I just checked, but it’s not April 1st.

I considered it superfluous before – but let me know – should Burgundy-Report have it’s own forum? On second thoughts I might have to do more work – a lingering death for wine-bulletin boards? Well given the reach of that site, comment will now be all the poorer for erp members (subscribers); passing winemakers and ‘experts’ in general will no longer be able to contribute. Comment and info will certainly be diminshed for the subscribers by this, though perhaps other sites will be strengthened…

Please note that the Bulletin Board will be closed until Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at approximately 6:00 p.m. EDT in order to convert the forum to subscriber-only access. Please note the statement released by eRobertParker.com today:

—————– Back in November, 2001, we launched eRobertParker.com with the goal of creating the world’s best wine information site. Our objective was simple. We wanted to provide independent reviews of the best wines in the world and encourage open discussion of them to the benefit of the participants. Toward that end, we invited Mark Squires to bring his Wine Talk Bulletin Board over to the site and offered it openly and freely to all, subsidized by our subscription revenues. Virtually overnight the board became the Internet’s premier forum for wine discussion. It has grown dramatically in size and stature as the population of wine lovers grew. At the outset, we asked Mark to maintain his philosophy of insisting on real names and email addresses. This approach sought civilized, non-commercial discussion of wine. Over the years the Internet and the board have changed. Supervising the huge volume of posts has become increasingly time consuming and expensive. At the same time, we’ve noted that the subscriber-only forums we created some time back are increasingly popular and much easier to manage. Moreover, we’re committed to providing even more functionality and greater coverage of wines for our subscribers in the near future. This will require us to spend wisely. We are a small company with limited resources and, after months of deliberation, we’ve come to the conclusion that it is in the best interest of the people who count most – our subscribers – that we change our policy with regard to the bulletin board. On April 27, the entire Mark Squires’ Bulletin Board on eRobertParker.com will become a subscriber-only forum, open only to subscribers of Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate or eRobertParker.com. A notice to our print subscribers on how to continue/gain access to the subscriber-only board was sent with the April print edition. Once an eRobertParker.com subscriber is logged onto the site they can access the BB but they must logon to it in order to post. Change is always difficult but, like this action, often necessary. We are sorry to say goodbye to those posters to Mark Squires’ Bulletin Board who are not subscribers, and who have made valuable contributions. We will miss you, but our overwhelming goal is more focused support and assistance to our subscribers, who are our bloodline of support and make all the fascinating features of the bulletin board possible. We look forward to better serving our loyal subscribers through a more focused effort on them. As always, we wish each and every one of you all the best in wine and life.

Maybe it’s back to the paywall debate or perhaps the erp winos were just too tough to handle. Anyway wasn’t it clever of them to shut everything without warning, so that I can’t delete all my old posts!