IMHO this isn't true, and I'm kind of annoyed that someone gave you what I would consider misinformation though of course they are entitled to their beliefs. This community was literally incredible back in the day, it was a blast to be here we used to log so many hours in the chat room and there were always "events" going on. If anyone had a problem becoming part of the community then it may have been because they weren't able to accept they were new to the game and/or they didn't have a friendly demeanor. I made some awesome friends here in 2007-2008 even though I was new, some of which I actually got to meet in person and still talk to this day. NP was so much fun to be a part of that most of the people I knew here had left another prominent webdev/domainer forum to join us.
I hope someone backs me on this lol.
Exactly that was never true back in the day, and no one from 2003-2005 would have been sharing that opinion with someone, so no one in the know.
Namepros started out us against them, another forum was the forum that made money, RJ kept things free, I used to chat with RJ and I think it was Sharon from Domain Dump almost every night, I remember discussing with RJ ways on how he could make money, I had come up with a forum escrow idea, where he could make a little money, and members would have added security. There was the NP$ that actually allowed you to register domains, your posts mattered because you earned NP$.
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@Kate and I mentioned earlier Domainers no longer buy from each other, at least not like in the old days. Back in the day a lot more business got done, it didn't have to be a firesale or someone underpricing an asset.
RJ leaving was a big deal, because no ownership since then has been loved by members, liked sure, but a lot of people loved RJ and when he sold the place changed in certain ways.
You also have a lot of older people that made their money and moved along, or were domaining at 18 - 30 and after that got married, had children and a spouse was not going to tolerate 8 hours spent on Namepros all day, and with less deals getting done, more trollish behavior, where was the value proposition in that?
I used to run .TV auctions in chat where we were regging names while the auction was going on, literally someone pmming me, Hey Equity can you add StLouisTV.tv to the auction? I would be like why didn't you send that earlier, they were like I just regged it at Name.com for $10.99 some of these would sell for $30 - $35 it was nuts, plenty were not big money but the fact that a reg 10 minutes old could turn a profit was interesting.
Today if I held a .tv auction in chat, there would be few if any sales unless someone was willing to start a premium name at $1 no reserve.
Domaining has also become a collection of Echo Chambers, confirmation bias matters more than objectivity a lot of the time. So someone is ready to rumble when you tell them new gtlds suck, or hey old man your not up with the times, and the old man could probably buy the commenter saying that a million times over. Or Emoji's are the future, Screw you Emojis suck.
I know we all read about Eric's stuff with threats due to having to be an admin, which is terrible, but people have threatened others for something that didn't even affect them like a suspension or ban, people doing crazy stuff over their name getting appraised at reg fee. Back in the days of .tv I used to think wtf is going on? This has become crazy. The only person whose opinion matters on your domain names is you, and that get's extended by one, when you have a prospective buyer. Who cares what everyone else thinks? Every axiom you have ever been told has been disproved at least 100 times.