Regarding Alan and the expected treatment of him here
Recently we have had some controversy regarding user Alan Mendelson, and some nasty posts made in his direction.
In that thread, I stated that, while Alan is a user like everyone else and is allowed to be criticized and challenged, I wanted to see a certain level of respect shown to him.
I will explain this further for those who may not understand.
This forum originated as "Alan Best Buys", in 2010. It did not start out as a gambling-related forum. Alan started it as an extension to his "Alan's Best Buys" television program.
However, that aspect of it never really caught on. What did catch on was the gambling discussion -- which was mostly led by Alan himself, an admitted recreational gambler.
I found this forum a few years later when searching for information on the Seven Stars program.
However, after a relatively short time here, I noticed that the forum was inundated with spam, and was running on a lousy third-party hosting service. Given that I already run a forum (pokerfraudalert.com) and have a technical background, I offered Alan to become administrator here and clean things up. He accepted, and I did exactly what I said. I moved the forum to my (much faster and more reliable) server, stopped the spam, and all of the technical issues previously dogging the Alan Best Buys Forum were solved.
At that point, I did not own this forum, nor was I making admin decisions. I was simply the tech guy, and Alan was still the one in charge.
However, in February 2016, Alan decided he had enough of running the forum, and was about to shut it down permanently. I offered to take over. At that point, he fully transferred the content and rights to the forum to me. It was mine at that point, and Alan no longer had any ownership in it. The only caveat was that I would change the URL, change the forum name, and disassociate the forum from Alan Best Buys. This was done, and vegascasinotalk.com was born.
While some of it was reorganized, 100% of the old Alan Best Buys content was retained, and all accounts were left intact. In addition, Alan decided to stay on as a regular poster (though he was no longer an admin or owner), and in fact has been the most active poster on vegascasinotalk, even more active than me.
So here we are. This forum has existed in is present state for 18 months now.
This brings us to the interesting question: Should Alan be treated as a regular user, or should he have some kind of special status because he was the founder, operator, and bill payer)of this place until I took over in early 2016?
I decided that, for the most part, everyone here is fairly equal, including me. As some of you have probably noticed, users on this forum have insulted and bashed me at times, and I have not deleted their messages nor banned their accounts.
However, I think there does need to be at least a basic level of respect shown to both the present owner (me) and former owner (Alan).
Obviously Alan gets very involved in the threads here, and sometimes makes controversial statements. It would be ridiculous for me to shield Alan from criticism or mild insults, simply because he once owned this forum. If you can't take the heat, you need to stay out of the kitchen.
At the same time, really nasty posts meant to sully Alan's reputation shouldn't be taking place here. Remember that this place wouldn't exist if Alan hadn't started it, or if he chose to just shut it down last year instead of transfer it to me.
I want to make it very clear that I am NOT asking people to stop arguing with Alan, criticizing him, or giving him a hard time when you disagree with him. That is all fair game on a forum like this.
However, even if you don't like him, I would like to ask that you tone down the personal attacks, unless has personally attacked you first.
I am trying to achieve a balance here of free speech and a semblance of order. Thank you.
