ComputerConsultantsForum.com Discussion Board

This doesn't bother me at all. You could have a vibrant and important community that wasn't on that site's radar.

I am well aware that we are tiny compared to the most active boards on the internet.

The thing that I find boggling is that when I search that site, there are *58* (yes, count em, 58) forum sites listed that are indexed with the keyword "business." And the majority of those are NOT business type boards. A couple are marginal - one is clearly an MLM/quick buck thing, and another one is "work at home" support. "Freelancing"? Sections of a couple of different gamer sites.

Slashdot probably comes closest to being a major player that actually has significant business and technology career related content. But it's dwarfed by the time wasting amount of typical Slashdot material.

Large message boards are, by and large, leisure time garbage.

I honestly don't think we have much, if any, competition, in our category. But it is also clear that our category has niche and not broad appeal. I think changing the name & identity a bit will help those interested in this niche find us.

Reminds me of cable TV, so many sites but nothing to read.

Clearly there's lots of noise out there.

PS -- I should have added to my post -- "Thank you" to G0ddard for his work in changing this forum's name, investigating renaming with Yuku, and similar work.  We all owe him thanks for this, which takes both time and experience in these things.

This forum is no better or worse, format-wise, than any other forum.  Content-wise, I like it better than dice forums even though the latter seems to have an order of magnitude more posts.

In the boom times of late 90's, the old realrates forum was pretty busy as well.

Now the fact of the matter is that in 2009 contracting is not an attractive option for the masses in IT, it is kind of a niche situation.  This is the key reason for membership decline. I no longer do contract work and haven't had a viable contract for almost a decade. IT is just not a hot item anymore. Computer Science university enrollments are down.  I hang out here anyway as some the issues are pertinent for the FTEs.