I just brought up the Dave’s ESL Cafe website forums after a long time not looking at it, and the most recent posts are from 2019 – 2020. Is the forum now closed? Anyone know what’s going on there? I thought that maybe I had gone to an older no longer working version of the website. Does Dave’s have a new forum?
7 comments
They were overmoderated to the point that everyone stopped using them.
Dave’s ESL Cafe hasn’t been helpful for jobs in Japan for over 10 years. IDK about other country offerings.
I don’t think I’ve been on Dave’s ESL cafe since about 2005… that’s a blast from the past.
Conflicts of interest where the school posting a job would be trashed to pieces (deservingly so, usually) in the forum. That’s what killed it.
Posters primarily went there to complain. By 2012 or so, ESLCafe was 80% boomer teachers who worked during the golden age of EFL in the 80s and 90s talking about how much things had gone to shit in their respective regions. We needed a better place to communicate: There was a ton of gatekeeping. People would ask a question and get swatted down or told not to come to X country. The format also started to feel pretty dated compared to Reddit. And the jobs on offer got worse and worse as universities just posted openings on TESOL or JRECIN, and Interac and some of the other JET killers moved their advertising to Facebook.
Reddit has done for quite a lot of forums I used to use. Why bother with a separate one ?
The 1980’s called. They want their tedious website run by an a-hole called ‘Dave’ back.
I wonder what could have happened in 2020 that put a lid on people looking for jobs in foreign countries.