Quote Originally Posted by TheVBs View Post
Haven't been on here in ages. Used a couple social media groups to plan our recent trip. Definitely not something I prefer over the forum format. Without a doubt social media has had it's impact, but what also had a huge impact, and continues to go unaddressed here, is how ugly things got here in recent years. I saw some very benign comments deleted, and some really horrifically ugly ones allowed to stand. People interacting in a more intimate forum need to feel that the moderating is solid. And I'm saying this acknowledging that moderating is not an easy job, and it's typically thankless. Although, when this site was very active, people were great about expressing appreciation for the moderators. John, can you give us some insight on what the moderating will look like on the new site? I think it may be hard to draw people back if this topic isn't openly addressed.
Believe it or not, all the same comments are posted on social media as well. They just have automatic software that flags a lot of it and prevents it from showing and then they also have a substantial paid staff that reviews flagged content and takes it down quickly.

I used to be a moderator on a couple of forums and it was almost constant nonsense at times. We would take down posts and then the poster would go on a tear posting garbage everywhere. They were often just there to start trouble for their own entertainment or perhaps were there to push some sort of agenda and we would have to ban them. They just come back with a new user name and start again though. Moderating a forum is not easy like you would think.

You also have to keep in mind, we had quite a bit of social issues all happening over the past few years that caused a divide and gave everyone plenty of things to disagree about. It did not take but just a few posts in a thread and it would devolve into basically what equated to a forums version of a bar fight. lol