Hai,
First I want to thank Darren for writing this, and SGTRam for brining it under Aeroscale attention. It's a brave posting and although I never was confronted with very rude statements on the forum, it touches upon important things such as mutual respect.
However, that does not mean that I totally agree with the content of the message. For instance, respect goes in all directions; not only user to user; and user to site; but also site to users.
I dare so say that I ha(d)ve some expertise in designing and maintaining internet sites, I have been studying it professionally for quite some time. Over the years I launched many ideas on how things could be improved here, I hardly ever got any reply back, never mind that much of my suggestions were ever implemented. I don't claim here that someone should feel obliged to do what I tell them to do, but maybe a simple "thank you, we will think about it" would not cost too much?
Otherwise, I am convinced that the technological stand still of this site compared to the fast evolution of the internet is an important reason for people disappearing.
The gallery problem is there for at least 10 years, the subscriber status grants someone a whopping 50mb of picture space in a world where one gets a few terabytes for the kitmaker subscriber price. And these are only a few examples.
Finally, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are the competition, and not the sites best friend. Maybe it delivers some quick gains, but you really want to sell out your members to those big sharks?
I warned quite some time ago that the site not owning the pictures but counting on the likes of photobucket would one day come at a high cost, guess what...
What do you think that Facebook, YouTube ... will do once they know they have an almost monopoly?
Or should you invest in kitmaker itself, make it actively evolve and offer the community some value the impersonal big three can't provide?
About community: why is there no regular blog from the kitmaker leadership to explain what is about to be improved?
Aeroscale was one of the discoveries that brought me back to building and I care for it. This is the only reason for this, maybe too long, response. I hope it provokes some positive thought.
If I offended someone in the process, my apologies, this was not the intention.
Happy building in 2018