Its time to "Clear the Air" -First orders of Business

[Reciever]

Good Evening everyone! 

As most if not all of you are aware, NoteBookReview is slated to be shut down on the 31st. Its 100% the reason why any of you are here to begin with, including myself and @Hiew. There are some tenants of the forum that I would like to announce or further develop. To this end we do intend to launch a series of polls to better gauge the direction that we intend to go. I cant promise we will go with the communities direction all the time, but it will absolutely be the frame of reference in how we tend to certain orders of business.

Such matters to look on will be the following: 
 

• The name of the forum going forward.

As we have announced multiple times, efgxt.net is a place holder. In fact the top header used to be NewbookReview as we continued working on the forums here, only to be changed to NBR 3.1B hours before sharing the links with you all. We do fully intend to have this changed going forward. I do ask that you guys/gals wait until about a a week after NoteBookReview's closure to make official changes on that front. Its not quite an issue of the link no longer functioning (as we intend to forward it for some time). This decision was made in order to allow for a respectable amount of time to permit more and more NBR members to trickle in, and have a say in how the name should be made officially going forward. 

One thing to note is that we will only be polling names that we have already acquired, as sadly we must protect ourselves from bad actors purchasing domains that we projected potential to purchase. Until we make the poll for this change I would ask that any and all name submissions be sent to me or @Hiew via PM, so that we can acquire them ahead of time especially if they are in a price range that we can do that with. If its something we cant acquire we will notify the member that made the suggestion and will leave it to their discretion to share it for forum consideration.
 

• TapaTalk, will we support it?

A few members have inquired over various mediums to the support of Tapatalk and after some internal discussion can happily announce that we do intend have Tapatalk support. This has yet to be done, but cursory investigations look quite positive.
 

• Can we make any guarantees to continuity?

Beyond the initial primary functions of this forum, this has been an issue that I want to have squared away. The second question I had for @Hiew after finally asking him if we could make a forum (even if ONLY temporary) was the differing means to focus on specifically continuity of this forum. I believe this to absolutely be possible. The backend functions have been provided by Hiew but I would like for backups to be in the hands of specific people that we trust to do exactly what they are charged to do in the event that we have a top to bottom failure of management to follow through on the tenants that I have already explicitly stated before or in the worst case scenario of me and Hiew suffering mortal wounds and the forum needing to be handed over to the next custodians of this forum. 

We also have the desire to be as transparent as possible in this regard as well, however, being 100% transparent does introduce inherent security issues so, some elements will not be announced, ever. They will remain in the charge of certain members here that will accept such a charge should the need arise. While I would love to state that there will never be a need, failure to plan is planning to fail. Not to mention, I would like this forum to survive us and at some point be passed to the next generation. Whether or not said members are able to project that role (via a profile badge or otherwise) will be also discussed internally as well as with the community.

• Does NBR 3.1B own my content?

I dont have the "legal" know how to make this proclamation however I can state that I have no desire to own your content. The ones that generate said content belongs to them. This is direct reflection of the issues of being able to post the content from NBR here. If you came up with a great modification, or discovered something that enables better functions, heck even a meme, that content is your own. Please feel free to post here and any other forum! This dictate will never change.  If you desire for content to remain here to post elsewhere at your own discretion then I would ask for a disclaimer to better protect yourself from bad actors. Naturally we cant enforce things outside of the forums but internally your content is yours. 

• Funding

The issue of funding has come up here and there and many of you have offered donations to which I have refused up to this point. I have a particular personal flaw due to my personal experiences that money always muddies the waters, especially with Friends and Family. In order to refuse that type of scenario here I have asked to please hold on that. We do have some ideas for funding but ultimately it comes down to a sobering point of which I will make here.

If no one provides anything at all over time, the forums may likely close. Right now the forums expenses are at a point where me and Hiew can maintain them. However if you wish for this forum to grow or continue to increase its functions then funding will need to come from somewhere. In the age of "social media" where you become the product is now commonplace we would like to make the content provided here the product that over time brings more people. This means that we as a community will need to come together and put our money where our mouth is and contribute.

