Logan
North Texas Marauder Member
Mercurymarauder.net opened for business on March 28th, 2002. It quickly became the authoritative resource for the Mercury Marauder.
Since then, we've had three awesome annual events, countless local and regional get togethers, developed a huge community of over 2000 friends and folks with common interests. Personally, it's an achievement I'm proud to say I helped create, though somewhat unwittingly.
The Internet is an unforgiving medium for those who operate sites like this. We get paid nothing, well next to nothing. Net for 2004 was $676. Yep. $676 for the approximately 1400 man hours that collectively went into managing this site. Not bad eh? Contrary to the opinion of the few, it's not or ever has been about the money.
Mary, Dan and myself run this site because we genuinely enjoy it, the majority of the time. We all have made a TON of friends across North America and beyond. My personal attention span for a car is usually less than 6 months, and I've stuck with the Marauder thing for a looooooooong time. To me, the fact I don't actually drive one currently is proof that this site is more about the people than the cars.
That being said, in every population, there's a small percentage that just aren't right. They, for whatever reason, exist solely to create havoc, spew venom, genuinely selfish and without any moral guidance.
What you witnessed over the past few days is what happens when a forum such as this turns. Stops moderating, stops enforcing its rule, stops enforcing its laws. This site is no difference than any other society in that regard. Chaos and human nature take over.
For me, it solidified my position with respect to the disposition of certain individuals and brought to light the disposition of others that were, in all regards, playing us like a fiddle.
My many thanks to Dennis Reinhart for stepping out and making a show of stepping off the site. This is what would happen the second we stop collectively governing ourselves. It's not enough for Mary, Dan and myself to be the bad guy 100% of the time, though we functionally enforce the site rules. The community at large has to speak up and support how the site is run so that the expectations of socially accepted behavior are commonplace and understood by those who would seek to participate.
It was truly disturbing to see just how fast things turned when we let go of the reigns and said, "Fine, you want no law, here." Within 12 hours, there was so much venom posted on that site it was absolutely surreal.
Honestly, My plan was this, if the community can operate without enforcement, then let Mary, Dan and myself take a less active role in the community and bring in new admins to manage those changes to mm.net. That probably would've taken the form of a "Opt-in" forum with a dedicated admin, where the rules were relaxed and people could feel free to discuss vendors, argue with each other or what have you.
So obviously that's not what happened, in fact, it degraded so quickly, I'm genuinely disgusted. It only served to strengthen my resolve to ensure that this site does not fall prey to the few who serve no other purpose than to spread discontent and hatred. That's not a community I would want to associate myself.
So thank you to the actors, thank you to our vendors for understanding the premise and even helping prove our point for us. MI2QWK4U for being our standin Admin, and Thanks to Dennis Reinhart as well...Though deleting all the posts was a bit much buddy! I now have an hour of work to reverse that sucker...
A special thanks to Mary and Dan for all their hard work over the past few months as the pressure and "crap-o-meter" has gone off the scale for some reason lately. These people are selfless. I get complaints constantly from people about getting moderated. My advice? Shut up or leave. This isn't a democracy.
We moderate how we see fit. Period. End of Sentence. Mary and Dan are MY buffer, keeping me sane. Messing with them, you might as well just mess with me. Heck, save yourself the trouble and rather than complaining, just ask us to close your account. Because that's all that would happen anyway.
Too often people ***** because they think they were targetted by our moderators. What people don't get is that YOU as users, consumers if you will, will NEVER see the whole story. You get a very jaded one-sided perspective. You don't see the PM's, you don't see the emails traded, you don't see posts made after you leave and removed before you arrive back.
You must have some faith that it doesn't matter who it might be arguing, we moderate with as even a fist as we're able to do. That being said, GIVE US A BREAK. We're not lawyers, everything is subjective. What Mary removes, Dan or I might not. I'll tend to delete users alot quicker than they will, and so on. We're human and we're honestly just doing the best we can.
You all need to understand just how much work, effort and love Mary, Dan and myself put into this site because we LOVE doing it. But, there are a number of people who seriously need to apologize to Mary & Dan for their recent conduct and reflect whether or not they should be a part of this community.
So, at the end of the day, those of you who're interested in an unmoderated forum, I'm sorry, I just don't have it in me to create that type of community. It's just not healthy and fundamentally would be a waste of my time. The biggest proponents of the idea themselves, proved that there's no value and nothing good could come of it.
A few things need to stop, immediately. Seriously, any further violations will result in immediate account termination regardless of who it might be.
- Personal Attacks. I'm SO done with this one.
- Vendor Issues. Contact the vendor directly, your issue is with them, not us.
- Moderator Abuse. This, I'm sick of. We selflessly give our time to this site, we don't deserve it.
- Stop the subtle innuendo, back handed comments and subterfuge. It's not welcome. Don't leave your comments open for interpretation, I guarantee we WILL interpret in exactly the worst way for you personally.
I sincerely hope that people give more consideration and tact to our moderators and the reasons why we run the site the way we do going forward. I think we've proven what happens when we step aside. Let's work together to build a community we can be proud of.
We're also talking to a couple new moderators to help spread the love around.
Sincerely,
The entirely VOLUNTEER and overly ABUSED mm.net mgmt...
