A Letter from the President

[pledosophy]

Over the past two weeks there have been several events that have happened in our little club and at the request of several members I have been urged to make a statement to address some concerns and correct some of the misinformation and rumors that are out there.

 

On August 25th our forum was hacked by a group named by a group called ArHaCk.net. They accessed our site through a hole in our security that had not been patched with the intent of collecting information for the use of phishing schemes and relay those schemes from our server. During the hack they wiped out the information on the server replacing it was a script that made it impossible to retrieve.

 

Any rumors of our site being hacked and obliterated internally are completely without merit.

 

In November of 2012 our then host company was purchased by another host company. Our site at that time was scheduled to do automated back ups. During the transfer of ownership to the new host company our automated back ups were turned off. The Admin team at the time had not noticed and had no other system of back ups in place. Our site was reverted to the last back up that was available. The construction of the site had been erased and had to be rebuilt. All member information between 11/9/12 to 9/5/14 was lost and had to be registered and manually input (which is why I got to PM so many of you nice folks)

 

To address this situation we now have instituted remote daily automated backups that are being pushed to servers in two geographically different locations. Backups are stored daily, weekly, and monthly. Micah has also tested our backup making sure we can upload it in case this does ever happen again. We our also proceeding with "fire drills" where this will be done quarterly to ensure what we have in place is working.

 

The Officers and Board also voted and approved money to be spent to upgrade our forum software and make other security upgrades to the site.

 

I think I speak for all of the BoD and Officers when I tell you that we take the loss of information very seriously and making sure that these protocols where in place and functional was a very high priority.

 

There is still a lot of work to be done, and it is being done. The club will be restored as much as it can be, but please be patient with us as we do the work. Do to the resignation of two of the Admins we are limited on staff right now, but the work will be done.

 

I am going to address a few rumors just so we can all move past them.

 

There is a rumor that I fired the entire Admin team and put Micah in it's place. That is not true. After the team of Jay, Adam, and Darryl had been working for 7 days to restore the site and knowing that our VP is an IT expert I spoke with Jay about adding Micah to the team if they needed help, and he indicated help would be useful and no toes would be stepped on. 2 days later he was added to make him the 4th Admin on the team. Given the amount of Admin work that has had to be done over the last 5 days, I can fully see why more help was needed.

 

There is a rumor that at the last board meeting there was a vote where the board and officers agreed not to have Micah be an Admin because as a VP and friends with Jeff it was a conflict of interest.

 

You know I was at the last board meeting, and that just didn't happen. I am not sure where that confusion came in, but while there were several votes at the last meeting, none of them were about Admin work. When I first became President I did what all good Presidents do and spent a day or three reading back through all of the posts in the Officer/Board forum. I was looking specifically to see if my name had ever come up of course, and to any votes or decisions that had been made so I would know how to proceed. I did not ever see any vote excluded Micah from being an Admin.

 

My intention in getting his help was solely to get the site back up and running. I had no intentions of defying any vote, and I certainly did not mean to hurt anyone's feelings. I was actually quite surprised at some of the reactions, I was expecting thank you's for getting people the help they needed. I was really that naive in the whole process.

 

Part of my role here as President is to over see the group and committees. So when I see something needs help, I try to get it help. Everyone pitch in do what they can kinda thing. That's my job.

 

There is an elephant in the room, a certain legendary email chain. The first thing I want to clear up is that Matty and Mattv are two different people. Matty is a BoD and a fantastic member of this site and community, beyond reproach. Mattv is the one who was in that email chain. It has been eluded to that the Officers and BoD have not addressed some of the things that were said in those emails. That is false. Based on the accusations surrounding myself and that email I did feel the need to read it. It did feel weird reading other peoples private conversation, but since the allegation that my name was being used falsely to solicit funds from sponsors I felt obligated. Turns out that allegation was also false.

 

I have often wondered what the motivation behind the spreading of those emails was. It just strikes me as odd.

 

Were things in the email hurtful, yes. Did I get my feelings hurt reading, and feel disrespected. Absolutely. The thing is, that since those emails, Micah had been working his butt off to get the site back up. He had rededicated himself and showed a huge passion and love for this community. I did not find out about those emails until the evening of Sept 7, but between when those emails stopped and me getting forwarded them Micah and I had talked several times, texted several hundred times, and emailed as well. He has already shown that he was dedicated to this club. Did I talk to him about the emails personally. You betcha. Did other officers or board members address it with him, oh ya.

 

Sometimes people screw up. Sometimes you get caught up in things, you get emotional, your drunk, whatever it is people make mistakes. When they apologize for those mistakes and then show you they are willing to step up to the plate and prove themselves I gotta forgive them. I've screwed up, I've said things in privacy to people I would not want made public, we probably all have. The Officers and the Board have moved passed the venting that happened in that mail. Micah has shown that he is all in. It takes a lot of guts to stand up and do the right thing after that all came down. He's shown he is passionate about the site, he's proven to me that he belongs here. We as a club need to move beyond it.

 

This community is about the care of fish and corals, the education and husbandry of marine life in our captive environments and the education about their exsistence and fragility to those around us. Let's not forget why we are here. We need to get back to what brought us here, and focus on our purpose.

 

Kevin

[matty]