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Many of you know the reaction (likes) and reputation system crashed. In database terms these were files I have allowed to build for 11 years without touching them. The main benefit as far as I was concerned was seeing what posts were the most popular over the years, helping point people to high quality content. However, this post popularity thing was also tied to a member reputation system. As non-active members and spammers were purged from the system, the lack of reindexing eventually caused problems. The forums have had periodic meltdowns the last couple years, and I suspect now it was tied to this. The data was unrecoverable without going to extremes not worth the time and effort I would have to invest with doubtful results. In a bid to get the sytem back to a higher level of stability I dropped the member reputation system and leaderboard entirely, and reset/reindexed the post reactions/likes system. In general I have been paring the system back deleting less used areas in favor of focusing on the main activity here, the forums themselves. So far the result seems to be a more stable and snappier responding forum. That was the goal and hopefully this remains the case going forward. Thanks for your patience and understanding.

I once hoped this forum would recapture some of the magic of the old days at the Alaska Gold Forum. It is obvious now that is not to be, with almost no posts here anymore about gold dredging. It makes sense as I gave that up in favor of metal detecting myself over 25 years ago, and without me driving discussion about dredging here the idea was doomed to failure. By and large the main posting action on these forums is about metal detecting. I got curious where if anywhere the dredgers ended up at, and a brief search of Google results has me thinking the TreasureNet Dredging & Hi Banking Forum is now the place to be if you have an interest in the subject. Looks like lots of good posters and posts there. Not much has changed in the dredging world from what I can see except the dubious fascination with whiz bang magical mats. I doubt anything will change here as regards gold dredging so best bet for those interested will be to head where the action is, and as far as I can tell TreasureNet is the only place getting any substantial number of new posts on the subject on a regular basis. Back when I used to go gold dredging......