Merging forums

Have any of you ever merged your forum with another forum? How did the move go, was the forum bigger or smaller than yours and why did you merge forums?

Also, when is a good time to merge forums?

 

I was a member at a forum that recently started to go on a buy up the smaller competition and start to merge into one big forum fest, and its completely destroyed a lot of the inner circles and core members of the forum's experience to a point many of us don't go back, and oddly enough, members from those merged forums hardly return either.

Its pretty much filled with people who speak english as what is apparently a hobby language making it frustrating to read posts, and people who post the same thing 30 different times, 29 different ways

"Yes it does"
"Yep"
"yea for sure"
"of course"
"why wouldn't it"
"yea"
"ohhhh yea"
"hello yes my friend goodbye sir"

Just completely ruins a forum to me and i have no use for them at that point!

/rant

 

I am in current negotiations to buy out a forum - it is bigger than mine (mainly due to my site being hacked twice in the past six months) and runs a free forum from forumotion or something like that (I don't know I have never used it).

It is in the same niche as mine, and has at least 80% Australian members which is what I am after.

I am hoping impex works fine with the merge when the time comes.

 

haven't done it myself, but I've been a member of a couple sites that did so and from my perspective as a user it didn't seem to go well. The merge may have added a bunch of new content but I don't think the members really stuck around.

 

A friend of mine merged his forum with another not so long ago, and in the beginning, members of both sites didn't like it. But through time, they are getting used to it.

Merging communities mess up the sense of community.

 

Hmm, you almost need to send ambassadors over in advance... maybe some kind of "mixer" party is in order