No definitely, this forum is perfectly ok, its growing now and you have no guarantee that setting up another from scratch would succeed. So I would say stick with it, and it will probably grow from here. I would just make a few suggestions:
- I would say nowhere on this site should any discussion of any type be allowed with respect to two people who populate a certain other website. Just delete any such reference as it arrives, its an awesomely bad image for this site where people might think this forum is just set up to feud against another.
I am not saying that about so called 'doxing' of other people. Its not unreasonable to try and figure out who people are, its not right that you would 'know' people for more than a decade and not know their name, and not wrong to speculate on it, I think anyway.
- I wonder should you just abolish all restrictions for new members? Sure some are infiltrators and will try and wreck things, but I don't see how you can successfully weed them out by such restrictions? Just let everybody post as they like from the beginning, and moderate from there? People who come from
www.politicalirish.com might just get bored waiting before they can post.
- Also, we are not scared of debate? Obviously I completely disagree with somebody like Charlottsweb on the other site, but it hones your own thoughts when you can bounce them off somebody else?
- I guess the obvious step now is to go into video, maybe a weekly round up of politics that you could do on zoom with somebody and post up on youtube or whatever?
Anyway you are doing well, its going ok, I wouldn't change too much. Thanks for your kind comments too!