So uh...Will Gather ever allow new members again?

Nope! Haven't heard a thing.

new members so they will take for ever to give them points

I got an email from Chuck saying that AOL was saying that I as saying that gather mail was spam. AOL send a lot of my mail to Spam that they shouldn't send should send to spam they aren't. They drive me crazy..

Hotmail was doing the same thing to me so i finally made the move over to Gmail, i havent had any problems since then.

I hate to be the one to say it but, I think Gather is nearing it's fateful end, there is less and less people on here, and the ones who are here are pissed over something someone said on their post or whatever, lol, is Bubblews the NEW Gather? hmmm....

lol, might be. but i will be hanging out here until the end either way...far too much time invested to walk away now. Plus there is some pretty cool people here even if the money is crap

People have been saying Gather is dying for years now, but it is still here.

exactly, there will always be doomsday people. even facebook has them and i dont see them going anywhere any time soon.

I am usually the last to believe it, but this one has me a tad bit more worried than before. But mostly i just want the doors to open back up so we can work hard to get some new members in here!

I have no idea I thought it would be just for a short time.

same here....

Hmmmmm, I've been thinking that maybe it's a permanent thing....of not letting new people join......that's the "feelings" I've been getting anyway.

I dont know, i would think they would just shut down all together rather than a slow drawn out process. Why spend more money than you have to sort of thing...but who knows.

I agree Ryan, I am sure they are still going through accounts and it is just taking longer then they thought.

I agree with Nora. It's permanent. Like they were going to tell us that it would be permanent?? Heck, no. They don't need the bad talk if they did tell us.
They want this site for the news, celebrity, etc. writers. We just happen to be leftovers from the old days. What are they going to do to us? Kick us out? Heck, no. They will just wait until we fall away from the site gradually. Then they will have it all to themselves.

Or they will turn off the points completely. Heck, they have choked them to near nothing anyway. Then there will be a mass exodus from here.

This is what I've been thinking all along......the stuff like news, celebrity crap, etc........it's completely taking over.....I, myself, don't care for all that so I just ignore it. Now, I'm just wondering how long it will be, before the points totally disappear!!!

I'd guess it won't be long. I have not seen one person say they received a Gather payment yet this year.

Like I said to Sophie a few days ago:



Sassy *bacon makes me happy* Cat Jan 28, 2013, 1:32am EST
Happy 6th Gatherversary!!

LINK to Chuck's post concerning the no new members situation.

Wasn't it nice of them to give us notice? Like they ever did that for anything before. hahah! My opinion: I'll be surprised if Gather ever does open up the membership to the general public again. How would they keep the spammers out? They have already blocked most entire countries. You know who the important ones are here, the ones who never commented on another one of your posts past that post of a couple years ago. Seriously, I think the only new accounts that will ever be seen here are for the hired help.

I've been watching for some new "hired help" accounts opening. I haven't seen any, not that I might have missed them.

Would that be a sign that their finances are in need of a recovery? It's possible. I guess it makes us more exclusive like a true writer's community -- just so it's not like we've become a new Skull & Bones cult or something! Thae Daewn of thae Gaethyrnyg aest upaen aeus!! Thanks for posting this and may our numbers steadily and diligently increase - could I get some referral power?!

I guess now we'll have to appreciate and seek out the great folks who are already here. Welcome to autarky!

I've noticed that things have become very, very slow around here as well.........perhaps people have just gotten too busy with the "real life" stuff and are spending much less time online and on Gather. I know that we've got a LOT going on here at our house right now; there just are never enough hours in the days to get everything done. I've dropped a huge number of my rewards programs.......just not enough time anymore for them.

I know I have been busy Nora, with attending counseling and other activites going on in my life.

People are leaving because they are making only pennies a day here, compared to the old days. Remember triple points? Summer pics? Photo contests? All gone. There is no excitement here anymore.

Nora, I agree with your comment farther up this thread. It is permanent.

That's very, very true.......about so much being gone from here.....those triple points days were great, as were the contests, photo contests, etc........seems like Gather's become a "ghost town"...............and the points are slowly disappearing, little by little.

Connie may know something.....I can hope they'd allow new members soon.

same here. I have basically given up on Gather making this a better place any time soon, so i guess it falls onto us as a community.

I've felt like a lot of people jumped ship. They seem to be all gone with only a few die hards remaining.

I haven't heard anything about the situation. I like it here though. I plan to stay until they shut it down.

Same here. I love it, but i just know it could be better.

It does make you wonder what is really going on... Maybe gather, is just doing some spring cleaning, but who knows?

I know Chuck made some mention of revenue that wasn't available in the past...but no further information that i saw. So that makes me believe there will be changes coming soon, hopefully for the better.

This site does remind me of a job that I once worked at... I worked there for 5 years and in most places, the longer you are employed with them the more you make... Not this job... This was the only job that I actually made more when I first went through the doors then spending 5 yrs there... They had some decent incentives that gave you bonus's and of course the more you produced the more you made...Next thing you knew, the money kept getting less and less until, you were lucky if you made a few dollars extra... They even cut back the help... it was two to a machine, sometimes 3 people, then went down to just one... that was hard to maintain the machine and sort the mail, bag and tag it, feed the hoppers , all at the same time... so you didnt make as much... Then there was the nice little part about (after checking with the unemployment office) that instead of a piddly 4 or 5 bucks an hour, we were actually doing 2 different jobs and we should of been paid around 13.00 an hour and this was back in the 80's.We were lucky if we got a nickle raise... One of the guys told the General Manager, if that was all he was worth , he could keep the raise and by George, the manager did keep it... We were ripped off at this place and it went under...

