Well, 2002 comes to a close and it's been a busy year.
We have had over 380,000 posts! In them we've laughed, we've cried, we've celebrated and commiserated, we've fallen out and made up and we've seen new people come and people move on.
What's to come in 2003?
Well, some changes ...
The new forum is nearly ready (though I expect will never be 'finished' lol) and I think it is a good opportinity to do some things differently and make a 'fresh start'.
I have incorporated features that will allow me to give other people the chance to get involved running the site so it becomes less 'mine' and more 'ours'. Up till now, I didn't have the features needed to make this possible but I intend to make good use of them and will be inviting people to lend a hand if they feel they'd like to.
I hope people will stop and consider what they think the personal attacks and vendettas will accomplish and see if they can't make up or at least cease hostilities.
The new forum will have more security features to make it easier to identify and make public duplicate accounts which I hope will prevent some of the trouble and there will be some clear posting guidelines which everyone will be expected to adhere to. Really, having a post edited or deleted is not the end of the world and people shouldn't make such a big fuss over it.
Personal security is being beefed up too - personal info will not be visible as currently and private messaging / contact requests can be made to swap contact info securely (which should also help for gift exchanges and the like). This should cut down on viruses and faked emails and make it harder for people to cause problems.
There will still be the public areas of the site but also a new members only area (ie. only people who have an account will see it) as well as a place for administrators to discuss and agree any issues and the direction of the site instead of by email. I'm also considering making additional 'areas' available for peer support over abuse issues and for groups who need to securely discuss various 'campaigns' without having to go to external sites where identities are difficult to confirm (they will probably be invitation / request only). Other possibilities are having adult natured discussions in an area that is by request only and not visible (even on active topics) to everyone.
I've fixed plenty of bugs so us UK'ers will now be able to post pound signs (yay) and such like.
I will also be able to make security more granular and be able to grant individuals more control over areas of the site that the would like to help with.
The new forum should be slicker and faster than ever and give us plenty of room for continued growth as we go through the new year.
I'm looking forward to it and I hope we can all do our part to make it a continued success.