I was an admin at a one of Verticalscopes larger (probably largest, at the time) forums many years ago. At the time they were mostly hands off day to day operations (although on occasion some random employee would show up and decide to change things inexplicably with no communication), but the most frustrating part that they locked down a lot of things even for the admins that it often made life difficult for us as we needed to go ask our VS rep to make changes or whatnot for us, so it added a gatekeeper level for some ridiculous things.
And yeah, the advertising - all of a sudden things would be foisted on us, often with major changes to the forum itself, with little to no input from the existing team that actually ran the place on a day to day basis.
When I "retired "I basically left the forum completely as the whole situation had left a bad taste in my mouth.
I popped back week or so ago just to see what the place looked like and I barely recognized it anymore. Instead of maintaining it character, it's just been white washed into yet another VS forum, several others of which they also own on the exact same topic, and they all look the same short of a different banner photo.
If anybody wants to start up a competing forum for any of the ones that VS has ruined for them, I'll offer my services as I am exceptionally well-versed when it comes to that sort of thing (about 4 decades of experience dating back to the days of BBS's, for those who remember that era), however having been there done that, it can be a difficult task building a critical mass of membership, and it is certainly not a free venture.
And
@cutekill, if you ever decide it's time to move on from GTAM and you want to sell, keep me in mind, as I'd be interested, and having no love for verticalscope myself either, I'd keep it the way it is as well.
