HeatherY - The scope is so huge it's just blowing my mind right now... and I just wondered who's responsible for this monster of a place?
I'd love to know the story. It's probably around here somewhere and I just don't know where to click.
SmokeyJoe founded the site and chose to use vB, which was a good choice. It's a standard forum, meaning the basic job is off the shelf, but heavily extended now (lots of plugins and customizations).
SJ had the right vision, he figured this subject was important and put a huge amount of work into it. There are a bunch of different ways you could view ECF, for example it's a monster community site, it's the world's largest and most popular ecigarette resource, and it's an ecigarette business of course because it earns money from publishing advertising and supporting the trade. It performs a neat balancing act, juggling the needs of the members and the trade - which is the most difficult aspect of the site to manage.
It has over 100,000 posts a month on the forums and 15 million pageviews a month.
When SJ started he realised the best way forward was to promote high standards, such as decent standards of behavior and no unproven health claims on
ecig websites (which was not common at that time, is still difficult to enforce, and is a vital element in avoiding undue interest from government regulators). Maintaining those standards was difficult and always will be, which is why there will always be complaints about the firm management.
As to who actually *created* the site as it is now, the community and in particular the most active 'older' members such as Sun, Lu, Kate, Spikey, Tropical Bob, Mary Kay, Wiz and many others did. Some are still here, some aren't. Communities grow and change. This one is so big now that it is impossible to regard ECF as one community, it hosts many of them since when something gets to this size it just too big to keep that village atmosphere, it's a major city now with multiple areas each with their own 'residents'.
SJ worked himself into the ground on this and when eventually it just got too big, he got people in to help run the framework. He decides policy and details where needed. His thing was always campaigning and when work allows he'll be back on that. There will be enough campaigning to keep people busy for the next few years.
And Heather, as to the Story - well, maybe TBob will write the book one day...
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