NON-MONSTER FORUMS TO BE CLOSED AND REMOVED ON APRIL 27TH

[marsattacks666]

I think the Elvira thread should be moved to an active forums section, as she still has projects, merchandise, and con appearances.

http://www.universalmonsterarmy.com/forum/index.php?topic=9235.0

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk

Thanks Count. 

[Hepcat]

Well.....I have to say I am not surprised.

Maybe you're not surprised, but most of the rest of us are absolutely shocked.

[Flower]

Toy Ranch,

I am really upset .. I pretty much comment on movies (and try to help with questions), post music videos, post pictures of kittens and start birthday threads.  Where is the evil intent?

[Toy Ranch]

removed, which makes everything make less sense - Toy Ranch

Sorry, I can't keep up with all of the post edits. This one changed from the time I started to reply to the time it was edited.  So no more editing in this forum.

(removed which makes everything make less sense)

sigh...

[Hepcat]

We are all from different walks of life but all share one common interest - MONSTERS!

That's an oversimplification. Yes, we're all into monsters, but we've come to that in many different ways. Many/most of the members may have come by their love of monsters through the Universal flicks, but some of us such as Bigbud and myself came by our love of monsters as part and parcel of our love for all baby boomer toys and other stuff.

[Toy Ranch]

Toy Ranch,

I am really upset .. I pretty much comment on movies (and try to help with questions), post music videos, post pictures of kittens and start birthday threads.  Where is the evil intent?

No evil intent, I wasn't talking about you.

[Hepcat]

We need a "DISLIKE" button.  I don't want to see you(Bigbud) go.

Nor do I. I'll really miss his posts. But where's he going to post now? He ran through his hard core monster toys long ago. He's not going to post the latest treasure he brings up from his basement in the classic monster movies forum.

Before everyone starts leaving, why not wait until after the changes are made and see what difference they actually make?

You don't seem to understand that the change that's been announced will have a permanent effect. Deletion is forever. It's not experimental. There can be no turning back.

[Toy Ranch]

Hepcat, the idea of things posted on the internet being "forever" is because people copy things and repost them. Forums cease to exist. Some forums regularly prune old posts and keep a few in a "Hall of Fame".  Some are active for a while, and then go away. There are no plans for the UMA to go away, we plan to be here for a very long time. Things do change though, and starting a forum is not a life sentence.  If you want to make deleting stuff a crime, you are more than welcome to start your own forum and put that in the TOS.

[Hepcat]

Now I feel even more guilty! If I'd just taken certain things between  to PM, instead of bumping heads in the thread, none of this would have been necessary. For that, I truly apologize.

No need to apologize. This has nothing to do with you or any of your threads specifically. The specific thread to which you're referring has been locked. It's over, and we've moved on. And of course there's no reason to knock down a whole huge wing of house just because there's a ding on the wall in that part of the house.

I was bewildered by the announcement on the part of the administrators yesterday, but after a day's consideration I believe I've sorted out some of their thinking. This board had its origins as a small exclusive club of dedicated monster enthusiasts over on Yahoo. When the admins moved from Yahoo over to this present board late in 2007, they worked hard to make this new site a success. They posted very energetically for a couple of years, and burned themselves out by and large. (Just check the posting histories of any of the mods if you need confirmation of what I'm saying. Mike Scott is the only mod who continues to post actively.) After all, they were first and foremost monster enthusiasts, not compulsive posters.

But you know they succeeded. The new UMA board attracted some other very active posters, e.g. Dr. Teufel Geist, Scatter, Opera Ghost, Sean, Marsattacks, Unknown Primate, etc. In fact, the board prospered beyond their wildest expectations!

Unfortunately, their own interest had dwindled. Like I say, the fellows who had launched the board weren't really big posters by nature and they had burned themselves out. But they were victims of their own success. They were now saddled with a much bigger board to manage than they had initially envisaged, and a much costlier board financially as well! And they're unwilling to invest the time and money in this big active board.

So what to do? Hey, by truncating the board by more than half they can bring it right back down to a manageable size. And as dedicated monster enthusiasts they're really only interested in the hardcore monster sections of this board. Like I say, they don't want the financial expense or the trouble of dealing with a bigger, more active, board.

Their other motivation here may be the simple very human desire to reestablish the control they once had over the UMA. Any forum that succeeds grows beyond its founders. It gets its character from the posters, the more active the poster, the more the character of the board is determined by that poster's interests/personality etc. Therefore this board has come to reflect the personality of today's most active posters. I don't have to name them. If you're posting here, you know who they are. The casual observer glancing at this board will come away noticing five to ten good posters, but with the exception of Mike Scott they won't be the admins. But the admins want a board again that the casual observer will associate with them, and not Scatter, Hepcat, Count Zirock, Flower, Bigbud, Jimm, Horrorhunter, etc.

