Why are the forums being shut down?

[Donatas Kaulinis]

I have read the blog post but I still don't understand what happened. Does anyone have information on this?

[BillyTheAdult]

Angela banned? You can read this thread but honestly I don't think anything is going to be much more clear when you're done.

[apsinvo]

Although steve pretends to be super spiritual, I think ultimately his ego just got super crushed because a few regulars decided they didn't much like it here anymore and the oppressive moderating regime so they started a new forum. I think steve's quite shocked at just how many people joined this new forum and just how quickly they did it. Don't get me wrong, the new forum looks like an even bigger ego-fest but hey - it is what it is.

[Brutha]

For a while Steve wants to spend more time on face to face interaction and less time on online interaction.
He tried transfering the admin job to Erin but it didn't really work and Erin's involvement in the forum sank as well.

Steve then made the decision to seek another person for the role of the admin. Getting someone from the outside would have been a bit strange. After a bunch of months Mariana Trench volenteered to take over the role.

At the same time a new forum called PDforYou get's opened up by the forum member LostMyMap.
He invites a few members of this forum to join him on his forum. Among them Angela and supertom. Steve has a quite complicated history with Angela that's to long to retell completely.

Angela and Supertom write PM's on this forum to invite other members of this forum to PDforYoo.
A lot of those members get an account on PDforYou. Some of them such as Mariana Trench in turn invite other members of the forum. In total around 60 people join PDforYou.
People like Mariana quit the forum because they don't like it's exclusity.

Nobody of them told Steve about the existence of the forum. Suddenly someone informs him about the existence of the forum. Steve feels betrayed by those members because they didn't tell him and used the PM system of this forum to advertise the new forum. He makes his decisions without talking to those people from whom he feel betrayed.
Giving the forum to Mariana to administrate doesn't seem to an option for Steve anymore.

Steve also thinks that the forum isn't worth perserving if so many people of this problem have so issue with going elsewhere without telling him. Instead of spending more energy on finding a solution of how the forum can exist without him spending time on it he decides:
"At the moment I’m not in a place where I feel particularly concerned about others’ feelings. [...] At the moment I’m not in a place where I feel particularly concerned about others’ feelings. [...] For me this is a matter of self-love and self-care."

He makes a decision to be done with the forum and end it's existence.
Midnite offers to take over the adminship but it's too late, Steve made a decision to end the forum and doesn't take up the offer of someone else running the community completely without him.

[BillyTheAdult]

If I recall correctly Steve had insinuated that he was through with the forums and may shut them down several times in the past 6 or 8 months or so. I think it just never got any special notice from most.

[Ink]

Well that sucks. Give adminship to Brutha Steve, please! There are plenty of people who love this place still.

[brendannz]

Originally Posted by Brutha

. He makes his decisions without talking to those people from whom he feel betrayed.

I think if he had talked those people (or us) about it, he may feel a bit differently about it,

but at the same time, I don't think he really owes anybody this time.

[Plays With Life]

Lol @ the big fonts.

[garentee]

Originally Posted by brendannz

I think if he had talked those people (or us) about it, he may feel a bit differently about it,

but at the same time, I don't think he really owes anybody this time.

Not so much that he owes anybody anything, though in the spirit of Personal development a more holistic approach to communication may well have avoided the problems with toxicity that we see here...

[Bliss Sage]

Originally Posted by BillyTheAdult

Angela banned? You can read this thread but honestly I don't think anything is going to be much more clear when you're done.

It was all very clear to me after I read that thread - ok, I didn't read all of it, it is huge.

I totally agree with you, by the way. This forum, in fact, was very cliquey right from the first time I dared to post on here, and I was never accepted in with them. I think we should feel complimented not to have been invited. I do. I would even suggest that if some of those people had left much earlier, especially Angela, these forums would have been a much more pleasant place.

[Brutha]

I don't think it's wise to give the forums to anyone else to own or administrate simply from a legal standpoint. That's handing over thousands of email addresses to someone who was not the person with whom the members originally agreed to give their addresses. Know what I mean?

Deleting the email addresses is no problem.
The forum can run without having email addresses of the members.
Steve could simply delete them from the database and hand over the database.

Every member of the forums had to re-sign their forum agreement under the new owner. She lost a lot of people but most came back.

Making people resign forum agreement is no real problem.

[Andreas]

Steve,

When you make the forum read-only, would it be possible to allow us to log into the read-only forum if we wanted to PM a member, at least for a few weeks after the shutdown? That way, it would give longtime posters who've been busy during the holidays a chance to exchange contact info.

A good friend of mine did this when he shut down his forum, and it worked very well.

[Laurenaus]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Deleting the email addresses is no problem.
The forum can run without having email addresses of the members.
Steve could simply delete them from the database and hand over the database.
Making people resign forum agreement is no real problem.

Did anyone consider this??? There has to be a less destructive solution to this problem.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Laurenaus

Did anyone consider this??? There has to be a less destructive solution to this problem.

This has already been addressed in other threads.