The primary reason behind combining them was to free up "vertical space" in scrolling on the main forum screen. Scrolling is bad because surfers don't like to have to do much movement to get where they are going.
Since the collectors forum gets relatively little traffic and I felt the topics were similar enough because the people who typically buy customs tend to know collectables, and vice versa. The people frequenting the affected forums tend to be the same group, and as such, there'd be little loss. As it stands now, the Collectables forum is on the very edge of generating enough traffic to justify it remaining open. Combining the two forums is not set in stone yet, but we're seriously (very seriously) looking at doing it quite soon.
The single best way to keep any forum open is to make sure that there is enough traffic to support it. If the traffic picked up to the point where it was steadier, that would be another matter, but as it is now, it's been almost a full year, and it hasn't even hit 800 posts. That's less than 2 new posts a day on average.
As for Les's resignation, the only animosity between him and myself is what he's created on his own; I don't harbor any ill will to him. Please note that I didn't force him to resign this morning, and, to tell you the truth, I found this to be a rather rude shock and didn't see it coming.
I'll be happy to forward copies of the email I sent to him last night detailing upcoming changes to the forums and asking for his feedback, and in there I went out of my way to let him know that he wasn't being swept aside, removed or replaced, because I didn't want a repeat of what happened last time we made changes.
Instead of replying and discussing anything, he chose to fire off a nasty gram to me where he threatened to resign, accused me of being out to get him, and then proceeded to resign anyway. Which, is pretty much a mirror of what happened last time anyhow, only this time there was completely no excuse for it.
This is entirely his choice, and we respect his decision. But, make no mistake, there is nothing underhanded going on here. Les made his own decision, and decided to call it quits despite our best efforts to do the right thing for everyone.
Spark
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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com
Insert witty quip here
[This message has been edited by Spark (edited 10 September 1999).]
