Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

*** The Mayor is Back for Bettermost Spring Cleaning ***

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Phillip Dampier:
A Message from Your Mayor
Dear Residents,

It has frankly been several years since I have been active here at Bettermost, despite the fact I created this website.

But that should not be seen as me no longer caring about Bettermost, Brokeback Mountain, or the insight both have given me.

We each interpret and reflect on the story in our own way. For me, the core message is not allowing opportunities to pass you by and to take chances to grow and achieve happiness instead of regretting what you didn't do years later. I took that lesson to heart and used Bettermost and its success to give me the confidence to begin writing professionally about consumer issues relating to the telecom industry. I created a consumer group in the summer of 2008 to fight internet data caps, for net neutrality, and for more internet access competition.

Since launching Stopthecap.com, I've written 5,100+ articles, testified in several state and federal hearings relating to broadband issues, and successfully won battles to keep customers of Frontier Communications and Time Warner Cable from having to endure data caps on their internet access. We also successfully fought off Comcast's attempt to buy Time Warner Cable and won several pro-consumer conditions (in New York) on the merger of Time Warner Cable and Charter Communications/Spectrum. I've done countless radio, television, and newspaper interviews on these issues, and stood next to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the lawn of Time Warner Cable in Rochester, N.Y., announcing that company had shelved the idea of putting usage limits on its internet accounts forever.

None of this would have happened without the journey I made on Bettermost.

Unfortunately, successfully applying the lessons learned from the movie made it necessary for me to spend less time here and more time working on those things. But just as someone who grew up in a community and later moved away, life events can eventually pull you back home, and so it is for me.

A lot of people have taken different journeys after seeing Brokeback Mountain over the last 12 years. This forum was launched February 12, 2006 and is still up and running. There is still a core group of Bettermost residents who never felt the need to 'move away' from this place and have done a wonderful job keeping the community safe and sound.

As I return here, I have realized there is a lot of work long past due on this website to bring it up to current standards. The software that powers this forum is at least five years out of date, we have had constant battles with spammers, and some of the features that were up and running several years ago when this website had more traffic were dropped long ago for financial reasons or lack of use. But they are still listed as options, although they no longer work.

So here we begin an official spring cleaning campaign to ready the website for a long past-due software update and a refresh. I have no intention of disturbing the important historical elements of Bettermost. I am told new people arrive even today as they see and absorb Brokeback Mountain for the first time and start to explore the same issues many of us did back in 2006. There is no finite time limit on these personal journeys, and I am an example of that, because here I am again.

This remains YOUR community and YOU are a part of what happens here next. I would very much like to hear your ideas about what we can do to make this community more relevant to you. I'd like to recruit more volunteers who might like to moderate new forums (or abandoned old ones) and help make this place better for everyone.

I am working towards a goal of moving to the latest version of the forum software around March 1st, after we make sure the conversion will do no harm. Around that time, I will be sending out a newsletter to every registered member here, which means there will be some folks like me that haven't been here in a long time getting a reminder this place still exists and is undergoing some changes that might just pull them back home as well.

When the hard work is done, I will share personal details about my own journey and the new challenges that I am trying to overcome, and hope to use Bettermost in ways I had not thought of before.

Thanks for being here.

Phillip M. Dampier
Your Mayor

Jeff Wrangler:
Congratulations on your professional successes, and welcome back.

J.W.

CellarDweller:
Hello Phillip!

Welcome back to BM, and congratulations on all the good that has happened since your Brokeback moment!

We've been through a few of these upgrades on DCF (now UBF) and they've always gone smoothly, so I'm sure that the history that is here will be just fine!

Looking forward to the update!

Front-Ranger:
Welcome back, Mayor Phillip. We missed you so much, we could hardly stand it. But it's great to hear that you took the message of BBM to heart and used it to improve your life.

Looking forward to the next chapters.

Phillip Dampier:
Just a quick update for all residents:

Our new server for the next generation of Bettermost is in Atlanta and will enter a brief testing phase hopefully this week. We will have to transfer over a bunch of customized elements from this version of Bettermost to the new server and we also have to thoroughly test the integrity of messages transferred to the new server so we're sure things won't get lost.

I will post an important message as the transition time nears with some instructions and more details about exactly what is going to happen and when.

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