So how do the admins get their own little board back? Well cutting everyone else back to size is the easiest way.

That then is the explanation in a nutshell. It's always about cost and control.

So what's the prognosis for the future of this board? Well without a coterie of active posters, any board slowly withers and dies. Speaking for myself, I won't be refocusing my posting to classic horror movies and modern monster toys. I know very little about the first and I have no interest in the second. I'm all about vintage baby boomer toys and other memorabilia, and so my posting is going to be very sharply curtailed even if my enthusiasm wasn't. Unless the mods really step up to replace the posting of people such as myself, Flower, Bigbud, Jimm and others who have seen their favourite forums vanish (together with all their posts!), this forum will slowly wither and die. Good active posters are very hard to replace these days.

[Hepcat]

dont take me the wrong way here hep. I Love toys in general, I have a huge gi joe and comic collection and many other non monster toys, these threads weren't the issue for me.

It was all the "personal problems threads" that was ruining everything. This forum was a great place to meet and talk to very knowledgeable people in the monster collecting world.   I have noticed that those people almost completely stopped posting on this board, why? IMO due to the fact most posts in the last year or two were full of personal problems, feelings, and arguments galore. I have seen several veteran members of this board  verbally attacked for no apparent reason.  There are a few members here as of late that seem to be looking for a fight or think its fun to spread discontent, and these off topic threads are where it usually starts. the only chance to set things straight is to get rid of everything non monster, take away the fuel and hopefully the fire dies out. These people will either straighten up, or leave.

Its unfortunate that we will lose many great threads and discussions on other non monster toys. But worth it to me if we can get back to the grass roots and focus on our beloved monsters again.

While I sympathize or agree with most of what you say, it's absolutely incorrect to say that the non-monster threads have been the source of most of the ill tempered argument on this board in the last few years. Just look at the evidence. The "Funko bringing back Remco mini-monsters" thread which was locked earlier this year ran to 38 pages of rancor. The most infamous blow up last year complete with frothing obscenities was the Teachbug one which was precipitated by a post about a monster magazine.

[Toy Ranch]

No need to apologize. This has nothing to do with you or any of your threads specifically. The specific thread to which you're referring has been locked. It's over, and we've moved on. And of course there's no reason to knock down a whole huge wing of house just because there's a ding on the wall in that part of the house.

I was bewildered by the announcement on the part of the administrators yesterday, but after a day's consideration I believe I've sorted out some of their thinking. This board had its origins as a small exclusive club of dedicated monster enthusiasts over on Yahoo. When the admins moved from Yahoo over to this present board late in 2007, they worked hard to make this new site a success. They posted very energetically for a couple of years, and burned themselves out by and large. (Just check the posting histories of any of the mods if you need confirmation of what I'm saying. Mike Scott is the only mod who continues to post actively.) After all, they were first and foremost monster enthusiasts, not compulsive posters.

But you know they succeeded. The new UMA board attracted some other very active posters, e.g. Dr. Teufel Geist, Scatter, Opera Ghost, Sean, Marsattacks, Unknown Primate, etc. In fact, the board prospered beyond their wildest expectations!

Unfortunately, their own interest had dwindled. Like I say, the fellows who had launched the board weren't really big posters by nature and they had burned themselves out. But they were victims of their own success. They were now saddled with a much bigger board to manage than they had initially envisaged, and a much costlier board financially as well! And they're unwilling to invest the time and money in this big active board.

So what to do? Hey, by truncating the board by more than half they can bring it right back down to a manageable size. And as dedicated monster enthusiasts they're really only interested in the hardcore monster sections of this board. Like I say, they don't want the financial expense or the trouble of dealing with a bigger, more active, board.

Their other motivation here may be the simple very human desire to reestablish the control they once had over the UMA. Any forum that succeeds grows beyond its founders. It gets its character from the posters, the more active the poster, the more the character of the board is determined by that poster's interests/personality etc. Therefore this board has come to reflect the personality of today's most active posters. I don't have to name them. If you're posting here, you know who they are. The casual observer glancing at this board will come away noticing five to ten good posters, but with the exception of Mike Scott they won't be the admins. But the admins want a board again that the casual observer will associate with them, and not Scatter, Hepcat, Count Zirock, Flower, Bigbud, Jimm, Horrorhunter, etc.

So how do the admins get their own little board back? Well cutting everyone else back to size is the easiest way.

That then is the explanation in a nutshell. It's always about cost and control.

