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Traffic: 2003 was the biggest year yet for the site, with 115,831 unique visitors, up 196 percent from 2002. In November, the site experienced its biggest month, with 17,945 unique visitors. November also had the busiest week on the site, with 6,302 uniques. The New Year came in with the biggest day in site history on January 4, 2004, with 1,946 unique visitors.

Forum: The FVZA forum debuted on May 20 and by the end of the year there were over 450 registered users and over 5200 postings. A forum is certainly a mixed blessing. While it can encourage information exchange and intelligent, reasoned discourse, it can also attract an assortment of emptyheaded reprobates who have nothing better to do than spam.

The two biggest bones of contention on the forum were the presence of role players and the practice of post deletion/forum locking. By the end of the year it was determined that there needed to be some separation between role players and people who wanted to partake in serious discussions. We recently added a paranormal forum that is an RPG-free zone. However, these distinctions surely will need further refining. There also were cross words exchanged over locking of forums and deleting of posts. While I am all for freedom of speech, clearly there are times when deleting posts neither requires nor deserves an explanation. I want to commend forum moderators Agent Bennett, Maverick and Dr. Defecto for a fine job under often trying circumstances.

Provisional FVZA: The number of Provisional Agents doubled this year, from a little over 400 at the beginning of the year to over 800 by the end of December. U.S. Agents are now divided by state. We have decided to password-protect the Provisional Section, including the agent listings and incident reports. This changeover will be complete by the end of January 2004. All registered agents will be issued a username and password. Also, we will be adding sorely needed Directors for the Southern Region and the Northeast. Special thanks to Agent Frost for his efforts and ideas in this area.

The Santa Rosa Institute: After the much ballyhooed announcement that SRI had begun testing Genuflex on mice, things have been strangely quiet this year. It seems the Institute has gone into lockdown mode. Rumors are rampant, including one that SRI is trying to make an end run around federal regulations. I will be tracking this situation closely in 2004.

A Few of Dr. Pecos' Resolutions for 2004:

1. The addition of archival footage to the site.
   
2. Password-protection for the Provisional FVZA section.
   
3. Increased traffic.
   
4. Directors for the UK, Europe and Australia.
   
5. More interactive cases, including a widespread zombie outbreak scenario.
   
6. Faster responses to e-mails.

-HP