Forum Overview :: Rants :: A Website Autopsy

[quote name="jeep"]Hard as it may be to believe, OMM wasn't the only website I read regularly. I liked the fact that: - They were honest about game reviews. - They were readily critical of review sites that weren't honest, or were just stupid. - They were entertaining. However, OMM only focused on one or two types of games, so I looked around for other sites that did the same for other types of games. They've all pretty much disappeared at this point. Lum's, Qt3, and now SportsReviewers are gone, at least. Since SR just went down, their (hated flat) forums are still up, and they are (intermittently) finding themselves in a world of shit. I was never a huge fan of sports games, but that website was so good I'd go there anyway, and the forums were - like OMMs - filled with regulars who had a good time and talked about whatever with people they generally got along with. Even with my distate for the genre in question, it was as good as OMM, and so if there'd been a fundraising drive or something, then just like OMM I'd have been the first one there with my credit card ready. Anyway, a bunch of weird shit has happened over there after the site stopped, and <a href="http://www.ianstorm.com/forums/periscope/default.asp?Do=top175271">this guy sums it up pretty well</a>. His summary looks like an autopsy of that website, but it's really sort of an anatomy class on how small, focused sites and their attendant forum communities operate, live, and die. I found it instructive, and just as applicable to OMM as it is to SportsReviewers. Maybe you can get something from it as well. /jeep/[/quote]