More about the shutdown of the Q&A forum

Question

SD said they were shutting down the Q&A forum because of spam and bugs. Here is an excerpt from an email exchange I had with SD. I thought that Stephanie's reply should be shared with everybody.

TO STEPHANIE:

If the incidence of spam could be greatly reduced, would SD be willing to restore the Q&A forum?

My wife is a co-moderator of a popular early retirement forum. They have implemented several technical steps that minimize the amount of spam they get. Would it be worthwhile for me to pass on to you those steps, to see if there's anything SD has not tried?

FROM STEPHANIE:

The spam issues are just one reason why the forum is being closed.

The bigger picture is that the code that is running the forum is one of the oldest parts of the site, and it's written in a language that our current engineering team doesn't use frequently, if at all. This is the main reason why making fixes has been so difficult and takes so long to do. It takes a really long time for our team to find a way to try to fix the problems, and even when they do, the old code does not easily adapt to new changes. Essentially the current forum would continue to break down, and the only way to fix it would be to rebuild it completely.

This is not something that our tiny company is able to do at the moment, so we had to make the decision to close it right now. Please know that this was not an easy decision to make. Our team really values the human connections that have been forged on the site and the community that evolved over the years. I'm really sorry that we are taking away a feature that you enjoyed so much!

Well, that makes a lot more sense than what's in the short note at the top of the page. Thanks for posting this, Matt. - Findy, Oct 13, 2017

Thanks Matt - Mardle, Oct 13, 2017

Yes this sounds more reasonable - patch, Oct 13, 2017

Finally, we get to understand it all ....why couldn't they have just told us this information through the mods right at the start ...perhaps it could have saved /avoided so much bad feelings that they didn't value our human relationships! - FELIZ77, Oct 13, 2017

Thank you very much, Matt :) - FELIZ77, Oct 13, 2017

Thanks, Matt. Being given pertinent information always helps people to process a difficult situation like this. I still wish there were a solution, and I hope one might become possible at some point in the future, but at least I understand why this . . . - AnnRon, Oct 13, 2017

. . . decision more or less forced itself on you. - AnnRon, Oct 13, 2017

You're welcome, everyone. I found that the info made the loss a bit less bewildering - mattb1of6, Oct 14, 2017