I am also a member of advrider where I keep an eye on trip planning often refering people to here, olds cool, shiny things for watches and bicycles and finally CS&M where I watch people abuse each other about politics.
It has recently been posted up that the site has been sold to a large company called VerticalScope who according to some flood their fora with adverts and use heavy handed moderation to get rid of anyone whose posts might upset their advertisers and there are many doom and gloom predictions about the future of the site given what has happened to others they have aquired.
If some or all of these predictions come to pass I wonder if there is an opportunity for the HUBB to expand its membership and pick up some of the people who might give up on advrider, it could mean expanding the site's remit beyond long distance motorcycle travel with more technical and other interest sections, watches and bicycles sounds good to me but what do others particularly Grant and Susan think?
You might want to pass on a church, state and money section though, it can be a little raucous.

https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/a...rider.1534813/

Grant should get ready for an influx as Vertical Scope are a nightmare.

They managed to kill off a really good forum pretty quickly as they did indeed flood the site with adverts, the mods were all changed from technical experts in the forum subject matter to muppets trying to be maintain that they knew the subject when that was far from the truth - not surprising really as they were responsible for multiple forums covering multiple subjects. Don't even think about criticising VS on that site as it will be scrubbed off in no time. The other joyful thing was that they claimed copyright for all of the images and information on the site so posters ended up deleting it off the website - again rendering the website less helpful. The old forum is still open - but you can watch the tumbleweed roll past. The latest post today is from 2 weeks ago - normally there were dozens of posts every day and on Friday it get really busy with hundreds going up especially if there was a "hot topic" - in a similar way to oil / tyres / bike choice can cause a wave of posts here.

The end result was that there was a new forum launched by the old mods, which kept the same character as the old one had. Oddly the new forum had a very quick launch and the member numbers grew incredibly fast.

Other than that Vertical Scope are great custodians of a forum.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Don't knock it, it's the American dream Build something up to the point where you can sell it to an 'uncaring' (they might well be caring for all I know) faceless bureaucracy, count the mountain of money and move on. What happens to it after that isn't your problem. If they mess it up, well, at least the cheque cleared.

Like you I'm also a member but well towards the silent end of the spectrum. Somehow I've never felt comfortable there and I doubt I visit more than once every three months. As a source of travel information its been further down the pecking order than even Facebook. So you can probably guess I won't lose much sleep if it transforms into clickbait central.

My guess is that if it does become unusable to the point where it's obvious to most of the stalwarts that its gone downhill then someone will embrace the American entrepreneurial spirit and reinvent it. (Just seen Jay's post saying that's what's happened - great minds etc ). For me one set of log in details are much the same as another so going to the 'New ADV' wouldn't be a big issue, but I wonder how the new owners will react if their footfall contributors desert in droves. Not much point in having a screenful of adverts if no-one is looking at them.

The biggest problem came when people realised that by leaving their information on the forum that they were giving up copyright to the images / information etc to Vertical Scope. Then there was a stripping out of images etc by some very frequent posters - not so much that that killed the forum but it certainly wounded it. It continues to limp on but the footfall must be a shadow of what it was before. Now there seems to be more adverts than content which doesn’t help - previously there was a single banner advert at the top of the page and nothing further down but that became an advert every other post - and worse the adverts were unrelated to the content of the forum much of the time.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Thanks for posting.

I haven't set foot on there since I realised I did not need the abusive US-centric idiocy a lot of it is/was.

I wonder how things stand imagine wise for stuff posted years before where the poster hasn't logged in for years? I doubt I have anything that valuable but I do detest zombie logins where they ignore requests to remove you.

Refugees from ADV rider will be welcome here as far as I'm concerned so long as they leave the Gunz, coolaid, KKK, soft porn etc. at the door

Andy

Really? I have never seen any adverts there, even not today. OK, I am not an active member but sometimes I do some thread surfing there.

I am using Pi-hole as a network filter and I am using uBlock Origin, NoScript, I don`t care about cookies, Cookie AutoDelete, Privacy Badger (to name a few important..) as addons in my browser. This not only for the reason that I don`t want to see adverts or adstreams at youtube, etc.

If companies like VS want to sell me and my data through tracking and/or to bug me with adverts and to create an income of this, they can do but I don`t accept this behavior and I react my way.

