I've been here (mostly quiet) about as long as you WOM (I still remember what the letters stand for!). As I recall, we've always had a certain amount of dissention and "screw you all, I quit" going on. We've lost some great people over the years and will again.

Side note, I love it when folks we haven't heard from for a while drop in. Bakerstreet comes to mind. Possibly one of the most erudite and controversial members ever. I recall Brad and Bakerstreet had many a clashing sword!

Well, while I am saddened by the recent chain of events, anyone in need of a good laugh or in need of remembering just how much fun the forums can be....please gotoWWW Link
the fun starts around post#9....enjoy! I did.....

I said it was subjective didnt I ? How I meant it remains to be seen...perhaps I didnt find it funny at all...you should know that shouldnt you ?

We won't mention the Joe User/Joke user thread now...

Was only teasing you Fairry. Trying to make things brighter. Lets not mourn this past weekends events.

In all seriousness, the quote is kind of rediculous since it makes depression sound like the common cold. Depression is more than a joke o matic snip.

Good point WOM   

I miss how the board used to be myself. I look at it almost daily but am very rare to comment any longer. Nothing to say really.  

I used to be able to help with some things but now I am way behind the times in the workings of some of the skins.

I would truly like to be a part of the site again. I did renew my sub. either way this year. I see it as that if WC is kind enough to hold onto my skins I want to hold onto my sub.  

May of you on the board these days I do not even know.  

Others I miss very much.   

Special hi's to

WOM, Night Train, Chef Garry, Hankers and Jafo who has not commented yet to the post.

Z71, very sorry to hear you had problems even back then.

Fairyy~ I know that you can't pretend like it never happened but it is human nature to try to make the best out of a bad situation...hopefully you will find a way to do that in time...

It is the only way I can keep going day to day.

Hi Keila, pleasure to meet you

Thank you seldomeseen I am anxiously awaiting summer so that I can get the real smell from the many roses I grow.

It's My Secret

I remember those days WOM   The boards were much fun. The forum was soo active that it was hard to keep up with all the buzz on some nights. I believe that people were more helpful back in those days. For many of us it was a special kind of place.

You told me a long time ago that you can't go back in the past, but all you can do is do the best with what you have today. I don't know if this make sense or not with what I am trying to say but I think the problem is that when things started going down hill, alot of us(me included) kind of abandoned the forum instead of making the best of what was going on.

Hi Keila and elvee.  Two of my friends that helped make this forum fun.  Another that I miss is Motion.  But alas, he left and never came back.  Your right elvee, ya can't go back and yes ya have to make the best of the situation, but if  people acted more like it was back then, it would be fun again.  And like I said, we had our problems also, they just seemed to not be as many and when the dust settled, it was back to the fun.    

Laying down a red carpet to stop that dust from blowing up & obscuring our view

It's My Secret

I don't want to throw water on this "good old days" stuff but we do have the logs from those days.

Which time frame are you talking about? On average, forum traffic on WC for the past several months is higher than at any time since it was founded. I mean, seriously, the # of posts and comments made per day is something we do measure and keep track of.

The forums are more active now than they used to be. It's just more diluted across more forums which we have some ideas on how to change.

Between 2002 and 2004 is when I remember it being very active, maybe it just seems that way to me in respect to today's traffic. I loved coming to the forums and helping anyway I could. Some of the oldtimers talking about how the forum has changed, but it could be us that have changed and not the atmosphere of the Forums.

Time keeps on slipping slipping slipping . . into the future. 

It's nice to see you all here.  What can us "new" folks do to make it more fun?

To add to Frogboy's comment above.....some time ago I posted "People will hit me, but.....", a thread about what people were listening to, music-wise.

It was done [tongue in cheek] to liven up what was then quite a dead forum.  I could come in daily and see perhaps a half dozen newly commented threads, and the only real 'action' was with something 'controversial' that attracted the usual flaming, etc.

Currently [I know the forum structure is now different] 'Recent Posts' [72 hours] shows 7 pages of new/newly commented threads.  My old "People will..." thread is plainly superfluous as the Forum has definitely taken on its own life.

The negative side to this is the growth can isolate/alienate some and perhaps lead to cliquish interaction on the part of others. 

This seems to be something endemic with Wincustomize [though maybe I'm more attune to it as I'm here so often] and not outwardly apparent elsewhere [I have been known to show up on other sites' forums - eg. rscnet.org - a racing/sim site - been a member there a year or so].

