I have to say that Ride Ohio is a huge success! We have a great group of folks on the forum and I can honestly say it is my favorite forum on the interwebs!
If anyone out there has interest in starting a forum similar to this for the state they live in send me an email and I will set something up for you. In order for something like this to work you will need to have some good folks to act as moderators.
Recently many of the forums on the internet have been purchased by companies looking to make money off them. This really disturbs me because I do not feel the forum is actually owned by the administrator of the forum. The thing that makes these forums valuable is the information that is posted in them, and that information was posted and created by the users of the forum. If these forums are sold, it is the users that should profit from the sale.
If these companies continued to operate the forum the same as they had been operated I would have not problem with it, but they plaster the board with advertisements. I don’t mind a few banner advertisements if it supports the operation of the site, but these guys always go way overboard on the advertising and it becomes very distracting. Of course, their goal is no longer just to provide a forum, it is now to make a profit.
The most amazing thing about the internet to me is the fact that it gives a voice to most anyone who wants to speak up. For the first time in the history of free speech we all actually have the means to use this right. The idea of companies and corporations purchasing these forums puts us right back where we used to be, with corporations having control of our free speech.