Site Feedback Let's have a discussion about the site

i fully understand the stress he is going through, but if it dose come to selling the site, please give controll over to someone who legitimatly can run the site, not to some corprate fucks that will probs delete everything and just use the site's name for recognition, this site has been a haven for the likes of me, and everyone who ever came here, a true comunity filled with people that just want this community to strive, im pretty sure i can say for alot of people that this place is like a home and a family to them, sure is for me, ive met alot of good, trustworthy people here and i bet others have aswell, if you do end up selling the place, do the right thing and give it to someone who cares about this community.

 

Well shoot. Missed this one. Maybe because I'm reading on mobile, usually.

I understand ASSEMBLER's initial "nobody cares" sentiment. While everyone chimes in for a kind word, and that's nice, I can understand still feeling jaded. Boil it all down and we're just internet people, behind far away computers and aren't really involved in the day to day of his life.

That being said, Assemblergames.com is the best site on the internet for video games (especially obscure ones), for ages. It was ancient already when I found it on roarvgm (and prior versions) and it's amazing that it's still here now. I mean shit. It's a website that's been around--in one incarnation or the other--for what, about 2 decades now. That's ancient in internet terms. 1001 kudos for keeping what is essentially a personal website up for decades.

It's also a website that I keep on coming back to. Any time I search for something cool/obsure/neat about video games in Google, I always find my way back here--as it's the best resource. The website is really "home of the obscure."

Lastly, I know it's cool to bellyache about ASSEMBLER being unavailable, aloof, or whatever, but compare him to the alternative--the other supercollectors of the obscure out there. They're so insular as all hell. This guy makes a damned website for us to chit chat and shows off his neato stuff.

 

I seriously think we just need to reset things, drop the grudges, unban certain people and move on as a community. Bad shit happened. It happens to all of us. But we move on from it. To continue bitching and over reacting to things is simply ripping the scab off and not allowing things to heal.

That’s my opinion anyway. Because honestly if the toxicity and grudges continue, I’m leaving the site which pains me. I just can’t continue to try and escape real life drama to come here and just sink into more political and personal fallout and Bullshit.

Everyone needs to grow up and move on. Hurt feelings or not. The site died. It came back. It’s all in the past.

 

Looks like you got your reset.

 

The classic style forums are slowly dying while the masses move to bloated javascript imitations of old internet services showing no respect for privacy with a false sense of security in the "too big to fail" category (think Titanic, or more recently, Equifax). I blame the users for this who willingly trade their privacy for 15 minutes of candy crush or fame in some useless social platform. You know what, let them have their crap, we don't need them.

I think assemblergames.com is a great community, and that's coming from someone currently running a website with over 300k registered users. Over the years I've learned that it doesn't really matter how big a community is, it's about what the members actually do with it. You can have three active members doing more than 10k passive ones, in the end it's about sharing an interest/hobby, this is the core of the community. Whatever happens to assemblergames.com as a site, I hope the community will continue in the same spirit.

While reading this thread there's a lot of discussion about moderation, well, I don't believe in moderation of anything except spam and death threats. Just let the members fight it out until the dust settles. I have my own experience and concept dealing with this at eurasia.nu since the start back in 2002.

The only weird side effect I've noticed is that some people tend to get silent when given the power to write what they want, having no moderators around, treated as adults rather than children.

Perhaps you have noticed how the corporate "social media" sites (Facebook, Google/YouTube, Microsoft, etc.) all move towards censorship with frequent updates of their user agreements. More regulations, more reasons to remove/block content, less privacy, in order to provide a family friendly market where their business partners can profit from your personal activities.

I for one actually believe those who move away from independent forums like this one eventually will change their minds and come back, so lets give them good reason to by having less moderation and more freedom.

 

Quoting myself from another thread to summarize my grievances with the current, and sudden, changes.