Yeah I am lol… From Finland
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I think the discussion really comes up because the forum’s active base is primarily composed of people who joined after sales were removed.
E4 wasn’t always growing and thriving. There was a period of time when the new posts were dominated by shitty sales threads. There was discussion in between and a core group of dedicated posters that kept it alive, but we had so much crap that you could join the forum and not have the impression that there was knowledge to be had here. The decision to remove sales saved E4.
Even after the change, it was a lot of work to weed out membership that primarily came here to make money. We had people that were literally listing eBay inventory spreadsheets as “collection threads.” We had people that were abusing signatures and different thread types. And of course, we had some incredibly unreliable people, motivated by money, who stuck around and made every thread they could participate in cynical and joyless out of protest/spite/generally being trash people. But ultimately, because we committed all the way to removing the profit incentive for joining the forum, those people left or got themselves banned over time.
E4 is more alive today in large part because of that decision to remove sales. It altered the forum identity and made it a better place. We have always invited people from other places, but the retention is higher. People see something of value to be a part of. When you log in and see new, active threads, they are nearly all discussion-based.
We will not ever change that back.
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