My experience with being part of "free communities" where someone with a bit of money tries to buy the community/property/game from the developer/admin/etc. (who has spent the best part of their twenties running a forum or old game and now wants to move on to Living Real Life™) usually ends up in the new owners dredging the community for ideas on how to create what end up being poorly contrived ways to attempt to marginally monetize the system in manners that don't cramp upon the current users style TOO unreasonably, but which also make the site literally ZERO percent attractive to outside users if they have to pay-to-play in ANY way, and the community thinks that everything's been "saved" for a while, but then it just goes back to how it was after a while, since:
a. the place is still a money hole in terms of hosting costs
b. the development of new features is still a huge time sink, and
c. the community continues to dwindle (at the same rate, or an increased one)
The key to "new management" is
not trying to monetize
. That'd be like electing a new president of a country, and then having him raise taxes and/or create new taxes that never existed before, just to pay off the government's bills. The citizens would be like "the fuck bro" and those that could move, would. And since it's an internet time waster instead of an actual place where we live and work and stuff, it's simple to just choose to leave entirely, OR just choose not to use the paid features (not a single one of you fuckers has paid actual real money for WinZip, don't lie to me).
That's not to say that transferring ownership might not be a good idea. If a price is agreed on and someone steps up, the key to "new management" is trying to provide users familiarity, first and foremost. A more convenient, more accessible, enhanced experience, sure, that's on the horizon. And maybe monetization of some things is in the future, sure, maybe. As long as it's in ways that will never affect the vast majority of users, and wouldn't affect balance in any way... perhaps it even catches on and becomes a fad, like ... I can't believe I'm saying this... but... look at the ridiculous market for hats in Team Fortress 2. Valve used to charge for the game itself. Then they introduced hats. Soon they made so much money selling hats in TF2 that they made the game free to play (so they could attract MORE users to buy hats!).
But if the user base is dwindling already without monetization schemes, what do you think adding them in will do to the basic user experience? lol