@chris the cynic: . If I understand what it means for this place to be frozen correctly it just means that nothing new can happen and will not, therefore, break any links pointing to existing articles because no addresses will change. That is correct. There will, however, be some movement of links to articles that were once on subsidiary boards such as under the cut. Those articles, including the comments, are in the process of being moved over to this board. When that process is complete we will attempt to update the links to them. There are a few commenters who have in the past had problems with cyberstalking and who had, even before the decision to freeze the board, asked to have some comments removed for that reason. Thus anyone reading back through the comments may notice the occasional instance of discontinuity where one or more commenters are responding to a no longer visible comment.

Yup Kisekileia, that was the plan.

@Ana Mardoll: Thanks for all the work. To make things a little easier for those who want to find the new board and get the password from you we edited your comment so there is a clickable link to the new board and an email link that will bring up your address and a stable subject line.

@TRiG: Incidentally, the existing archives could be exported to a different platform in a way which didn't interfere with the privacy of posters. Going to step in for a moment here. We know how to export the existing archives to different platforms (in fact we have created non-public backups on different platforms already.) There are a number of technical issues that arise when one does that--issues that are not obvious (or even evident) until one attempts to export from this platform to specific other platforms. More to the point members of TBAT have over time, on the board and in private emails, promised various commenters that no one other than members of TBAT will ever have access to the "behind the scenes" data. Since this board will remain visible after it is frozen any new board can, of course, link to this site for those who wish to access the archives.

@Ana Mardoll: On/After October 15th, we won't be able to comment here anymore, but all thread and comments will still be visible? Yup. Also there will be a backup archive kept on another platform which won't be visible unless something happens to TypePad.

@Stalin: it has already been posted here: http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2012/08/an-atheist-roundtable.html

To the commenter whose comment has just been removed: We direct you to section h. of the new board policies: Using anonymizing and redirect services without explanation and a consistent name/email address = red card. After this has happened, a notification will be posted on the relevant thread explaining the banning and linking to this policy page. If the person who has received the red card was using the redirect/anonymizing service because they weren't aware of the policy, they can contact TBAT [[email protected]] to explain their situation and set up a system for using one.

To the commenter whose comment has just been removed: We direct you to section h. of the new board policies: Using anonymizing and redirect services without explanation and a consistent name/email address = red card. After this has happened, a notification will be posted on the relevant thread explaining the banning and linking to this policy page. If the person who has received the red card was using the redirect/anonymizing service because they weren't aware of the policy, they can contact TBAT [[email protected]] to explain their situation and set up a system for using one.

@TRiG: those are both very important questions. We have some plans in mind that would address both issues; what we'd like to do is let the thread carry on till Friday to give people the opportunity to have their say, and then propose some solutions. In the meantime, rest assured we do take both archives and privacy seriously, and plan to take steps to preserve both no matter what else happens.

Lonespark: 'If TBAT were to step down in favor of a new BAT, would the members go back to posting? Because that would be fantastic.' We don't plan to start posting or commenting again, new mods or not. There's too much water under the bridge.

To the person who wondered if their snarky comment would result in them getting a yellow card the answer is "no, your comment was removed due because you have commented several times using different usernames."

Link to the Guardian series: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/rereading-stephen-king

Removed, thanks TRiG.

:) Ana. 1. Yes, one-off submissions are still quite desirable. 2. None of those roundtables have been done because no one is organizing them. Volunteers are welcome. Also, submissions for prompts of the day are welcomed.

@cjmr: Found you and freed you.

@Nenya: Just emailed you. :)

@Lonespark: Have I unscrewed my italics? We went back and closed the italics tag in the original comment.

@Froborr: the link in C. Adam Scott's piece is broken. It *should* work now. Thanks for catching that.

@Froborr: Did you get the email we sent you?

@storiteller: Done!

@Froborr: Could you do me a favour and check it now? I did a coding tweak and it now looks okay in my IE7 but that doesn't mean it will on yours since I am Windows7 and you are using XP

@Froborr: Thanks for letting me know. It shows right for me in SeaMonkey, Firefox and Chrome but when I fired up IE7 (which I don't normally use) they run together. We don't normally use IE7 so thanks for the catch. Now off to see if I can crack the coding mystery.

@Sarah (with a capital S) -- we have a long time poster who goes by sarah (no capital S.) Not wanting to rob you of your name -- perhaps you could use TheOtherSarah or some such username so others know who is who?

I'm confused too. The way it was set up in the post is that there are twelve chocolates and one chili Oops. This was a mistake: it should have been written as thirteen chocolates and one chili. (This is Kit posting: it was almost certainly my fault. I think I must have typed the first sentence already anticipating writing 'You take one, leaving twelve' a bit later on, and ended up scrambling the two together and writing 'twelve chocolate candies' because I had the number twelve in mind. Please don't blame hapax or mmy; they merely trusted my maths too much, which is never a good idea.) So yeah, sorry, that's just a big honkin typo. Will be fixed when someone with more technical skills comes online. Head bang.

@Amaryllis -- Fixed. Thanks.