So what's the prognosis for the future of this board? Well without a coterie of active posters, any board slowly withers and dies. Speaking for myself, I won't be refocusing my posting to classic horror movies and modern monster toys. I know very little about the first and I have no interest in the second. I'm all about vintage baby boomer toys and other memorabilia, and so my posting is going to be very sharply curtailed even if my enthusiasm wasn't. Unless the mods really step up to replace the posting of people such as myself, Flower, Bigbud, Jimm and others who have seen their favourite forums vanish (together with all their posts!), this forum will slowly wither and die. Good active posters are very hard to replace these days.

Well, that's interesting and I suppose there is a little bit of truth in that, along with a lot of malarkey.  I'll spare everyone my amateur "common sense" psychoanalysis of you and your motives and raison d'etre.

[Wich2]

Bobby, with great respect:

>As (I believe) Craig said, who are we misfits to judge other misfits?<

I don't recall saying exactly that; but I may have said something to that effect - "those who are obsessed with Toys shouldn't look down on those who are obsessed with Movies," or somesuch.

>Which is a big part of it (but not all, by any means).<

Well, if that is the reasoning here, I take great issue with it. Because...

>We misfits are socially awkward a lot of the time,<

...shouldn't the goal be to fight that, not to surrender to it? To strive over the course of a life not to be just a "misfit"?

>and we admins and mods are ill equipped to deal with all of the extra-curricular stuff that goes on. Not only that, we most certainly don't want to.<

I've never seen anything here anywhere near outside the bounds of garden-variety Human Nature. And isn't that precisely the thing Human Beings are supposed to grow to deal with?

>The people who play on the pity of others to get free stuff, making up imaginary circumstances.<

Now, that IS gross. But it's rare, it happens everywhere in fandom, and my memory is that it was always dealt with very well here at the UMA.

>The people who have real circumstances and come to the UMA to find support for them from others who can't handle their own that well.<

If I read you right here, that is a deeply sad statement - as well as a bit of a generalization and an insult. Because how in heck does one learn how to handle such circumstances, if not by dealing with them, rather than by putting one's head in the sand? (And there are several heartfelt posts in this thread where folks say that they most definitely were helped by others here.)

Things are fine; but People trump Things - always. And if we are saying that the "new" UMA wants to focus on the smaller to the exclusion of the greater, I have to agree with what some have said:

This place will whither and die. You can count on it.

Because a Catalog, no matter how beautifully illustrated, is not a living, ongoing thing. A Community, is.

Sincerely,
-Craig

[Toy Ranch]

Craig, it was probably somebody else.

[Monsters For Sale]

All Internet sites and forums change, grow, evolve, mature and will eventually die or morph into something unrecognizable to those who were there at their inception.  Even the computers, programs and the Internet have and will continue to undergo updates, improvements and phase-outs of favorite features.  Nothing is permanent.

The Universal Army is a living thing.  All living things change.

It is unwise to invest one's sense of self too heavily in such a tenuous thing as an Internet site that is created, owned and operated by someone else.  Internet posts are, like e-mails, not etched in stone.  Their eventual/inevitable deletion is not like burning the library at Alexandria.

The Universal Monster Army is free to all.  Donations are welcomed, but not required.  Participation is voluntary.

The reins of management seem to have been held pretty loosely in the past.  The original direction of the UMA has strayed a bit too much for the liking of the creators/operators and many of the members.  It is felt by them that some adjustments need to be made.  It is their prerogative.

And, whoever you are, it's NOT about you.

Using the UMA in conjunction with a more broadly focused social forum might be a solution for members who find the changes too restrictive.  Post your grandkids' and pets' pictures there, and your monster topics here.

Or, (and I do NOT mean this in any snarky way), start a new forum of your own that better addresses what you want from a group.   Invite dual membership from all UMA members who wish to participate.

It's not the end of the world.  If it seems like it, maybe you need to get out more.  [Insert "Happy Face" here.]

[Flower]

Adam,

I agree with some of what you say and understand where you are coming from with your post. 

I, for one, don't use or want to use social networks and am more comfortable with discussion forums  I prefer to post on one forum.

It's not my forum, but past experience tells me that not all forum admins like people poaching from their membership.

I've been to 'Making Change Work for Me' workshops and I totally agree that it's good to be flexible.

I believe that people posting in this thread are expressing their opinions, whether it be shock, annoyance, grief or happiness .. no right or wrong, just opinions being freely expressed to 'friends' in the same boat.

At the end of any day, if something like a forum making changes is the worst thing that is happening in my life, it would be a good day.  I really think that it's healthy for everyone to express what they are feeling.   Feelings do change, what we are reading are gut reactions .. some will be proven correct and some will be proven to be incorrect.

P.S.  Do you still own the very 'cool' tee shirt that you are wearing in your avatar?