It was an interesting day.
I learned a lot more about how the site works, about how it’s funded, how the advert networks work (and why we occasionally get rogue adverts), and about the statistics around how it’s used and by just how many people. The same old “big hitter” names are prolific posters sure, but the sheer volume of people who view and interact with it but don’t really post (or don’t even have accounts) is just mind-bending. It was eye-opening stuff. I also sat and showed them how we worked as moderators, obviously they know what tools we use but perhaps surprisingly not how. (TL;DR – we’re sneaky bastards.)
One thing I came away with is why the site is the way it is, and why development might seem a little… pedestrian to an outside observer. It’s economies of scale and the smallest of innocuous-seeming changes can have butterfly-effect “well, we might have to let someone go” levels of repercussions. To anyone thinking “it’s just a simple forum, I could spin up a better replacement in my lunch hour” (eg, me 24 hours ago) you have absolutely no idea. It’s a monster.
