Voltage forum still salvagable?

Hi there,

I've just read Ken original statement again. See below

"Posted: Apr 7 2004, 12:45 AM
My name is Ken Trough, and I am a consultant and technical writer from Bellingham, Washington and the Voltage Forum architect and main administrator. I've been involved with EVs for a few years now, focused on electric scooters, electric bicycles, electric cycles, and other Personal Electric Vehicles (PEVs).

I really believe in the importance of EVs in creating better living spaces for ourselves. Electric vehicles give us cleaner air and less noise in dense urban areas, less dependence upon fossil fuel products, and they put the FUN back into the commute. I decided to do all I can to promote them in various ways. This included the participation and moderation of various EV related forums around the web. Eventually a desire to organize this sea of raw EV data prompted me to start my own website and magazine on the subject, V is for Voltage.

I have come to believe that a single, large, EV community of forums would be much stronger than a dozen isolated and narrow narrow topic forums. By gathering all these narrow topics under one site, we allow users to easily visit other related topic areas without having to seek out and register at any other sites. This means more effective data sharing. Also, many of the existing online EV communities are based on simple, outdated messaging systems such as listservs or Yahoo!Groups, and the limited functionality of these older systems has stalled their growth. They were good in their day (and still serve a valuable purpose), but ultimately these kind of basic function message systems limit community growth beyond a certain point.

I decided to launch the Voltage Forum as a way to provide the impetus and infrastructure the online EV community needs to be able to grow to the next level. I believe that the software chosen provides the most functionality to the most clients including the top ten browsers as well as difficult clients like pda, cell phone, and WebTV participants. This means we offer wide availability combined with efficient organizational structure, very fast response times, and monster bandwidth. Add the advanced forum information delivery/viewing options, a beefed up backend architecure, and a layered multi-site backup methodology, and I believe you have a system architecture model that will be able to handle the explosive growth expected in the electric technology space.

The Voltage Forum has a team of dedicated forum moderators. These people look for spam and off topic posts, make sure that all the forum participants follow the forum guidelines and respect others, and provide basic leadership in the forums by assisting new users and so forth.

If for some reason in the future I am unwilling or unable to administrate and support this forum, I pledge that I will hand it off to the current moderation staff so that they will be able to find a suitable replacement administrator. This way, the community can outlast any single individual's administrative availability.

I look forward to seeing this forum grow into its true potential, providing the EV community with the fertile ground and the support it needs to not only grow but to thrive around the globe.

As always, we welcome all ideas about how we can make this space even better. Email us here admin [at] visforvoltage.com"

Looking at the third last paragraph I'm a little surprised at whats happened. It would be great if there is some way to contact Ken and, if he no longer wishes t be involved I'd imagine he would want to hand things over to some trustee's so the old site can be continued and rejuvanated. I understand he's not contactable on the numbers that he has printed on his site I'd be surprised if there isn't someone who knows him personally and would be able to contact him to find out whats going on. Anyone know anybody or have any ideas

Cheers

Nick