[PowerBook]

Here is a PM that a fellow community member from the "forums-previously-know-as-ThinkSecret-Forums" received ...

I won't say who received it, but I will say that it was from Luca ..

You think you're mad? I don't think you have the right. You don't know how much you're pissing off all the guys here. We welcomed you into our forum, and the first thing you do is complain about every little detail. It's too dark! The smilies aren't yellow! There's no avatars! Some of the TS guys seemed to take it in stride, generally wishing that it would change but knowing that as guests, they didn't exactly have much power to be dictating what we do with the forums. They still made suggestions that we took into account, including Quick Reply which we implemented. But others (especially you and PowerBook) seemed to really take offense to our telling you that no, you can't always get what you want. However, I see no agendas at work here. At least not on our side. Maybe you guys wanted to somehow take over this place and turn it into your own, but I doubt it. From reading some of the posts at your own board, it seems as though you guys are a close-knit community, one very different from ours. I was thinking about some of the things you were saying... like, "we're the best run message board I've seen," etc, and I'm reminded of how I feel about whichever message board I'm most attached to at any given moment. I feel the same way about AN, and before this, I felt that way about AI. It's just the way people get when they are part of a community. And you know, it is pretty damn easy to resolve conflicts and have good conversations with people when they're part of your community and your friends. It's much harder when you go somewhere completely different, and I think this little "experiment" of throwing all the TS people into the AN forum was proof of that. You guys need to be in a community together because you obviously won't all fit in to this one. So go find yourself another place to hang out. We don't want you here and you don't want to be here, so there's no point in prolonging our misery.

I don't feel welcomed here ... and that's not a nice feeling ...

[LoCash]

I don't want this to come off as if I'm silencing anybody or trying to dust this under the rug, but our posting guidelines ask that if you have an issue with a moderator or an administrator that you take it up with them via Private Messaging or another form of communication. We ask this to keep disputes such as this out of the public forum and between the individuals that need to deal with it.

I don't want to re-hash this debate. I will say that some of you guys came over here expecting us to immediately accomodate you, and that did impose a bit on our community. This caused a lot of our members to get defensive because they felt like no consideration for these boards were being taken into account.

On the other hand, you guys felt like you were losing your home and were desperately trying to recreate your community somewhere else, and AppleNova seemed the logical choice. The administration here was willing to think about the changes you guys said you would appreciate, and the membership here prior was not quite as diplomatic, but it's basically because they all felt exactly what Luca described in the PM you quoted above.

Nevertheless, you guys are going to keep your boards and ultimately that's going to make you happy because you keep your community and don't have to traipse into someone else's home and start requesting that they do things to make their home feel more like your old home. Both sides were not as nice as they could have been initially, but it's over, and so is this thread.

You are welcome to bring up your dissatisfaction in regards to Luca's comments with anybody on staff here, including myself. But we do ask that you not start threads about it in the Feedback forums, or any other forum, per our posting guidelines as this isn't the appropriate place for it.