Not sure exactly when the old Glowing Embers forum was created, but the guy who started it -- Tampa never did know his name -- would probably deserve mention were there a "SF Hall of Fame". Net Tracker (?) pulled the plug on Glowing Embers -- as well as many other free SF-related message boards -- during a purge in 2000. Several smoking fetishists e-mailed Tampa (who contributed a fair amount of news and reviews to GE) and asked if he would consider running a replacement forum. That's when VT was founded.
If memory serves us correctly, the guy who started and moderated GE made one post to VT very early on in which he congratulated Rodney and Tampa for carrying on and apologized for the fact that job-related travel committments made it impossible for him to devote as much time as he would have to liked to the administration of GE.
IOHO that was very classy of him and, if he hadn't created GE at some point in time, maybe VT wouldn't even be in existence.
