This episode has underlined a few things:
- First, if whoever is running things behind the scenes isn't around much, small problems will become big problems. This was true of the issues related to spambots (which made it much harder for new users to start participating in the community and sucked up a lot of moderator-time) and also of the damage caused by the botched server transfer by my host.
- Second, if I am going to continue running things, I should change hosts, because my current host has screwed up in the same way twice now, and will probably screw up more in the future.
- Third, I haven't been around much, and we shouldn't be counting on me being around much in the future.
- It needs to move to a different host sooner or later.
- Someone else should take over my role in terms of being in charge of the back end of the place.
2046 is willing to take over hosting an archived version of this forum, preserving the very extensive record of debate and discussion we have had here on SFJ; he could then launch an alternate venue for discussion (namely, a sub on Reddit that would get around the problem of the time investment required to run a platform in the long term).