I am planning to slowly retire from the site. I will be doing a couple of updates to the forums and after that it is up to someone else. I've put in 8 years under the hood and it is both growing old and I am seldom able to play any more. I have sold off most of my guitars and have a handful yet to go keeping only the very special ones, ones I started out with, ones friends have helped me acquire, and such.
I am in the process of gathering all the images I have accumulated through my own efforts and the efforts of others. I am also packing up every HTML page currently on the site as well as the finished and unfinished templates I created when I planned on doing a site wide update. I suspect I will not be doing this now.
I have been diagnosed with a brain tumor which even after a year of test after test has not been positively identified and the resulting condition correctly diagnosed. With this in mind I am shifting gears and devoting more of my time to my passions and less to community service. As time passes it is more and more difficult to focus on recent memory although past memory seems to be unaffected. Let's just call it forgetful for now. I am told it is likely to get worse over time though.
Hopefully I have given enough to inspire others to continue the work that has been done so far by the hanful of dedicated Uncle Matt fans.
I will be refraining from moderating the forums very soon and leaving this job to the new moderators. It will be up to you to lock inapropriate threads, move and delete out of scope threads redirecting the inquiries to the correct resources, remove duplicate/spam posts, remind and reinforce rules and guidelines, interject when threads or users begin to cause problems, and basically keep things on track, in the right direction, and moving forward to one day identifying and documenting the many guitars made by Matsumoku.
Just a few hints: eBay links belong nowhere but in the eBay forum for reasons already explained. Out of scope threads belong in the Post Matsumoku forum for later model guitars and ultimately locked or deleted, and threads that have NO connection with this site deleted (save for those permitted in the Off Topid forum of course). Threads on well docuemented models belong in the Member's Treasures as the individual forums are dedicated to identifying and documenting models less well known. You get the idea.
Those of you who are moderators now will notice you have rights and powers available to you that you did not have as a normal user. You also have access to a forum where you can discuss and work with each other (Moderator's Holdover). This is also a place you can move questionable threads to take them out of view yet retain as some should not be deleted and kept for reference or when a joker joins solely to do as they will giving the Admin time to cripple their account and make returning under a different name more difficult.
I will ask that whomever takes over the role of page updates kindly refrain from using tools which make the site inaccessible from true RFC compliant browsers or forcing visitors to use the proprietary Internet Explorer. The site should always remain accessible to ALL, not just those who use IE. This pretty much rules out Front Page and a few other large packages that rely on proprietary IE specific formatting and syntax. If the site becomes unruly in FireFox I for one will no longer visit.
If you have any questions post here and I will reply as soon as I have a chance. Those willing to assume the duties of updating the site should also post here.
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