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Posted by: je110
I've seen these sorts of threads on just about every forum I've been on. "The mods/admins are unfair!" "The community is elitist!" "Veteran members are given better treatment!"
Frankly, I find it pretty silly.
This is a forum community. It's a place to hang out with people who share a similar hobby with you. Don't make it something more serious than that, please.
With all due respect, je110, I disagree with a lot of your post.
I have no problem with you taking this place lightly. I think most of us realize that this site is merely a place for social interaction and that the vast, vast, vast majority of people who come here are doing so to be passive observers or to merely ask questions or mess around rather than positively contribute. But asking b.net's most regular users not to voice their concerns about this Community -- especially in a thread filled with Septagon regulars -- is both hypocritical and destructive.
It is hypocritical because at the same time that you ask us not to take this place any more seriously than you, you purport to tell everyone else how they should view it. Nobody in this thread has stated that casual users like yourself who only post a few times a week should be "taking the Community more seriously." Yet you come to a forum where most of the "regulars" have thousands or tens of thousands of posts in the public forums and countless more in private groups, as well as numerous Community projects such as forum moderating and other projects, and tell them not to take this place seriously. You tell users who have been an integral part of this Community for years and long before Halo that they should simply let the Community go in whatever direction it is going to go. I see this as hypocrisy.
But worse is the destructiveness of such a suggestion, were a "community regular" to follow it. This Community is a fun place to hang out and socialize for casual forumgoers like yourself precisely because of the dedicated efforts of the Community. Aside from Achronos and a small, sporadic, and inconsistent handful of other Bungie employees, the Bungie Community is shaped and run by fans. Do you really think that this place is fun because of the 15-year-old casual gamer who drops in and says "check out this brand new Haloid video I just found"? I certainly hope not.
This Community is built upon the efforts of dedicated fans who genuinely care about it and take it very seriously. This place is not fun because of the casual lurker or frantic, rulebreaking, infrequently posting child. This Community is vibrant, alive, and fun for both dedicated and casual Bungie fans because of people like the "Regulars" of this forum, who log in and post daily. People like the staff of the Bathroom Reader. Moderators who are volunteers and endure a gauntlet of criticism and harassing PMs every day for little reward except the ability to clean up the public forums here. Writers like MLG Cheehwawa who endure as much sarcastic flaming as praise for the detailed ideas that they post every day. Theorists like opogjijip and Lord Snakie who spend weeks and months thinking up, supporting, writing, and arguing for the merits of their theories. Community project leaders like BL4H00G4N4, who started Bungiepedia, or Gods Prophet and Snowmanaxt, who started the Guide, or SS_Zag1, Prometheus25, ash55, and Zee JollyRoger, who wrote and maintain the silly-but-addicting "Pimps at Sea RPG." Webmasters like MaimumFEAR and Louis Wu and many, many others who dedicate all of their free time to running popular fan sites. Fan artists like Jean Luc Fortier, just another fan, and Phil Benji. The people who dedicate time and effort to helping out new forum users with links, advice, suggestions, and tips. Even (I grudginly admit -- jk) some of the Floodians.
These people who create the resources, diversions, and answers that casual "Bungie drop-ins" use on such a regular basis are the pillars upon which the Seventh Column rests, and I can assure you that they do not view this Community as merely a "place to hang out with people who share a similar hobby." It is something more than that, and although it has probably not completely taken over any volunteer's life at this point, it is perfectly valid for them to voice their concerns about the Community and the way that other Community Regulars treat it, regardless of whether they are correct or not.
Argue the merits of the post, most certainly. I know I did, and I disagreed with them. But I would never tell Rokit to take this place less seriously. To do so is to ask him and any other reader of your post to become one of the random, faceless people who pretty much stick to the Halo 3 forum and the Flood Forum and passively read other posts, incorrectly post without reading rules or paying attention to etiquette, or purposely cause ruckus and mayhem here.
To encourage this, in my opinion, is to truly advocate for the real "death" of this Community. So now it becomes my turn to ask you, for the good of all of us, to please stop.
P.S.
This has nothing to do with me not being a "mellow" person. I am almost certainly older than you and I do remember the days before the internet. Before even AOL and Prodigy (for those of you who even know that that is) were around, I was dialing into BBSs on my 400-baud modem and interacting in forums not so different from this one. But that does not mean that I am obligated to take a Community lightly, purely by reason of the fact that I remember when the "internet" did not even exist except as a few bland text-only University and government websites.