After I left the old site, there was a certain amount of confusion among the members of the motorcycle forums that I hosted at the time. All the moderators had been shutout and no one was in charge. Of course, some members liked not having anyone in charge. Fortunately, no trolls have arrived and no heavy SPAM has occurred so the old forums are still relatively sane.
It must be mentioned that the old site and forums have been unguided for two months now. Also, the site is still being advertised to find a new Guide. It could be many months before a new Guide is found, trained, and allowed to build the site from scratch. That's right, the old site will disappear and a new site will be constructed from scratch. The forums may be allowed to stay the same, or some forums may be deleted, or the forums may start from scratch. No one really knows.
However, many hundreds of the forum regulars departed and attached themselves to two existing forums and one newly created forum. The latter forum is now being run by a former "corner host" and the vast majority of the regulars have set up housekeeping with that forum.
In the beginning, I was happy to see that the regulars were attached to a forum that would stay around. Many were worried that the plug might be pulled on the old forum and everyone in the community would lose touch with each other. The new forum solved that for the most part.
I was also not ready to be responsible for another forum when I was trying to establish the new Motorcycle Views Web site. I first created this Motorcycle Views Blog. Then I established the Motorcycle Views Web site. Next came a Motorcycle Views Newsletter. I'm currently getting subscribers for the newsletter from a sign-up form on the site. After I had established a huge number of articles and features for the Motorcycle Views Web site, I started thinking about creating a forum.
The Motorcycle Views Forum is now attached to the Motorcycle Views Web site. It can be reached from any page of the site. Having the forum allows me to stay in touch with a very large community of riders, both experts and beginners. I can now run Polls in the forum and link to them in the newsletter. I can also provide links in the newsletter to important forum discussions as I used to do in my former newsletters. I can also put links to forum discussions in my articles to enable people to discuss important points in the articles.
The net effect is that I finally have back the major pieces of the old site and that's a good feeling.
I hope you will visit the Motorcycle Views Web site and the Motorcycle Views Forum and also subscribe to the Motorcycle Views Newsletter. Together, we will all continue to learn more about motorcycling and develop a great motorcycle community. It all depends on you.
Walt