Since we're talking about histroy, here's some worthwhile history (as it pertains to kymba)

The previous sites have not be taken down because of the forums.  It has been a technical shortcoming in both cases and in each case, every effort was made to keep these precious forums in place. (because everyone seems to love each other so much) Ultimately we opted to move to bikeclicks because it allows us to better communicate with more cyclists and - as steven said - they offer terrific technical support (for free).

The Kentucky Mountain Bike Association was founded in the mid 90s with a distinct mission: to promote mountain biking in the Commonwealth of Kentucky through advocacy, education, leadership and sustainable trail development. (Notice, the mission offers no mention of providing individuals with a place to publicly post personal opinions, particularly when it comes to highly divisive, non-cycling related issues.) 

By nature of what we try to do, KyMBA is something of a political animal. We all like to ride bikes on the trails and the trails happen to be on public land. As we need to use a public resource for our chosen recreation, it's rather important that we effectively lobby our elected leaders for support - both political and financial. So, while we must operate in a political world, we are a bicycle-oriented user group - not a political party and certainly not a political discussion group.

To sum up: the Kentucky Mountain Bike Association is an organization built around mountain biking. The organization's end goal is to improve mountain biking in Kentucky and the website serves as a place where people with a common interest (again, that would be mountain biking) can communicate with each other, organize and hopefully - get out and ride together once in a while.  When it comes to mountain biking, we have something in common - beyond that - I suspect it get's a bit trickier. 

So, as I have done at least twice a year for the last two years, I am once again going to request that all opinion pieces be kept off the general forums. There has never been an "opinion" post that didn't dissolve into name calling and chaos, which is what get's us back to the original post: "A History Lesson - Then and Now"

As this started as a history discussion, let me offer this lesson: History has proven that opinion pieces in the KyMBA forums are bad for moral, take away from the goals of the organization and generally leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth.  So, since we are so psyched on learing from history, let's employ what we've learned from our own recent digital history and move to a new operational model - Please post all personal opinion pieces elsewhere. Someone invented this neat little thing called a weblog and you are all encouraged to start your own - you can even start one right here on bikeclicks. Think of your blog as your own little marginally-informed talkshow where people can "call in" and agree with you or fight with you or whatever else and by moving it to another "room" on the site, it will help preserve the forums for other stuff, like organizing arm wrestling or cage fighting instead of hill climbs or huffy tosses. 

Thanks for coming to class today everyone - please try to enjoy your summer.