A veritable ****-storm of controversy has been stirred up by the recent revelation that
the JREF is planning to disassociate itself from the forums. Meaning that either they are shut down entirely, or they must be taken over by someone else.
While not a decision that I'd personally disagree with, I can understand the JREF's reasons for doing so. It's a fact that they've had to deal with various lawsuits originating directly from discussions in these forums...and whether those lawsuits were valid or not (so far as I'm aware, nobody ever won such a lawsuit), it created unwanted problems and distractions for the JREF. That alone could be adequate reason to seek to drop the forums. They cannot adequately control what people on the forums may say or do, but by being an official part of the JREF, it opens them up to potential litigation over things said by people who have nothing to do with the JREF.
Many people are, understandably, upset about this. Lisa Simpson, who I'd generally consider one of the more level-headed members, is so upset that she's talked about leaving altogether; she feels it is a betrayal from the JREF, after she's volunteered to help with the forums for a decade or more. And I'm sure she's not alone in that sense of betrayal.
But I'd like to propose an alternative perspective. The vast majority of members here have participated because of the
community...not because of the JREF. In fact, for the past several years, the JREF has had almost zero involvement in the forums, it's effectively been run by us, the members, anyway. So it's not so much that the JREF is abandoning us now -- they abandoned us several years ago. They've just taken this long to get around to formalizing that decision.
Yet during this time, the forum has continued to run just fine, with almost zero involvement or support from the JREF.
Right now, there are really only two options. Option one is shut down the forum entirely, and lose this community.
Some people would keep in touch, through social media, email, or other websites...but truth is, the community we've built would be lost.
More than that, a
huge treasure trove of information would be lost. And that, to me, would be the greatest tragedy of shutting down these forums. There is
so much information here that has been accumulated over the years. I'd really hate to see that lost.
Option two is to find someone else to take charge of the forums. Jeff Wagg has been proposed as the new 'overlord', and personally, I think that'd be a great choice. He's got the experience, he previously oversaw the running of the forums when he worked with the JREF,
and he has a legal organization that the forums can be attached to. In fact, I think the forums were
better under his guidance than they've become since.
Now is not the time for decisions based on emotion. Feeling hurt, abandoned, betrayed, angry...those are all legitimate feelings. But they should
not be the foundation for making decisions about what happens next with these forums. This is a forum dedicated to the idea of rational thinking -- so let's do our best to be rational.
And in some ways, we could see this as an
opportunity. There are some aspects of this forum that people have long disagreed with, but couldn't change because of the JREF's control. The censoring of particular words (like bull-feces) would be a good example. I'd also like to visit the possibility of pardoning
some banned members (Dr. Adequate would be one of my first choices, if he were willing to return).
We could use this as an
opportunity to re-shape the forums in the way that
we, the members, think is best. Certainly, we'll never have 100% agreement about what form that should be; and certainly, we'll lose people along the way.
What it comes down to in the end is this -- the JREF has abandoned the forums. Are we going to abandon them, too?
I say no.
In fact, I say that we take the forums for ourselves, we make them better...and we demonstrate to the JREF what a stupid mistake they made when they decided that the forums had no value to them.
