It's also been a bit of an up and down couple of months here. Most things are ticking along OK, but there have been a few flare ups along the way. Most recently, a member has accused me of being "poltically adverse" to the building of new marinas. Once again the old threat of legal action comes out of the bag and along with it another few hours of my time gone sorting out the problem. For the first time ever yesterday I questioned why I was running this site, and thought that life would be so much easier at times without it, but a trawl though the forums tonight has restored my faith, with genuiune topics being discussed it has reminded me of why we exist.
It has made me think about what we've achieved here. I never started the site with any particular goal or vision. It has sort of evolved, taken a life of it's own and is now more successful that I'd ever have imagined. . In all honesty, when I was 16 I just wanted to have a website. My first attempt was not successful (the less said about it the better) and the intial versions of this site were less than brilliant. However the original forum attracted a number of people who got it off the ground and kept on coming back. It was only in 2004 when the system failed and when I changed to IPB, ditched the rest of the site and concentrated on the forums that it really took off. Now we lots of visitors each day, many interesting debates, and best of all friendships have been formed via the site that might otherwise not have happenend.
With success though comes the associated problems. We can never keep everyone happy, there will always be those who think we treat them unfairly and those who don't like our decisions. We will always have people who break the rules, and numerous reports made to us when they do. We will have the inevitable spammers and junk posts,and we will have maintenance issues to deal with. On average we deal with about 20 reports a week, anwer approx 40 private messages, look at weekly total of nearly 2000 new posts, approve those posts that need approving, moderate posts that need moderating as well as try to find time to participate ourselves. I'm sometimes asked why I don't participate in discussions very often. The answer is that once I've done my share of the above tasks, I simply don't have any time left! The site crew work hard with no reward to help me out, and their efforts must not be underestimated.
So, after brief dip in enthusiasm I'm pleased to say that I'm back up to full strengh and I'd like to thank all of you for your participation in making the site what it is today. In particular, I'd like to thank the volunteer site crew who do a fantastic job looking after the site. It couldn't be done without you.
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