Recent happenings

For new members, this is the email that was mailed to all registered users this morning

As some of you may have noticed, the ThePhotographyForums have been closed since early yesterday morning.

We feel it only fair to offer you all an explanation of what has happened.

ThePhotographyForums was set up almost 18 months ago, by four people, who wanted an online home and had become despondent with other forums online.
We decided that we wanted a forum where no one person called the shots, and everything was a team decision. Hence TPF was born.

After some inevitable disagreements alot of hard work, and the promotion of two members into moderators, the forums grew into what you see today.

However...

Last year we noticed a distinct change in attitude of one of the Administrators. Apart from being quite rude to a number of members, he was developing what we describe as a 'Longe Ranger' attitude. While there were numerous consultations with other Admins about site decisions, alot of decisions were taken purely on his own, leaving us to find out what changes he'd made afterwards.

To our fault we never properly approached him with a laid out post of our problems, but it was raised many times in often heated private discussion.

After yet another recent (and heated) disagreement between this Administrator and a Moderator (of an unrelated topic), the Moderator decided to resign.
Naturally, a discussion ensued in private, where the Adminstrator urged that if the rest of us so wished, he would 'hand the site over' to us and step down.
We all stressed that this was a decision that wasn't to be taken lightly and we should all wait for a few days before we decide anything.
However, a short while later, he then stated some time has passed, and he would also like to remove the Moderators priveleges as we had been told he was adamant he wasn't going to return.
The remaining three administrators urged the other NOT to demote this Moderator or take any action just yet.
Yet again, this 'lone ranger' attitude came to the fore, and the Administrator went against all our wishes, stripping the moderator of his priveleges.

This was the straw that broke the camels back, as they say.
The other three Administrators, and the remaining Moderator, collectively discussed the problem, and we decided that we could no longer be part of the same team as this other Administrator. His bad attitude and ability to 'blow up' and take offense at any given moment was pushing valued and well respected members away, and now it seems moderators too. (We have been contacted by numerous members who have left the forums, and cited that his attitude was the reason they could not stay.)

Therefore, we collectively decided we no longer wanted him on the team. A team decision, but majority ruled, as was the original ethos of TPF that he was always to keen to disregard.
Please note this was a complete last straw, and for the good of the forums.

When we approached him with it privately, explained our position, and asked him to resign, he simply closed the forums, removed the Administrators from their positions (demoted to Moderators), and removed all our TPF email accounts and FTP accounts and access from the control panel, cutting us off completely. Again the actions of someone who we believed thought of the forums as his own. This confirmed it.

We have still had no contact from him.
However, we have been able to access the site, and the forums, and regain partial control. However, as he personally registered the domain names thephotographyforums.com et al, we cannot regain complete control.

The remaining team have decided that we cannot let such a friendly and valued community just fall by the wayside.
TPF has always been 'for the members', and has become an online home for many of you, including us.

Therefore, we have decided to set up a completely new forum. We have retained all usernames, forums, threads and posts too.

The name is www.talkphotography.co.uk

We apologise for using this method of contacting you all, as some of you may have opted not to receive forum emails.
We'd like to take this opporunity to thank EVERY SINGLE ONE of you for your participation in the forums over the past 18 months, regardless of your level of involvement. A forum is dependant on its members, and it is YOU that has made the forum into the friendly photography resource it is today. We promise to hold onto that, and not throw it by the wayside.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us. For now please send all contact to admin@talkphotography.co.uk

We are now open!

Kind Regards

- Staff
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Personally I'm dying to know what a Longe Ranger is.


Actually, infact I don't think I want to know, this is a respectable forum :D
 
mrklaw said:
well, if this is the thread where 'what happened' is discussed, can someone tell me 'what happened'?

I only joined this morning and I'm intrigued :D
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You'll get the e-mail shortly along with everyone else. :) Short version though.. we had to ask a founder/admin to leave because of regular and unfortunately insurmountable problems between staff and himself and complaints from not an insignificant number of members. It wasn't easy, as he's been a big driving force behind the board without a doubt, but the decision was unanimous by the staff.

He went... but closed the board before he went, taking the domain name with him (which was registered to him), so that it no longer pointed to this site. Hence the mad scramble for the last couple of days to get the board back on line and let people know where we're at. :)
 
Marcel said:
Personally I'm dying to know what a Longe Ranger is.


Actually, infact I don't think I want to know, this is a respectable forum :D
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:LOL: I think they're from Texas where everything is bigger!
 
Glad your back, i pop in quite frequently and read, even though DSLR purchase has been put on hold.

Hope to be updating my Ixus 500 to the New Ixus 800IS when it hits the shops and continue with that for the time being.
 
ah balls i KNEW that was in there too..../kicks cat...
 
CT said:
:LOL: I think they're from Texas where everything is bigger!
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Except for Ten Gallon hats! (only 16 fl. oz to a US pint)

That makes the US 10 gallon jobby only 8 UK gallons...... :thinking:
 
WELCOME BACK!!!
THANKS TO ALL THE STAFF WHO MAKE THE FORUMS GET BACK!!!

No mather the name, the people and spirit is the same.
 
