Bugg’s constant filling of the forum with useless reposts of internet news (only sometimes maritime related) has almost certainly driven away more viewers/posters than it attracts. Myself included. I used to visit frequently but am now tired of opening the forum on any particular morning to find the first dozen or more posts from Bugg. And he mostly doesn’t even bother adding his own thoughts anymore.
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The reason my posts shows up in your morning may be because I’m in a different time zone?
I do not comment on every post because it is the link that is interesting, not my opinion.
I get my news from different sources. I don’t need or want the forum to be a news aggregator any more than I want my email inbox filled with spam. It isn’t really the articles that you post that are interesting. It is the comments that they may generate from the forum members (yourself included) that I appreciate. You are too busy cutting and pasting links to other news articles so much so that you can’t even bother to state why you might have thought the forum would find an article interesting or whether or not you agree or disagree. Again, I can get news almost everywhere. What is unique about the forum is the members and their thoughts.
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I’ll admit that since I went shoreside, I read gcaptain less and less. It’s not as applicable to my current role. The forum crazies were like the ship crazies - a little extra spice to a boring day
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Man, I hear that. I miss c.captain for that very reason. And he also did his best to keep bugg in check. Now with him gone, this forum seems almost entirely one dimensional.
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Nice deflection. Nobody gives a shit about your time zone.
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Yes, I liked him too.
Last post november 2022; last visit March 2023.
@Dutchie is not a freshman, he should be well over 80 years old…
Seriously, when do you see that happen?
Is making specifically anti American remarks so second nature to you that you legitimately don’t realize you’re doing it?
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There are thousands of coastwise and inland American mariners that would frequent and contribute to the forum. Unfortunately, a new visitor is confronted by one dimensional useless spam that has nothing to do with their maritime interests, combined with a peppering of anti-Americanism.
Those guys arent coming back for a second look.
At least I have a place to look at Norwegian fishing boats and anti-American “cartoons”.
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As a predominantly coastwise small vessel mariner, I really enjoy a great many of @ombugge posts about many different topics, including his news clippings.
I simply ignore his posts that are outside my areas of interest. I’m occasionally infuriated by his posts, but I have many friends that are occasionally infuriating.
Ombugge is very knowledgeable, brings a different and broad perspective, and is a steadfast great contributor to the forum.
@ccaptain was also very knowledgeable and a great contributor to the forum. He is certainly a difficult personality, and too often infuriating, not to mention amusing. He often got carried away with rants and personal slights.
@ccaptain crossed the line and I understand why @john became angry and had to ban him. However, time heals all wounds. I wish that @john would bury the hatchet and invite @ccaptain back.
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As a relative newcomer, I had to go back and research the history with @ccaptain and @ombugge .
I don’t know anything about the former. I know the latter is extremely experienced and knowledgeable, and is sure to let everyone know. I’m not sure what the Norwegian word for humility is, but I’m certain it’s not in his vocabulary.
Stacked on top, he also has great disdain for the US in general, and US mariners in particular. He talks down to almost everyone on this forum.
I swear when I first found this site I thought he was a co-owner. It’s all @ombugge all the time (regardless of the timezone). As several of the long time veterans have stated, he’s (probably) driven away a boatload of members.
He is what comedian Brian Regan would call a “Me Monster”.
“Top Contributor” my @ss
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While I’m not going to share our exact numbers there are services that know our traffic and compare it to other sites along with other metrics like total reads, clickthroughs and time on site.
We aren’t perfect but we do have the best stats of any site.
Today traffic and profits are at a high water mark so thank you for your kind words of support
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I realize you don’t want to read my articles because you think they are “incomprehensible” but I welcome you to check out my twitter feed if you think I’m pro-green or woke. I assure you it’s neither: https://twitter.com/johnkonrad
Getting mariners to write is almost as hard as getting anyone here to say something nice after we have provided this forum free of use and free of social media’s BS for over a decade. We would love you guys to submit more article from deep within the industry. Send them to @Mikey
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The store did hundreds of thousands in sales. Problem was it attracted competitors who were willing to sell shirts for only a buck or two profits each. That killed our sales. Well that and we ran out of ideas for new merch.
Those competitors who undercut us are out of business now so, while I didn’t enjoy “overcharging” for a shirt it was a necessity. Warehouses, mailings, news design, customer service… the overhead adds up quick. The return rate was especially bad because 26% of you guys think you weigh a lot less than you actually do.
As for the “gCaptain waterborne pallet size shipping” of yeah, I crashed and burned that one hard!
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Have you seen the news lately. Supply chain shortages, clogged canals, ships getting attacked by Houthi’s, China going crazy in the south china sea, the US Navy banging it’s head against walls, mines in the black sea… the public is more focused on shipping than anytime in decades.
It’s a great time to be in the maritime news business!
(we are so busy, I have been neglecting responding to the forum. I do apologize for that guys)
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What do you suggest we do, ban ombugge?
We have only ever banned one person permanently and only after causing us tens of thousands of dollars in legal expenses and countless man hours cleaning up after his messes.
But I’m open to suggestions.
bingo
Everything moved to reddit, facebook (for the old guys), instagram or twitter (and now those are even dying for Youtube and TikTok). This forum has done nothing but cost us time and money but we keep it going because there is a lot of great content in the archive that people search for via google. It’s very difficult to find anything over a year old posted on social media sites.
The smart business decision would be to kill it off but we have some great moderators like @Kennebec_Captain who understand the value and keep things in line. (KC’s posts over the years alone are worth way more than any and all trouble c.captain caused)
There is a lot we could do to boost participation but inviting c.captain back is not the solution. Most other ideas ways would make this a financial loss or would be fighting against the stream.
The logical place to go is for a non-profit or such to comb through and delete the BS while preserving all the wisdom and encouraging more mentors to post great content. That was the original dream but it would require more time and money than we can spend right now.
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Thank you! I enjoyed it too and we had hundreds of dedicated listeners. It’s probably the one thing I get asked about most when mariners meet me for the first time.
But, no, it never drove much traffic to the site or attracted any advertisers. We started that way before Apple made the podcast app available and most people didn’t know how to set up an RSS audio feed. I’d love to restart it but… we would need to find a sponsor to make it worthwhile. One of most difficult business decisions was to stop doing things that were a financial loss. We don’t need to make a ton of money but we do need to break even on new ideas/projects (this forum being the one exception)