BootsnAll :(
Saturday, May 25th, 2013Back in the fall of 2007 when I was thinking about travel to places with palm trees in hopes of finding a retirement home. I was still finding my way around the internet but had stumbled across a couple travel forums, Trip Advisor’s Cuba forum & Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree.
Back then TA was 99% AI resort travel, TT was geared towards independent travel. Then at the end of ‘07, the BBC, that had purchased LP, pulled a ‘fix what ain’t broken’ stunt, reformatting it which made it so slow that it was impossible to use on dial-up.
As a result other dissatisfied users started a ‘hate TT’ site where I heard about forum for independent travelers called BoostnAll 
I checked it out & joined on Jan 12, 2008.
It was a great forum & a big help in planning both my 08/09 CA/Cuba trip + my 09/10 RTW.
Times change, forum traffic has slowed to a point that about a year ago there was a topic posted http://boards.bootsnall.com/is-this-forum-dying-t47691.html where possible reasons were discussed over 4 pages. It was lamented in a post on that thread a year ago that only 77 posts had been made in a 7 day period.
Now I am not politically correct (and proud of it) & have a problem with Canucks who wear rose coloured glasses, which has gotten me banned from forums before. 🙂
A couple weeks ago there was a thread in the infamous subject of TIPPING in which a couple Canucks said they only tipped 10% for poor service! Needless to say they were told, in no uncertain terms, what I thought of that, especially since one was from Ontario, where on my trip last August, I tipped a grand total of NOTHING due to lousy service! This unsatisfactory service is encouraged by those who tip for such lack of service IMO!!!
Fast forward a week & I find I am unable to log in on http://boards.bootsnall.com
An email to BNA brings the response that I have an unspecified time out because of my “posting style”!
Now I have been a member of BNA for over 5 years, have submitted an article + 2,026 posts to the boards. I have seen the article section go from a good selection of general interest articles to a bunch of garbage 10 best list postings that are of no interest to a traveler.
Forums have gone from lively discussion of differing ideas by experienced travelers with valid information, to a mishmash of garbage info posted by newbie’s who love dredging up long dead threads, whom one dasn’t dare challenge for fear of sanctions! The new postings have dropped to 28 in the past 7 days. 🙁
The new section called Indie Travel is only useful to those too lazy to plan a trip themselves, the hostel section does not list the cheaper accommodations in most high traffic boarder areas, useless really.
Almost forgot, during my 11 month RTW with 
One World Alliance (would use again) I only had 2 disappointments, the first in Beijing when the owners of 
that I had done charters for over a period of 11 years, couldn’t be bothered to meet me, the second when during the final week of my RTW in Portland, it wasn’t possible to contact a rep from BNA. Kind of brings the chickens home to roost on the class of people one has been dealing with, EH!
All I have to say to Chris aka Hydro, the moderator/Sean, the owner is that your
site IS DYING and as long as you cater to the uninformed,
naive cruiser with 24 posts, by banning a long time experienced
backpacker member, then 
the forum
IS NOT FOR ME!!!
BYE - ADIEU - ADIÓS
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busman7