Thank you for your sentiments and many of them are valid.
However, the very fact that you are receiving a personal response, not an automated response must have some value. Strangely, it is also advertisement free.
When we switched from Yahoo Groups there was a big debate - you can probably find it in the archives. The switch was not really generated by my company, but at the desire of BCC and FC owners, because there were failures in the Yahoo system.
Jeremy Waters spent HUNDREDS of hours working on ensuring that no data was lost. I worked with him on this project. No-one asked anyone for any money, and certainly Sam L. Morse Company could not foot the bill. It was done as a gesture of goodwill to the clients of Sam L. Morse Company, and it worked well for all concerned. It actually cost me, personally, a few thousands of dollars in programmers? salaries to ensure that a) Sam L. Morse could have no influence over the site, and b) that all prior messages from the old Yahoo site were retained forever. I am not attempting to recover these costs; I am purely looking at the on-going situation. It cost Jeremy many, many, hours of processing to convert the data, and the fact that Jeremy and Nica have subscribed to this element might suggest that there IS some value in what we are trying to accomplish.
The forum is not a “couple of HTML pages”, there are some 27 different elements and it is all data based, and backed up every night.
I can understand your frustration, but please consider: every hour someone checks all messages to ensure that the system has not been defeated by spammers. At least twice a month we have to upgrade various programs to ensure that the data is safe. Consider also, that we backup to a different server in a different location.
Now we get to the personal bit: Yes you see my photo - that?s an avatar, and is attached to all messages produced by me. Feel free to enlarge one and put it on your dartboard! What you don’t see is the small army of technicians and programmers that are on the payroll and who need to be paid to do this. Worldwide we have 17 divisions in different language capabilities and internet skills. People from most of these divisions have worked on the forum at one time or another.
Oh! By the way, it?s not “John Cole, Inc”, it is Coledata.Inc. I am not the sole shareholder of the corporation, although I did found it, oh, about 20 years ago. Coledata, Inc. prides itself on producing quality deliveries to global situations. We only (Apparently until now) do anything other than mainstream corporate work.
I have already said this, but I will say it again, we endeavor to provide quality, no hooks, no advertising, we would NEVER sell your e-mail address.
Now here is YOUR challenge: If you really believe you can produce the same quality, no outsider flames, data security, remote backup, no advertising, total transactional security, personal service, and all at a lesser cost, and the current members accept it, then I have no problem: I will refund everyone their money immediately.