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Why Our Community Must Live Anew
Topic Started: July 16 2010, 05:17 PM (36 Views)
Mace
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The Wandering Bard King of Kansas
Wocml, as we once knew it, has died. We let it die, and it's never coming back.
The Shack, which was once a thriving community where everyone had fun and respected each other, and where creativity was appreciated and encouraged, has become a miserable, putrid pit of darkness, where posts containing more than a single phrase or image are an endangered species, and where threads that don't devolve into mindless, puerile banter have been hunted to extinction.
As much as it saddens me to say this, I don't think that things here are ever going to change for the better, and especially not under our current Administration.
Much like the Fail Boat, Wocml is a sinking ship. Our community is going to continue to deteriorate until everyone who helped to make this the great community that it once was will finally give up on it and move on with their lives. We will be scattered, and our community will be completely lost.
Well, I'm taking a life boat, and I'm sailing on to a better place: a new forum, where we can build a better community. I've got room here in this boat for a lot of people, and I'm inviting you to come with me.

Why Our Community Has Died
As has been pointed out, forum activity is down. Most of us don't post nearly as much as we used to, and I think the main problem is that we've grown up, and Wocml isn't growing up with us. While we've graduated high school and moved on to college and careers, the forum has actually digressed to more of a middle-school-mentality.
Much like in the schoolyard, genitals an apparently fascinating topic of much discussion; and trolling, bullying, and joking about pedophilia and sexual harassment are not only tolerated; they're hilarious.
This goes beyond a simple difference in taste. As was brought up and hotly debated several months ago, there is a complete lack of respect for others that pervades and infects this forum like a disease. Some of you are acting like jerks, and you have been for a long time. As long as somebody gets a laugh, you don't really seem to care how your trolling and vulgarity affect others.
Wocml, once a community, a family of friends, unlike anything else I've ever encountered on the internet, is now merely another internet forum.

EARTHBENDERS, THERE IS EARTH BENEATH YOUR FEET! v;
I know I'm not the only one who is upset and saddened by this forum's increasingly intolerable atmosphere of schoolboy humor and playground bully antics; far from it. You know who you are. We've all talked to somebody about this.
Why are we putting up with this? Our community is collapsing around us, and we're just watching it?
Look at what we've become! Look around you, and tell me that things aren't as bad as I say they are. Those of you who have been here long enough to remember: compare us now to how we used to be. We had something incredible here! Have you forgotten? Or are you just too busy to care? How can you sit idly by while others are destroying what took you years to build? Don't make excuses. You know what's happening here is wrong.
I understand your reluctance to speak out, to leave. It wasn't that long ago that all I saw were problems, not solutions. I didn't know how to fix the problem, so I resigned just to quietly fade out of the community and keep in touch with the people I get along with. But that feels like surrendering. I don't want to lose that sense of community that I once felt, if I don't have to.
Let me ask you something: do you really like it here? Can you be proud of a community where your posts are trolled into oblivion, where every thread devolves into mindless and meaningless dialogue, where we have an Admin who thinks it's funny to sexually harass female members of the forum? If so, then by all means, please go about your business. Have fun.
But if you're tired of the way things are, then why are you still here? Maybe it's time for you to move on.
Staying here when you don't even like it is akin to continuing to live in the ghetto in a third-world country under a dictator, because it used to be a nice neighborhood. However, unlike your standard dictatorship, the borders are wide open, and you are free to move into a nice house in a new community.

Why Our Community Must Live Anew
Wocml may be dead, but gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. XB
I can still see fragments of the community, ghosts of what used to be. The good old days are still buried underneath all of the obscene humor and ALL-CAPS SINGLE LINE POSTS. We can't restore Wocml to its former glory, but we can do better than that. We can start a new forum, built around our current lifestyles, where respect for others will come before so-called "freedom" of speech, and where you will be able to have fun being creative and doofy without being trolled to death, and without being bullied whenever you don't keep your head down and your mouth shut.
I'm not going to take it anymore, and neither should you. Don't let people walk all over you, don't let them treat you with so little respect! Just ignoring them isn't going to get you anywhere. We've already given up the Crap Shack, and it's not stopping there. Stand up for yourselves! Stand up and take back your community! If we can't take this forum back, we can start anew. Our community has moved before. The forum itself is not what makes our community what it is. The individual people who populate the forum are the community. And the people here now don't play well together.
As for myself, I'm moving on with my life. I've started a new ZetaBoards forum, and anyone who is interested in joining it is more than welcome. Send me a message on facebook, IM me on Windows Live, and I'll link you to the new world. Or you can stay here. The choice is yours.

In conclusion, I felt like we had something truly special here on Wocml; it was a lot of fun while it lasted, and I'm sorry to see it go. But I suppose that all good things must come to an end, and this chapter of my life is coming to a close. I really don't know what's next, but I am excited for whatever lies ahead.
And I hope that good things are in store for the rest of you, as well. Despite what's happened, I wish you all the very best.
Goodbye, Wocml, and thanks for the memories.
Edited by Mace, July 23 2010, 09:11 AM.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ...It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. - 1 Corinthians 13:4,5,7,8
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you, and his glory appears over you. Lift up your eyes and look about you... Then you will look and be radiant, your heart will throb and swell with joy. Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. - Isaiah 60: 1, 2, 4, 5, and Ephesians 5:14
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