Nothing new unfortunately. When I eas Senior Ed at Off-Road.com back in the late 90s, plenty of our forum members demanded a say in how we did things because they ‘felt’ it was they the readers who made it what it was.
Well, that’s true to an extent as without readership a site is nothing. But their lack of ability to ‘know their place’ in the big scheme of things says more about them than the the business they bitch about.
It’s the ‘everybody gets a trophy for participating’ mentality. And it has been pushed on society for a very specific reason. When you get a bunch of otherwise sane people taught/believing they have ‘ownership’ of something because of their presence, the path to socio-communism gets a whole lot wider. Because the fences aside it are torn completely down.
It happens to a lot of websites. Heck, I think it is inevitable. I was involved in several start-ups in the 90s and early 2Ks (foodie website, product review site, and a business trade association). The same kind of things plagued all of them. All of them are still successful but only after going through many of the same things you see here. Fractionating, people trying to claim ownership or steering the boat, spin-offs, etc. All of those things are just distractions from whatever the stated goal is of the site. It becomes all about personalities. I believe it is just an internet thing. It equals the playing field a lot and suddenly everyone thinks they can run whatever. Bloggers think they are journalists. A lady posting reviews on Amazon thinks she is a professional critic. And posters on a forum think they can run a website.
That,in a nutshell is why I'm here.Just sayin'