The Future of These Forums . . .

[Hazel]

As most of you are aware, over the last few months we've seen a number of effacements/hacks. As most of you can imagine, cleaning those up is time consuming and costly. We've also seen an uptick in bots/spammers. As the year ends, we'd like to revisit the forums and their future. Here are two potential options (though we're open to new ones too):

• 1. Freeze the forums so they are "read only." In this way, they'd serve only as an archive and should prove pretty impervious to hackbots. We'd then look for a more reliable and secure platform to start new forums for new discussions in 2020.
• 2. Upgrade vBulletin to its subscription service. Supposedly, we will lose many of the skins and icons (kites, swords, bulbs, etc.) and who knows what else. It will also up our cost.

The big question is whether most discussion have migrated to social media or is their a vital community here that we need to preserve? If there was ever a time to speak up . .

Please let us know your thoughts.

(Head to of Leaves Forum for discussion).