So long and thanks…
Ahh, the penultimate post.
This is just a quick marker to thank some people that have helped out with signposts over the years and whose contribution that we want to recognise. Most visible are those that have posted guest posts or even just considered guest posting. You have managed to keep the posts coming around here when we have been unable to, and have been willing to bring some different insight and perspective. We thank you for what you have done with no more reward than our appreciation and the ability to jump on your own soapbox.
As many of you know, we have never used advertising or any other means to cover the costs of this site. And the costs of maintaining this site could have been prohibitive for us. With the number of comments and page refreshes here every day, our usage at time spiralled out of control. We are therefore very thankful for the support of our good friend Carl at Bluestreet Internet. He helped us to both install every upgrade we needed, charged us very cheap rates and didn’t smack us around when we went over our limit. I doubt that we could have continued in the way that we have without the support of our internet host.
We have also had a whole heap of people help with the design, coding and prettiness of the site. In addition to Carl, Doug (sometimes referred to here as “the Lodger”) has often been the one stuck with the task of rejigging a plug in or page format so that it meets our exacting requirements. Joseph and Stephen and others have from time to time contributed design work in the various headings and banners that we have used over the years. And there are many others in our friends and community who have given technical or other advice as we have needed it. We thank you too.
Mostly, we want to thank the commenters here. It is truly you that have transformed this site into something that we didn’t anticipate. It has been our most powerful experience of virtual community and we thank you for it. There are many people here that have, either under their own names or psuedonymously, posted very raw details of your experiences and thoughts. Some of you have trusted us enough to reveal yourselves even more to us personally. We thank you. Even if you haven’t been a member of the signposts anonymous club, we thank you anyway. To all those that waded in advocating their own point of view and defending it even when shouted down, we thank you. There would have been little discussion or dialogue on this site if all of our commenters agreed with each other. And for all those that thought hard, considered their positions and tried to impart insight, we applaud you. We know that we have had our viewpoints pushed, prodded and stretched and we hope that others have too. Finally we thank those of you who made us laugh. The funsters and the running jokes at times were a great relief of tension in talking about serious issues.
While we are confident that this is the right decision for us now, we feel like we will be losing something out of our lives and our ministry when we say goodbye to this bunch of screen names and IP addresses who have been joining with us over the last years.
God bless you, whereever you may be or go.
*update*
Sorry meant to turn off comments.. so, have removed the last couple of comments - ah finally censorship at signposts 