So Long, and Thanks for all the Spam
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Mark Vander Voord
Jul 20, 2026, 3:38:23 PMJul 20
to ThrowTheSwitch Forums
So Long, and Thanks for All the Spam
The forums for ThrowTheSwitch.org are moving. If you’re an actual human who wants to participate in our community, we’d LOVE for you to move with us. You can find us at throwtheswitch.discourse.group.
Why the move?
Remember when the internet was fun? Remember when it wasn’t filled with spam, information-scraping bots, and instead was filled with people that just honestly wanted to connect and help one another out? That was the era that the ThrowTheSwitch.org forums were born into… that was the era that Google Groups, the tool we used, was created in.
The internet has changed. The needs of the forum have evolved. It’s not okay for much of the forum traffic to be spam. It’s not okay for half the forum visitors to be bots which are searching for your contact information. It’s not okay to log into a site marked “adults only” just because someone thought it would be funny to click a button 20 years ago.
Why Discourse?
We looked at a lot of options. We agonized over the move… for honestly way too long. Discourse has a good track record of protecting their user’s data, protecting their users from spam, and supporting Open Source teams like ours. In the end, the choice was obvious. Can we guarantee that Discourse will forever have the values we have seen thus far? Of course not… but we hope that they do.
Thank You
If you’ve continued to help us through the years, despite the spam, despite the long periods of silence, and despite the poor interface, THANK YOU. We appreciate you more than you know. If you took some time away, because all of that was too much, we understand. We welcome you back and invite you to give these forums another chance.
It is our dream to nurture these forums into a vibrant community of people who want to improve the reliability of C code; A community which is supportive of one another; A community built on respect and a drive to nudge the world in its own tiny positive way.
Thanks for joining us.
Dr. Michael Karlesky & Mark VanderVoord
ThrowTheSwitch.org “Mad Scientists”
The forums for ThrowTheSwitch.org are moving. If you’re an actual human who wants to participate in our community, we’d LOVE for you to move with us. You can find us at throwtheswitch.discourse.group.
Why the move?
Remember when the internet was fun? Remember when it wasn’t filled with spam, information-scraping bots, and instead was filled with people that just honestly wanted to connect and help one another out? That was the era that the ThrowTheSwitch.org forums were born into… that was the era that Google Groups, the tool we used, was created in.
The internet has changed. The needs of the forum have evolved. It’s not okay for much of the forum traffic to be spam. It’s not okay for half the forum visitors to be bots which are searching for your contact information. It’s not okay to log into a site marked “adults only” just because someone thought it would be funny to click a button 20 years ago.
Why Discourse?
We looked at a lot of options. We agonized over the move… for honestly way too long. Discourse has a good track record of protecting their user’s data, protecting their users from spam, and supporting Open Source teams like ours. In the end, the choice was obvious. Can we guarantee that Discourse will forever have the values we have seen thus far? Of course not… but we hope that they do.
Thank You
If you’ve continued to help us through the years, despite the spam, despite the long periods of silence, and despite the poor interface, THANK YOU. We appreciate you more than you know. If you took some time away, because all of that was too much, we understand. We welcome you back and invite you to give these forums another chance.
It is our dream to nurture these forums into a vibrant community of people who want to improve the reliability of C code; A community which is supportive of one another; A community built on respect and a drive to nudge the world in its own tiny positive way.
Thanks for joining us.
Dr. Michael Karlesky & Mark VanderVoord
ThrowTheSwitch.org “Mad Scientists”
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