For YCMaker

[Horu]

No, I'm not here to rant about your punishment of Giga and the others. I am simply here to ask that instead of just being the high and mighty admin that everyone views as a dictator and provides the face value of the site, can you also become an active member of the community?

Since the face value of this site hasn't been updated since MR2 and has effectively stopped working, I have come to love this community.

Effectively, if you are going to punish everyone that is a member of NCM, you may as well issue me a warning as well since I am also a member. But before you do, consider the fact that I am among the most active members here. As I stated, since the face value of this site has stopped working, I came to value the community.

Do I feel Giga and Cow should be punished for becoming members of a second site? No. Am I going to waste my time bitching and moaning about how "You're being unfair" or how "You're a bad admin"? No.

Instead, I am here to request that you become an active member of the community and help us increase activity and value here on the site.

Look, I understand your place as the admin. I understand you have a job to do. All I am asking is that you join us and add value to the community that you, yourself, have brought together.

If you want this forum to focus solely on card games, you need to make that known. But as a community, as friends, we are going to open conversations and joke around and debate serious topics. We as a community and as friends, will speak our minds so we can get the input of others. You, as the admin, provided the platform for us to come together as a community and to come together as friends. For that, I thank you. But I am extending my hand and inviting you to become a valued member of the community that you brought together.

Will you accept my invitation?

[YCMaker]

I can't promise to be an active contributor to this community, as my interests simply lay elsewhere. But I can promise to be active in my capacity as an Admin, which I'll admit I haven't always been in the past. We have a mutual interest in helping this community thrive, and I promise I'll do everything I can to facilitate its growth and support the community.

[Horu]

I thank you for your honesty. Also, I will do whatever I can on my end to maintain an every growing community. Wether it be aimless jokes, serious conversations with other members, welcoming new members, etc. I just wanted to be certain that you will remain an active member of the community once your work here is done. It would be nice to see you post cards too. Might be interesting to see the ideas that run through your head once in a while. Also, remember, we are all here for you if you need us or just want to get something off your chest. This community has evolved from what it once was. It no longer that extremely toxic YGO community that it was when I joined. It has become a rather large circle of friends. That is why I have come to value this site so much.

[mitchermitcher]

i'll piggyback off this thread because what i want to say is relevant to this thread's request. my words might not have much weight because i'm not active on this forum anymore or even on the other one, so think of it as two cents from an ex-member.

first, you have every legal right to do whatever you want with the site, its your property. i also acknowledge that you are doing what you can to improve the site's functions now (to what extent, that is not visible to me but i will give you the benefit of the doubt). after all, if this site flourishes and gets more visitors, you make more revenue so it makes sense that you'd be doing that. and theres nothing wrong with that either.

however by your own admission you have not engaged with the community that's been built up here over the years. by 'community', i dont refer to the entire site's userbase because not everyone engages with the site as anything more than a card maker site (which is fine, nothing wrong with that and those people are valuable too). however a subset of the userbase that cared enough about the cardmaker at one point continued to remain on the site to engage with the forums and other members in spite of the lack of moderation or management from you. this subset are the regular posters around here, and they may not form the actual majority of the userbase for the cardmaker, but i think it's fair to consider that they were the community on this site until your recent return. this also includes a lot of the users who eventually migrated to the other forum, and i say this because the decision to create an off-shoot forum was to keep the community alive in spite of the site's functionality failing them. you may consider them not part of the site anymore, but their decision to join the other forum was precisely because they wanted to keep engaging with this same community. therefore they are relevant to this discussion.

as a member within this specific community i just described above, you have contributed practically nothing. you are an outsider. everyone knows your name and mocks you for your absence, but no one would've considered you a fellow participant. when you come out of the blue, wielding your (admittedly rightful) ownership to change things on this site as you see fit in a way that obviously has an effect on this community, it's only natural that some people aren't going to approve. even though they dont own the site, they have been participants of this community and thus, have a right to feel that way and voice their dissent because in effect, a communal outsider is invading their space. to you it probably feels like you're just doing what's well within your rights and a minority of the userbase is annoying you for some reason, and it may be in your interest to portray them as a vocal minority whose dissent is not representative of the entire userbase. however to the rest of the community, that is what you are.

what i wanted to point out here with all of this is that no, your interests actually do not align with the community i described above, at all. your interests are to increase the number of users coming to this site because . to this end, the community described above is not the actual majority and their resistance to your moderation impedes your interest. it is far easier to build up a new community off the other incoming users who are curious enough to check in the forums or are starting to participate, and you have every right to do that as well. the so-called 'old' community will resist having a new community override them but whatever, who cares. i dont want the 'our interests align so i will do my best for this community and i want all of us to work together towards that' bs, i want to you to acknowledge this specific point i just said. if you cannot acknowledge that your interests and the old community's interests do not align then theres no point to trying to converse.

to go back to the original point of this thread, the request that you participate in this site more as a member of the community (either by preserving the old one or establishing a new one), this was a request for your own benefit as the site owner as well. if you do not start to establish yourself as a member of the community you want to build on this site, i can only see that the same debacle will repeat itself and at some point you'll find yourself hated and resisted by the next batch of users. they have every right to and you don't need to care, but i would imagine it would be more profitable and enjoyable to manage this site when the userbase does not hate you.