Well, even if Gather doesn't re-open to new members, there are other sites that are welcoming new people...

I am starting to look into and join a couple myself...But gather will always be special to me even if it does go down in the end.

Indeed Gather is special for so many of us.It has given so many people from around the world a platform to express and share and hopefully it remains so for ever.I really wish and hope things sort out faster than imagined.

Like who?

I have not heard a thing... :(

Not heard anything - had recommended quite a few new members and sent out invites to come and share their works as well though that has all gone down the tubes.

I noticed that a week ago. I hope they open it up again. I understand why they would want to deter spammers, but there are other ways to do that.

I wouldn't have a clue.

I'll be sticking around...was planning on leaving myself because of how things have gotten, but then I was asked to take over the prayer list so I am staying for that...at least till Gather disappears if that is what happens...

though, I would be quite upset if it does because we cataloged my husband's battle with cancer here and I do not have the time to copy all the posts we made

I actually think what's driving away traffic is the sheer slowness of the site, especially for the "regular" side of the sote. People aren't going to wait more than 30 seconds for a site or page to come up when there are other sites with similar content that are much faster.

They would find the time if they were still earning decent $$ here.

First time I heard of this so thank you for sharing this news. I don't know.

Who knows.... oh the drama...

lol hehe Silly Peter.


Where is Lori I wonder?

LOL

I didn't even know they weren't taking new members.

I only come here for the few friends I have. Don't spend much time here anymore. Many have left.

It might have something to do with the groups you join. Many people are here for points (and the associated payouts) and points have slowed down so many of them might be leaving.

I'm here as a writer and all the writing groups are doing great.

I follow quite a few of the writer types, i'm just not one myself. I am more equipped for the blogging sort of things. I used to be really into my, and others photography on here but a lot of them left too for "greener pastures" or whatever.

I'll just wait and see.

I'll just hang out here while it's here.

Same here

And maybe its just me. But it really seems like there is just less and less activity on the site.


They ended the accounts that stand up to liberals.

And vice versa. I see a lot of the liberals are gone too. I think there were a lot of warnings in the background that we don't know about. All the mean people seemed to shut up all of a sudden.

I had only seen maybe 2 or 3 from the left that were mean.
Gather.com is ran by the left and that's theirs to do. No complaint here.

This is why liberal talk anything is never successful. They do it to themselves over and over.

lol well that didn't come out right ) I'm too sleepy to explain my thoughts : )

That is another reason Gather would be happy to keep anyone from opening a new account.

Comment made by:
Chuck McGuire, Gather.com Member Support Dec 19, 2012, 4:23pm EST

This also means that if you are removed for repeated non-spam Terms of Service violations, you will not be able to sneak back in! So please let me know if you have any questions about our rules and policies!

Hmmm, I don't know that I've noticed any change in people commenting or not commenting, LOL. I don't post enough posts to even notice a change. Maybe if I posted something every day I would notice, but I don't. I never have anything interesting enough to post about. LOL!

Surely you are kidding! People luv your posts and artwork! Your posts are highlights in an otherwise rather drab Gather environment. :-)

LOL, Sassy, you are so sweet. I'm happy you like my stories and little cartoon grandma. I really don't post very often, therefore my points add up slowly. I just posted a post about how sick I am ..... LOL .... I hardly ever get sick and when I do I think I'm going to die for sure ..... I bet I'll be all well by tomorrow. LOL!

Maybe no news is good news...?

It's anyone wonder, anyone would wonder, about what's going on in Gatherland. We were told they were cleaning up the spamming, and not allowing new members. Since then we've heard nothing more. I can't see why they would allow new members after the cleanup, unless they put forth some type of criteria to keep the spam from returning or building back up. Otherwise why go through the whole process, to only end up back to square one again? Somehow I don't see them not taking in new members again eventually. I don't see how the site could stay afloat. And if their intentions are that they will go belly up, then why ever bother with cleaning up all the spam to begin with? I don't see all the rag tag crap with celebrities, and newsy post being enough to keep them going. To many other sites with that kind of thing already. I don't know. Just to many questions. Wish Chuck would give us some kind of heads up on what's going on and a better picture of their long range goals. If something better is possible on the horizon, maybe, the lack of points and slowness of the site could be dealt with. The longer it drags out, the more apt people will be to leave, or spend even less time here. It's pretty evident that there's less activity going on. Generally in the winter months, you see more, or use to.

Thank you for sharing on Helping Out One Another

Guess I'm so inactive that I didn't even notice they weren't allowing new memebers ... That sucks though :(

I am sad to hear this not understanding all why yet I did invite a friend and she told me about it,,
on the other hand my step son stated account like 5 yrs ago and never wrote anything on it,, he B*&&# to me how they cancell his account as I told him he didnt keep up,,

haha, he could always make a new one...

its just supposed to be temporary at least...lets hope they mean it lol

My thing is less content is being shared so I am on less. I am so out of it I didn't even know Gather wasn't accepting new members. Why not just go back to flagging the spam like they used to encourage us to do.