If there is a Sitepocalypse...

I hope I'm not opening a can of worms here, but I had just finished writing out a reply to the "If there is a Sitepocalypse..." thread at UD (sorry, can't post direct links just yet) but it was locked by CJ in an attempt to diffuse the situation. And since she suggested that this forum may be better suited to continue the topic, I thought I'd post my reply here instead:

enigmawing wrote:

If I may add something? I pulled back with my way of trying to help when one of the mods informed me that I was only stressing Luke out at the worst possible time with my "aggressive" attempts, while being given the impression that I couldn't possibly have any idea of what I'm talking about. That's fine; while my knowledge is extremely limited in comparison to my husband Rey, the reactions I'd been given while attempting to help sort things out were rather discouraging. Rey tried to register here so he could better explain the issues himself and how things might be fixed, but his registration was never approved. I still let Luke know that he could contact my registration email if he was interested in getting help from Rey, but in the end it's his choice on how things are handled and it's really not my place to say.

And no offense, but in my opinion it shows that this forum has little priority to the mods/admin anymore. I really can't blame anyone for that; the bread and butter of this site is of course the reviews, and right now a main priority lies in dealing with the Google penalty so that the site and Luke's livelihood may survive. But it hardly seems fair to find those that value this community as insulting for doing what little they can to ensure it survives beyond the pessemistic, uncertain outlook Luke himself has given us. The fate of this site is not in our hands; no matter how much we tweet, like, share, etc., it's not going to solve the issues with this site's code, nor will it change the new specs required by Google. Many continue to remain supportive of course, but realisticially there's only so much we can do.

enigmawing, I think you should email that response to the moderators or create a new thread in which you could post it on UD. I couldn't agree more with what you said and I'm very surprised that a moderator would accuse you of being "aggressive" or adding to the stressful situation simply by offering your's and your husband's time and energy to solve the problems on the site. Those of us who have followed the "sitepocalypse" are well aware of your attempts to help UD resolve it's issues and I'm sure that we all can agree that you have never been aggressive in offering your services.

I can understand why you’re discouraged by their reaction, but, trying to empathize with Luke’s position, he wasn’t really asking for help in that department, and he probably wasn’t excited by the idea of opening up info. regarding the site to someone he doesn’t know personally. I know your meaning was entirely good to the rest of us, but that whole thread probably felt like an accusation that “You haven’t done this” or “You need to be doing this.”

And, in all honesty, I agree with Luke that it probably wouldn't change anything in regards to Google; it would just make the end-times of the site more stressful for someone who's probably already depressed about his site dying.

What I find unfortunate is that even though it was clearly spelled-out that this forum was created as a safety-net, it's been accused of being a cheap alternative. It was never meant to be an alternative in the first place nor was it ever meant to divide the community in abandonment of UD.

DisneyAnimation88~ It's likely that any admin/mods from the site that need to know already do, the "aggressive" comment directed at me wasn't privately made, it was posted right there on the forum. It could have been deleted by any of the mods but I imagine Luke did it himself. It's obvious that he doesn't want our help; pressing the issue any further would be pointless and only cause more frustration and hard feelings.

Divinity~ I get what you're saying, and it's why I've already backed off. Not that it makes any of this less painful to watch.

While I understand your point, DD, I don't think that the way it was handled was right. Merely offering help is not being aggressive, and enigmawing wasn't constantly pestering them with her offer. But if it were my site, I would focus more on making changes to the site to try to save it however I could, rather than writing essays on what happened. And in all honesty, I don't think tweeting and liking UD on Facebook will do much good. But this isn't my site, and it isn't my life, and I'm sure Luke is doing what he feels is necessary.

It's interesting to read back through some of these old posts. They definitely take me back. It's hard to believe how long it's been.