Welcome Atlas Forum Members Press Release

[tom mann]

Railwire Forum Company, Inc. announced today that it will accept most members from the defunct Atlas forums onto its Railwire forum, www.therailwire.net, effective immediately.

In making the announcement Railwire Admin Tom Mann explained that the decision behind the membership increase is "as a result of the expected increase in ad revenue due to the influx of Atlas members.  Besides the monthly costs of bandwidth and other hosting costs, the Railwire dedicates a significant amount of advertisement revenue to model train purchases and other hobbies", Mann said.

John Berger, father of Admin Thomas Mann, is president of Railwire Forum Company, Inc.  A step cousin, Ed Kapuscinski, serves as Vice President of Bacon and Winter Tree threads.  Gary Hinshaw, a recent retiree, is active in draft gear box Design and Development.  Another son, Ian MacMillan, serves as thread-mover.

 

[Chris333]

So who pays the $80k a year 

[wazzou]

So who pays the $80k a year 

8,423 former Atlas Forum Members @$5.00 per person, right?   

[Ian MacMillan]

...  Another son, Ian MacMillan, serves as thread-mover...

A well organized forum is a happy forum!

[esa123]

+1

[Chris333]

Apparently it really did cost Atlas almost 80k a year to run their forum.

Quote from "Atlas Moderator"

From a strictly dollar and cents point of view the forum was currently costing Atlas, in hard and soft dollars, approximately $75k per year which necessitated more than $150k in annual sales to offset. It's hard not to think about how many freight cars, locomotives and other new and upgraded products these dollars could have created, not to mention the potential revenue stream. However, with all of the above concerns these were still not the major deciding factors.

Wow 

[Bremner]

Apparently it really did cost Atlas almost 80k a year to run their forum.

Quote from "Atlas Moderator"

Wow 

and if you buy that...I have property out where I live with a great ocean view....

[Chris333]

Got it from here:
http://forum.atlasrr.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=70800

[flight2000]

and if you buy that...I have property out where I live with a great ocean view....

Why is it that hard to believe?  How many man hours did the crew spend a day managing the forums, repairing bugs, etc, etc, etc.  How much did it cost to host the forum either in house or outsourced.  I think the $80K figure is probably pretty close once they account for everything that goes into it.  Unless Atlas opens their books, we'll never really know.

Just my .005 cents worth for today..   

Brian

[C855B]

Truthfully? I think they asked around, "How much time are you spending a week dealing with that *&^% forum? How much after hours?", got a ballpark quote from everybody, added time-and-a-half to anything done at home, and voila!, a fabricated and highly exaggerated number. That's the way similar "project retrospectives" have been handled everywhere else I've worked... where it wasn't a timesheet/billable hours environment, where everyone tracked their hours in real time.

The kicker would be the Stupid Wild-a$$ Guess method of estimating hours. If you just spent a whole bunch of time dealing with a problem, you're likely to cast your entire experience in light of the most recent efforts. I think that's the deal here, then add the educated conjecture (in another thread) that their outside consultant wanted A Large Sum (probably $20K or so) to update the server and forum software, possibly including a conversion to different software since the obsolete Snitz package was 90% of their problem defending against spammers.

So, yes, as a pro sysadmin and semi-pro forum moderator, I think the $75K to keep the forum in operation was way, way out of line. It does NOT take 50-60% of a systems professional's salary (incl. bennies) to run what was a primitive forum. It just doesn't. My take is they were simply collectively tired of dealing with the crap, and fabricated a convincing number.

[Bremner]

Why is it that hard to believe?  How many man hours did the crew spend a day managing the forums, repairing bugs, etc, etc, etc.  How much did it cost to host the forum either in house or outsourced.  I think the $80K figure is probably pretty close once they account for everything that goes into it.  Unless Atlas opens their books, we'll never really know.

Just my .005 cents worth for today..   

Brian

for $75K to run a forum, I would get a pair of servers, load balancing, quit my normal job, write new, cool plugins like a Timesaver puzzle, and drink nice scotch while laughing that I work less....I have ran forums with THOUSANDS of active members. The A Board was nothing compaired to the one that I ran that had over 5000 posts a day.

[flight2000]

for $75K to run a forum, I would get a pair of servers, load balancing, quit my normal job, write new, cool plugins like a Timesaver puzzle, and drink nice scotch while laughing that I work less....I have ran forums with THOUSANDS of active members. The A Board was nothing compaired to the one that I ran that had over 5000 posts a day.

Well there you go, maybe that's why they abandoned it, they were paying too much for so little in return...   

Brian

[wm3798]

Lee Weldon, Tom's brother in law, is not involved in the management of the forum, or work of any kind really.  However, he occupies the far end of the couch, and makes sure there is adequate turnover of cold cuts and beer in the company lounge fridge.

[seusscaboose]

he occupies the far end of the couch,
coach

[PAL_Houston]

Lee Weldon, Tom's brother in law, is not involved in the management of the forum, or work of any kind really.  However, he occupies the far end of the couch, and makes sure there is adequate turnover of cold cuts and beer in the company lounge fridge.

Sounds like the kind of job I could handle.  How do I apply?