Since then, we've had three awesome annual events, countless local and regional get togethers, developed a huge community of over 2000 friends and folks with common interests. Personally, it's an achievement I'm proud to say I helped create, though somewhat unwittingly.
The Internet is an unforgiving medium for those who operate sites like this. We get paid nothing, well next to nothing. Net for 2004 was $676. Yep. $676 for the approximately 1400 man hours that collectively went into managing this site. Not bad eh? Contrary to the opinion of the few, it's not or ever has been about the money.
Mary, Dan and myself run this site because we genuinely enjoy it, the majority of the time. We all have made a TON of friends across North America and beyond. My personal attention span for a car is usually less than 6 months, and I've stuck with the Marauder thing for a looooooooong time. To me, the fact I don't actually drive one currently is proof that this site is more about the people than the cars.
That being said, in every population, there's a small percentage that just aren't right. They, for whatever reason, exist solely to create havoc, spew venom, genuinely selfish and without any moral guidance.
What you witnessed over the past few days is what happens when a forum such as this turns. Stops moderating, stops enforcing its rule, stops enforcing its laws. This site is no difference than any other society in that regard. Chaos and human nature take over.
For me, it solidified my position with respect to the disposition of certain individuals and brought to light the disposition of others that were, in all regards, playing us like a fiddle.
My many thanks to Dennis Reinhart for stepping out and making a show of stepping off the site. This is what would happen the second we stop collectively governing ourselves. It's not enough for Mary, Dan and myself to be the bad guy 100% of the time, though we functionally enforce the site rules. The community at large has to speak up and support how the site is run so that the expectations of socially accepted behavior are commonplace and understood by those who would seek to participate.
It was truly disturbing to see just how fast things turned when we let go of the reigns and said, "Fine, you want no law, here." Within 12 hours, there was so much venom posted on that site it was absolutely surreal.
Honestly, My plan was this, if the community can operate without enforcement, then let Mary, Dan and myself take a less active role in the community and bring in new admins to manage those changes to mm.net. That probably would've taken the form of a "Opt-in" forum with a dedicated admin, where the rules were relaxed and people could feel free to discuss vendors, argue with each other or what have you.
So obviously that's not what happened, in fact, it degraded so quickly, I'm genuinely disgusted. It only served to strengthen my resolve to ensure that this site does not fall prey to the few who serve no other purpose than to spread discontent and hatred. That's not a community I would want to associate myself.
So thank you to the actors, thank you to our vendors for understanding the premise and even helping prove our point for us. MI2QWK4U for being our standin Admin, and Thanks to Dennis Reinhart as well...Though deleting all the posts was a bit much buddy! I now have an hour of work to reverse that sucker...
A special thanks to Mary and Dan for all their hard work over the past few months as the pressure and "crap-o-meter" has gone off the scale for some reason lately. These people are selfless. I get complaints constantly from people about getting moderated. My advice? Shut up or leave. This isn't a democracy.
We moderate how we see fit. Period. End of Sentence. Mary and Dan are MY buffer, keeping me sane. Messing with them, you might as well just mess with me. Heck, save yourself the trouble and rather than complaining, just ask us to close your account. Because that's all that would happen anyway.
Too often people ***** because they think they were targetted by our moderators. What people don't get is that YOU as users, consumers if you will, will NEVER see the whole story. You get a very jaded one-sided perspective. You don't see the PM's, you don't see the emails traded, you don't see posts made after you leave and removed before you arrive back.
You must have some faith that it doesn't matter who it might be arguing, we moderate with as even a fist as we're able to do. That being said, GIVE US A BREAK. We're not lawyers, everything is subjective. What Mary removes, Dan or I might not. I'll tend to delete users alot quicker than they will, and so on. We're human and we're honestly just doing the best we can.
You all need to understand just how much work, effort and love Mary, Dan and myself put into this site because we LOVE doing it. But, there are a number of people who seriously need to apologize to Mary & Dan for their recent conduct and reflect whether or not they should be a part of this community.
So, at the end of the day, those of you who're interested in an unmoderated forum, I'm sorry, I just don't have it in me to create that type of community. It's just not healthy and fundamentally would be a waste of my time. The biggest proponents of the idea themselves, proved that there's no value and nothing good could come of it.
A few things need to stop, immediately. Seriously, any further violations will result in immediate account termination regardless of who it might be.
- Personal Attacks. I'm SO done with this one.
- Vendor Issues. Contact the vendor directly, your issue is with them, not us.
- Moderator Abuse. This, I'm sick of. We selflessly give our time to this site, we don't deserve it.
- Stop the subtle innuendo, back handed comments and subterfuge. It's not welcome. Don't leave your comments open for interpretation, I guarantee we WILL interpret in exactly the worst way for you personally.
I sincerely hope that people give more consideration and tact to our moderators and the reasons why we run the site the way we do going forward. I think we've proven what happens when we step aside. Let's work together to build a community we can be proud of.
We're also talking to a couple new moderators to help spread the love around.
Sincerely,
The entirely VOLUNTEER and overly ABUSED mm.net mgmt...
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BTW what would my Marauder think if I told her the sight was gone
it would never run the same. OK nuff said keep it real and many more good times to come.:beer: P.S. the haters:banned: .