Its so good to have the forum back, congratulations and thanks for explaining the reasons for the old forums' dissappearance - very cutious and I appreciate that. :clap:
You guys must have put in an awfull lot of work to get it back up and running :notworthy: .
Thanks,
Rich
 
Good to be back and glad wannado got their act together and caught up with the rest of the ISP's
 
If you appreciate these forums and have a couple of quid going to waste in your paypal account you might want to take a look at the bottom of the main page (y)

The 'staff' might not like to mention it .... but I will :)
 
RobertP said:
If you appreciate these forums and have a couple of quid going to waste in your paypal account you might want to take a look at the bottom of the main page (y)

The 'staff' might not like to mention it .... but I will :)
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I never even noticed that - well pointed out RobertP. Noted and actioned :D
 
aww guys you shouldnt have! we didn't want to point it out as we didn't want to make people feel obligated,.....but expect a post explaining the reasons behind it very soon!

THANK YOU to you for any contributions, post coming shortly
 
Talk about well hidden - never noticed it either (honest) :(

Thanks for pointing it out RobertP(y)
 
Great work getting things back up and running. Statistically there is bound to be a cock or 2 on a forum, that is unfortunatly life.
I personally met the offender, and he seemed a genuine guy...I guess you only find out in the long run...
Keep up the good work chaps dont let this setback put you off! :)
 
my goodness me, after weeks of looking and searching (and i thought i'd serach for the appropriate thread) for what has been going on in the depth of the intarweb i have stumbled across this thanks to a helpful soul!

my username works and my password seems fine, im online and able to say hello again. my that was a strange few weeks without the tpf i thought i was after.

that's the last time i refuse forum emails in the CP!!

hello again to all, i'm sure you're all well as usual but it's nice to see you again, what a relief!
 
welcome back noah! Its a pity but some will not have got the email, we would have loved to get all 667 members notifies at the same time, but we couldnt, lol, so dont forget to tell people you know who used to come here but havent for a while!
 
Not wishing to rake up old coals and sleeping dogs and spilt milk and all that, but I was just looking at my webby and clicked the linkage to the old forum. Got this.........


vBulletin Message

The site and forums are currently closed.

This is due to certain ex-staff members damaging database and other site critical files during their unauthorised use of this site and my hosting account.

Steve
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as the beastie boys would say


'I'm tellin y'all it's SABOTAGE!' :D :D :D :D :D :D
 
Thanks for the headsup Spencer, but we were aware of that VBulletin message. :)
 
Gandhi....if ever there was a reason for updating your bookmarks, thats it.

As agent scully would have said......the truth is out there :cautious:
 
Gandhi said:
P.s.


Welcome back noah! I take it you have lots of fresh to view then?
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yup, posted a few up just now :) more to come when i find where i put them :cautious:
 
Gandhi said:
*stuff*
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lol :cautious:

i have kept a dignified silence thus far.

:baby:
 
CT said:
Thanks for the headsup Spencer, but we were aware of that VBulletin message. :)
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Not being one to keep an undignified silence and liking to call a spade a spade, I always got on great with Steve personally, but if he does re-open the original site at some point, I will be staying here.
I think stuffing the sites' loyal contributers over without warning was unforgivable.
 
Bachs said:
Not being one to keep an undignified silence and liking to call a spade a spade, I always got on great with Steve personally, but if he does re-open the original site at some point, I will be staying here.
I think stuffing the sites' loyal contributers over without warning was unforgivable.
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I agree and although I don't really know what went on.....I can only see effort for us members coming from you guys.
 
Many thanks to you lot for getting us all back together. Away for a couple of weeks and on return went to see wht you all had been up to and - no forum! Only when I waded through the mountain of emails did I find the new home. Well done in getting it up and running and thanks for all your time and effort on our behalf.
 
Guys we appreciate your sentiments and your support, more than you know, but the fact is the decision was unanimous by all the admin and it's done and dusted. It wasn't an easy decision for any of us, and if we could have resolved the problems any other way we would have. As you've commented, I think subsequent events speak for themselves. The limb has been severed, and the body looks like making a full recovery. It wasn't without a measure of pain, so let's all forget it and move forward. :)
 
Bachs said:
Not being one to keep an undignified silence and liking to call a spade a spade, I always got on great with Steve personally, but if he does re-open the original site at some point, I will be staying here.
I think stuffing the sites' loyal contributers over without warning was unforgivable.
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Same sentiments here Bachs. Thats the last (and only) comment ill make on the saga, just need to try and get things back the way they were, is a good job we have a great community here :) , onwards and upwards :)
 
thanks for the support guys!
 
CT said:
It wasn't without a measure of pain, so let's all forget it and move forward. :)
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Thank you Cedric!! It's very hard to move forward with one foot in the doorway folks. Yes we have a great site here but in the best interest of everyone I think it's best the staff deal with it,not us. Nobody knows the "whole" story here so how can opinions be formed anyways? Of course were all glad the forums are back up and running but come on, let's stop beating a dead horse here, get's old real fast! :bang:

Just my 2 cents for what it's worth.

Jewel
 
jewel said:
Thank you Cedric!! It's very hard to move forward with one foot in the doorway folks. Yes we have a great site here but in the best interest of everyone I think it's best the staff deal with it,not us. Nobody knows the "whole" story here so how can opinions be formed anyways? Of course were all glad the forums are back up and running but come on, let's stop beating a dead horse here, get's old real fast! :bang:

Just my 2 cents for what it's worth.

Jewel
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most wise!

im sure one day the whole truth will be revealed(and very interesting it is too) but for us now it is time to move on, save to say that we did what we thought was right for the community as a whole, and the responce from all you guys and visiting figures, emails and PMs weve had bear out that we did the right thing :clap: :D
 
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