I've noticed that not only have you taken the contact points away from this forum but "all" forums. Why should everyone be punished for the actions of the people you seem to have a vendetta against?
It is quite elementary, Watson.
The current ban on both emails and other methods of private contact (you'll note that the option of sharing chat information has disappeared as well) exists for two reasons.
First of all, they do not want any more members to leave for greener pastures. Which is, I suppose, fair enough, although the way they've gone about it is not really wise in the grand scheme of things. Heavy-handed moderating tends to make people rebellious. Simply sitting back and waiting, and occasionally responding to new posters with actually well-thought out advice, would probably have re-populated SSM with fresh batch of people in a couple of months. I've been on message boards for over a decade and have run a couple myself. It is also a wise to reach out to disgruntled members and try to work out a compromise. I offer this insight free of charge.
The second, and more important, reason is a strategic one. They've decided that it is not to their advantage to having close networks of friendship and support form amongst members and may in fact hurt their bottom line. If you are desperate, alone, and have no where to turn, but can e-mail a message board buddy you're that much less likely to call a DB busting coach. The members here are raw material, from a business standpoint. Helping people is all well and pretty, but it doesn't pay the mortgage, the kid's college funds, and the employees.
Unfortunately, it has been discovered that people do not respond well to having privileges taken away that they once had. Something the New York Times discovered when it tried to make its online op-ed section subscription only, after having been free for years. They have recently gone back to making it available to everyone.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out.
