Originally Posted by
Nik Hasta
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