The lacklustre response to BtA for me obliterated the myth that BP raised the bar and other campaigns struggle because they don't meet that bar.
But it's a lot bigger than BP, the problem. The forum culture is wrong. Because this place alienates and eliminates anyone who doesn't fall into a narrow set of beliefs and behaviours on the far left.
We had a dude come to the forum recently who went to work right away with real passion and gusto. We get like one or two such people in a year. Then he made a weird post in gen disc and was treated like human garbage for it, got banned for it. So he's GONE. And who could blame him.
I don't think content creators should be treated any differently to ordinary members, but that was ridiculous. He didn't actually break any rules, but the rules don't mean anything. He fell afoul of the site's protected class, and that's all that mattered. No one cared about anything else.
If you're a content creator, your audience is badly curtailed because of this. This applies to BP as well, except it caters well to the ideology of the protected class, so fares better than anything else because of that, and it also gets the most outside of the forum coverage too.
My role in the creation of BtA was a small one. But because I can see the internal forums and the SVN and saw it all taking shape, I know what went into it. Mjn put his heart and soul into that project and an immeasurable number of hours into it, I'm betting it's a four digit number easily, and I wouldn't be surprised if that number doesn't start with a 1. Day after day, week after week, month after month, that SVN got updated. It was incredible to see. Awe-inspiring. The man's a machine. His standards were exacting. And for what? He gave so much of himself for you. It's not right. There is no doubt in my mind if the culture of this forum was different, if it catered simply to anyone with a love of Freespace, welcoming all with open arms, his board would be enjoying the same kind of attention that BP enjoys. Because of the way this place is, he's been robbed of that.