What really happened to this forum?

I'm not much into spekulation and conspiracy, but I think it had also to do with low numbers of philosophers.

Robert Gentel and Jason were attempting a trip around the world when they discovered that the earth is really flat and that it is the center of the universe. With these new bits of information in hand, they returned to the philosophyforum.com site and bellowed, "behold! A new day dawns upon us, the forum has been saved from extinction!" Robert then began playing a lively tune on a flute and all the philosophical hamsters followed him to their new home here at A2K. The A2k hamsters welcomed them with open arms, shared their meals with them and gave each of them fresh straw in which to make a home.

The PhilForum hamsters slowly came out of the shadows and began building their nests with the fresh straw that had been given them. Some complained about the freshness and appearance of the straw while others were just glad to have some place where they could be together with friends to think and to talk about thinking.

He is. His name is Robert Gental. He purchased the PF for $5000.00 USD. He has not hid this fact. He has been very transparent about this. Perhaps you haven't had the face time (online interaction with him), but I'd say that if he says his motives were security related, it's true. There are perhaps less radical ways, but as owner and manager, he decided this action was the best. He had already developed this successful forum platform. I don't think that PF members would have been better served by him taking a great deal of time and again rebuilding a completely new platform. As it stands, he is bringing over a lot of the features from the old site. This will be good for all users, IMO.

I've been to many forums, and I think the vision of this site is not to do just what has been tested, but to find a new things that are untested. Meanwhile, we are still able to meet in rhetorical congress and opine over apples, oranges, and the meaning of lice.

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The site was bought by the owner of A2k.

The hack caused the planned merger to be done way sooner than was planned.

Most of the threads from the old forum came over with you guys.

well said!

Damn. I miss the old site and I'm sure most of the members from the original philosophy forum would agree with me.

Don't worry, Hue-man, there was a lot of whining when some fairly major changes were done to A2K some time before you folks joined. Folks got over the changes with time and now the vast majority probably can't even remember what they were.

It's hard to move from the functionality and robustness of the philosophyforum.com (PF) site to this site. The PF platform was way better than this one. Perhaps this platform is better able to handle the vast amounts of users and posts, but the PF platform better served the constituent users.

Sorry able2know, you fail to provide a workable and enjoyable site on too many levels.

Have put your input in the thread where RG asked for feedback or have you just occasionally complained in other threads ignorant of the work being put in to accomodate you on the merger.

RG doesn't have to make any of these changes he's working to get for the former PF people. He's doing it because he wants the users to have good features. There's a way to get the things you want from the old PF: Wait.

Now it's going to take the same amount of time for these features to be integrated no matter what. So perhaps in the mean time, you can spare us the woe is me.

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Oh my guys, crap happens then we die. make the best of it or move on.

There was no "woe is me" in my post. Sorry you interpreted it that way. Also, I was not complaining. I was just stating the facts as I see them.

I have no need to complain to Robert or anyone else on this forum. I understand that a lot of work has gone into the merger, but a lot of work does not a good product make.

It's not the features of the old forum that I think were better. In fact, I never once mentioned "features" in my post. It's functionality that makes a forum enjoyable and I don't think able2know provides a functional forum, especially compared with the old PF site.

By the way, I have not complained in other posts. In fact, I was a proponent for giving this site a chance. I gave it it's chance and still feel that it fails on many levels.

What provides "functionality" on a website that isn't a feature? What makes a good "product" on a website that is not a feature? Tell me a non-feature that made the PF more functional than A2K.

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The woe is me crap is this A2K "fail" crap. It is complaining.

What the hell is up with some of you guys. Former philosophyforum members are just stating their opinion about this site compared to the old philosophy forum. Stop taking it so personally. It's not that serious.

I'll just state my opinion on that. It's getting old.

As one of the other PF posters put it on one of the threads, "move on".

It could be that the original A2k posters have more or less adapted to the "change is the new normal here" way of life at A2k, but really, he had it right.

Depends on your definition of "radical".

For the owner of the site, it would have been "radical" to spend a bunch of money/time/effort/resources to solve the problem.

Instead, he spent (presumably) less money/time/effort/resources to merge the two sites, which hopefully will end up benefiting both sites.

I think he is misusing "functionality" to substitute for "familiarity."

Many of us old A2Kers had the same complaints when we switched from the old format to this one. Now that we're all familiar with this format, it functions well for most of us.

We had plenty of this attitude from A2K members when the new site debuted.

Give the new folks a chance to adjust and become familiar with the new layout.

Edit: I see that BFN beat me to that observation.

I'll add that there are plenty of Internet discussion boards that have gone the way of the dodo and everything was just gone, whereas your site was migrated with the data preserved.

That's pretty cool, IMO.

Functionality of a site is the implementation of features.

For instance, feature: List all the posts that I have made. The way that all of the posts are presented and the options that come with the listings is the functionality of that feature. PF.com did this better. Sure, you can argue that "the options that come with the listings" points to features that were available on the old site that are not available on this site, but that is not how I am viewing it. The way I view it is that this site presents information a certain way and the old site a different way. The old site did a better job of presenting information (like my posts).

When I look up "functionality" in Google, the definition is "capable of serving a purpose well". This site seems less capable of serving certain purposes than the old site.

Does that sufficiently answer your questions?

As to the complaining, If I cook a bad dinner for my son, I expect him to tell me that it is not a good dinner, I don't expect him to sit idle and keep his mouth shut. If he tells me that the dinner is bad, he is not complaining, he is giving his opinion on my dinner. Likewise, I think this site fails to serve it's constituents as well as the old site did. I stated my opinion about the site. I'm sorry you see that as complaining.

--Post Edit--

I think that Robert did a grand thing by saving this forum and migrating users and old posts. However, just because he did some nice or considerate things by saving the information from the old forum, that doesn't mean that this forum is a better forum. To Robert, thanks for all you have done to save the old forum. I truely mean that. Philosophyforum.com is important to some peoples philosophical development, at one time I was one of those people. Of late it has fallen out of favor in my life and that occured long before any merger.