owner would run the forum in the same way and not use it just to make a few quid. I should add that if it came down to it I'd rather close the forum down completely than hand it over to someone I didn't trust to take good care of it.

I'm not entirely sure what the next step is. I guess that interested parties should contact me via PM. It would seem only fair that the forum members, especially the more active ones, also have a say in the forum's future. Obviously this thread is a place where such views can be aired. In private discussions with the mods the issue of a leadership election "poll" thread was mentioned (assuming there's a shortlist of candidates) but the main obstacle to this is the inability of the forum software to run a poll where the results are not public. A public poll could potentially be utterly humiliating for the loosers and IMO would create a lot of bad feeling so isn't a really an option.

So, lets hope a solution emerges. I know that's not very definite but it's the best I can do at the moment. For the time being I will of course continue to run the forum but, as you may already have noticed, my contributions will be dramatically reduced.

Lastly, a big thankyou to all of you, the members, who have made ZeroGain what it is, hopefully it will continue onto bigger and better things .

Regards,
Michael.

 

HI Mike

Thanks for running Zerogain for so long, and giving us all a place to get together and chat about music, kit and life in general.

Im sure that a solution will present itself, and thanks again for giving time for that to happen so that we get where we need to be.

Cheers
Chris

 

What Chris said. Hope you resolve all the personal issues. Thanks for setting this place up and running it for so long, even when most of the regular posters were taking the piss out of you.

Is the hifiplus forum still going? If it is, maybe the easiest thing is to simply redirect people from here to there, if Robbo agrees. Last time I looked it seemed most of the regular posters there were the regular posters here, so culturally it shouldn't come as too much of a shock to anyone.

-- Ian

 

Michael,

What Chris and Ian said.
I hope you get things sorted for yourself soon.

Andy

 

You have done a fabulous job Michael, I'm very sorry to hear you feeel unable to continue long term, I also sincerely hope your personal issues reach a swift and painless resolution.
I would be very sorry to see this place go

 

Thanks for all your time, effort and patience in running this site Michael, and like others I hope the more important issues in your life right now are happily resolved.

Martin

 

Michael,

I hope that you manage to resolve your personal issues to the satisfaction of all involved. Everyone owes you a great debt of gratitude for the work that you have put in on this forum and it has really grown into a valuable resource for the hifi community.

I have known fow quite a while now (thanks to our moderator conversations) that you have been fed up with the forum and I have sensed this point coming for several months. If I am totally honest thats one of the reasons I got involved in setting up hifiplus forums to create some kind of backup place should the plug be pulled over here and we were all left high and dry. (Thats not to say we wanted to replace ZG, the idea behind HFP was to create a new atmosphere different to the other forums and pull in some new names).

Regarding the future, lets see what everyones thoughts are as to what to do next. I am not necessarily in favour of redirecting all traffic to HFP (and would need to consult with the others as well), but lets see what the general feeling is.

cheers, Robbo

 

What everybody has said and is gonna say!

I came late to the party here, so the concept of decline isn't on my radar screen. I've learned an awful lot though from lots of fine folks and appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts every so often. Things like the NOS DAC and Squeezebox that I first learned about here might be with us for a little while more, but community lasts longer still! Thank you for allowing us a voice, you've been a most gracious host.

Best of luck in whatever the future brings!

Cheers, Dex

 

Its not entierly surprisingly really, running a forum is a time consuming job and you have legal duties to maintain it, if you have personal problems then that is going to be very hard. I think its clear a lot fo the members are no longer as interested in HIFI anymore, it would be nice if the forum could continue though.

I do totaly understand your position though and at the end of the day its totaly upto what you do with the site.

Thanks for providing this exellent forum out of your own pocket for all these years.

 

Cheers Micheal - If zg dies it will be a sad day indeed.
"better to have posted once than never to have posted at all" I think someone once said.

Ultimately there are plenty more things more important in life than bloody hifi.

all the best //craig

 

Another massive vote of thanks for all the hard work Michael - I personally have got a lot out of the forum (& probably not put enough in..) so it would be a great shame to see it go - hopefully a solution along the lines you are hoping for can be found.
I hope you can get your other issues sorted quickly also.

 

A big Thank You!

 

Hi Michael,

I can only echo what others have said. It's a very sad day indeed. However the personal issues have to be more important than HiFi and I hope you can resolve them.

My heartfelt thanks for providing this forum.

 

Michael, hope the personal issues are resolved as soon as possible with the outcomes you would wish for. You've done an excellent job in running this forum since Groovehandle died, giving us somewhere to chat about music, hifi and anything and everything else, and all out of your own pocket and time. Good luck with everything!

 

Michael, thanks for all the work you've put in. ATB.

 

what are the yearly costs of runnng the site?
if it aint too much then perhaps the hardcore members could pay a couple of quid a year to maintain its up keep,the mods remain to keep us all in control,and Michael remains as the boss,albeit in a silent role.
A simaler method is used by a certain "gardening site" i freqent,none of the suibscribers gain anything from there investment,apart from subscriber or life time member by there user name

 

All the very best for the future Michael and thank you for keeping the site going as long as you have.

andrew

 

Hi Michael,

Sorry to hear about your personal issues. I hope you sort them out and everything goes well.

A big thanks for running the forum. It has, on the whole, given me and others many hours of pleasure. There has been some very good debate on some good topics. I can understand your lost of interest in hifi, it happens. I must admit some of the posts on here do leave a lot to be desired. They can be off putting to a forum owner.

It's a shame we only meet once but, you never know, our path may hopefully cross again.

All the best and thanks once again.


Dean

 

'tis a shame as this place is a refuge of sanity amongst the madness that is the usual hi-fi fora. I have been made welcome and I appreciate that.

Michael, you have my good wishes.

 

Another thank you post from me, Mike. If you do decide to close ZG down, please post somewhere else, I'd certainly miss reading your thoughts on F1 even if you can't be bothered about hi-fi anymore.

You've put an awful amount of time and effort into this site. Your intelligence and evenhandedness are what attracted some good posters; for a while, ZG was extremely good reading. I concur, however, that the level has been falling a bit and that may make this a good time to call it a day.

I very much appreciate your composure in the face of unwarranted abuse, too; the thought of having to put up time and money for some of the things that went on here must have tempted you to pull the plug more than once.

Sorry to hear about personal things, I hope they will work out alright for you.

FWIW my own take on the matter: either merge ZG and HFP (don't know about the politics involved) or leave ZG as a read-only site for a couple of years.