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  Yes as I said some very interesting points of view and all of them valid.
  
  The thing that must be rememebred or highlighted here though before I start to try and explain a few things is that this is an Accidental Forum. When we started up the recent version of this Doverforum, there was NO FORUM at all. Some of you will remember it. I had had enough of doing Forums from way back TEN years ago when myself and Rick used to do the old one that Rick pioneered on Doverweb. It was great in those early years, we were part of the dotcom revolution, yes it was that long ago.
  
  But after ten years of doing it Rick was gone by then and the forum eventually disintegrated into a dreadful miserable thing. When I started going out into the town with my notebook and camera to do editorial I was surprised how many people actually hated it. It was loathed far and wide. It had to go...otherwise my editorial aspirations would get nowhere, as nobody at all is really interested in Forums other than those taking part. I wanted to be more of a sort of a magazine type kentonline or a thisiskent although I dont think either of those sites were around then.
  
  So this brings me back to this modern version of the site. We rebuilt and restarted and we had NO FORUM at all. And all was much better. The only communication with the outside world was the very basic GuestBook. After a while i was surprised when people started to use it to communicate. So we turned it into a very basic Letters Page and it ran for 170 pages with no trouble at all. We were then clobbered by persistent spam and as it was totally OPEN we couldnt win, although we tried, and we had to give up and close it. It was then and only then we started a small club for the guys who had been in the letters page ...and then the current Forum came into being. We didnt call it a forum, we didnt push it, we didnt advertise it, because we didnt want any members. Weird but we just wanted to provide a chat point for ther few guys in the letters page. We called it the New Letters page never using the term forum. Lots wanted to join but we didnt want them as our 'forum for real' days were over. Ten years of doing that were enough and as I was over 60 I couldnt be bothered anymore.
  
  This is like Vics life story...more to follow

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