Dear Richard,
I hope your tour through Oceania is going well.
I'm sure this is not the most convenient time to address you with complaints, but I'm afraid the utter disappointment of the great many RDF-members and former forum admins that I have talked with yesterday more than justifies this little note.
Over the years, the RDF forum has become a bit of a sanctuary for former theists who needed support AND for current theists who had doubts, as well as for atheists who needed sound rational arguments to back up their position. Forum members and administrators of the likes of Calilasseia, Darwin's Bulldog, Hackenslash, Susu.exp, Tim O'Neill and many others put considerable effort into the many informative and educational contributions they posted, and the forum has been a real help to me in discussions with creationist relatives and friends, and a great source of information and education.
Whereas I have been a less prolific poster than some others, my own posts also aimed to help the occasional theist/creationist-with-doubts who dropped by at the forum, and I dare hope that we indeed have been able to help a few.
Moreover, the forum had become a community: there were many people that I had come to consider friends, even though I didn't know their names, even though I had never seen them and even though the forum was my primary means of keeping in touch with.
Now, the forum is gone. It was destroyed - and I did pick that word with care - overnight, with-out any warning whatsoever to the members. The "View your posts", "View active Topics" and "Search" functions being disabled, saving to my harddisk the great number of posts that I would have liked to save for reference has become virtually impossible. Many threads have been cut-off mid-discussion.
Dear Richard, I have no idea whether you are aware of this, but please know that the forum was important, both for social and educational purposes.
In 2008, you wrote the following (on the forum):
“It is a community, and that is a valuable part of it. Many of our forum threads have an atmosphere of friends going out for a drink and chatting. I think that is valuable, and I don’t think we should insist on sticking to serious topics. That would be a good way to stifle the sense of community, and that would be a real shame.”
I cannot but wholeheartedly agree with this, and express my utter disillusion at the way things were handled by your staff in closing down the forum two days ago.
Yours sincerely,
SDL
