[Mitch]

So, it has come to my attention that many of you do not know what the mission of this website is. Perhaps some background in how we started would benefit the reader.

I initially opened up the Chemistry Website to help answer my student's questions in Organic Chemistry, because it’s tiresome to answer the same question over and over. As the website's forums evolved we started getting indexed by more and more search engines, until the website was getting a decent flow of traffic per day. We now get approximately 50 unique IP hits a day, which isn't too shabby for a non-commercial purely informative website (click on the counter at the bottom of the forum for more details)(this has translated into over 16,500 clicks around our forums). We had always planned to expand the site, but the old forum software proved very problematic.

Now that the old forum has crashed and burned it freed us to evolve into this website. Which allows us to focus on what we're good at (question and answer), but also allows us a chance to expand. One part of the expansion will be what I've coined as Citizen Chemistry. I'm very dedicated to getting the citizen chemistry aspect of the website off the ground. Citizen Chemistry is a broad term which encompasses the interests of chemical enthusiasts to individuals tinkering in their own back yard labs to the advanced individuals actually doing serious investigations of chemical phenomena at home. That is why www.citizenchemist.com www.citizenchemistry.com and www.amateurchemistry.com will be redirected to this website in the coming days.

The second part of the expansion deals with furthering our work with chemical education. We already have the forums setup, but we're also developing the on-line textbooks ( or I like to call them "living" textbooks). This is by far going to be the slowest resource developed, since it’s just me and gregpawin at the moment working on it in our spare time.

The real fun will be the merger of the chemical education aspect with the citizen chemistry aspect. To my knowledge there has never been a website that tried to link chemical enthusiasts with chemistry students in the manner we are attempting. Most other chemical forums, I've encountered, are focused on spitting out answers for homework questions and not interested in this type of mentoring.

That’s where we stand for 2004. We could not be developing into a premier website for Chemistry, without you! If it wasn't for your knowledge, your curiosity, your generosity, your hard work, your faith in the website, and especially your time. 

I hope you enjoy this adventure. 

Mitch

P.S. This individual has never been mentioned on the forum, but has been the crucial link in getting this new website started. It is very fair to say, we would still be our old question and answer website with out him. He was the one who introduced me to YaBB SE and to the Lunabyte modification that generates the website around the forum. Thank you David for all your help, you can check out his website at http://meo.ath.cx/