PhilForum check in

You have to be one of the sweetest, kindest people I have ever met. I dont know exactly what it is...but I do sense something about you that makes you very unique and special. And I felt badly for you in reading your initial posts here. I know this has been a difficult transition for most, whereas myself being a less frequent poster than most am less affected, but still did prefer the old forum. I will say this robert seems to be willing to bend over backwards for people, and I think is the main developer of the site. So he may take it in any direction he wishes.

anyways,
Sometimes sun, sometimes rain.

Well, when it gets up again, I will send you an invite.

In the meantime we are reassembling the group at another site, The Galilean Library I mentioned, if you are interested in joining us there.

Why thank you Mark.
Good to see you again.
Have an extraordinary evening, and everything, always. Sir.
Neil

What what?! this is my first post on the new forum, what is up with the un user friendly format? I am so lost lol

We're working on that davidm. And we eat our own dog food here too, we need the groups urgently for our own staff forums.

I suspect we'll have something (initially rough) ready soon.

I would just like to say that Robert, you have been a star in all this commotion.
While I would have like PF to have remained the way it was, change is change and I am deeply appreciative of the hard work you are putting into this operation.
Thank you.

To much and you'll need an umbrella for both. (sun smiles sadly)

Because, frankly, it doesn't "feel" like a community anymore. It feels like the PF community was assimilated by this large network of discussions. The focus of a2k is no longer philosophy, but includes such topics as "television", "food and drink", "relationship help"....

The thing is, we had already made our community at the old site, and it was a pretty good one. Then to have this happen with no warning or discussion...well...that had nothing to do with a community. It was just part of someone's plan to buy up successful, special-interest forums and then dump them into this huge forum, without regard for the members' feelings on the change. As for security issues, there are hundreds of perfectly secure vBulletin boards out there that aren't getting hacked, so I don't buy that as the main reason for this move. It was what you intended to do all along, that much is clear.

It is great to see you, it is only un-user friendly until you make friends with it.
Please for the sake of those who will miss you give it a try.
Where ever you go let us know.
I used to have a Stafy in the family

Seems like the bandwidth requirements would be fairly low. Unless a great number of people are watching videos. I never watch any. Other than that its mostly just text being uploaded/downloaded.

The most valued and important resource would be the database. I think they are primarily using My Sql, which runs on the linnux apache web server. If I remember right. Ive only dealt with microsoft products in the past, although I did have red hat linnux installed on one of my computers a while back. Cant say I liked it much and had no reason to keep using it.

Anyway its a nice thought you have, im just not sure how practical it is. Be interesting to see what other users think.

Pangloss,

Getting hacked changed timing, not overall plans. I have not ever claimed otherwise. We just had planned to do this a lot better, with more of the communication you legitimately fault us for lacking.

And yes, it's possible to run a secure VB install, but we had an install that had been hacked twice and with limited human resources we had to make a decision on how to best plug the serious hole on our server.

But that is small fry about timing, I get that you object to the merge beyond matters of timing and I think you raise legitimate concerns about community culture. It's a delicate balance needed between cozy and vibrant to get these things right, and we have some pretty big changed planned aimed at helping strike that balance (groups is a good example, allowing for cozy microcosms within a vibrant community) and I think I am up to the challenge. I hope that more of you give me the opportunity and I wish I could have better engaged the philforum community before this.

Have a look at the original writing forum,

http://able2know.org/forum/original_writing/

click on creative writing

A new forum is entirely doable, and this happens quite often when old forums get shut down from time to time.

The main issues are that, 1) someone or people will need to pay for the server, domain, vBulletin software, and anything else that comes up. Hours spent working on the forum by mods/admins are essentially an economic loss 2) this abrupt change has probably already resulted in the loss of many old PF members. Some may never log-in here to find out about any new site. Others might be so put-off by what's gone on to where they just move on altogether. Without a core contributing group of some of the older members, there can be no forum...the members make the content, and the content makes the forum.

Thanks. This (building knowledge sharing community) has been my favorite hobby for a long time and a lot of other people do this as a labor of love.

This kind of transition will always have rough spots, and this one comes with some extra ones based on timing being forced, but the folks that stick around here are going to enrich our already very vibrant community and the tech side of things, which is irrelevant in comparison, is only going to get better because this is what we dream of doing in our spare time.

sorry whats the reply to all thing

I do that kind of thing for fun, and I am more than willing to pay the costs and do the work, you know. Just saying.

Thanks very much!
I'll have a wee peek.

It doesn't link back to a particular post, such as the @lazymon at the top of this post goes back to your post.

I found the smillies... I think the other forum had better ones...

Show me some you guys like (that I can use) and I'll add/change them.