AirsoftCanada - Move Forward?
 

It's just me or AirsoftCanada is slowly dying?

The forum has not been updated for a long time. The sale pages are getting less and less visited and there is starting to be more and more confusion between what is for sale and what people want to buy (WTS vs WTB). Worse, I sell more through Reddit than through ASC... I'm not even talking about the provincial channels which have long since been emptied because Facebook in particular has taken over. In short, I ask myself the question without any negative thoughts. Where is airsoftCanada going? Is it possible to have a version 2.0 that includes new players? I would like the discussion to be constructive.

Thank you

I have certainly noticed that AirsoftCanada has been slowing down.
It seems fewer people have been using it. Including myself...

With local classifieds and other online platforms such as Reddit, it does seem like Airsoft Canada has lost it luster over the years.

For buy/sell/trade, I like the verification and vetting ASC has here as opposed to the sketchy free-for-all that is Reddit. The serious longtime users here tend to be more mature and experienced with better quality gear and items offered. I can list several users here that I would buy super expensive kit like NODs and such from without worry while I can't say the same for Reddit. Granted, I could probably hit them up on Facebook too and achieve the same result but BST on Facebook is more difficult nowadays due to TOS.

As for games and event postings, yeah, it's pretty much completely migrated over to Facebook as it's a lot more user-friendly, integrated, and easier to manage. You can see exactly when, where, and how many people are going with Facebook events.

I've also noted that things have been slowing down.

ACS's barrier to entry has definitely contributed to this - reddit and hopup, even facebook have much easier access to classifieds. Not saying I think it's a good idea to remove the system ACS has, but it might be time to open a discussion about it.

I guess the best question to ask is what does ACS bring the the airsoft community?

It has always had the classifieds - and the safest ones at that. But it's other features have been on a sharp decline.

I see very limited tech information posted, in both people asking questions and people answering them. Tech Tuesday on reddit has been dominating that market pretty heavily.

Game days and club schedules have moved to bigger social media platforms such as facebook and discord. It used to be that every group had a post on ACS with information on their group as to were to contact them and what they were all about (here's mine for reference https://airsoftcanada.com/showthread.php?t=182563).

Gun reviews have moved mostly to youtube. Proper longform typed out reviews are very uncommon and haven't been seen here for the better part of 5 years. (just as an FYI longform is way better then the "look at my shiney AEG" reviews then we get now)

To sum it up, their just isn't as much relevant content here as there once was. If we want to revitalize the form, we need to improve the content.

Most of the tech advice and reviews on Reddit/Facebook/Youtube posts are pretty garbage. I'm lucky enough that I've got some very good techs as friends that I can just ask directly but they're constantly bombarded with ridiculously stupid questions from random people on Facebook, Reddit, and sometimes Instagram.

I just see ASC as a very good BST forum now with some quality historical posts. Used that way, I don't think anything really needs to change.

It's a lack of time and availability of the admin/ownership who are really pulled 8 ways with their jobs and whatnot. If we can put together a small team of devs/designers/community managers and a strategy of how to revitalize it, I can bring it up with the owners.

I totally agree with you! Do a quick SEO of ASC will give you an example of how far it's hard for new players to find us.

Mat.

I've been waiting over a year for the age verification process, so yeah no this place is dead.

At least the bots are alive and well

A bunch of us have been saying this for the last 6-8 years. We discussed it with a few admins wayback, offering support since some of them we know personally, but it seem more of the case of other admins not wanting to give up power, despite not being active.

I wonder where I have heard that before

My username description is a case in point.

Hahahha love it

Doesn't help that Facebook censors links to airsoftcanada.com. You have to mangle the domain name to post links, and tell people to fix it when copy pasting it.

1 post total and been on the boards for 2 years? how hard are you trying to get AV'd