Some of you may have seen my posts in Town Hall or the suck thread.
After a decade, it's probably time for a new chapter.
Quick summary.
While I do the technical stuff and pay the bills, I have not had any active involvement in any ban discussions, in years (I think other than the first year or so, I haven't even had a vote and only rarely participated in discussions before mods voted and haven't even done that in many years). I have never unilaterally banned someone. I am about as anti-ban as Buff. I despise them and given my choice would only ban spammers.
So, I created the site, but with the agreement that rules would be created and agreed upon by the community and bans MUST be voted on and agreed by a majority of mods, so we could never have a trigger happy mod banning, or have bans instituted due to personal or topical disagreements. We've run that way since pretty much day one of the forum.
That said, we have a vocal group of posters that constantly complain about how things are run and a subset of them that routinely accuse me of having people I disagree with banned. While that's not true or anything close to the truth, the mods have been in a difficult position since the official policy is not to explain details about bans, and a belief (so I'm told, as my main account has no access to the mod forums) that if they counter those accusations they won't be believed anyway, so it's best to just ignore them.
I disagreed and still do, because I don't think there are many people that would put up and maintain (financial and time) a forum, allow others to set the rules, enforce the rules, and have no active part in managing AND then also sit back and allow people to regularly accuse him of abusing his power and banning people and just let it go. I've reached the point that if people are going to keep accusing me of abusing my power and banning people who disagree with me, then I should start doing what I'm accused of. However, since I DON'T believe that's what is right, this alternative is probably better.
Anyway, that's the only part of this last ten years that I haven't enjoyed and taken pride in. While we are a small community, and many people have moved off to Facebook or Twitter, it's one I enjoy and take great pride in.
That said, there is a vocal minority that don't like me or how the forum is run, and this same vocal minority regularly tells me via PM that the silent majority does not like me or how the forum is run.
I've now reached the point that I'm tired of that, and only that, aspect of BroncosForums, so the simple solution is just to end it.
So, while I'm not going to shut BroncosForums down, because I made the commitment when I started it that as long as people were coming, I would pay the bills and keep it open -- and I keep my commitments, I have given permission that if someone else wants to start up an alternate forum, they can openly recruit on this site.
My suggestion, for what it's worth, since as mentioned I'm told most don't like how I've setup BF to run, is to be careful about creating a place that's cliquish and where those not in the clique are abused or banned, simply for having different viewpoints.
With that, it's been a fun decade. I've enjoyed the Broncos conversations as well as political and other discussions in the opt in forums.
Once the transition happens, maybe I'll see some of you on the Mane or Mania or the new forum. If not, I've enjoyed it while it lasted.
It's been my pleasure and a source of pride to run BroncosForums for the past decade plus, and I'll miss it.
T