When to delete a forum?

Terminated said:
At what point do you feel it is justified to delete a forum? and have you ever had to?
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I had a sharing forum back in 2004. It lasted until 2010 and we just got tired of it. I've spent more than 3k $ in that period of time and people just would use Web 2.0 tools like Fb, Twitter.. etc.
 
I had a forum back in 2007 and it lasted 8 years before TapaTalk took over phpBB. I got tired of having no control and I ended up selling the board. Some projects just don't work out but sometimes it does require patience.

The best advice I can give is money aside for a moment. Do you enjoy managing, directing, and contributing to your own website? I hope this helps somewhat.
 
I used to be big, BIG into anime. So I started a forum in late 2013. It was called Anime West. It had 80 members that joined from some forum promotion websites and some gaming forums. It was all good for awhile.

Common problems were None of my staff members were helping in the way that I wanted them too. Talking to them and having meetings in the staff threads didn't seem to make a lick of difference. Another issue as with all boards was advertisement and arguing with people why YOUR board is special and better than the other guy's board. Another issue was money for advertisements and finding new ways to promote fresh activity on the board.

Eventually my worldly obligations caught up to me and I just didn't have the time for any of it. So I deleted the forum. Everyone was disappointed but they moved on rather quickly.
 
I usually end up selling any projects that I get tired of but there have been a few that I've had to just close. Usually, you want to give it a few months before making a decision. In terms of forums, there is going to have to be zero activity for you to start thinking about it really.
 
If a board doesn't make any progress beating any of my milestones, and is inactive long enough, I would probably consider it to much of a hassle to keep up.
 
Terminated said:
I used to be big, BIG into anime. So I started a forum in late 2013. It was called Anime West. It had 80 members that joined from some forum promotion websites and some gaming forums. It was all good for awhile.

Common problems were None of my staff members were helping in the way that I wanted them too. Talking to them and having meetings in the staff threads didn't seem to make a lick of difference. Another issue as with all boards was advertisement and arguing with people why YOUR board is special and better than the other guy's board. Another issue was money for advertisements and finding new ways to promote fresh activity on the board.

Eventually my worldly obligations caught up to me and I just didn't have the time for any of it. So I deleted the forum. Everyone was disappointed but they moved on rather quickly.
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Maybe you could have chosen better staff members. :( it's a shame that it ended because of that, we all have those kind of times in our lives (it happened to me as well, i was with college stuff starting 2009) and peeps did help me but sadly modern social media took over so... i couldn't compete with twitter..
 
I deleted my old forums whenever I stopped having interests in them. Most of them weren't too active to begin with, or were overshadowed by other forums. (Well there was only one of them that was overshadowed by the official forums.) Most of my old forums are deleted, but I think a few of them are still online since they were made on free forum hosts.
 
I feel like it often comes down to a mix of factors, including personal obligations, forum activity, and the joy you derive from managing the community. It’s important to recognize when a project no longer aligns with your goals or lifestyle and make the tough call if necessary.

I haven't deleted a forum but I have stepped down.
 
I have deleted a forum only once. It was a forum for my in house writers on a multi author blogging site. When I closed guest posting on my site, I felt that there was no need for the forum, so I deleted it.
 
I've had plenty of failed projects that I eventually deleted. If it didn't catch on and I lost interest in it, I probably kept it online until the domain expired.
 
I have, kind of. With Q-Army, the domain was eventually sold and I simply never backed it up just before to use later. There was also some sites for a gmod server that just... too stressful
 
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