Alex and I have been talking with Mel facilitating. With very high probability, the end result of those discussions will be the movement of this forum to diehards.org. That has a number of benefits, most important being the co-location of this forum and the existing diehards.org front end to the M* forum.
I am writing this post because moving the forum to diehards.org leaves loose ends hanging in the form of commitments that I made to the members here at or after opening.
- I promised you no trolls on this forum. My opinion is that VGDH at M* came near the precipice because forum management would not deal with one person who trashed thread after thread after thread. I value free speech as highly as anyone but I also value peace and sanity for thousands of innocents whose meeting place was vandalized by one man.
- I promised you no advertising. With hosting costing nearly nothing these days and with very capable forum software available for free, it is my opinion that advertising is not necessary to carry a forum. To carry advertising for products that are antithetical to the mission of a forum in order to defray miniscule expenses is a tragedy of misplaced priorities.
- I promised you that the forum would claim no copyright in what you posted. Your words are your property as far as I am concerned.
- I promised you that I would not disclose information that could be used to identify you to any third party, absent a court order. The site diehards.org and its proprietors are third parties and I will need to know whether I can pass on such information, in particular, your email address and the IP address(es) you post from.
I ask Alex to post a followup to this message either committing diehards.org to the above or not, as he sees fit. I ask all of you to wait to see what Alex has to say about these items on behalf of diehards.org before posting any followups yourself. If what Alex commits to will be unsatisfactory to you after the forum moves to diehards.org, then make your feelings known, either in this thread or by email / PM to me. I insist that you wait for Alex to have his say.
No one is better off with two similar forums running and three entry points. Some Diehards are reading only one of the forums. Others are checking both and sometimes posting on both, which is extra work. The software on this forum is better, it looks to me like all of you have made this forum a busier place than M* VGDH is these days, but that does not change the simple truth that all Diehards would gain if all Diehards were in one place. That's why I'm talking to Alex and why Alex is talking to me. We are both interested in a better Diehards forum and we are sure that all of you are too.