OK, well after literally 100's of emails for and against my supposed motives, here is the promised explanation.
1. The email was sent to all existing RAG members who have been active in the last year. It did not solicit any new members.
2. The email was only sent to those who have selected to receive emails from administrators in their control panel.
3. Cuddlefish in his posts have pretty much covered why this email was sent out. However, I will give you a brief synopsis:
The future of our hobby can be directly impacted by this. Imagine all the permits and such that can be denied because of having a bad taste in ones mouth if something did happen. Corals and other endangered or restricted species would not be made available for study because of the possibility of something like this happening again. Thus, I believe it was paramount that our community know and discuss this topic.
I phrased my intro very carefully and basically asked Eric to give an account and if this could really be true. Since this time, Eric has sent me several emails and I have sent one response to him, as the sole recipient in a confidential manner.
I have asked him specifically to summarize his email and post it here on this thread in hopes that it will clarify some points on his position. If he does, that is up to him, but the door is open for him to do so.
4. RAG as a pay to play site. Several have alluded that this site is going down, that this is a ploy to get more users, actually as you can see, not one new user has posted on this thread. RAG became a pay to play site so that we could avoid all the problems associated with having sponsors and having to cater to their whims. RAG is proud to be the only site that is wholly supported by their members. How can RAG give timely, factual, and relevant information when they are handcuffed to sponsors? Don't have competing products because a sponsor might not like it, don't say anything bad about a sponsor because they do not like it.
The banners you see are advertisements, those who advertise on RAG know quite well that our business model will not pull punches. If an advertiser has a bad product, sure they can advertise on RAG but then they must deal with the fall out from the product, much like the magazines and news papers handle advertisers.
Read the threads and you will see which products and such the RAG community uses and recommends then make your decision on RAG's business model. But please next time ask before you make assumptions, just like we asked and several other forums asked Eric to give his side.
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