A description of AWC's problems are in the Owner's own words

• The owners plea for Lifetime members donations in June 2010 outlined the basics – not enough money coming in had forced them to lay off virtually all staff. The site's primary traffic was non-cash generating Lifetime Members.
• A year ago the Owners promised big and good things for the site, but no one, not even Ops, has seen evidence that anything is or has happened to improve or change the lot of AWC since that announcement in Sept 2010. Appropriately, the link on the announcement page is dead.
• Both documents are featured prominently on the Home page of the website
• We have a post on the message board by one of the Ops the ONLY time anyone engaged in operating the site has even seen Ownership was a brief visit during the year – in which they said nothing.

Alexa – the premier internet traffic authority – reveals that the website's daily traffic has been in free fall ever since:

• 
  
  Overall – daily traffic is 1/4^th what it when the request was made of members for donations.
  • In the most recent quarter, site traffic has been falling by over 25% each month!
  • And as each month passes, the revenue from pay as you go members (AWC's only source of income) also continues to decline. Simple math makes it clear the cash flow has to be almost gone at this pont.
  • There is no evidence Owners are or can subsidize the site or to what purpose that would be.
• AWC is totally dependent on the generosity of the volunteer Ops and Mods right now, but soon if trends go unabated even THAT will not be enough. .
• An unscientific survey of on line activity conducted over the last month suggests that n0n0cash generating Lifetime members STILL dominate what traffic is coming in.

The question is with traffic/active membership plummeting how much longer will it be until the few month-to-month subscribers will fail to pay the operating expenses of the site.

• As of Sept 2011 we are at roughly 25% of the traffic that forced the owners to lay off virtually everyone because there wasn't enough money coming in with about 4 times more revenue. .

These facts painful for me to report – I wish it weren't so. .

Those in AWC-The Sequel who have looked have reported that they have not found existing website alternatives that meet or exceed the mix of features the members of AWC have come to enjoy. Others are working on other alternatives that offer the potentil for a different feature set, time will tell how viable these may become.

Does anyone care to guess how much time left we have before AWC becomes 503 (Internet error code for File Server Not Found)?

WELCOME to Argument Clinic

Thank you for accepting our invitation to take a look and post something.

What we are trying to do is create a REAL blog focused on debate and discussion of events and issues of the day and eliminate/minimize much of the static caused by folks who don't have much to say but feel compelled to flame, troll, parrot or otherwise cause distractions. 

As you can see the bones are in place. Google has been set up to search the blog for information you may post that might be of interest to others in the blogesphere.  What we lack right now is content from a variety of people to start the festivities and debates.

We selected you because you have a history of posting original content on AWC and that is what we also want to focus upon. We are more interested in what YOU think and can be able to defend than what some other person may have already posted. 

You have been given the power to post an articles  on the blog and we would like to encourage you to do so. Its simple to do. If you need help please feel free to email me at jffrsnsmith@gmail.com and I will try to talk you through the how to do it if you can't figure it out.

Let's give it a shot

I think if we all treat one another with due respect we can continue our spirited diolague without the discoarse and ill will that has been witnessed at the other site. I kept my original username so that all of you will know who I am. I am looking forward to some lively debate from all of you.

Preliminary goals

Given my limited time I have put this blog system through its paces and it seems like it is fairly capable.

What I would like to do is have more Moderators/Authors put it through its paces to see if it makes sense to more than just me.

Since this is a pre-launch effort - only the invited Authors will have access to it.  Feel free to try out whatever you can.


You are NOT stuck with your AWC names on this Blog, but if you choose to change it as I did, please let us know your former handle.


ANY ideas or thoughts on how to make this work and be appealing to  others would  be greatly appreciated.