There are no Terms of Service on this new forum platform, because we had not even thought about it. There were so many logs-on-the-fire when we were going through the process, it never crossed our minds. This new platform was built for our situation at the time, a Terms of Service was never anything we discussed when the site was fixed.
There probably was a "stock" one as you mention on our original forum that came with the old Vbulletin software.
I have to look into this because the VDF is not a corporation, LLC or a sole proprietorship. It is not a structured business in that sense. The "organization" is really just myself and TommyP handling the posts.
We do not generate revenue or sell add space to cover the expenses. Generally speaking it is solely funded by me. The mission has always been to have a resting place for preserving the history.
I can say the user data and the forum data has ever been sold or transmitted to any third party for monetary gain or non-monetary gain for that matter. The programmers did have access to the data, but there was a contract I signed for them to do the work.
Sadly though, after the switch from Vbulletin to this new platform we lost a lot of traffic due to all of the delays in making the change. There were way more hurdles to the process which we had to overcome and that did damage the membership..
Initially I never wanted the site to be a hang out for guys just to banter and discuss off the wall topics. That usually ends up with a core group slowly taking over the forum and dictating content and policing new members. The issues really start when a forum adds more and more moderators to the point where alliances are built and when one group of mods does something another group of mods does not like, then the forum breaks apart and usually splinters into one group creating another forum. In retrospect, that is how this forum and DFO started, but it was technically not a fight between members, but there was so much hatred going on, and the preson in control owned a brick-and-mortar business which caused a lot of personal conflict in the industry, he decided just to shut the forum down. I saw a need to document the history and create a resource for future generations to learn from and hopefully catch the collecting bug and why I started the VDF.
Those days may be over for forums in general, but there are still huge forums not in the vintage drum sphere that are run like a real business because money is the driving factor.
I always wanted it to be a "question and answer" database for the history. That was the original slogan "Ask a question get an answer"
The question then becomes as you mention if the data could be offloaded to the highest bidder for an AI system. Data is big money! Everyone thinks Tesla is a car company, which they are, but they are really a data harvester for everything those cars encounter and what their users do! They are creating a road map of the world, much like Google. Most big companies are the same. It is the data that has value and companies will pay big money to get it.
I would think our data is low on the totem pole in regards to having much value. Users input limited personal information to create an account and the data being created is very specific to a small part of the population. It is however valuable to the person looking to ID a vintage drum!
I have no problem adding a Terms of Service, but just pasting a stock version would just be as you mention.
I would like to get some input if I'm not seeing this correctly or missing the point entirely. I can never just answer the question with a simple answer because my mind goes into a variety of directions and I tend to ramble on and over explain things.
Oh yeah, the only reason I mention the forum splits is because that is when the data is most vulnerable and we are not structured like that for a reason. It is also my memory of the past forum situation. Others might have been more involved and see that previous situation another way.
