Ok folks, just going to add my perspective to the fast moving thread so people can get a better handle on what's been happening and people's motivations -
(1) A week ago I put my hand up and offered resources to help manage and maintain the forum from a technical perspective. As most know there have been serious problems, and I have significant experience and expertise in the area, as well as the ability to commit the time and resources. I simply didn't want to lose this fabulous resource, and I still don't
(2) In discussions about fixing the issues it became clear that the JREF did not have an emotional investment in the forum, did not want to continue support for the forum, and haven't for some time. It doesn't fit in to their vision of where JREF should be heading, and is a drain on time and resources.
I believe Sharon was instrumental in convincing them not to just simply close the whole thing down -
she deserves the community's thanks
(3)
This was all occurring in the context of severe performance issues and the risk of the hardware failing completely and everything being lost.
(4)
In this context, as part of establishing how to proceed, which involved communication that was copied to both Sharon, Rick Adams, and at least one other board member, the JREF principles clearly decided I had the know-how and resources to manage the forum and offered to let me simply take it over and get it fixed. They had a few requests regarding decoupling from the JREF name. I was more than surprised to receive the offer but agreed. My motivation was purely to not lose this forum, which I enjoy greatly. Rick and I have continued to have good communication in solving issues.
(5) The first order of business was dealing with the immediate risk of hardware failure and the loss of all data. After a number of attempts Rick managed to do a successful off-server backup so all would not be lost. I was given access to the server (not the forum itself, I've never had admin access and still don't) to get an understanding of the issues involved in transferring it to a new server to solve the immediate, critical, problems. This is just like any other technician working with web servers or your computers or any websites that you access, that would theoretically give me the ability to rummage through the data - but it would be quite a time consuming and difficult thing to do. Every person at the data center where the server is stored has potentially the same ability, much like technical staff at Hotmail or Google or anywhere else. I have not looked at any personal data, and I will not look at any personal data. To do so would be both unethical and illegal and put myself and my company at legal risk. Companies all the time must make decisions on who they trust to handle their data, in this situation JREF trusted me - note: not anonymous forumite "icerat" - but
real world me. From the beginning we have been dealing with these issues using my corporate email account.
(6) The next order of business was to speak to all the mods/admins about the proposal and get everyone on board to get their input and ideas and make things happen to save the fourm. Unfortunately under the strain of constant peppering from curious and upset forumites Sharon revealed some of what was going on but without being able to fill in all the details (on handling privacy etc etc) and before the mods/admins were involved in the discussion. I think it's was the cumulative pressure she was under rather than Darats' emails per se that led to her "vitriolic" comments, have some sympathy for her role, it's not really what she was hired for.
Now, lots of people were understandably confused and pissed off. The admins obviously should have been in the loop earlier but it didn't happen. Fortunately good lines of communications now exist between myself, Darat, Lisa, Locknar and most other admins and mods, as well with Jeff Wagg who has great experience with this system and I know many of you have great faith in. We and JREF are pretty much all on the same page now and we're putting together a proposal and timeline for how we think things should proceed, addressing all the issues regarding privacy and content etc.
They were all areas I intended to address before anything drastic happened.
The short of it is that a bunch of people who love this place want to save it, and are working to do so. For now, things are much the same as they were. The forum is still at risk of imminent failure (hello lagging) but JREF now has a backup. A plan to move forward is being developed, and we'll let everyone know what it is and asking for input as soon as it's more concrete. In the meantime you can help us try to
work out a new name for our favourite place to waste time.
I hope that clarifies things. Fire away with questions publicly or in PM
I'm pretty sure that was my idea.