This also means that it is incumbent upon the community to make sure anyone and everyone in management (as of now @Hiew and @Reciever) work towards bringing the best forum possible. I have had some ideas as to different means to support the forum in terms of fiscal contributions. 

1. Premium Accounts
2. Donor Accounts
3. Subscriptions
4. One time donations
5. Crypto donations and/or mining addresses

I am not of affluent means, and I also am very defensive for when I accept money from anyone. 
In this regard I wish for, if nothing else, to be beyond reproach when it comes to dealing with money in relation to the forum. 

• Who are you? 

An interesting question when seriously considered. My name is Chris, currently a technician for a B2B operation in Dallas / Fort Worth area. Introverted loner who enjoys synthwave probably more than I should. My only reprieve is probably NoteBookReview and its community otherwise, the only friends I have are those in Canada of all places. Born and raised in California, having been living in DFW since 2009. Went from the service industry to IT and had been doing various contracting work. An issue that I have (that Im sure some of you had seen in the past) is I always try to thread the needle. Sometimes successful, typically not but I do enjoy the good faith argument. 

I had been a member of NoteBookReview since 2012, though I dont think I posted as often until after I stopped participating at OCN. Ask anyone in my group and they used to say something akin to "he likes to make laptops run as good as the desktops". @Hiew would often tell me just stop and come to terms with my Ranger being a server, not a personal computer lol. 

• Rules and Moderation

I was hoping if this stayed community driven as one group to allow for the moderation team to have the mods continue their roles on the forum. Sadly this did not happen and there are now 3 potential options on the table for everyone to consider. The issue now at hand is that if what I was initially hoping for is seen as endorsement from the "old guard", by extension can be seen as putting our thumb on the scale. I will need additional perspectives surrounding this problem as moderator roles have to be done well. A peculiar problem, as we need passionate people that can also take a step back and objectively maintain order in a heated discussion.

[Reciever]

I know some of you have been posting that you all dont know who Hiew is, he has been taking some measures to address this and will be posting something relatively soon, as this last week has been terribly timed due to IRL factors, please have some patience in this regard.

Thanks in advance, and welcome to the forums! 

 

[Hiew]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to say thanks for coming around and welcome to our potential new home. So as I'm sure I've said It's been very hectic for me and @Reciever lately with getting the site up and running while still balancing work and personal.

My goals for this site mirrors what @Reciever has already dictated in his "Its time to clear the air" post. We've been working very closely on this project nearly every spare hour we've had, and its quite clear what we'd like to do here. I'd like to add that while us two can get quite a bit done ourselves we're obviously going to need some help with Moderating, coding (CSS/PHP/HTML/MYSQL) to start, graphic designer (or maybe a graphic design forum for submissions?) We have a few people in mind however it is also up to them if they feel they're up to the task. As well we'll also open up an area for which people can apply for certain roles/tasks. And please if there are any issues with how things are being run please raise the issue, everything is on the table for discussion and always subject to change.

Which brings things over to me. Who am I? My name is Kyle, I'm an I.T consultant working contract work for a handful of clients. I have a bit of a passion for running websites, on the side (and for fun) I run a few for friends and clients. With this sort of thing being the side focus, while I was in grade school (age 13) I ran a website for our 'clan' which comprised of mostly school friends and people I've met online. I enjoy this sort of thing.

Even though I haven't been an active member on Notebook Reviews, I've known Reciever for quite some time (10+ years), and would often get links or discussion over on my Teamspeak server about (x,y,z) from NBR. Thank you for giving me a chance, it really means a lot.

With all that being said I'm more than open to people talking directly to me, I try not to be an "unreachable" kind of person, and will always listen to reason. If you have a personal issue please take it up with me via PM, I don't ignore. Over time I'd like to get to know more of you, and from what I've seen over the past while I understand wholeheartedly why you all loved notebookreview.com. The amount of helpful, friendly, and critical thinking people on the forum are quite unique in a world where its too easy to get bottled up in an echo chamber with a closed mind. This whole situation quite frankly sucks, but I think we can make a good new start at this going forward.

My only request is to please keep things here civil, if someone rubs you the wrong way just give it a break and come back to it at a later time when nerves have calmed.

For those that are here, thanks for sticking with us! I expect this is going to be a fun ride!