Hi all,
I'm sorry that we've been slow and sometimes non-responsive to the requests or email enquiries. The truth of the matter is: we've been really really very busy. We are planning to upgrade the server and this time, the upgrade will be a very major upgrade so that it can cater to future growth of the community. It is to also prepare that the new server architecture can cope for the future features where we've been planning to implement. This decision was not taken lightly as it will cost a lot of money and we've limited resources. It is a catch-22. We can only do one: employ more support staff or upgrade the servers. We've chosen to upgrade the server instead.
As some of you may have noticed, the community has continued to grow but the number of advertisers in the directory has not increased. Why? That's because many business providers chose to abuse the forum instead. That's why we have no choice but to continue to police the forum as best as we can. We are glad to have some business providers who have chosen to advertise with us or users who have paid and organised BP in the forum. However, the income from this avenue is not enough to sustain SingaporeMotherhood.com. We are currently relying on the revenue from other areas to support the continuous running of SingaporeMotherhood.com. We are doing this because we believe in the community and want to continue to provide for the genuine parents and parents-to-be here. If it was a pure business decision, it would have been easier just to shutdown the forum.
Many times, the moderators have to rely on their own judgement to make the decision. It may not be perfect but this has serve us well. Some of you have suggested that we should send a prior warning email. I've mentioned before, this method does not work as there were many users who ignored our email and went ahead to spam more messages in the forum. This ended up creating more work for us and took up even more of our limited time. We try to serve the best that we can to as many people as we can, but I've learnt that we can't please everyone. I'm sorry but we just have to do the best we can.
Some of you have said that there isn't a point in suspending users' account as they will just recreate another one. So does that mean we shouldn't do anything and let the them run amok in the forum? It would be a sad day if we choose not to do anything at all; that would mean we have given up! If another account is created and used to violate the terms of use again, we'll just have to ban again. If we don't do anything, do you think in future, we'll have any advertisers who would be willing to pay to advertise here?
We are basically running on a very tight budget, and we have many duties and responsibilities. Our responsibilities does not involve in just running SingaporeMotherhood forum. We do have to ensure continuous revenue from our current projects. Like many here, we've mouths to feed and responsibilities to our own families and children.
Finally, to find out the reason why your account was suspended, please send an email to
[email protected] instead to
[email protected]. Daily, I've hundreds of emails and I'm sorry but inevitably, your email queries to me will be buried among the many emails. In fact, emailing to me will take longer (sometimes never) to receive response. I'm sorry but really, there is only one me.
I know we are not perfect but we are really doing our best we can with the limited time and resources. I hope everyone remembers that behind the forum, it is a team of human beings with feelings, who is not so different from you. Thank you.
Regards,
Chin Leng.