So Long Ning! (And I wasn’t that into you)

So, for the longest time I had a Ning community associated with this blog. When I first set it up, I was advised that it was a great forum to set up for the sharing of photos, ideas, and resources. I had been only familiar with Yahoo Groups, but we went ahead and set it up, anyway.

Fast forward two years. I now have 659 members. Wait, before you get too excited about that, you need to know that 90% of those are all pharmaceutical spammers. I’m not sure if the group just wasn’t set up correctly, but I wasn’t notified of new members joining, and before long, I had a group full of spammers like a yard full of weeds.

I even tried last month one evening to “weed” my garden, and found that eliminating members for spam was a long, multi-step process. I contemplated just deleting the entire group and them re-inviting my real, active, fabulous group members to join me somewhere new.

And then I got this notice:

Announcement

In July, we will roll-out three new pricing plans and begin phasing out our free service….(read the whole thing here..)

…blah, blah, blah. And to keep the group going I’ll need to pay somewhere between $20 and $500 a year.

Are you kidding me? Really?

Ning was a sucky site for me, anyway. Hard to moderate, no e-mail notifications…and OBVIOUSLY no spam filter.

I realized it’s kinda like feeling like you want to dump your boyfriend and then finding you he’s breaking up with you to move to Oregon.

So, that settles it. I’m going to be deleting my Ning site on June 30, and use the time between now and then to research and get feedback from you about where we should go for our show-and-tell parties. The CraftTestDummies Facebook page? A Yahoo group? Flickr? Somewhere else?

I’m really open to ideas and feedback on this topic. I really value the crafting community and want to provide a forum for ALL of us to share our crafty goodness and ideas.  So leave me your thoughts!

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About Jenny

Chief Craft Test Dummy, Craft Evangelist, Founder, Editor, bottle-washer, trouble-maker, and creative whirlwind.

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• Jane Davenport debuts at Creativation 2018 & Watercolor Card - February 13, 2018
• Creativation 2018: New Product Showcase - January 20, 2018
• “OLT” Craft Challenge for 2018 - January 16, 2018
• Cutting Shrink Film with a Cricut Die Cutting Machine - January 12, 2018
• Nuvo Aqua Shimmer Glitter Brush Pen Review from Tonic, Demo & Comparison - January 9, 2018