rkeeb, thanks! 

Prior to the present Agoracom Lithium Americas Hub having any posts on it from anyone, there existed a Western Lithium Hub here on Agoracom.  I had been a member of that Hub for several years, but it had very few members.  I tried to get the name changed to Lithium Americas, but was never successful.  I'm not sure, in retrospect, if there was a process available to change the name.  It was never a very busy Hub at any time.  About 2, maybe 3 years ago, the message board over on Yahoo Finance ( "TOB" ) experienced a major change in its character.  I can't really remember when that happened, but prior to that change I had been a contributor over there for several years as well and it had a good number of other contributors who, for the majority of posts, all worked diligently to present their opinions and information in an amicable fashion for the benefit and encouragement of all the other members.

Then, things began to change and that message board began to deteriorate and members started attacking each other in some pretty awful ways.  I was one of the ones who engaged in those attacks, particularly on two other members of that board whom I hoped would leave that message board.  At the time I didn't see any other way to discourage them from posting what I percceived as posts that were destructive of the more amicable and instructive message board that we had prior to the change in tone over on Yahoo.  I engaged in some posts that were very attack oriented against those members I thought were most detrimental to that board and, in the process, became just as detrimental to that board as I perceived them to be.  My "solution" to cleaning up the board only made things worse.  Things were going downhill fast for a number of reasons well known to the members who were there during that time and there seemed to be no way to improve that situation since Yahoo Finance had little supervision of its message boards then and that lack of quality control continues to this day over there.

In late 2019 a rumor started over on that board that at the end of 2019 the Yahoo Finance message boards would no longer take new posts and, if that rumor turned out to be valid, then that would essentially have been the end of usefullness for the Lithium Americas message board over there since it would not be able to update new information.

Of course the rumor turned out to be false and the Lithium Americas message board continued to accept new posts and new members and the quality of that message board continued to deteriorate, as all of you who were members of that board during that time know full well.

I kept trying to find some way to make the Agoracom Western Lithium Hub update the name and to attract more members since Agoracom presented, in my opinion, a superior venue for legitimate discussion of both opinion and information.  My personal "war" with one of the members of the Yahoo board spilled over to Agoracom and that individual made an attempt to bring the same level of antagonism and divisiveness over to the Western Lithium Hub.  It didn't work and they were removed from the Western Lithium Hub, but during that struggle I just happened to put in the Search window here on Agoracom the title:  Lithium Americas.  I didn't expect to find anything, but since I hadn't been able to get the name changed on the Western Lithium Hub it was kind of a "Hail Mary" pass to see if anything was in the End Zone. This must have been late March or early April of last year, 2020.

I was frankly surprised to find out that Agoracom did have a totally empty Hub titled:  Lithium Americas!!

So, "the plan" seemed self evident.  I would quit trying to knock my head against the wall and abandon the effort to have the Western Lithium Hub renamed.  It made perfect sense to just open up the Lithium Americas Hub here with its initial post and that is what I did, somewhere in the middle of April last year, 2020.  This Hub too has been attacked in the interim by more than one person trying to circumnavigate the "6 Rules" of Agoracom for reasons that have nothing to do with furthering the information available about lithium mining, lithium products and LAC.  More than one of those efforts has been by people who apparently had nothing to do with "TOB", but also more than one of those efforts were from a person or persons associated with TOB.

Agoracom Administration mostly and I on one or two occasions have removed those posts and, when in the extreme, have banned those who attempted to sabotage this Hub.  It hasn't been something that has happened every day and I suspect on most occasions the members of the Hub have not had any idea about what disciplinary action was taken.  In all cases the member identification indicated that the person had just recently become an Agoracom member. I have always suspected that some of those "attacks" involved an individual taking on a new username her on Agoracom for the only purpose of causing trouble to this Hub OR to promote a commercial product that had nothing to do with lithium products, lithium mining or LAC.

Since April of 2020 this Hub has seen some moderate growth.  We still aren't "huge" by any means, but now we have 4 Hub Leaders to help guide the Hub into the future and we have a terrific Agoracom "Administrator" to see that the Hub will remain one where the focus remains on LAC, lithium products and lithium mining.  More important:  We have the very best contributors on the internet now as members of this small group.  

The quality of the contributors here now is so much better than anything I could ever come up with on my own.  I confess openly that I don't spend nearly as much time dedicated to detailed investigation of LAC now as I did in the past and I am way down the totem pole as far as detailed knowledge of LAC compared to most of the other members here, something that is proven every time one of you posts evidence of your own dedication and commitment to investigation of all things LAC.  My hope was to work myself out of a job and have a place where I could occasionally type out a post with the hope that it would be of some use.

I think Agoracom is monitoring to see how the new Hub Leaders will work out and I believe they will be more than satisfied that these folks will take this Hub forward.  I certainly am!

Well, that is the story as I remember it.  Hope I didn't leave out much or misconstrue any of it.  We are all here for the right reasons.  We don't have to agree on everything.  That would be a disaster and extremely boring.  Agoracom is THE Place where we can have that competiton of ideas and opinons while, at the same time, accepting that our own opinion might be considerably different from our fellow members opinion.  That is what makes this Hub great.  I remember the process of trying to persuade one member here in particular to come over to Agoracom and join our Hub simply because that member rarely agreed with anyone else.  I wasn't wanting to bring over discord.  I just wanted that member, I won't name him, to be a contributor here because I could always depend on him to examine any issue concerning LAC with a fine tooth comb and never accept anything about LAC at face value.  I still value that individuals ability to sniff out anthing that would be oblivious to the rest of us and bring it to our attention and for our consideration in an amicable style consistent with the 6 Rules of Agoracom.

Rkeeb, again, I appreciate your recent post.  I also appreciate the major addition of the diligent investigation and dedication you have shown here and on TOB.  Both boards are the better for your contributions... and the same is true for all the rest of you.  We truly do have a great group here and this will continue to be the place to come for ideas and opinions free from the Drama Queens and open to at least some information that might not be so readily available elsewhere as well.

Okiedo