October 2019

Dear Insiders,

The MacInsiders Forums are now closed. It has been over 12 years since MacInsiders opened it's doors to empower McMaster students by providing an open discussion platform for peer help, advice, news and reviews.

We accomplished our mission of helping to connect students of McMaster University and building a student-driven, online community. MacInsiders was the top platform for students to voice their opinions openly, share their stories, opinions, advice and experiences of student life in university, and support each other through sharing of knowledge, feedback, ideas, reviews, and articles.

Over the past decade we have reached over 3.5 million unique visitors to the site, serving over 44 million pageviews across 10 million visits.

We achieved many milestones along the way. Having over 30,000+ registered users, over 1000 student-written articles, 500,000+ forum discussion threads, 10,000+ course reviews, being awarded "MSU Club Of The Year", raised funds for charity, were featured in the Hamilton Spectator and the McMaster Daily News, listed in the prestigious Academica Top 10, and mentioned in The McMaster Times alumni publication.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved with making MacInsiders such an incredible community, and to the many volunteer staff who moderated the forums and wrote articles and news for the site. I would like to give a special thank you to our original executive team which included: Danielle Lorenz, Paul Antiperovitch, Joanna Simion, Sarah Allison, Katie D'Angelo, and Vladimir Popovic. Our original street team staff crew with Grant Winestock, Chris Crombie, Dave Disher, Sarah McNaughton, Kyle Park, Adam Ferraro, Thomas Abraham, and Ron Levitin.

A massive thank you to our incredible moderator team and dedicated contributors over the years including: Lorend, jhan523, ~*Sara*~, goodnews.inc, Leeoku, Tailsnake, feonateresa, sarahsullz, Entropy, Grover, LauraV, ashleighp, kokosas, temara.brown, MacPack, Nino and akikokoyoki.

A thank you to Afzal Najam for building the Android MI Chat app. Also a massive thank you to our largest forum contributors and top thanked users: starfish, Ownaginatios, RyanC, lawleypop, nerual, Lois, huzaifa47, Mowicz, anonanon987, mitch, deadpool, PTGregD, blackdragon, sew12, Taunton, Afzal, xxsumz, jim1, Marlowe, Silver, ferreinm, Kathy2, Rakim, lizziepizzie, reeves, britb, giftedchick, Desda, AelyaS, Kendoon, JEFF_CHAN, sinthusized, Alchemist11, ferreinm, xo.monica, REPLEKIA/., Faer, anon491, micadjems, mike_302, L'Étoile, RememberTwce, justinsftw, temptingf8, and many more. MacInsiders would not have been a thriving community without your dedication, help, and support.

To all the volunteers who helped our in-person events, thank you. And of course, a big thank you to all of our 34,000+ users who spent the time using our forums and chatroom, posted course reviews, and shared your stories and comments on the site. It was an amazing journey.

Today, there are new and robust platforms to continue this mission. McMaster has been providing students with official Facebook Groups for each cohort, and the McMaster Subreddit has grown to be an active community.

It has been an unforgettable experience, and I want to thank all the MacInsiders members for making this community so incredible.

Signing off,
Chad Fullerton