I don’t think the owners of these social spaces realise the impact their decisions have on participants. Forums aren’t just fungible tools for communication. They’re not replaceable.

It’s particularly frustrating when the owner in question explicitly admits the space is financially sustainable. He just doesn’t want the burden of running it any more.

The lesson to social network creators: plan for permanency and plan for the diminution of your own enthusiasm for the space. You implicitly nurtured the relationships and the conversations within the space and f it’s a space people love but it making you sad, sick, or poor, have mechanisms in place to hand it over. Don’t just kill it.