Thinking back to skinz.org, Deskmod.com, Customize.org [and a half dozen Litestep sites] - the 'big' skinning sites "back when", I can't say I remember any of them having such an undercurrent of 'we are superior cos we are at WC', though there WAS rivalry to a degree as each found their niche.

Deviantart even started out as a skinning site [with a difference], its popularity escalating due to 2 things...clever site interactive design and transition towards alternate 'art' forms, more than 'just' skinning....but for a while there Devart was THE pivotal place for skinning/skin discussion.

What bugs the proverbial out of me is not who decides to leave here, but WHY.

What drives them off?

How much of it is purely natural progression [moving on to commercial time-consuming endeavours] and how much of it is "shit....bunch of arseholes aren't worth my time"?

I know some are now busy elsewhere....but even THEY should still be WANTING to get back here just to interact....yet generally they do not.

Is that due to loss of relevancy with so many new faces around, or is it the underlying atmosphere that is alien to "their time"?

Site forum and skin comment interaction is how to gauge a Community's health and vibrancy, yet so many times it shows to be cancerous.

I know pretty-well everyone is at fault at one level or another, including myself.  My promotion to 'Admin' here was [for me] a real buzz, but it came with an obligation to nurture the Community, assisting with its growth and change/development.  It wasn't in my 'job-brief' to toe any Company partyline, but it just so happened that 'most' of what I thought matched the thinking of the site's owners [so I still have both my legs ... ]

What was/is needed is a general wake-up call to all 2.7 million members that attitudes of one and all must change.

Unfortunately for some, this has been rather precipitous, however arguably quite overdue.

Frogboy's decision to remove site access from those who, by whatever action indicate an intent to depart has my 100% support, not because he owns the site and has ultimate say, but because it is an intelligent pro-active response to an untenable situation.

Ultimately, people will put as much effort into contributing to a site/community's success as they wish to receive from it in interactive friendship, etc.  Once they decide to go it tells the rest of the community this interactive friendship is past.

Here is a very Australian example..... [heed well if ever visiting the antipodes...and wanting a drink in a pub]....

When in a bar in a pub NEVER indicate you do not wish to have another drink by inverting your glass on the bar.   THAT is a formal declaration that everyone else in the bar is unworthy of your drinking with them and is an open invitation to having your facial features readjusted.

Correct protocol [that saves your teeth] is to lay it on its side.

Social/societal interaction is often a delicate balance....one that ALL of us need to redress....

That was way too many big words Paul......I'm out'a here.....  

See, right there's reason enough for me to have visited this thread today. Could literally save face in a pub Down Under, should I be lucky to visit one day.
Now I have to find out just what is a pub if a bar's in a pub...is a pub then not a bar? Over here, in Idaho, you go to a bar for a drink or a brew, in Washington state, you find a Tavern. In Utah, you go to a club where they serve mixers and you byob...I think, that's no-man's-land for us Gentiles, never been...
In L.A. you can share a bus-stop bench with a homeless person, but the bottle has to stay in the sack so no-one knows when the "end" is coming...

I remember WC before Russ started his own site, Pixtudio was a suite, and HoverDesk was interesting to me. Curious how times change. Now, when I'm searching for a new flavor-of-the-day for my GUI, I explore the "dusty" library stacks circa 2001 and 2002, even earlier. Some stunning and innovative work there. I miss the good-ole-days a lot, but the work's still around. Miss the crew from those days, you were all gods to me. I'd just gotten my first PC for school and couldn't believe what I'd found in the skinning community. Still in awe. Always will be.

Frogboy, I do have to admit that I did not take that into consideration. I also have to admit that I pretty much never look at the other forums so I have no idea what goes on in them.

I also have to say that many of us from the talked a lot on WC and SD chat. We knew each other pretty well and it followed along into the forums. It could be that many others did not even know what our connection was and did not realize the fun we would also have there.

But I am also at fault here. Instead of trying to make make things the way they used to be or the way I liked them more I just gave up. I have no right to complain if I do not try to do more to change it up some.

I'd like the default forum view to be something like this:

https://forums.wincustomize.com/?g=recent

I don't need an index of forums, I just want to know what's new.

I concur.   

Frogboy, when I first to a look at it I was like "wow, way to much info"

I then noticed that you can click onto the forum you would like to go to but in the mean time you get a quick glance at what is going on in the others and might have something to add to them.

I back you on that idea 100%