It's the content that matters

While KKF drama seems to gain momentum and few vendors decided to switch to KKFora, there's one fundamental problem that's common for both KKF and KKFora. I'm talking about paid sections contents that disappears when subscription is over.

Over the years makers/vendors had put a tremendous amount of their time to fill their sections with valuable contents. It could be WIPs, some techniques of sharpening, grinding, heat treatment and so on. Even photo galleries are very valuable in my eyes.
Inevitable at some point of time maker/vendor would stop paying for subscription. It's just a question of time. And when that happens — all the contents is gone.

As a user I can't count the times when I was searching for the content that was on the forums and couldn't find it because maker/vendor is no longer there.
As someone who used to pay for craftsman subscription I no longer want to renew it and invest time and efforts contributing into subforum knowning it will be gone.

My point is that content matters and deletion/hiding of subforums that are no longer paid for — is a poor way to go forward. There got to be a better way. Swithing them to read-only and moving into some archive section or something else…

If KKFora really wants to be better than KKF, it needs to be better not only in software, but in it's attitude towards the content.

 

And 40 minutes after writing this post I've found pretty much the same thought written by another Anton on KFF

 

That was me... I'm the other Anton...
I've been saying this for years since, ironically, another handle maker left KKF- Mikey and all his contributions and examples of his work went puff. We have lost some great examples of work over the years and some extremely through details by makers and other members, Rader among these. The thread got quickly locked by admins.

It's silly really, it just devalues the sites, and will eventually lower visitors. If they were smart they should simply create membership tiers with slightly higher membership fee for all content

 

For the record, I was the first Anton there..

 

Reportedly the Catchside subforum threads were moved to the General Discussion (or other) portion of KKF. I have not checked for anything to confirm.

No question deleting all of an ex-vendor's content is a disservice to paying forum members. Hopefully that doesn't actually happen (anymore) on either of the kitchen knife forums.

 

This is a great point. I hate when I search and something is gone. Also, when externally hosted pics disappear.
It should be super cheap these days to offer pic hosting right on this forum, I would think.
There may be some technical details to work out with the forum software, but it should be readily available.

 

As a side note, I've actually been very curious about this Anton thing. I was certain these two Antons were different persons/ identities, but always wondered.
Seriously.
I'm happy to see this answered and cleared up for me. No more wondering.

 

The big questions answered

 

And the mystery unravels itself!