The forum closure has ended after a brief 'cooling off' period.

Hopefully it has given people time to reflect on recent forum developments, and to come back refreshed without a lot of the negativity that has been a problem recently. I for one found the break beneficial, even though this site really did lose its 'soul' without the normal forum activity.

I have had many volunteers come forward and request to be moderators over the last couple of weeks, so thank you all, but to help with moderation consistency, I think the current moderation team will remain fairly static for a short while. Thank you for your offers though – they were genuinely appreciated.

I also have had many suggestions via PMs and on the forums about the best way forward for the forums, but I have chosen to experiment with something fairly unique. If you have a problem with moderation, then I agree that you are entitled too voice your concerns. But from now on, keep all posts in the new forum for this purpose alone. Please don't see the creation of this new forum as an encouragement to complain - rather a way to voice any genuine concerns publicly.

To keep the other forums as clean as possible, if any posts about moderation appears elsewhere, they will be removed immediately. Those who care not about such matters need never read it.

Anyway, apologies to everyone effected by the closure, and I hope past debates can be picked up and continued without too much further disruption.

Oh, and if anyone has picked up a posting ban recently, and is still banned, consider this an armistice, contact me and I will remove it.

Let us hope we never have a repeat of the recent problems.

-Russ