Craig McGregor just replied on Rerolled. THIS IS GREAT

Drakain said:

They closed that thread over at mmorpg. Last I saw Lithos open a can of truth and it was glorious. Thread closed for that? Glad we're out of there.

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Drakain said:

They closed that thread over at mmorpg. Last I saw Lithos open a can of truth and it was glorious. Thread closed for that? Glad we're out of there.

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Vetiria said:

MMORPG.com buys a small forum for $20K...

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What a strange business move. I checked the site out, and to be honest, there's nothing there but a few random people talking about completely random stuff all day. It's not like it's some dedicated gaming site whose population would blend into ours necessarily.[/qote]

Even the people over there are asking why??????????

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Palum said:

Let's get something straight - communities are not some trinket to be bought and sold. People are not chattel.

Inasmuch as you were defrauded by someone who schemed to sell an insignificant domain and antiquated, rickety forum install under the dubious presumption that a fiercely independent user base would simply accept change in ownership without consultation - well, I guess we've all been swindled.

Here's the thing that gets me - at any point either party could have discussed this with the community and provided a first right of refusal but failed to do so. The only reason this could possibly have been viewed as the 'smart' way to handle a transition is if both parties recognized that informing the users would 'rock the boat' and therefore reduce revenue/value. This means both parties to the transaction decided that there could only be an adverse reaction from the community. The same people apparently generating revenue for the site. Now, I'm not some fancy AA in General Studies, but I'm pretty sure taking steps that would inevitably alienate the only loyal customer base is poor business acumen.

There's exactly zero surprise to any of the members that we would choose to move rather than do without control over the direction and content of the community. Of course, one could only divine such knowledge by, you know, bothering to ask.

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Lithose said:

Kyleran said:

According to doofhoof, Craig made you an offer for the data, $7K, seems fair in light of everything.

So little understanding of business in the world, a failing of the education system apparently.

Here's a thought, maybe the community member who sold the site can buy the data back and donate it to the new site?

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First, lets be clear, the community member who sold us out? Is no longer part of the community. That Judas betrayed both Craig and us. Now, onto the meat of the post.

What "business" world are you referring to? The community in question is made up of mostly older folks, we've been gaming since the 90's online, and have been a community now for 12+years. Most of us run our own businesses now, or are fairly established in "business".

Since you apparently think "being fair" or "trust" are important factors in "business", let me disabuse of that notion right now and save you some heartache and money in the future. The first term you should learn in any business venture is Caveat Emptor, buyer beware, it's so enshrined in Western society that precedents have been set up around it. It is up to YOU to do due diligence on your purchases, and on contracts you sign. Someone can't defraud you, yes, but the standard for that is incredibly strict--certainly it's not "I bought a business without checking my customer base and then they all left, this is unfair!"

Fair has nothing to do with it. It wasn't fair when Draegan (The site owner) sold us out, just like it wasn't fair that Craig got duped. We, however, did our due diligence and checked owner records and had members of the community placed to warn us--and we benefited from that diligence by avoiding being tangled up in a for-profit site admin (Which I'll explain below is unpalatable to us). Craig, on the other hand, seems to have either eschewed due diligence or purposely kept the purchase secret because he really did know what would happen and wanted to exploit the view numbers to sell adds at a higher rate under his network (You can believe either of those scenarios you want). The point is we didn't "expect" the world to be fair, and we were able to defend ourselves when it inevitably wasn't, when one of our community members tried to screw us over. So some advice? If you have this expectation of fairness in life, you're going to be miserable.

That all said, I'm sure Craig is a swell guy--he seemed amiable enough when he posted. And I'm sure he actually believed he would leave us alone, too. The issue is, Craig is a businessman (Remember what I said about the business world being unfair?)...As nice as I'm sure Craig is, the point of his efforts isn't to be kind, it's to put food on the table for his family. If you're in 'business' you have to keep this in mind with EVERYONE you meet...At the end of the day they are making money for people they love, and YOU are just a customer, client or partner that they derive money from. They will only be "fair" or "kind" to you in so much that it effectively benefits their primary motivation, which is to make money for their family. The second the relationship with you, interferes with that, the relationship with you will change so it no longer interferes with the money making.

One day, inevitably, someone would have taken one of our more blunt conversations on Rerolled and run off to twitter or some other social network and screamed about how MMORPG was involved with such a terrible site. It would eventually get back to Craig's advertisers, or some other interest, and Craig would be forced to bring the hammer down in terms of moderation on the site. Again, not because he's "mean" or a bad person--but because his primary goal is to make money, NOT be "fair" or "nice". He's under no obligation to us to do anything, at all, not even a little (We don't even purchase things from him, so he's not even bound under the thinnest of consumer protections, or any kind of quid pro quo to uphold his "deal". It would be immensely naive of us to simply take someone's word on that when again, he has a conflict of interest--he wants to make money.) Just as we're under no obligation to him, it would be ridiculous to think so, like trying to say you're under obligation to continue eating at a restaurant you like.

Does our view bend towards cynicism? Of course, but as I said, most of us now run our own business, we're older and we've learned the lessons life has had to teach the hard way. If we didn't have a site to go to, we would have just left and let the forum die and used one of the much more popular sites for watered down, mass market conversations (Like Reddit or the Chans depending on which kind of conversation.) The forum is only valuable because it is fundamentally different from other options, its a steady non-anonymous community which is dedicated to open discussion and frank discourse, and light moderation--not exactly a combination that is easy to find in today's easily offended world.

I wish Craig all the best, hopefully we can come to an arrangement, but you need to dispel yourself of "fair". There isn't a discussion of blocking adblock on this site because of fairness. Craig's not a bad guy, but you're being silly if he's not going to put himself and his family first, as I would expect of any rational adult.

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Erronius said:

Kyleran said:

According to doofhoof, Craig made you an offer for the data, $7K, seems fair in light of everything.

So little understanding of business in the world, a failing of the education system apparently.

Here's a thought, maybe the community member who sold the site can buy the data back and donate it to the new site?

1. I don't even know who doofhoof is. Palum, Lithose and I are posting under our known handles however. Believe who you want, I guess.
   
2. AFAIK we reached out to Craig and asked what he and MMORPG would want. You make it sound like Craig rang our doorbell out of the blue looking to make a sale.
3. Even if (even if!) $7k is remotely accurate, then:
4. It's probably based on what Craig paid, which probably isn't a fair valuation, all things considered (some of you have even been arguing that he was ripped off, so this should be an easy concept to grasp)
5. No one in their right mind would want to pay a premium simply because Craig paid too much. This is like buying a used car for 10 times the market value and then trying to sell spare parts off of it at inflated prices. No, we do not want to buy a $50 used car stereo that Craig ripped out of the dash for $500, on the premise that he paid to much for a collection of sites.
   
6. $7k for the forums database is pants on head retarded. No one else will ever want that data. It doesn't have a use beyond us wanting to insert it into our new forums to maintain continuity.
   
7. Why would Draegan/Teljair voluntarily buy that data back and donate it to us? You probably think that Santa is real, too.

I will ask you this though: what do we not understand about the business world? You sound like a petulant teenager trying to take a swipe at me while simultaneously trying to sound erudite, yet you couldn't really manage to verbalize a very convincing argument beyond "hurr durr failing of the education system, hurr durr". Is this really a fair representation of the level of discourse here?

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jihodj said:

Totally should have had our community merged with their community of like minded 10 years olds.

Not.

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Leadaas said:

And that's why you'll always remain inferior to others with that immature outlook on life. Enjoy the crappy life though.

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