Not sure why the admins don't just sell WF for whatever. The fact that there's still a smidge of interest in WF after all these years should make it clear the community was something special. Or don't sell and just find a way to keep spam in check and some old timers might reconnect. Such a shame...
We had a pile of offers over the years. Most weren't serious. Some were. But ultimately, it wasn't worth selling off.
You're absolutely right. WickedFire was a glorious experiment with no established direction or purpose and after it survived it's first year of existence and dominated whatever temporary goals I had set to achieve, I kinda just let it grow into it's own and take whatever course seemed legit to pursue. It did better than I ever imagined it could.
I walked away from giving a fuck about it somewhere in 2016. Was going through a lot of strange shit for the first time and felt like I was just kinda over everything. Then from sometime in 2016 until 2018 I spent most of my effort removing as much ranking authority (ie, domain authority, seo related powerz) and made every attempt to strike down the value and overall industry reliance on here. Purposeful self sabotage. However even that could not snuff this place out, and Google refused to nuke it from ranking and appearing in important places.
I have reasons why I chose that path. Some were pretty legitimate, some were absolutely ridiculous (oops!). But I had this love-hate relationship with this place and the brand.
I'm older now. A lot more mature. Far more serious and responsible. And yet, here I am... back in the old digs.
We have lots of ideas of what to do with this place moving forward. But ideas aren't useful unless they are acted upon. The industry itself has morphed into a whole different beast too. Most of the people have gone into different industries. It's a different game these days. So, I have no definitive answer for you or any others on here about what we'll do next or what this place will become... But, as I post again in a meaningful way, for the first time in almost a decade, a feeling I haven't felt in some time crept back into me, and it compels me to want to do something again over here.
I very much dislike the forum format WickedFire has always been. I think it should be something more than just a place to gab and learn. Being just another place to spam Temu codes and SMS schemes is a shitty existence. I'm always surprised when I look over stats here every so often and the fact that this place still manages to make a profit from obscure income streams that shouldn't exist but still do. And of course, there are the threads like these, from people who don't want to let go for whatever reasons, and I admire you for that, truly, RESPEK.
I'm nuking spam threads and cleaning shit up. I think I'm going to have to just nuke a few years of shitty posts in one fell swoop with the amount of junk that's accumulated here from all these years of neglect.
Thanks for posting this and not giving up. Hit me up if you want to send ideas and have a legitimate discussion, I'll make a private, spam free spot here for just that.