No they are not making a forum to bash moderators. There is a lot more at stake here. These are all adults, most of them professional artists, some of them famous ones who post anonymously. It grew from a grass roots forum to now having over 10,000 posters world wide and maybe 5 times as many non-posting readers. It is connected to an international convention only for those members and the networking involved can be of immeasurable value.
But it is going through growing pains, with the current mods in culture shock as they now have to deal with so many cultural backgrounds, etc. and feeling threatened at their power base. They are a bunch of middle-aged, white men with very narrow scope and no experience whatsoever in running internet sites. But as is often the case with those kind of moderators, they let it go to their head, now sure they know what is best for everyone, ignoring popular opinion and shutting down anythread they feel makes them look bad. As well as being inconsistent in why they ban people, striking out of personal pique rather than acting for the good of the community.
In other words it claims thousands of members, when there are only six. Everyone else has no rights whatsoeverand is treated like they are lucky to be there at all. No one voted these people in, the guy who took over from the founder hand-picked the current mods, who were just like him and would do what he asked and they are enjoying their little clubhouse at the expense of everyone else.Not that they are all villains, but they are certainly misguided and causing more harm than good.
That would be fine and everyone could just go to some new forum, except for the untold donations paid to keep it going and the international event that people would have to give up attending if they just choose to leave the forum.
Many founding members and hard core members who came in recent years do not want to leave and hope a united effort can clear the air and get the mods to wake up to reality without anyone having to call a lawyer (and there are a great many lawyers among the members who are not professional artists).
So they want a place where they can discuss the issues without the mods being able to prevent it and where the three or four people paying for the new forum can have their identities remain safe.Those mods will not be barred from the site, they will just have no control over it and we hope their reading of what is posted on the site will bring about a peaceful transition to something more like an elected board of directors who set the policy the mods carry out.
So anyway, any help would well, be helpful. I will pass on the recommendations provided thus far.
