This is correct. The forums original were on the main site and of a poorer quality forum. Also the forums were put on a didn't server so when the main site went down there could be some kinda communication between the members and with Silk Road. After the Mt Gox Black Friday incident and the Gawker Article the SR main site was flooded with so many ppl that it was crashing on a regular basis so this forum was created to help alleviate the traffic and two keep communication between members intact both vendors and customers could still talk to each other and the panic of not have an order trapped soley on SR was some what lessened. It was also instructed to not use the same passwords for the main site and the forums because of the Mt Gox security incident. So many members actually switch their passwords up on both sites on a regular basis to keep up personal security. It;s fairly easy to exchange a encrypted message with someones PGP public key to verify that the vendor/person on the forums is the same as on the main site. nomad bloodbath