[Horu]

18 minutes ago, mitchermitcher said:

i'll piggyback off this thread because what i want to say is relevant to this thread's request. my words might not have much weight because i'm not active on this forum anymore or even on the other one, so think of it as two cents from an ex-member.

first, you have every legal right to do whatever you want with the site, its your property. i also acknowledge that you are doing what you can to improve the site's functions now (to what extent, that is not visible to me but i will give you the benefit of the doubt). after all, if this site flourishes and gets more visitors, you make more revenue so it makes sense that you'd be doing that. and theres nothing wrong with that either.

however by your own admission you have not engaged with the community that's been built up here over the years. by 'community', i dont refer to the entire site's userbase because not everyone engages with the site as anything more than a card maker site (which is fine, nothing wrong with that and those people are valuable too). however a subset of the userbase that cared enough about the cardmaker at one point continued to remain on the site to engage with the forums and other members in spite of the lack of moderation or management from you. this subset are the regular posters around here, and they may not form the actual majority of the userbase for the cardmaker, but i think it's fair to consider that they were the community on this site until your recent return. this also includes a lot of the users who eventually migrated to the other forum, and i say this because the decision to create an off-shoot forum was to keep the community alive in spite of the site's functionality failing them. you may consider them not part of the site anymore, but their decision to join the other forum was precisely because they wanted to keep engaging with this same community. therefore they are relevant to this discussion.

as a member within this specific community i just described above, you have contributed practically nothing. you are an outsider. everyone knows your name and mocks you for your absence, but no one would've considered you a fellow participant. when you come out of the blue, wielding your (admittedly rightful) ownership to change things on this site as you see fit in a way that obviously has an effect on this community, it's only natural that some people aren't going to approve. even though they dont own the site, they have been participants of this community and thus, have a right to feel that way and voice their dissent because in effect, a communal outsider is invading their space. to you it probably feels like you're just doing what's well within your rights and a minority of the userbase is annoying you for some reason, and it may be in your interest to portray them as a vocal minority whose dissent is not representative of the entire userbase. however to the rest of the community, that is what you are.

what i wanted to point out here with all of this is that no, your interests actually do not align with the community i described above, at all. your interests are to increase the number of users coming to this site because . to this end, the community described above is not the actual majority and their resistance to your moderation impedes your interest. it is far easier to build up a new community off the other incoming users who are curious enough to check in the forums or are starting to participate, and you have every right to do that as well. the so-called 'old' community will resist having a new community override them but whatever, who cares. i dont want the 'our interests align so i will do my best for this community and i want all of us to work together towards that' bs, i want to you to acknowledge this specific point i just said. if you cannot acknowledge that your interests and the old community's interests do not align then theres no point to trying to converse.

to go back to the original point of this thread, the request that you participate in this site more as a member of the community (either by preserving the old one or establishing a new one), this was a request for your own benefit as the site owner as well. if you do not start to establish yourself as a member of the community you want to build on this site, i can only see that the same debacle will repeat itself and at some point you'll find yourself hated and resisted by the next batch of users. they have every right to and you don't need to care, but i would imagine it would be more profitable and enjoyable to manage this site when the userbase does not hate you.

I made this request because he has indeed made the most important contribution to this community. He gave us the platform to become a community. I am simply asking that he now become a member of the community that he forged so we can get to know him as more than the admin of the site.

The admin to the other site which fostered another community that I once cared for stopped working on his product and eventually just shut down the site.

The major difference between YCM and that site is this: YCM became a community in the absence of the both the admin/mods and the product. The other community fell apart and eventually just died off.

Now, YCMaker, you already made a very important decision to rebuild this site and the card maker. But it is just as important that you become a part of the community so you can see how we all work together, how we give pointers to new members, how we interact with each other and just have fun. All of the toxic members have vanished and we have rebuilt this community to what it has become in 2 short years. We have increased activity and have done everything in our power to keep this place active in your absence and in the absence of mods. I returned 2 years ago expecting an updated card maker but quickly lost interest until I realized that the only way I will keep coming back to YCM is to make friends and become a member of the community. YCM and NCM are the same exact community. Yemachu cared enough to give us a working card maker until you returned. And Tormented cared enough to give us an alternative site in case something happens over here. So that "off-shoot" site, while not created for the benefit of YCM, was created for the benefit of the community itself. This is obviously the preferred place where we all gather and play. That will likely never change. But it would still be cool to have you as part of the community as well.