In case you haven’t realized there is a group of people who hate me and spend an inordinate amount of time digging for rumors and hearsay to disparage me.
Some of those people are the rapists who are mad I advocated for Midshipman X and now they find it more difficult to sexually harass women. Others simply think I’m arrogant. Some love the lols memes about me. Some are navy officers who hate the merchant marine. And some I just rub the wrong way
And some will read this post , hate me more for defending myself, and double down on their efforts.
I don’t care much. I lived in the Bronx as a kid, lost my dad while I was still basically a kid, and got the sh!t kicked out of me plenty of times in my youth.
There is much truth to the saying “sticks and stones can break the bones but words can never hurt me”
And it’s easy to just not log on. (But I do miss not being more active here with the true professionals)
The question is… should I keep paying thousands of dollars a month to host this BS on this forum?
Yes. It gets a lot of traffic. Traffic we don’t monetize because advertisers don’t want to be seen alongside links about south korean sex guides like @Meme.Lord posted above. We could install an ad tracker that watches your browsing history and pulls in ads about jock itch and whatever shady sites sailors visit but they don’t pay well and we would probably just break even and the meme pages would have a field day with the screenshots
And not just hosting. We have freelancers who do front end, back end coding and site maintenance and database repair.
The costs ad up fast
And I’m happy to pay because there is a lot of good information in our archives that mariners and maritime industry professionals around the world find useful but…
When Threads like these cost me money and ones like “debunking de sal” disparage my friends, when congress interested in giving’MSC mariners pay raises but then admirals send them screenshots from this forum to push back against me and them… I have to ask does the good still outweigh the bad?
If you’re paying thousands of dollars a month for an off the shelf forum package that’s mostly text it’s no wonder you want me to pay for a private Discord.
If your websites not making money that sucks, but that’s the way all legacy media is trending. If you don’t want to host the forum somebody else probably would.
Our website and job board are making record profits.
It’s this forum that’s a net loss.
And I don’t care if you join the club or not. It’s not for everyone. If the offering is not what you need I understand and you’re free to ignore it.
We didn’t start it as a cash cow, we started it - and ask for $10 - because a lot of people asked for it (both the discord and more important additional news that comes via the newsletter) and we we can’t afford to have two offerings (discord and this forum) that lose money.
If someone wanted to host it they would send me offers.
We get dozens of offers a month from people wanting to buy our news and job board. Nobody’s offering to buy this forum… probably because nobody wants to deal with managing posts about - checks notes - the owner publishing sex guides
Maybe, just maybe instead of making assumptions. Assumptions like nobody could possibly find value in a $10 club membership or assumptions that I’m a jerk, or that gCaptain is failing. Maybe you could do a bit of research?
Website performance data is pretty easy to find via a google search:
Try Reddit. I’ve been visiting this forum less since I recently discovered Reddit and it’s maritime threads. I probably will eventually stop coming to this forum. Seems like there’s a lot more engagement with Mariners that are currently sailing on Reddit and less drama bullshit. Just seems like mariners talking about things that matter to them
I’m not very familiar with Reddit. Occasionally Google takes me there, but that’s about it. There seems to be a lot of unusual characters from a different planet ranting about strange topics on Reddit.
Can you post a link to the Reddit maritime forum? I’d like to check it out.
gcaptain (my phone resists the correct spelling) is a great maritime forum. John is an impressive young fellow and has done a good job with the forum which is a real service to us.
But like any forum it goes through its ups and downs depending upon who is being active, and what news and events are driving commentary.
I will admit its a lot of folks asking about joining the industry, with some interesting posts sprinkled in. But plenty of folks will respond if you have something interesting to say. Or roast you.
Captain Konrad,
I feel like I owe you an apology. I didn’t realize how ugly this forum would get. As a soon to be academy grad, whose first thing I do each morning when I wake up for formation is read the daily gcaptain email, I was trying to get an inside scoop before deciding to join the club or not. Never did I realize the blood bath this would turn into and for that I am deeply sorry.
He’s not wrong, reedit is the place to be. Different purpose. Reddit is faster paced and much more fun and the place for quick answers. It also gets a broader range of industry participation. gCaptain is - or hopes to be - a place for deeper dives on topics and more expert insights into incidents and industry problems
I would love to build out some of the tools Reddit has but they are a publicly listed company with deep pockets and expert marketing. We are not
If I had my way I’d encourage everyone here who’s looking for entertainment or speed to switch to them…. And people wanting to dive deeper to come here
The other big difference is social media groups are notoriously difficult to search. We have a lot of great content in our archives that you can’t find on other apps. But that has changed recently because Reddit opened up to google and has greatly improved its searchability
I tried r/maritime for about a month. I got tired of all the bad information and uninformed omadhauns arguing with me about regs and policies I wrote. There are few informed persons giving good advice, but not many.
I used to enjoy the forum here. Now I much prefer reddit. John, even for you, I’m not sure forums are really worth it anymore. Your time might be better spent cross-posting links to your articles onto Reddit to drive traffic to gCaptain. Big fan of this site, the information in news and editorial here, and especially of much of the professional opinions in the forums over the years, but one has to evolve with changing trends in technology. For someone my age, in their mid-30s, forums are starting to really seem like an internet relic.
If the forum isn’t profitable, shut it down. Or find another way to fund it. Just don’t ask forum members (who generate the content!) to pay for a subscription. You could instead ask for gcaptain news subscribers to pay a monthly subscription. As do other news sites. Not that a paywall has ever stopped me.
