Possible reason?

There have been dozens of "news stories" in the past few days examining why Thorn Tree was shut down, and they are all pretty much the same. The jist of it is some disgruntled repeatedly banned forum regular accused the BBC of sponsoring kiddie porn and sex tourism with references to Jimmy Savile and the execs whent batshit and had the forum shut down. I was logged in when it happened and it melted down in a strange way until finally just that blue screen with generic unhelpful message. Who knows now? It could be down for another week or go away entirely. Too bad, it's a good resource for newbie travellers and was kinda like my morning coffee and a good way to make travel friends. Sorry that some sick scumbag and a few paranoid reactionaries had to go and mess it up for the rest of us.

There was really good advice on the South America forum. Sometimes things went a bit off topic, but aside from the occasional idiot who wanted to find drugs, questions and answers were genuine and it was the best resource on internet. They should have focussed on any branch that was a problem and left the rest alone. BTW, aren't the mods supposed to keep an eye on inappropriate posts anyway? Where were they?

That was never my experience. Normal posters could't ban someone anyway. You could report spam but that was usually so obvious it wasn't even worth it.

The reason the forum has been temporarily closed is because some adults had a good look at it:

www.homeinbali.com/forum/topic/6439-why-lonely-planets-travel-forum-was-shut-down/

Here's his posting: -

Posted 30 December 2012 - 06:50 PM

"Arguably the most popular and longest standing travel related forum, known as Thorn Tree, operated by Lonely Planet, and since last year fully owned by the BBC, was shut down on Saturday the 22nd of December. The shut down is presumably temporary while necessary measures are taken to clean up its archives, address moderation issues, and likely install software filters to keep the forum from being classified as an "adult content" website.

Almost immediately following the shut down, the internet lit up with numerous news articles, blog entries and posts on various forums, all speculating why the BBC took this action. None of those "sources" provide the truth or the facts associated with this event.

This entire event was initiated by an e-mail dated December 16 to acting Director-General of the BBC, Mr. Tim Davie by a well known writer living on Bali who was preparing an article for the New York Times Sunday travel section. The article being prepared for the NY Times was to be an analysis of several well known travel related forums with an objective rating of each forum based on parameters including popularity, accuracy of information, number of responses to questions, decorum and style. Nine travel related forums had been picked by the writer for that study.

In the course of the research conducted by the writer, it became alarmingly evident that the Thorn Tree forum was full of active and archived posts which would easily classify the Thorn Tree forum as an "adult content" web site.

Mr. Davie immediately responded with great concern to the writer's e-mail and delegated Mr. Philip Fleming, the head of BBC's Communications, to address the issues raised in this writer's first e-mail. Mr. Fleming first contacted the writer on December 17. On that same day, the writer also received e-mail from Mr. Tom Hall, who is the editorial director of Lonely Planet.

On the 20th of December, the writer shared some of the research conducted while preparing the article for the NY Times with Mr. Hall. This research proved that over 43,500 posts in the archives of Thorn Tree included adult material, unquestionably not suitable for a "family oriented" forum. The writer was also able to prove that the vast majority of those adult content posts were on particular branches of the Thorn Tree forum which were for non travel related discussions, and primary among those branches was the Your Choice (YC) branch of the forum.

Also documented was the fact that greater than 83% of the participant posters on YC posted almost exclusively on that branch, and when looking specifically at high usage posters, those with 15,000 or more posts, 97% of their posts were made exclusively on the YC branch.

At the time of writer's study, the number of open topics on YC exceeded that of any of the other specific branches on the TT forum, which at the time of the study, numbered 50 branches. YC currently stood with 76,348 open topics. None of the other 49 specific topic branches, which largely dealt with specific travel destinations, met this number, and the vast majority fell well below the number of active topics on the YC branch.

Understanding that Lonely Planet is a recent acquisition of the BBC, the researcher and writer of the intended article for the New York Times acted in good faith and forewarned the appropriate executives of a problem that they very likely were unaware. At no time, and in no discussions between the writer, the BBC, or Lonely Planet was the topic of Jimmy Savile raised, nor was the issue of the BBC looking for a new owner of Lonely Planet discussed.

Hopefully the Lonely Planet forum will re-emerge shortly and in a revised manner that reflects and satisfies the needs of would be travelers world wide."

I'm sure our self-congratulatory 'friend' managed to convince them that YC members would just migrate to other branches. The WT (Women Travellers) branch had been given a warning too.

To my mind, YC acts as a necessary 'syphoning valve' to keep more flippant comments off the main branches. Personally, I call it 'the bear pit' and enjoy a scrap or two there. Sometimes they get a bit carried away, and sometimes they're downright puerile. Sometimes they overstep the mark - but that's why we have mods.

The guy who is so pleased with himself for having the whole site closed down was the subject of a thread that did get rather out of hand - but that was at least in part his own fault. If you can't stand the heat you get out of the kitchen, methinks.

“Why not just close down YC, temporarily or permanently, if that is where the problem was and leave everyone else alone.”

While the majority of problems were found to be on the YC board, they were not limited to that board.

“I'm sure our self-congratulatory 'friend' managed to convince them that YC members would just migrate to other branches.”

You might be “sure” but you are wrong. None of the correspondence between the writer and the BBC or Lonely Planet included any recommendations or suggestions for changes to the TT forum.

Sorry Gogo that your playground has been closed, but you are doing an excellent job demonstrating some of the reasons why the BBC has taken the steps they have to safeguard the integrity and reputation of both the BBC and Lonely Planet.