First, thank you Brian for taking on the responsibilities of the operations and management of TheChipGuide and all of its forums. Greg was a very wise man, and his looking to you to carry on with his labor of love was another example of just how wise he was. He couldn't have made a better choice.

I have a number of friends who own/operate/moderate online forums, and every single one of them will tell you that maintenance involves a great amount of time - much more than most people realize. In some (or most) cases, the financial commitment needed to keep things running is also much more than most people realize - reliable servers cost real money and bandwidth does too. I participate in quite a few online forums, and this is the only one that provides file upload for images. Granted, the image files age off in a set time frame, but while they are being hosted by TCB, they occupy bandwidth. That is a very valuable tool for even the most novice computer user. Being able to upload directly to this site is so much easier for everyone than having to find another form of host and HTML paste/link the images into the body of a post.

One of the other things that makes this place different from others is it doesn't cost the user/visitor anything to participate. Some require a membership fee to join. Some require an annual membership fee to participate. Some rely on a lot of on-site advertising banners and links to offset most (or all) of the operating costs.

All of the other forums that I visit on a regular basis are moderated to some extent. That is completely understandable. I know of a few (in which I don't participate) that are unmoderated or regulated as to content. Chaos and anarchy just don't appeal to me at any level. At the other extreme, I'll see people rant about 1st amendment rights when they believe a forum is over-moderated or the rules (that they agree to during sign-up) are too restrictive. They seem unable to differentiate between a privately owned entity and the government.

I sometimes wish this BB software had the flexibility to add forum categories devoted to specific off topic discussions. It doesn't, so we have to deal with it as it is. I say "sometimes wish", because I usually don't mind the simplicity of this particular type of forum structure. KISS is almost always the best way to do things.

All of that said, I believe the tone of what Greg put forth in his "First Time Users" statement should continue to be the foundation of how this forum is conducted. It really does reflect how we interact in person, other than the occasional troll or the spam posts. When I go to the convention or a chip show, it is to spend time with friends. The face-to-face conversations are all over the map. Of course some of them are hobby related, but many of them have nothing to do with the hobby. The only difference might be it is a little harder to walk away from a hot video poker machine because you don't care to listen to what someone is saying than it is to ignore (or not click on) a BB post on a topic that is of no interest to you.

As to controversial discussions having a negative affect on club membership (brought up by others in this thread), I'm not quite sure how to respond. We are all human beings. As such, we all have the ability to form opinions. Expressing opinions is normal behavior. Ignoring posts that the titles suggest will be a topic that is of no interest to the potential reader is a pretty easy thing to do, especially if the topic is likely to contain opinions. I can state that through the years, there have been many times that meeting persons face-to-face for the first time, the conversations began with something like "thank you for writing what I was thinking", or "let's talk about your strange political beliefs". I believe political discussions should still have a place in this forum. Occasionally, there will be long threads that erupt with strong opinions expressed within them. Even during the current climate of politics and economics that affect us all, I don't think they (the political threads) have become overwhelming to the point of banning them. ...but, that's just my opinion.