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Well, I had a lot more words, but it started turning into a ramble. So I'll try to shorten it up.
Some of the animosity generated on that Sunday was my fault. I disagreed with something Schony did, and that should have been kept private, at least at first. I also responded inappropriately when she made a snide comment to me. That was a mistake, and something I've apologized for publicly a couple times, and privately to certain individuals as well.
That being said, I was not the only one at fault that night. I had hoped, like many others, that things would subside, everyone would apologize, and we'd all move forward. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.
Obviously, some of those people who have chosen to move elsewhere because of my actions. I do feel bad for that, as I clearly had no intentions of fracturing our community. However, there are others who played a part too. I certainly will stand up and take some responsibility, but I won't take the entire pie in the face.
As I see it, there are a couple main reasons why people have chosen to leave.
1. The community is open to anyone who finds it. We got complaints from day 1 that SJ was open to anyone who wanted to join. Some folks wanted it to be a private community, but XC felt it should be open to whomever wanted to join so long as they weren't a douche. It's his site, so who are we to countermand that?
2. We have political discussions. Some folks didn't like that, felt this place should only be about hockey. I never really understood this complaint when we got it. We had them all the time in the old official forums, and they got quite contentious, more so than anything here. There's also a separate politics forum that things got contained in. There's a lot of topics that get discussed that not everyone likes. Politics tend to get a little rowdy, so that's why it was kept separate.
3. The events of Feb 28th, the gold medal game.
At the end of the day, I think what can be done has been done. Apologies have been offered. Some moderator rule changes have gone into effect to hopefully make everyone's experience a better one. Through it all, people make a choice if they want to be here or not, whatever their reasons may be. Out of all the folks that are no longer around, only rbochan's account is deleted, and only because he requested it. Schony was removed as a moderator, as she made it clear in PMs sent the night she no longer wanted to be. If they ever come back, I'm sure folks will welcome them. If they don't, I'm sure everyone wishes them the best. I certainly hold no grudges, even in light of some of the comments that have gotten back to me.
I will say that if people feel my role as a moderator is causing consternation in the community, I'll drop that role in a second. Most of the PMs I got on the subject supported my position, even if rightfully criticizing how I went about it expressing it. The last thing I want to do is to drive folks away if they feel like I'm an unreasonable prick.
In closing, I don't think the community is dying out. We've lost some folks, sure, but we still have folks that are around. Maybe the days of 30 page GDTs are in our past, maybe they'll be there again in the future. Time will tell.
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