Is It Vacation Time? | Talk it up | Forums

Trust all is well with Ashraf and co, this is my first port of call each day, guys your noticed by your absence, hope your all well, regards Mike.

It's just the natural way of a lot of sites. These guys start one, pour their heart and souls into them for a couple years and then burn out hits. What could anybody expect? Look at how much time Ashraf put into this site. Then imagine how long you could keep up the pace and quality that he did. Anybody would get burn out doing that much work alone. Some people come back from burn out, but not very many. Ashraf has already tried twice since just last summer to make a comeback, both times failed. The last time he did everything he could, including asking for help with articles. Lots of people stepped up and said they'd write articles, some even saying they'd write as many as 4 or 5 per week. But where are all these articles that people claimed they write? Talk is cheap. People have proven that yet again.

I see that Ashraf signed in last on February 7, 2011. So he still cares enough to stop in from time to time, but my bet would be that he's had enough of writing all those long detailed articles for nothing. He may get told that people appreciate what he's written a million times, but at some point that just isn't enough anymore. For someone that's doing all this work for free and because he enjoys it, at some point it's bound to become a job, and it's a bad paying job at that. Who among us can truthfully say that we would do that much work for almost no pay? I'd bet not too many. I sure wouldn't.

So if Ashraf makes another comeback and starts writing articles again, great! Lots of us will benefit from it. But if he doesn't and this site transforms into nothing more than a forum for people to use, I won't be surprised. Use it and the knowledge of the other users as much as you care too. You may also want to wish that more people would have donated to the site so that Ashraf would have made enough money from it to keep up with his work.

(Hope you're enjoying life a bit more now Ashraf!)