The actual owners are a good question. I believe it's some sort of small company that maintains forums without being too interfering or heavy handed. It isn't a business model that jumps out at me.
They don't try to steer us or propagandize us like most privately owned social media - they leave us apparent independence. I'm a mod, and a generally not trusting person when it comes to businesses, and I don't quite know. I've decided it doesn't matter much to me. I go to restaurants without knowing who owns them. The food's good here.
All jokes about the private jets aside (it's a paper covered biplane), the mods are volunteers, but the crowd here is easy to work with and it isn't a heavy task. We get the odd socially inept fightstarter, a lot of spammers to clear out daily, and rare inappropriate posts or little kids trolling.
In exchange we get access to the knowledge of many active hobbyists with anything from minutes of experience to many decades. Even if you started the hobby yesterday, you know things and if you bring them to the table, it can enrich all of us. A lot of people ask one or two questions, get responses and never return, but there's a revolving gaggle of characters who really like talking about fish and fishtanks, plants, snails, shrimp and even the history of sites like this. I think a bunch of people here see this as a bastion of insanity in a... wait a minute, a bastion of sanity in an insane stressful world. For whatever reasons, a lot of people from different backgrounds, ages, world views, countries, etc like talking about fish.
And here some of us are. More would be welcome.
They don't try to steer us or propagandize us like most privately owned social media - they leave us apparent independence. I'm a mod, and a generally not trusting person when it comes to businesses, and I don't quite know. I've decided it doesn't matter much to me. I go to restaurants without knowing who owns them. The food's good here.
All jokes about the private jets aside (it's a paper covered biplane), the mods are volunteers, but the crowd here is easy to work with and it isn't a heavy task. We get the odd socially inept fightstarter, a lot of spammers to clear out daily, and rare inappropriate posts or little kids trolling.
In exchange we get access to the knowledge of many active hobbyists with anything from minutes of experience to many decades. Even if you started the hobby yesterday, you know things and if you bring them to the table, it can enrich all of us. A lot of people ask one or two questions, get responses and never return, but there's a revolving gaggle of characters who really like talking about fish and fishtanks, plants, snails, shrimp and even the history of sites like this. I think a bunch of people here see this as a bastion of insanity in a... wait a minute, a bastion of sanity in an insane stressful world. For whatever reasons, a lot of people from different backgrounds, ages, world views, countries, etc like talking about fish.
And here some of us are. More would be welcome.
. I do have one card left to play however. How many can say they were born the same year as the forum was created? 
