EPE Chat Zone: cabal-stripping

The EPE Chat Zone forum - basic but solid and well-mannered. Usually.I've run the EPE Chat Zone electronics forum since the 1990's, which is provided to enable hobbyists to help each other out and exchange views in a (I insist!) good-natured, civil and abuse-free professional  environment. It's based on the now obsolete but very robust Perl-based Discusware program which has withstood the test of time, unlike many other PHP programs. Discus disappeared out of business but kept the support pages up for several years, which I'm grateful for.

My first Chat Zone in the 1990s used Matt's WWWboard program, which (unbelievable now) was open to anyone to post. It was OK until it was destroyed by Russian pornographers of the illegal kind. I hope to modernise the entire forum when I get the chance: IPBoard or Xenforo are on my short-list.

The EPE Chat Zone forum has never been a formal channel of communication with me or the Publishers as we have a deliberate policy of providing individual replies to individual queries. Why is that? Partly because Email is more manageable than having a live forum. Otherwise I end up fighting battles on multiple fronts in real time which diverts me from other more productive work. Sometimes the forum could take up an entire evening of herding cats and I've emerged from it all pretty well drained or exhausted. The feeling of being kicked to death is not a pleasant one.

Life gets difficult when I am put into a position where individuals want to grab the steering wheel and use our forum for their own ends, or (often) to try and provoke a tussle with the Publishers.  Users would never be allowed to do the same in counterpart forums and I think I generally apply a light touch only to the running of the EPE Chat Zone. History proves that only a tiny fraction of posts are deleted, and that's because they contain damaging mis-information or abuse that we should not be expected to tolerate. It is better than the other option of having a 100% pre-moderated forum which kills the fun for everyone.

If now't else, EPE has been highly successful in developing reader loyalty and it's absolutely recognised that some users might have a complaint or grievance they wish to air, especially following the unforeseen demise of the USA EPE Online site and the rapid introduction of Pocketmags. Most users observe the  Chat Zone forum's AUP and rules of netiquettes well enough, but the whole of the rest of the Internet is available in which to form cabals or garner support for user's own views. I might do something in EPE Net Work to help get people started on Facebook, once I puzzle out their 54 privacy settings.