DAU (daily active user) today vs 3-4 years ago

[sbgixxer]

I think it's mostly the state dismantling what keeps the hobby interesting. It used to be that whenever I wanted to try a new firearm, I could usually find one for sale here. I'd meet the seller somewhere discreet, we'd chat and make a deal. I'd try the firearm out and if I didn't like it then it'd go up on the site again for someone else to try. I was buying and selling all the time w/o losing money to fees and time driving to specific FFLs (sometimes twice) and waiting around a gun shop for the state to do what they require. Add in ammo prices ($500 range days?) combined with not knowing what will be illegal next week has just made the hobby tiresome. Things as they are now, I've probably purchased one firearm in the past five years. I spend very little time with the it these days and that's a huge bummer.

As for the site, there's little to do. You guys do a great job, the site runs well. You try to make it better but can't keep up with how quickly Colorado is ruining it.

[kidicarus13]

I think it's mostly the state dismantling what keeps the hobby interesting. It used to be that whenever I wanted to try a new firearm, I could usually find one for sale here. I'd meet the seller somewhere discreet, we'd chat and make a deal. I'd try the firearm out and if I didn't like it then it'd go up on the site again for someone else to try. I was buying and selling all the time w/o losing money to fees and time driving to specific FFLs (sometimes twice) and waiting around a gun shop for the state to do what they require. Add in ammo prices ($500 range days?) combined with not knowing what will be illegal next week has just made the hobby tiresome.

Yes.

To get more people in the door, although probably not all quality posters, open up the Trading Post now that Armslist requires a monthly fee. COAR's advantage over national firearm sites is that the majority of posters live in Colorado. I personally would much rather do business face-to-face with someone local (and likely with feedback) than some stranger on another site from another state with transactions including shipping fees and the potential for misrepresented products.

I've read it many times, "We'll shut the Trading Post down..." Why? Who's harmed by someone buying or selling through COAR without the minimum number of posts/time on keyboard? Odds are, some of the new members will turn out to quality posters that stick around for years.

Building personal relations through many face-to-face transactions and unaffiliated events has kept me coming back to COAR to discuss firearms, local/regional/national topics, and to share information. I tend to visit other national forums for the expert firearm opinions and product reviews. Although there are some very knowledgeable members on COAR, it's hard to compete with national forums with hundreds of thousands or millions of members.

My $.02

[VolksDragon]

Building personal relations through many face-to-face transactions and unaffiliated events has kept me coming back to COAR to discuss firearms, local/regional/national topics, and to share information. I tend to visit other national forums for the expert firearm opinions and product reviews. Although there are some very knowledgeable members on COAR, it's hard to compete with national forums with hundreds of thousands or millions of members.

My $.02

Agree 100%. I've made so many good friends and learned so much about the hobby through contacts made from the Trading Post, and we've all helped each other a great deal.

[villageidiot]

Long time lurker here.

I think forums as a whole have been killed off by SEO. The only way to get search results from real people is including the name of the forums in the search. If you do not know the forum, your shit out of luck.

A year or two ago I wanted to buy my first fishing pole since I was 12. All I could find were regurgitations of specs seemingly written by someone who has never fished a day in their life. It was just articles linking to Amazon.

I don't there is any tech or .gov conspiracy here. The Internet grew up and it is just a way to push products.

That or dead Internet theory is true and y'all are just bots.