Tahoma Parents Forum To Be Discontinued Next Month (April 2024)

[Justin B]

UPDATE 3/25/2024: THANKS TO OUR GENEROUS DONORS, THE COMMUNITY HAS BEEN FUNDED FOR ANOTHER YEAR.

Hi Everyone,

We will be shutting down our forum next month (April 2024).

We wanted to try this communication medium for a year after a survey showed interest in having a publicly viewable forum to discuss TSD information outside of official TSD channels and TSD Facebook groups that censor dissenting voices.

After trying this out for a year, it has become apparent that the vast majority of people still prefer closed, direct email communication and Facebook groups to obtain and discuss TSD info. This is completely understandable as parents can consume their TSD-related information while simultaneously checking their email and Facebook feeds. We had hoped that the advantages of having a forum that anyone could publicly view would encourage open dialogue and the free flow of information, but as it simply does not offer a comparable convenience factor and high-level interface, it never grew to a level that justifies the cost.

It has been fun running this forum for those who participated, and we appreciate the contributions offered by everyone.

Justin 

[Nathalie]

Bummer...

which groups are used for TSD-related discussions on FB? I visit FB extremely rare... I guess it's going to have to change.

[Justin B]

@Nathalie there are a couple different groups, but none allow open dialog if something doesn’t fit their moderators’ ideology.

TSD Discussion Group, which is probably the largest group flat out blocks our site. 

That was one of the main reasons people wanted a different way to communicate and why we created this feature. There is also a large amount of people (like you and me) who don’t use Facebook which was another reason we tested this out.

Unfortunately the convenience factor of this place just isn’t sufficient enough to motivate even our own supporters to consistently engage enough to grow this platform. Without engagement we are dead in the water. 

So with that, if you search for groups on FB, just realize you may get your Tahoma “news” from them, but you will also get very biased opinions on that news so take those opinions with a grain of salt as they are certainly not consensus viewpoints.

We still have email communication, and are exploring other avenues in the meantime.

Thank you for engaging on here!

[Nathalie]

Will there be an archive of some sort? People posted here a lot of useful information.

[Justin B]

I think we may be able to save the data, but it won’t be accessible via our site. We may be able to archive the posts using something like Wayback Machine or Archive.is so they can be accessed from there.

I agree there is a lot of good info on here and I wish we could keep the forum up even just for historical purposes, but we sadly don’t have the funding secured to keep it up while keeping everything else running so we’ve had to make cuts.

This forum is actually a separate service that we’ve attached to our site. I think after it disables, the data will remain persevered for sometime so if people show interest and we gain funding we may be able to restore it.

I’ll keep you posted on potential archives as we work through it.