Pearl Drummers Forum, what happened?

I'd say it was staff with tech skills drifted off.
The place was outdated. No one wanted to inject money/effort into it.
Bean counters upstairs made the "Boomer" move to go to Facebook. (Groan). Who uses that garbage platform anyways? Rhetorical.
 
I was there until the end. From what I could tell, the software they were using was old and kept crashing. They didn't have the resource to fix it, and it seems they didn't want to spend the money to keep 10 people happy on a dying forum. Basically, it was dead, and had been for about 5 years.
 
I was on the PDF too for many, many years. November this year would mark my 20th year anniversary there, but i stopped visiting regularly around 2017 since the place was pretty dead at that point (and why i joined this forum!). Posted some posts and pics and hardly got any replies anymore near the end. There was still a group of regulars that were pretty tight it seemed, but besides that not interaction at all.

The forum was 'down for maintenance' for a few months and would check every few weeks, but still got the same message until a few weeks back when it was all archived. From what i remember it were a few people that replied on everything and thought they owned the place, turned pretty toxic fast. Nail in the coffin for me was when they closed down the Chit Chat section; that was the heart of the forum.
 
TheJarvis said:
It's been a while since I visited the Pearl forum and discovered it's no longer active, does anyone know what happened.....
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From the top of the Pearl Drummers forum page:

Thank you to all who joined us on the Pearl Drummers Forum but we have decided to continue the conversation at the Pearl Drummers Group on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/groups/pearldrummersgroup Although the Pearl Drummers Forum is closed, the content is still searchable as there are many informative threads on Pearl gear. We hope to see you at the Pearl Drummers Group!
 
The whole "rep" counter was pretty lame as well. Some just tried to see how many red bars they could get. A lot of butt kissing from what I remember. It got old quick.
 
Well all the bashing aside... still had a fun run there. Still have occasional contact with a drummer i got to know via PDF (we send filthy pictures of our drums and cymbals, please don't tell my wife). Had a fun run with 'Kit of the month contest' or whatever it was called. You could participate in a contest/poll and people could vote on which kit they liked the most, which 9 out of 10 times was the largest and/or most expensive kit in the poll. You could have a great looking Stage Custom with a nice set of cymbals, but then a n00b with a Reference featuring holy tom angles batman and cymbals on cracking angles would take the cake.
Still had a lot of fun there!
 
I'm not on Facebook, so I never made the the transition from the old forum to their official Pearl Facebook Group.
Here's an excerpt that I wrote in a PM to another former PDF member last year:

I think that the general consensus as to why the PDF closed, came down to Pearl Corporate (Japan) feeling that it wasn’t as profitable and as popular as the biggest social media sites. In the end there was only a handful of regulars (including myself) that posted with any frequency. It’s a darn shame too. As you know, the PDF was a wealth of drumming knowledge and a valuable resource. (EDIT: I'm glad that Pearl decided to "archive" the old forum, instead of erasing/destroying all of that accumulated drumming knowledge.)

Pearl was spending money to keep it running, and some of the U.S. employees (in Nashville) time monitoring/administrating it for any profane content. In this case, I think that the more eyeballs that scrolled the forum's pages, the more profitable it was for Pearl Corp.. (Remember, they always reminded us that the forum was Pearl's Corp's property first and foremost, and that we had to play by their rules.) So, when Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter became the places to hang out on social media, the "old fashioned/less trendy" idea of forums (as a whole) started to die out. Especially, member-wise. So, less eyeballs = less profit.

On a separate note: I want to thank Bernhard, and all of the staff here on the Drummerword Forum for keeping this wonderful site up and running. I truly enjoy both the format and interactions of a open forum, and have no desire to participate in the other types of today's social media. :)
 
Al Percival, who works at Pearl's Nashville headquarters, is a fantastic human being.
I couldn't count how many times he went out of his way to do something above and beyond to help a Pearl customer/fellow drummer in need.
 
Idk Not a member but drummerworld is restricted on my work computer so I haven't been posting in a while. Making this post from my phone now.

What a pita
 
bearblastbeats said:
Idk Not a member but drummerworld is restricted on my work computer so I haven't been posting in a while. Making this post from my phone now.

What a pita
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Yes, waaaay back in like '08 I worked in a call center. Drummerworld was blocked but Cymbalholic wasn't so I was a member there first, until.... One day my manager called me to her desk and said, "hey Ian, what is 'cymbalholic'?" Lol. I explained what it was and asked how she was familiar, apparently one of my calls that got pulled for quality control included screenshots of me browsing the Cymbalholic forum while trying to get a 80 yr old to buy a Medicare supplement plan. Cymbalholic was blocked the next day
 
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