And yes of course, there are some private driven forums/sites where I deactivate all this to give them a chance to earn a little return for their efforts!

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I pop into ADVRider every once in a while to read some of the very interesting trip reports. Two or three years ago there was a terrific and lengthy report that really struck me - it was about a Spaniard who completed the Mongol Rally on a Honda 125 - it was an excellent read with stunning photos.

The rest of the forums I can't be bothered to read. It will be sad if the new owners ruin the site.

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Bruce Clarke - 2020 Yamaha XV250

Noted, and definitely keeping an eye on it.
Re expanding the site's remit, I'm certainly open.

BUT:
watches? no - who cares?
Church and state / Politics - that's a hard no!

As for more "mini-adventures" as we'd call them, i.e. shorter, maybe weekend or one or two week rides, absolutely - all of us do them anyway, and though we tend to focus on the big trips, there's no reason we can't discuss and do both, and well, here.

After all, we can't all do "the big one" every year - or decade, depending on how slowly you ride...

We ALWAYS welcome anyone here, so long as they're respectful and mind the rules of good behaviour.
All thoughts appreciated! We are OPEN to change.

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Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com

Well seeing as how you asked, let me tell you about my a few days ago mini -adventure! Three of us did a 100 mile trip to Stow on the Wold (a tourist town in the UK Cotswolds) on small bikes. No reason other than the pleasure of riding the things on a dry winter's day.

We got lost on the back roads, upset a load of time-is-money delivery drivers by getting in their way, got tailgated for miles by the local bus on the way back and had to scrounge 20p to use the pay as you go toilets as none of us had any cash. (Plenty of cards but no cash - a common post Covid problem). And the cafe owner in Stow locked the door on us after he'd delivered the coffee and we'd paid (we were sitting outside). And I thoroughly enjoyed the day. It's not normally the sort of thing I'd write up (other than maybe a cafe review on Trip Advisor) but if we're going to become the new ADV we need to get some of this stuff up there.

Looking forward to a couple of hundred comments about how I should have taken a different route, camped overnight, punched out the bus driver, stopped at Wendy's rather than a mom and pop cafe and asking what sort of gun I took with me. That'll be the time for the 'we fight for your rights' legal ads to start popping up, or, if artificial intelligence can work out what bikes we were on, vehicle recovery adverts. Watch this space for when I write up my next trip to Sainsburys.

Many thanks for mentioning that. I looked it up and have just spent the whole of my Saturday evening (and more of a bottle of gin than I realised) reading all 27 pages of it. Absolutely fascinating and really well written. I was with him in a kind of "I could do that on my small bike' sort of way until he hit Tajikistan. Then it started getting tough. And that ride back through Russia ...

What comes across though is the generosity of strangers. Again and again he was helped out by people who put themselves out for no reward. I've been on the receiving end of that kind of generosity myself and have been so grateful for their help. Each time it happens you think it's a one off but from his report it comes across more as the default human response. We - the West - seem to be the oddballs.

A perfect example of what ADVRider is so good at

Can you post up a link please.

Hi Mark, yes, sorry, I should have done that. This is the story:

https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/a...125cc.1440429/

Thanks for that - its a good read. I am only part way through but the writing style is good and the photos are very good.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

I use ADVrider quite alot as I have 5 build threads running at the moment. The adverts are of late and as stated here prolific and I have canned many a browse because of them.
It's the only other forum I use for motorcycle related chat and I have found myself flipping between both depending on topic. If its travel / overlanding related I come to HU. If its Dakar (2 weeks out of 52 per year) , responding to my threads/ general 'build' or fabrication Q's it's ADVR.
The only travel thread I use over there is the Canada Regional one because of my obsession with the TCAT and there's a dedicated thread there.
HU will for me though remain the font of wisdom and the pilot light for my main focus of TRAVEL. I also like a visit to the Pub here, less likely to get in a punch up/ bar brawl and get ones face stoved in...!!!

Sent from my SM-G781B using Tapatalk

How about a build thread here too?
And do we need a TCAT thread here? hmmm...

__________________
Grant Johnson
Seek, and ye shall find.
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Inspiring, Informing and Connecting travellers since 1997!
www.HorizonsUnlimited.com