An old pirate bids farewell to CBR

[Froggy]

Well I'm glad I got to know you dude

Peace out and I hope I catch you around sometime

[Dalak]

It was nice knowing you Nik . . .

I guess I'll never find out if you were really a Ninja or not

[JCAll]

It always feels so bleak when CBR burns down. Like a part of all of us go with it and all we can do is scramble to save the pieces. I'm sorry to see you go, but good luck in the future. I hope we'll all still be here if you ever want to come back.

[The Chou Lives]

Farewell Nik, you are a awesome guy. :Salute.:

[Dawn Quixotic]

Might as well put my own little monologue here.

Stuff like this is bad.
Nik isn't the kind of guy to throw a fit.
He's not the type to just get mad about something changing and now it sucks.

It really is insensitive.
I see some people upset about certain subforums not being added in again.

This isn't just deleting posts.
When Miburo told me, I figured it was just that.
It's more, it's hurting whole communities.

I really don't want to whine or play mental illness cards but having depression/anxiety/borderline disorder, huge changes like this can be pretty disturbing.
It's not like I can't cope or whatever, but you'd think they'd be a bit more sensitive to the needs of the community and its good members, how much many of us value and depend on things here...
And to change that so suddenly, with no real justification for some of the changes? That's really bad.

Because get this. It's going to happen again. You might have a zero tolerance policy, but they'll still make the posts, and you will have to delete them. It might be some guy who has never made posts here and his first thing is to go into a thread and starting insulting/threatening everyone. So you delete his posts, ban him, no big. Isn't that what we had before?

But now you can't get back all the good things you have taken away.

And yeah, we can say you can talk about the same things elsewhere on site, but it's different when the forum develops a community in its little space and that space is just destroyed.
I visited three forums here... Rumbles, Anime/Manga, and sometimes Wrestling. Two of those are gone completely and the other is no longer allowed an attached chat thread.
Hopefully these will be allowed to come back.

But now I find myself less inclined to come back here.

And again. This isn't rage quitting. This isn't me loudly ranting about how I won't come back out of some sense of drama (and mind you, I'm not even saying I'm leaving like Nik is). I'm just pointing out that for me, CBR is now Dairy Queen without the ice cream. Sure it still has really good hot good, but with my main reason for coming here irrevocably changed and possibly completely lost, I don't quite feel so excited about coming here. It makes me feel really lost.

So if anyone in charge or who has the ear of someone in charge sees this... rethink some things.
This just happened today so obviously not everything is settled and set in stone.
Rethink the organization of the subforums and some things like that. Those seem like some really minor, simple things, (and they are), but I think they'd go a long way for making the transition easier for a lot of people here.

[Postmania]

The transition really was sudden. I've been drifting away from CBR for a while now, but to go in and see everything gone and the accounts deleted, well, I liked some of that stuff. I liked having our threads in our forums. Just seeing it change in one day, quite unsettling.

[Dark Soul # 7]

Good bye Nik. The forums will be poorer without you.

[GMiller]

Might as well put my own little monologue here.

Stuff like this is bad.
Nik isn't the kind of guy to throw a fit.
He's not the type to just get mad about something changing and now it sucks.

It really is insensitive.
I see some people upset about certain subforums not being added in again.

This isn't just deleting posts.
When Miburo told me, I figured it was just that.
It's more, it's hurting whole communities.

I really don't want to whine or play mental illness cards but having depression/anxiety/borderline disorder, huge changes like this can be pretty disturbing.
It's not like I can't cope or whatever, but you'd think they'd be a bit more sensitive to the needs of the community and its good members, how much many of us value and depend on things here...
And to change that so suddenly, with no real justification for some of the changes? That's really bad.

Because get this. It's going to happen again. You might have a zero tolerance policy, but they'll still make the posts, and you will have to delete them. It might be some guy who has never made posts here and his first thing is to go into a thread and starting insulting/threatening everyone. So you delete his posts, ban him, no big. Isn't that what we had before?

But now you can't get back all the good things you have taken away.

And yeah, we can say you can talk about the same things elsewhere on site, but it's different when the forum develops a community in its little space and that space is just destroyed.
I visited three forums here... Rumbles, Anime/Manga, and sometimes Wrestling. Two of those are gone completely and the other is no longer allowed an attached chat thread.
Hopefully these will be allowed to come back.

But now I find myself less inclined to come back here.

And again. This isn't rage quitting. This isn't me loudly ranting about how I won't come back out of some sense of drama (and mind you, I'm not even saying I'm leaving like Nik is). I'm just pointing out that for me, CBR is now Dairy Queen without the ice cream. Sure it still has really good hot good, but with my main reason for coming here irrevocably changed and possibly completely lost, I don't quite feel so excited about coming here. It makes me feel really lost.

