Is it me or is this public forum getting smaller and smaller and smaller..........

Not just you. I dunno what's happening - it seems every single post is either gone or moved to the private forums.

This forum now has a relatively short "time to live" on the posts, so they expire with shorter inactivity. This is to allow people to ask questions, get an answer, and then let the thread die. It's to prevent lengthly involved discussions from being posted here by members by preference.

Just my humble opinion, but I think that will be a business mistake. Most people who join LL do so after spending some time on the public forum. This allows them time to make an informed decision and get confortable with the community (i.e. determine if it is an honest forum). Without this information many will simply never come back to the forum. Out of sight, out of mind.

When I first came to the forum one of my decision factors in joining was the amount of openess and discussion allowed in the forum. I figured all these people talking honestly and straightforward could not be possible if the forum did not deliver the goods it promised. As I look at the public forums now, I feel I would have been highly suspicious that open talk is not being allowed to air. Now you may say anything you want about people being allowed to talk all they want in the public forums, but if you delete the comments soon after post then it implies you have something to hide.

Just my humble opinion. If new membership starts to decline in the coming weeks you have no one to blame but your own business decisions. If membership stays the same or increases then I am wrong and you can credit your decision.

They didn"t delete them (keyboard"s messed up). There is this nice little drop down box that says "Last 10 Days"... maybe you should take a look at that...



Edited By Joe:
Please be polite to others.

Hey, how about that. I've been here for a little over a year and never used that option. I didn't even know it existed. In the past whenever I needed to look back for something I simply clicked on the past pages.

It's nice to know these are not being deleted. However, I do think leaving them longer in the normal screen stimulates discussion from those outside the community.

I believe Lumenlab saw the change as a neccesity, because the old Public forum was becoming steadily more difficult to moderate due to popularity, and too much information was being revealed.

I agree with you, Phutton, but remember the Gallery is also open to the public, as is Home Theater.

I understand the conundrum that LL faced with the public forum. The public forums provided an avenue for potential memebrs to determine if the private forums were worth the money, but it also could be used for some builders to piece together the information they needed for their own builds without joining.

I think the question that remains to be answered is wether decreasing the information in the private forums has a net beneficial or net detrimental effect on membership. I can only go by my own experiences, but as I said earlier, I feel that the openess in the public forum was instrumental in helping me make a decision to join. I think that many or most people who join are the same way. They see the value in joining is far more than the simple $20. Those who do not would probably simply never join, regardless of the information in the public forums.

So the net effect of limiting information in the public forums may be to discourage people like me (and probably many others who have joined) from joining, while not increasing the incentive for those who simply do not see the value in the private forums to join.

But then again, I could be wrong.

The big issue with the public forums was that in conjucion with the (now free) guide, it was giving away too much information, reducing the incentive to join.

Also, with the duplication in subject material, sometimes things were getting scattered too much, with part of a discussion in "intelligent design" and part of it in the public forum, making it sometimes harder to locate the source of information when you go looking.

In any case, we'll see how things go.

As long as a thread is 'active' in this forum it will persist. When people stop posting in a thread, 10 days later the thread will be concealed. The threads aren't deleted, and links to the thread would still work, say, if someone had bookmarked it.

The reason the threads are set up this way is because non-members were posting in this section as 'experts' and confusing prospective members. This forum is for legitimate questions about membership and the project, not a soapbox for malcontents.

LOL. yeah, I did notice the rash of goobers who built their own pjs and came on this forum to dis ours. I kinda would have preferred maybe putting a note beside their names (in parethesis) stating " This could be your results if you don't join"

Or something to that effect.

I think the public forums served well before as a kind of "free tour" of the forum. I did not buy "the guide" just because I wanted to build a projector, I did so because the public forums gave me a thirst for learning about the way projectors worked, and I wanted more.

And I don't regret a single penny (converted to cents...) of the money I spend on my membership.

The problem is, with the public forum as we know it gone, and the guide free, people can't easily see what it is they will be getting for their money. There is LESS incentive than ever for people to invest!

Maybe a free tour should be set up, with example threads that potential members could read...

I could not agree more, the public forum was a huge determining factor in why I joined, I really think they should bring it back.

They're back. We'll see how it goes.

Good choice! By the way, when I was just a member here, I would look at the gallery, and some people would snap pictures of the inside of their box, I would promptly save those pictures to my desktop and do the same for any other info I would find, whether it was in Questions, or the Home Theatre. I was doing my best to avoid the 20$ fee, but as I grew more familiar in the pub I realized that the 20$ was probably worth it to access all the restricted "goodies."

Its 20$ I'll never regret, but what I will regret is the 20$ I spent on lunch today.

I want to congradulate LL for taking the high road in this. Don't let a few malcontents divert you from a successful formula.