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Since the last monthly fee will not cover the entire month of October, we're setting October 15 as the day we'll freeze this place. If you want to establish your new space together, we suggest you either set something up by then or chose somebody's blog as an interim meeting room to finalise plans.

In the meantime you can use the comments to this place as a place to organize.

Warning: the layout and colour scheme of this space may change over the next few weeks as we prepare to freeze it.

TBAT

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)

We'd originally planned to post this on Friday to give everyone time to comment, but as there's clearly some effort in the threads to come up with some new systems, we think this might be a good time to suggest our ideas a day early, as we think it might fit in very well with what people are saying. We must first assure people that nothing will be done that breaches confidentiality and every effort shall be made to preserve posts and comments. Also, thanks to the people who are volunteering, and particular thanks to those who acknowledged all the hard work we've done over the last year and a half.

Looking at the amount of volunteering, it looks like there are still some possibilities left, but the move is towards more communal writing and, looking at how much people say they could do, it doesn't look as if we could maintain the blog at the levels of content it was set up for (especially because real life always intervenes and illnesses, family business, work crises and so on mean that there are always a proportion of contributors able to write less than they'd planned).

In addition, we know from exhausting experience (and you all know from frustrating experience) that handling roundtables with TBAT as coordinators can take ages, and to be honest, we're burned out on that process. If people want to work together, there's no reason why they should have to go through us; it would be a lot less unwieldy.

So, it looks as if the proposed plans are something better handled by the community as a whole than by us as organisers - which fits in with what we've all been feeling lately, which is that we'd like to move on to other projects. We believe it was the right thing to do to withdraw from commenting on this blog - changing from regular commentariat members to administrator-editor-mods was a very problematic way of taking on mod status, and the repercussions were probably never going to go away no matter what we did (off-board, there was drama about it right from the beginning, well before any open controversies, and again, we've just had our fill of it) - but it's pretty unrewarding for us to simply edit and code-crunch on a blog we can't join the conversations on. We'd like to call it quits, part friends, and wish everyone else the best of luck in making something out of it.

So, here's what we want to do: hand over to a more community-based approach.

Here's how we think it could best be done technically:

1. Handing over the 'keys' to this place would, given some of the confidences we've received since beginning here, create some serious privacy problems. Shutting it down entirely, on the other hand, would lose everyone's posts and comments, and leave old-timers looking for this place lost. It would, though, be technically doable to freeze this place as an archive with a redirecting link at the top, which would avoid both problems. Were it frozen, it wouldn't require any more money to maintain.

2. We can set up a new place for the community that allows for a more broad-based way of editing and contributing content. Depending on how people choose to organise themselves in the future, we could either set it up for newly-selected moderators or have it open to contributing content from whoever asks us to e-mail them the password. (Assuming they're known community members, obviously, not just any old troll.)

3. We think we should move to system that doesn't require donations (in other words, something free), as that gives everyone a level playing field and removes the ticking clock that financial pressures can create. Again, this is perfectly doable.

4. Some of the other things suggested could be done very easily (for example, suggestion boxes and prompt lists.)

5. The community will decide amongst itself whether it wants to elect one or more new organisers or proceed on a more open platform. Should you want to have an election, we can put up voting buttons if needed.

So, to sum up: TBAT is resigning, wishing everyone the best. Nothing is perfect, but we'll help you set up a new system that should avoid most of the potential problems of a hand-over and can be tailored to your preferences before we go.

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)

We set up this place at the request and with the agreement of the community when Fred Clark left to go to Patheos. The understanding was always that it would be a 'group blog', with content provided by volunteers from the community.

At the time of writing this, it looks very much as if the place is going the way of so many new projects: lots of volunteers and contributions at the beginning, but gradually dwindling to a hard core. Unfortunately, the hard core of regular contributors was only about half a dozen people - and in this small group were the members of TBAT (hapax, Kit and mmy), all of whom have withdrawn from commenting and submitting articles because of pressures from both in and outside the community, MercuryBlue who has withdrawn for personal reasons, and Literata, who formally left the board when hapax, Kit and mmy withdrew as participants.

The place is now fatally short on regular contributors. TBAT have continued to create the 'semi-open thread' discussion subjects we always posted to plug the gaps when there were no submissions ready to publish, but now the board is practically nothing else, and such insubstantial fare is not getting much in the way of long or lively comment threads.

The purpose in setting up this board was to provide a place where those unwilling to follow Fred to Patheos could meet and commune. It appears to us that the board has served, or perhaps outlived, its purpose. Some people are now happily installed at Patheos; others have set up blogs and/or established separate online relationships of their own: the volume of contributions here suggests that the place is no longer needed.

This is the impression we have from following the recent progress of the board, and if it is how things are, we do not want to continue to beat a dead cyber-horse: we would rather take the time and energy we spend maintaining this place and dedicate it to other projects. However, we have no wish to pull the plug if people still want the place open. We are therefore giving the community a choice:

1. A substantial number of volunteers can commit to submitting articles on a regular, preferably formally scheduled, basis.

2. We can hand the board over to new moderators, elected by the community, and the three of us can withdraw entirely and move on to other things.

3. We can keep the board going for an agreed-upon period to give everybody here time to set up alternative ways to keep in touch with those they wish to keep in touch with, and then pull the plug, give Fred the choice between taking the board name back and letting it go, and, should there be any surplus in the board's 'tip jar', donate it to a charity of the community's choosing.

Please either volunteer, including a commitment to contribute at least once every two months, or say which of the second and third options you'd prefer, in the comments below.

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)

草莓ss加速器 newspaper is currently running a series entitled 'Rereading Stephen King', in which the writer and King devotee James Smythe rereads each of King's books in chronological order and discusses the change between his reactions as a teenager and as an adult. Have you ever done this with favourite childhood or teenage books? What was your experience?

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



We see with regret and sympathy that online harassment has recently driven atheist speaker Jen McCreight to withdraw from blogging 'for an indefinite period of time.' This is the kind of thing that should not happen. What can be done?

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



What's the funniest thing you've heard this year?

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)



Two questions: what is the single aspect of your nation's system of government most misunderstood by residents/citizens of your country, and what aspect of your nation's system of government is hardest to explain to people from other countries?

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The Board Administration Team
(hapax, Kit Whitfield and mmy)