What has happened to the Photos?  Main reason for logging on to this blog each day was to see PeterRS’s daily post.  Now seems to have disappeared.  Sad.

Most likely part of new , improved formula of  the forum.

Happy New Year anyways, photos or not !

Lets hope that the new amalgamated forum offers compensations for the loss of what, IMHO, was the single most popular thread on this forum.

Daily posts here had already dwindled to a tiny trickle, perhaps there will now be new opportunities to drive-up 'traffic'. 

I remain an optimist  

I think Michael explained the issues over copyright etc in another thread.

I would have thought one work around would be to make the photos section a "Private Club", visible only to people with 50 or more real posts.   I've no idea how that stands up legally, but it makes it very difficult for a non-member to check the content and take action.

Of course, the board has the facility for any member to create a private club.  However, it appears to not benefit from the same type of thread structure as the public area.

3 hours ago, z909 said:

I think Michael explained the issues over copyright etc in another thread.

I would have thought one work around would be to make the photos section a "Private Club", visible only to people with 50 or more real posts.   I've no idea how that stands up legally, but it makes it very difficult for a non-member to check the content and take action.

Of course, the board has the facility for any member to create a private club.  However, it appears to not benefit from the same type of thread structure as the public area.

Im for this

Logged on this evening and the only new posts were on Gay Thai Drama and Rice Exports (not even Sticky Rice Exports).  What is happening to this board? Until recently the best of the boards but now in decline since the deletion of the photos which was surely the biggest daily attraction and encouraged members to post and comment here rather than on the competing Thai boards, at least one of which seems to be in the ascendancy.

2 hours ago, captainmick said:

Logged on this evening and the only new posts were on Gay Thai Drama and Rice Exports (not even Sticky Rice Exports).  What is happening to this board? Until recently the best of the boards but now in decline since the deletion of the photos which was surely the biggest daily attraction and encouraged members to post and comment here rather than on the competing Thai boards, at least one of which seems to be in the ascendancy.

I don't think boards are competing , rather supplementing each other. Over years I noticed many times that topics hotly discussed on one  are often barely mentioned on others.  But like you I miss photos. Our strong feature were trip reports , lacking now for obvious and self -explanatory reason. Waiting  for better days at least we are trying to keep flame burning

5 hours ago, captainmick said:

Logged on this evening and the only new posts were on Gay Thai Drama and Rice Exports (not even Sticky Rice Exports).  What is happening to this board? Until recently the best of the boards but now in decline since the deletion of the photos which was surely the biggest daily attraction and encouraged members to post and comment here rather than on the competing Thai boards, at least one of which seems to be in the ascendancy.

1 The one board in the ascendancy has benefited from a move from unmoderated to effectively moderated, which always helps.   Even then, a lot of the content is generated by about 2-3 Frequent contributors and those 2-3 contributors are spamming the forum at times. Although even the high frequency contributors sometimes write something worth reading. Perhaps 10% of the time. There are also other good members, who invariably  produce something worth reading.

2 Here, there's  nothing stopping people who complain about the forum lacking content adding to that content.

3 Whilst deleting photos might fix legal issues, it's not going to help sustain the forum.   A section only open to established members might be a good work around.   This won't attract new members, but might keep the existing ones visiting.

4 The merger with Boy Toy might help.  Or it might be unhelpful if we have to sift through too much of the content from North American contributors who may like big hairy "professional wrestler" types (generalisation not applicable to all members).   There is an optimum level of specialization.

There are probably other small incremental improvements available.  For instance, ensuring the Forum is added to the main menu on the mobile version of the site, rather than hiding.

Thankfully this site isn't actively killing the franchise with excessive flashing pop up ads, like certain Thai Visa sites. 

5 Finally, in some other fields, forum traffic has migrated to places like Facebook and Twitter (sadly).  Or gone to where I cannot find it.  Ten years ago, there used to be specialised forums on obscure topics like Acer Netbooks, with all the solutions to my IT problems.   I can't find the same for some of my more recent devices. 

Lonely Planet and Travelfish forums* seem to have almost died out in the same period.

6  We should be thankful the gay forums are provided by the owners.  At least one is owner funded, with no revenue stream.  I don't  see the owners of the forums getting as rich as Mr Zuckerberg off this. 

Finally, there are a few amateur "advisors", obviously including me.  None have chosen to launch and sustain an active forum within the last decade.