New forums you might all be interested in

[Erin Pavlina]

Hi guys,

My husband, Steve, and I have launched brand new forums that you might be interested in. The Personal Development for Smart People forums are now open.

A little background on my husband.

He has a Top 100 Blog. He has the largest personal development site in the world, getting more traffic than Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Dr. Wayne Dyer, etc.

There are more than 500 free articles on his site about all manner of personal development topics. He has discussed veganism in several articles and has probably convinced more people to go vegan than I ever have.

If you've been following my new career as a professional medium, you might also enjoy the forums as we have forums discussing spirituality, consciousness, awareness, psychic, and paranormal things.

The maturity level of his visitors is very high. We launched the forums Friday night and there are already over 1000 members in just three days.

We happen to have a lot of vegans posting in the health and fitness forum, including a vegan moderator, so it's very veg friendly over there (of course).

Anyway, just thought you guys might be interested. Wouldn't mind having some of these discussions with a wider audience. It's not quite as "safe" from debate as things are here at VegFamily, but we don't tolerate personal attacks or trolling etc.

Check them out for yoruself. Something for everyone

www.stevepavlina.com/forums

[Christa]

Erin,

I just got the email that the vegfamily forums will be closing this upcoming Monday. I have noticed that things have been a bit inactive on here as of late and there seem to be a lot of spam posts, but I am sorry to see this area closing.

Are you closing the whole site or just the forums?

[Erin Pavlina]

Just closing the forums. I forgot to make the announcement here, but I will soon.

Yeah, these forums aren't terribly active and the spam... oh lord the spam.... I would have to pay a significant amount to upgrade the boards and there's no point.

Our new forums are going to be as big or even bigger than the Mothering forums and I feel I can do more good over there.

I loved our little vegan community here, but I'm hoping to see all of our core people at the new forums. There is a larger than average ratio of vegans to omnivores. With you ladies all there we can really get some stuff done!

Vegfamily the magazine will be undergoing some changes soon too. But not yet...

[annie7]

Congrats on the upward move, Erin. Steve, too.

[PikkuMyy]

I, too, am sorry to see the forums go. Is there any way to archive the info? I'm always directing people here to answer their questions.

I freely admit that I've been less than active here in the past few months than in the past as I've been insanely busy and dealing with my FIL living with us in a very tiny house.

Any idea why the spam has increased so much? I never saw any more than once every 6 months or so until a few months ago and now every time I log on, I report at least a few posts.

I did look at some of the vegan-related posts on the new forum but I'm not too drawn in.

The main reason I'm sorry to see this board go is that it was a nice place to discuss the issues without people saying things like "Animals are bound to die anyhow: if they stop dieing because their predators don't eat them anymore, then they'll die because of overpopulation." I just don't have the time or energy to be involved in such discussions. And yes, there are other vegan-only forums but they never had the simple, nice and supportive, family nature this forum does, which is why I've not really participated in any others, even though some are more geared towards my demographic.

[Erin Pavlina]

The spam bots found a way to register, click on the confirmation link and post spam and it's too overwhelming for us to deal with every day. If I upgraded the board it would go away, but I feel like that is a waste of time and money since there are really only a handful of people who post on these boards.

I'm not sure about archiving, we'll see.

I know this was a nice, safe place. I'll miss that too. At least it was here for a number of years.

[Christa]

I totally understand, Erin.

I am in the same place as you, though, Pikkumyy. I like that here it isn't just one or two nutrition forums within a larger board. It is easier to find posts relevant to what you want to discuss when it is broken up into all of these different forums rather just all under one wide veggie or nutrition forum.

I no longer post on the MDC nutrition forums since there is one member in particular there who seems to have it in for me -- not a vegan . Although I have no experience with the new mod, I do have to admit that I am also uncomfortable with the idea that the mod for the whole nutrition forum (including the veg*n board) follows an NT diet and has posted on threads that she believes her former veg*n diet damaged her and her child's health.

I may pop over to your new site occassionally, but I'm not sure if it is calling my name right now either.

The articles, etc. on the main page of vegfamily will be staying for now, though?

[Erin Pavlina]

Yes, the articles and information on vegfamily.com will stay for a long time. We may end up integrating it into Pavlina, LLC but no plans to do that until we hire a full time webmaster to cover all the sites we own.