Indeed - Congrats Debate Politics.
Hrmm... let's see what I can do with some of these questions.
Our ORIGINAL birth date is in May, but our 're-born' birth date is in October.
I am the owner and co founder of Debate Politics. I recently changed my title from "Admin" to "Lead moderator" so that I could be a team player instead of a boss. For all practical purposes, I am the founder as I do all the coding in the background. Gypsy32 is the other co founder, but he is no longer active and never really was active much anyway. He fronted the money to create this web site (full year of hosting and half the forum charges). Debate Politics.com domain was available when searching for a name, so I bought it even without telling him! He didn't really like the domain name, but accepted it. He is no longer co-owner, but he is still a member. He might sneak in at anytime though.
The forum was created to be a sounding board for everyone of any political bias. We wanted to talk about the upcoming election, but started off way too late for that to happen last year. We were and still are the type of folks that like to keep in touch with the news and write our congressperson whenever we believe it was the good thing to do.
The original concept was a little different than what it is today. We had 3 additional forums that only allowed Conservatives, Independents, and Liberals to start a post - but anyone could respond. This proved to be a challenge to folks that were new to forums and also proved to be a dud. There were also private "flame" forums for each group. Of course we had "Today's news" and "US Politics" as well. Very small forums - I think we had around 12 or so.
The design and the goal has never been to be profitable, but simply pay the bills and refund our losses. I remember saying one time, "It is my hobby and an expensive one - why should anyone else have to pay for my hobby?" I still think of that when posting about how are bills are due in October.
We told friends and family. Probably the first 35 or so were just feeling sorry for us or just wanted to shut me up.
It took forever for google to find us, and when she did - we were very low in the rankings. For 3 months google ignored us after she found us (sandbox effect). Of course now we are top for many competitive searches. Most likely, if you are a new member, you found us through google.
Pacridge is probably one of the longest and still very active members and he can remember the good old days back in early November. I asked him to be a moderator shortly after he signed up. We had around 160 members at the time if I remember correctly. He is truly one of the guys that can be blamed for the sites popularity. From the beginning, I have attempted (not always) to get his take on where we should be heading.
Around the December time-frame we had several folks asking if they could donate and help out because they think we were heading in a direction that other forums were not. The idea of being unbiased was a new concept. I waxed and waned, but finally accepted it. This rekindled my personal spirits greatly that this was a good thing. I think that is a major reason why we are successful. We always try to listen to feedback and most of the time implement on the spot. Alex's recent request for the
Political Platform forum is a prime example.
The most successful thread ever was
http://www.debatepolitics.com/showthread.php?threadid=482 (A simple Yes or No with a short explanation.) - "A simple yes or no with a short explanation" - Abortion forum. Currently, the most active is War on Terror.
By now you should all know the concept and philosophy. We have a very diverse moderator team that keeps us all in check. We do not want to give the perception that partisanship is a reason for moderating a post or banning a user. To date we have only banned 4 users.
Thanks to everyone here, we are indeed one of the fastest growing political forum on the net.
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