Goodbye BassFishin.com Forum?

[BigBassin144]

Members of the BF.com Forums: over the past few days, I’ve been talking to some of the regulars here about the possibility of us leaving BF.com for our BassChat Forum. I could not contact everyone via PM, so I’m posting this here now. I apologize if I left you out of the original PM letter, but it was more so I could get some feedback, find out some of your concerns, and see where people stood before I make a post on the forum. Unfortunately, I think the time has come to move to a more suitable place for us.

Unfortunately, Kevin has chosen, for whatever reason, to neglect the site and the wonderful group of people who call it home. Kevin has not done anything with the site since August, 2011. Spammers have run loose on the forums posting spam on multiple occasions (some worse than others). And while most of this has been stopped after a long search to find Kevin only to beg him to come fix it, he cannot seem to stop the influx the new spam members. Over the past couple of days, we’ve gotten around 1000 new members, maybe even more. Every time I refresh the page, it seems a few more have registered. On top of that, he still refuses to grant anyone moderator powers.

So I propose we move our operations to the BassChat forum, which I myself created a few years ago to give the members here a chat room. It slowly expanded into a forum that few actually posted on. If we moved, we would be on a Yuku based forum community. Yuku is quite strict about spam, and takes care of a lot of it. What they don’t get, I (or one of the moderators) will take care of. We will have the chat room built right in to the forum, which is a great time for those who haven’t checked it out. The link is www.basschat.yuku.com. Please feel free to head over there and have a look, even register if you’d like. They have even recently release both iOS and Android apps, which I’ve been testing the last couple days.

I’d like to talk about a few things that have been brought up by the group of members I originally PMed. First the addition of moderators to the forum. There are already moderators in place for most of the forum sections on BassChat, and I will be adding more in the coming week or so. However, I strongly believe this forum was so great because of our system of self-moderation. The moderators I have chosen and I are in agreement that we don’t want to change this. The moderators will be in place mainly to deal with spam. They will be able to merge duplicate posts, move threads that are posted in inappropriate sections, and sticky topics if they feel they need it. They will also have the power to close and delete, but have agreed to only use this power in the most severe cases (and for spam). Any future moderators will have the same philosophy, and take a very hands-off approach with the forum.

Another aspect many are concerned with is leaving the BF.com Forums completely. This is a choice that only you can make. Whether you decide to leave completely or just use BassChat as another forum, you will be welcomed there. My hope is that it will become what BF.com once was before being forgotten by its administrators.

I also wanted to alleviate any fears that I have something to personally gain from any of you posting to, or even switching solely to BassChat. I created the forum as a place for the members of this site, and that has not changed. I do not have anything more to gain from it than all of you: a forum filled with good friends, good conversation, and no spam. I also do not have a personal vendetta against Kevin, I'm just disappointed he has forgotten about his friends here.

If any of you have any other concerns, please feel free to voice them here, to me privately via PM, or at BassChat. I will be happy to talk with any of you about whatever it is you’re thinking about the move. A handful of our regular members have already started to post on BassChat, and it’s already feeling like home.

We’ve always said it’s the people here that make the site special, and I wholeheartedly agree. I really would like if we could get enough of us to make BassChat our new go-to bass fishing website.

Anthony(BB)