The state of DPF

[Magda Hassan]

Last Sunday/Saturday the forum founders except Charles Drago left en mass from the DPF. The history behind the long running disagreement as to the forum's aims and the founder's visions is well known to most members here. Unfortunately after literally years of major disputes and despite much good will, accomodation, generosity and flexibility offered there has been no resolution to this problem. It reached a climax on Sunday when we collectively just lost the will to live with this any longer and left. The next day in reflecting on what this would mean for DPF members I realised Charles has no technical skills to manage the forum let alone any social skills to do so. I know this forum is important to many people. Not just those of whom post either. So I made the decision to stay and to move Charles to the 'Retired Member' category. In that I have the support of my fellow founders and many members. He remains a member. He is not banned. He can read the forum, open and download attachments but no longer post. He will always remain one of the founders of this forum. His friends here will know how to contact him to discuss posts etc and vis-a-versa off the forum. I was requested to disable his PM function by some one who fears his threats. Given he has already communicated with them by email I see no reason not to reinstate his PM functions.

His deep political insights will be greatly missed but I will not be having any further communication public or private with Charles Drago as I find his misogyny, sexism, rampant paranoid accusations of members and founders and poisonous misdirected bile completely unacceptable. It is a pity he spent so much time on the latter and not the former. The light to friction ratio was an ever diminishing return.

These problems have almost exclusively centred around forum decorum issues and the exercising of restraint and respect for other members. Founders, especially, must always be seen to adhere to the forum rules of decorum if they have any hope that they can expect our membership to do likewise. Being a founder does not excuse you from our rules. Charles was kind enough to write the rules for us, which we then collectively agreed, but somehow felt that he need not adhere to them himself.
We had hoped that by placing Charles on moderation he would modify his words and behaviour. But this seems not to have worked and, indeed, caused frustrations and anger to frequently bubble over. As well as being extremely time demanding just for one member. None of us have that sort of time to devote to one member who really should know the rules they themselves wrote.

So dear members, we have people who support our forum's aims and will support us technically and in any way they can. It is your forum. Make good use of it. The price has been high.