Was there ever any definitive closing of the reunification talks? Seemed like a good idea on paper, one official FE Society.
Eh, there wasn't an official "closing", but an end can be identified somewhat clearly. Mistakes were made on all sides. I'll focus on my own, because I know those best.
The original talks were between Parsifal, Daniel, Wilmore and me. We kept our side updated via the thread junker linked, and tried to represent what our userbase said to the best of our ability. One mistake I've made was to suggest that John's role in any unified society should be greatly reduced - I found it difficult to reason with him (I think we both got much better at that now, but it doesn't change history), and, at the time, he frequently complained that he's only involved in forum administration because no one else is available. That one is entirely on me.
At the time, this was reluctantly accepted, and we actually started planning a proper implementation - clear lines were drawn as to which parts of which societies would be incorporated into the newly-unified one, and what would be discarded. Shortly after, Daniel went into complete radio silence, and after a long time of him being AWOL, John took on a much more direct leadership position. He didn't seem to care much for prior talks and agreements, and that's his right. Daniel hasn't been active in years, and it's only natural that someone would
de facto take his place.
So, with old talks having met an abrupt end, and with new agreements looking unlikely, we did the only thing we could - we looked at the parts of our society that were weak (i.e. parts that the other society was meant to supplant) and improved them to the best of our ability. Understandably, this means that support for reunification from our regulars also started to wane, since the perceived benefits diminished. At this point, neither side seems to support a reunification effort (even if it does look good on paper), and letting each group do their own thing seems like the only viable outcome.
Another interesting short saga is when Dubay stopped by and laid out his demands for coming on board here. I can't find it now, but I remember reading the thread and he was basically asking for everyone's first born. Pretty hilarious.
Ugh. That was nasty. When Eric first appeared on the scene
some of us were quite enthusiastic, while others were much more reserved. Eventually,
Eric wrote a blog post declaring the Flat Earth Society (singular, and mixing up the two groups at will) "controlled opposition".The second thread I've linked is the one you're most likely thinking about.
Here is Eric's first post in the discussion, in which he asks that we hand everything over to him. Unsurprisingly, the idea of handing our entire website to a first-time poster was not popular...