I'm told that Korat Farang also has a private forum. I'm a member of Korat Farang but not of the private forum. It doesn't put me off posting once in a while.
Taser, forums
do have private sections. It's a fact of life. Some have sections for moderators to discuss problems. Others have sections for private interest groups. Many have sections for members who have established themselves as trustworthy so that they can have conversations away from the public gaze. Remember that the whole world can read a public forum, not just the registered members. The rules for admittance to certain sections of forums vary. You will see some that require a minimum number of posts and in other examples the administrator makes a merely subjective assessment.
The Grumpy Expat forum is a folder of the Grumpy expat blog at
www.grumpyexpat.com. The blog came first. I started it as a bit of fun and to add interest to my other activities; prompting me to take more photos when we go somewhere or finding out more about places that we visit, for example. Several people asked me to create a forum and, eventually, I did -
www.grumpyexpat.com/forum. The websites are there for people to either enjoy or ignore as they wish. I can't deny that I would welcome some more traffic to the forum but I prefer not to have troublemakers. If that puts off some from joining, that's fine. Big is not necessarily better.
Anyone who has administered a blog or forum knows that it takes time and costs some money. We learn a great deal about the technicalities of the task and something about humanity too. It's easy to knock the efforts of others and I would encourage anyone who is tempted to be destructive of the work of another blog or forum administrator to attempt to run a blog or forum himself.