Hi All
I would never judge anyone or their actions.
But I care about this forum and what it has helped with in our community.
This forum helped us raise funds for Forest Hill Library @leafandgroove and right now Stefanie’s Memorial. All of these mean a lot to me.
I hope everyone keeps on reading posts and contributing.
Thank you, but I don’t deserve this praise as I just do what I feel is right.
@anon93536262 Given the forum was started and has been paid for solely by Chris that would be a difficult thing to give away.
And when you say “Give it to the community”, to whom in the community? It is already run by members and ex members of the community.
Finally, of the over 81,500 posts on here I wonder how many are divisive as a whole. I personally don’t think most members care much for the very small percentage of discord, they just want a local forum where they can be kept up to date on local issues and events or post about them. This is why politics is an opt in topic as it allows 99% of the community never to have to listen to the spoutings in there.
This forum is not perfect, but then I don’t believe forums can ever be for all of the people all of the time.
All I ask is that people continue to support the forum even if you find you believe you can’t support the owner. That is your choice.
@anon93536262 Very true but the issue for some was that the Owner was also the only Moderator and when they didn’t like something it was out, no explanation. Also, if they didn’t like you, you were also out. No explanation.
But before we continue please take a moment to read the latest thread from the mods.
is the old one you are referring to .com? If so one reason is that that site is rubbish and far less user friendly that this one (I’m also not happy they wanted to charge me to attempt to let my house for a couple of months).
Hi James
I’ll respond but without my moderator hat on for the sake of clarity.
When I moved to the area not far off 16 years ago, the only local source of information I could find was the .com site. At the time I found it hugely useful, and it no doubt still holds some interesting information in it’s archives.
I once spent a considerable time detailing a list of all parks in the area (similar to the one I did here) and it got deleted for no reason - though in contrast to others did get a response when I asked why.
It’s not my place to say why, but that site effectively lost most of its active members. Some moved here, and some will have moved to facebook groups like the popular se23mums which I am also part of.
I’ve no doubt that from a user experience across multiple devices this is one of the best forums, not just locally, to use. I think there is an underestimation of the amount of work that has gone in to developing that in the first place, and to continually improve and maintain it.
You and the poster above are correct - the platform should in effect merely facilitate members to help with various projects - and I believe in that it succeeds. The forum cannot generate or push what people do - only people can do that - but the forum has been well designed, in my opinion to allow that.
In a utopia, you’d hopefully not need moderators and the site could self-moderate. At times, the site almost does, at others it needs lots if intervention.
I’ve probably strayed a little into speaking as a mod, apologies. But for clarity this is just my opinion.
Thanks
Al
I think that’s a sweeping understatement.
Firstly a small amount of that software has been coded by Chris himself in at least the form of the bots that try and regulate discussion and bring relevant content into the forum.
Secondly Chris clearly spent a lot of time organising posts, directing users to appropriate topics, promoting users and enabling messaging, handing out likes and badges as well as curating content into the forum & keeping his ‘ear to the ground’ on local topics of interest.
Software also doesn’t run itself indefinitely. Things crash, need backing up, maintaining and upgrading. I’m sure there’s lots of that work that has gone on completely unseen behind the scenes, and knowing IT, probably at the most inconvenient times too!
So I don’t think it is as simple as just ‘passing the software on’ and letting it run itself.
Did similar 
Yep that bit was strange - I never understood the logic - I could understand pinning people who paid for advertising, but not allowing conversation on those areas was bizarre and frustrating in equal measures.
Irrespective of recent events I imagine most of us would agree that the software product supporting this forum is streets ahead of others out there, and that it would be good to think se23.life could be restored to the trusted status it formerly enjoyed – before a critical proportion of members vote with their feet.
Whilst I would not begrudge Chris Beach his once-aired idea that a number of technically related local forums might provide a reliable income, I could never see that happening without overt ‘monetization’ (yuk!) of the system, and the consequent risk of further ‘forum wars’, and can envisage it even less from where we are now.
Q: Would Chris be prepared to cede ownership of se23.life and its software licence to others? And would they be prepared to take it on (I’d suggest dropping all but the se23 variant) – and raise or otherwise stump up the monthly licence fee? I believe it’s either US$100 or 300 per month depending on the exact feature set we seem to have available (and whether Chris has negotiated a special rate based on his own technical contributions to the Discourse product).
As a developer myself I don’t underestimate the time and effort, never mind the hard cash, that Chris has invested here. However I do doubt the wisdom of adding any custom features which depend on one individual for their understanding and maintenance. I’ve been there myself, regretted it, and have shed a few such millstones in my time. I’d be inclined to remove them, and doubtless still have the ‘bees’ knees’ in local forum software.
For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t have the time for hands-on involvement myself, and offer these thoughts for what they’re worth. (and I realise this may not be much, coming from someone far less active here than before).
Edited to add: Discourse give a 50% discount to ‘registered non-profits’ (US parlance). A putative new SE23 community group might qualify. It should be easy enough to raise the outlay via social events etc. Or maybe the forum could fall under the wing of the Library / Leaf & Groove organisation (just a thought).
Bit cryptic? What threads?
PM’d you.
Thanks for this. OK after reading the update it’s not going to be a good forum ever if admins continue to cover what’s happened up. Fgs there’s no way this can be under police investigation no one has none anything illegal lol. But there was a serious, serious beach of trust with this community and I would not be surprised if people feel like they don’t want to post here anymore I would not blame them. Ilwonder how long my reply will stay up.
Why don’t you wait and see. I certainly have nothing to hide.
It sounds like something big has happened here and those of us who haven’t been on the site recently don’t have a clue what it is!!! If there is a breach of trust rather than just people having the usual disagreements, I think it appropriate that a summary is shared rather than just hiding the original post. It would be good to know so we can make decisions on whether we want to continue using the forum. At the moment it’s all a bit cloak and dagger.
Agree the mods should share very brief smary without justification, judgement or excuses of what exactly happened, hwo that does or doesn’t affect users and how they will restore trust going forward. Just the facts.
Fran I’ve pmd you x
There has been plenty of speculation thrown about recently. We informed all members the topic was closed whilst a police investigation was ongoing. This is still in effect.
The topic and other topics have not been deleted, they are hidden whilst the investigation takes place, something I am sure most forums would do.
All I ask is that you give the police time to act, making assumptions is not going to get anyone anywhere fast
we don’t want accusations and speculation just the facts or what happened then people can make their minds up to use the site or not? Or temporarily close the site if there really is a police investigation? I don’t think anyone has done anything illegal but if there is speculation that someone has is that not a solution??
It’s ok guys, whatever happened was everyone else’s but Chris’ fault!
https://twitter.com/se23lifechris/status/1152689351157059584?s=21