Also:
Nas wrote:
I want to make it clear that I am speaking for myself. These are not the thoughts of the Three Wisemen.
Like MANY, I really enjoy this website. I've been posting here for nearly 12 years and this community has become an important part of my life. The diversity of the community and the diversity of opinion is what I enjoy the most. This place can be equally informative and entertaining and it can also drive you crazy. I haven't always agreed with BF, but I have always appreciated what he has done over the past 12+ years with this site. I've made a few donations over the years to show my appreciation and I've personally let him know how I felt about this place.
In November BF reached out to dozen or so of us. He wanted all of us to get together so he can share with us some important news about this site. When we got together in early December, he let us know that he was moving and starting a new venture and would be selling this board as well as another website. He said he had some interest from some outside parties, but he preferred to keep it "in the family". Everyone there had some level of interest in acquiring it, but all of us wanted to keep it in the community. I and MANY people there really appreciated that he brought all of us together to let us know what was going on and give us the option of taking it off his hands.
Right before Christmas I met JORR and Seacrest for drinks at Miller's Pub. This wasn't really anything new because we meet somewhat frequently for lunch. While having 1 or 30 drinks we discussed taking BF up on his offer and acquiring this board as well as Redacted. In the end, we all agreed to be partners. The following day we let BF know and in a few days he agreed to sell it to us.
Before an agreement was put in writing, BF decided that he wanted to retain Redacted. He adjusted the price accordingly and we all agreed on a number and the terms of a sale. We were supposed to finalize the deal in early February, but there were some delays with some things BF was involved in and the date kept getting pushed back. We all know how much BF loves this site so I thought he was having cold feet. During this time we exchanged dozens of emails, met in person with BF again and there were a few text messages mixed in. Finally, in April we got a somewhat concrete date. At that point, BF gave us Admin power.
What I appreciated a lot during the entire process was BF letting us know that he wanted us to look good when we took over the board. He banned a few people and said, "You guys can reinstate them all when you take over (except KeepingScore) so you can look like the heroes." I thought that was really kind of him.
As we all know the change of ownership wasn't smooth. There were several hiccups and in the end nearly a week of posts were lost. What you all don't know is that while the Three Wisemen have control over the board (at this time), we don't own the domain name. In fact, the transaction has never been completed. There have been virtually daily requests for BigFan to send us an invoice so we can finalize the transaction, but he never got around to doing that or transferring the domain name either.
We understood that BF was busy and that the money probably didn't mean anything to him. We believed that he would get around to doing it once he had a chance. Because we appreciated what he had given all of us over the years, we volunteered to create a section in his honor that he could promote his websites and even moderate. I was putting the finishing touches on it and had planned for it to go live today.
Unfortunately, over the past week I started to suspect that BF wasn't going to send over an invoice UNLESS we banned posters or ran the board in a way he liked. I was against this (I'll let JORR and Seacrest speak for themselves). Over the past 24 hours, BF sent an email saying that we need to renegotiate the terms or he had no issue with virtually killing the site by moving the domain name (that he still owns). As we can see by his series of posts, he's probably serious about doing it. It's unfortunate, but that's where things stand right now. Hopefully, we will be able to resolve this issue and finalize the terms that we all agreed to. If not, we may see the death of CSFMB as we know it.
_________________
Antonio Gramsci wrote:
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.