Why...?

[treee]

(05-13-2015, 03:05 AM)Wes Mantooth Wrote: It doesn't make much sense to me.  Yeah, a lot of other forums have, or will, close.  Both around the league and in other sports.  But how many of them saw the activity that bengals.com did?  Simply saying a NFL team closing their message board is to be expected because other NFL teams have closed theirs isn't exactly apples to apples when some teams see a fraction of the activity.

Think of the amount of page views that message board saw a year.  I'm nowhere near an expert on how this new and exciting world wide web worksm but I have to think that with the amount of traffic that site saw that it makes little sense to close it from a financial perspective.  1.) It had to more than pay for itself in traffic to the site.  2.) Even if it didn't, the amount to maintain it is next to nothing.  

So if it wasn't closed due to lack of use or because of money then what else could it be?  Well, many have speculated it has to do with criticism or negativity.  That the team didn't want to provide a forum (literally) for people to bash their product.  

If this is the reason then I think it's incredibly short sided.  The amount of traffic lost to your team's site is going to be huge.  The amount of customers you will anger, although small, still outweighs the money saved.  And, let's be honest, that criticism and negativity is just going to move elsewhere.  Twitter, facebook, another site, around the water cooler, talk radio... It was there before the board, it will remain after the board.  It's in Cincinnati, it's in Chicago.  It's even in places like Dublin, and Manchester, and *insert town and sport here*  It's a part of sports and their fans.  It comes with the territory.  So if by any chance they were trying to silence it or prevent it in some way then that seems incredibly stupid or naive.

But anyway, I don't really know, it's hard to even venture a guess.  If only because none make very much sense.  Why close something that is being used as much as it was?  By message board terms it was a rousing success.  Why close something your customers enjoy?  Why risk losing traffic to your product?  Why risk angering even a few of your most vocal fans?  And most of all, why schedule it to be closed in the middle of the year, with less than a months notice?  Why not A.) Wait until the end of the calender year and regular season. B.) Give people more notice. C.) Both.  What's the rush, where's the fire?

As with much of what this team does, it makes little sense.  I wouldn't be shocked to find out that Mike finally learned about it after 10 years and clicked on it one day and didn't like what he saw.  Right after he asked "The files are IN the computer?"

I'd agree and say Mike Brown and/or the front office doesn't want to pay to give us a place to make fun of them. Unfortunately for them, it's incredibly short sighted and MOST of the criticism that originated on the board was based in logic. Guess they're just a bunch of whiners.