SF-Fandom Forums To Be Reorganized
We have been struggling with the many changes that time has forced upon us across the Xenite.Org Network this year. Our Websites have aged and become fragile. Over the past few months many of our sites have been redesigned, upgraded, and changed in irrevocable ways. Regrettably, these changes have driven some of our old friends away. We really had no choice in the matter.
When you allow a Web server to grow old and you don’t update your software, you become vulnerable to many, many types of attacks from unscrupulous people around the world. At first our forums were flooded with tens of thousands of fake registrations by link spammers who were trying to promote their shoddy Websites in search engine results. After the link spammers’ attacks subsided we found the server under almost constant attack from hackers in China and Russia.
Securing our forums, blogs, and custom CGI scripts against these attacks took a heavy toll on our resources. We have had to radically upgrade our forums more than once over the last year because the older VBulletin software had become totally exposed to hacker attacks. In the process of upgrading the forums we took the very bold step of adding the VBulletin Content Management System. Unfortunately, we have never had the resources to fully exploit that system and many of our visitors have been dismayed by its almost irrelevant default settings.
Although the SF-Fandom forums still receive many visitors we have been asked on several occasions to simplify the forum structure. There are simply too many old forums where the topics have fallen out of favor. Old TV shows and movie franchises no longer stimulate interesting conversation among our members.
Rather than drop a “Use it or lose it” ultimatum on our community’s fragile nerves the moderation team has been quietly discussing what options are available to us. We have decided that the best move will be to shut down some forums, moving their discussions into more general forums. By reducing our forum count we hope to be able to better focus on the discussions people are still enjoying. We also hope that the browsing experience will be easier on the eyes for new visitors.
To that end, the weekend of September 10-11 has been set as the time for the forum closings. There are many secondary pages that people use to find our forums. We cannot promise they will all be updated, but where we have the ability to make changes we will do our best to effect those changes quickly.
As always, we the members of the SF-Fandom community and especially the moderation team appreciate your support and participation through the years. We hope you’ll continue to visit and to join in our discussions. These forums are here for you as much as for us.