So if anyone in charge or who has the ear of someone in charge sees this... rethink some things.
This just happened today so obviously not everything is settled and set in stone.
Rethink the organization of the subforums and some things like that. Those seem like some really minor, simple things, (and they are), but I think they'd go a long way for making the transition easier for a lot of people here.

Very well thought out post...I do agree...I also like that we have two different thread about this topic..One is for positive comments on the change, and the other is about negatvie feedback....Great idea, however, the negative one will be closed in 23 hours or so...

Also, i'm sorry to see you leave, Nik.....

[Motown Rage]

Hey everyone.

Some of you might know me; I was a regular on the Rumbles board and on the Anime/Manga board for the last eight years or so. I have had the pleasure of calling many of the fine people on this board friends.

So! Imagine my surprise when, at around 2:00 AM UK time, I get a message from a friend telling me that the entire board had been wiped, our accounts deleted and the last eight years of our online interaction deleted. Suffice to say, I was profoundly unamused when I found that this was true.

We were not warned, we weren't even aware of the ugliness that prompted this response from the administrative staff, to me and my friends, CBR had been the same place it had always been. Sure, Rumbles could be a little tough to get used to but we'd just gotten a new crop of users who were learning to ropes and things were fine.

And then it all got wiped.

And I was left, in a slightly drunken state, to come up with a response to all this.

And... it seems I'm done.

This is a goodbye. I can't bring myself to tacitly endorse the hideously unfeeling actions by the administrative staff of just wiping out everything we had, RPGs we played, fights we debated, stories we wrote, respect threads we built and all the other stuff that goes with being an active member of Rumbles. It shows a callous attitude to what we had here and it makes me not want to spend my time on boards run by the same staff.

Yes, I'm not trying to claim that Jonah doesn't have the right to do whatever he wants with the board and everything on it. It's his place, he owns, he pays the bills, he makes all the big calls. But, I had thought that the administrators understood how important this place was to us and I would have thought that they understood that doing this kind of action should have been done with care but this turned out not to be the case.

For the last eight years, I have not spent a day without coming on CBR when I could. I made lasting friendships that dominated my adult life online and I learned a lot about debate, comics, manga and series that I would not know otherwise. This place was a blessing to me and I truly cherish the time I spent here. Even when it was frustrating or annoying or stupid or I didn't win an argument, I would still return because it was an online home to me.

I think the thing that upsets me most is that we weren't warned. There was no preparation for this, it just happened.

Many of my friends will remain. Heck, maybe in the sobering light of the day, I'll come crawling back too but I don't think that this is very likely. This place has changed. The place we called home has, not to be too dramatic, kind of betrayed us. Eight years, just wiped away.

And so, I take my leave.

I thank everyone here for their friendship and interaction, this was a wonderful place to be and there were many great memories to be had.

I thank the Rumbles Moderator Team, many of whom I am honoured to call friends, for being fair, just and infinitely patient with us as we thrashed out the fine points of character vs character battles.

Thank you CBR, you were fun.

I hope that new people find as much joy and satisfaction in this place as I did and that the new ethos of the Admin Staff doesn't make for a place devoid of fun.

Farewell and good luck to all.

--- Nik Hasta

I never had any interaction with Nik, but that was a well thought out and worded goodbye, wishing Nik the best of luck in the future

[AJ Valliant]

Rumbles was a special place on this board. We self policed a level of civility and culture that no one can externally mandate. An internet culture is such a fragile thing and the one that formed up there organically was rare and genuine. To see it all wiped in reactionary move to a genuinely reprehensible, but narrow, band of transgressors is heart breaking. Nik, you were always fun to talk to and I enjoyed the hell out of Underbelly. I'm sure I'll see Sharp round and about town, the rest of the rumblers I got to know: take care folks, you legitimately improved most days but once the cops come the party is over.

[AJ Valliant]

And just to be clear: When I say that I will see the Moderator Sharpandpointies "around town" that is an expectation of knocking back a few and pleasant conversation, not a declaration of vendetta. I know we are on red alert around here.

[butterfingers158]

To Nik, and all those who are choosing to leave CBR



You will be missed

[HowitzerJoe]

Never knew you, but I feel for you. Good luck wherever you go.

[Sharpandpointies]

And just to be clear: When I say that I will see the Moderator Sharpandpointies "around town" that is an expectation of knocking back a few and pleasant conversation, not a declaration of vendetta. I know we are on red alert around here.

I'll be ready for you, AJ.

*looks around, shifty-eyed*

[Tanrage]

I wouldn't worry, we all remain terrified of your wife!