Eviction time

Further to this post of 2012 (NEO: an end of an era ), Uncooked Media and NEO magazine announced with just 7 days notice it was to close the magazines old Forum on Friday February 22nd where some of us had accounts for quite a period, saying they hadn't anyone to look after it.
So not for the first time some us are forum hopping again and can be found found at UK Anime news's forum as most of us have agreed to move other there for now at least and nearly everyone bar me is keeping their old user names.
For posterity here's a picture of the forum for duoinchains, Shadowcat, max, demonix and the gang.

So long NEO Forums and raised glasses to our new home.

An end of an era

This isn't a a post I personally felt like making earlier on but actually with some some redacts I shall.
As many of you are aware I enjoy anime and manga reading much about it, buying magazines and spending money on it.
Here in the UK there is a very good 4 weekly magazine, NEO, published by Uncooked Media that has played a big role in popularizing anime and it's subcultures such as cosplaying as well as Asian culture.
Well from the moment I first saw it, I bought every issue and one of the things it had was  a website that offered more up to the minute news and a lively forum where people talked about things, contributed to threads that influenced the magazine covering  suggestions for content, reviews.
Coming from a close involvement with a forum with more drama than Shakespeare could come up, with it was a forum where I felt everyone gelled well together sharing their mutual interests even if complaints about a prominent magazine advertiser stocking counterfeit goods tended to be ignored time after time and anything critical regarding this disappearing.
Then at the beginning of this year, there was a bombshell as the Magazine and by extension its owner ditched the forum for a Facebook page as its sole means of communicating with it's readership with not even an announcement to forum members, dropping of any mention of it in side the magazine.
Because it relied as some forums do on manual authorizing of accounts for a period new members couldn't use it and because no one with administrator privileges was dealing with this, it was ripe for spamming.
Somewhat belatedly a person was given responsibility for looking after it but without making any personal comments the impression one forms is it isn't really their priority and attempts to allow involvement by long standing responsible members stalled for reasons I'm not going into.
The problem as anyone who knows about these things are, your core members drift off  - and many have - and with the problem around authorizing, moderating and banning spammers not really solved and looking very much that it won't be  is simple: Over time the forum dies off.
Now I have no issue with using differing media to interact with readers but a forum is a very different beast than a Facebook page with 'likes' and entries to just reply to and treating a community you created like that comes over as very shabby.
I shall be at Anime UK news under a new username. If you're at CR too you can message me there for it.