But yeah, it sucks in a lot of ways and to a lot of people. I know for a fact that many in the mod lounge look at what's said here with sadness, wishing it could have gone differently.
And yet not once they presented a proper apology. Always playing the misunderstanding card. Maybe things could have gone differently if they had the balls to apologise?
This site is a big dump in many senses, and we for sure don't have the manpower to do many things we would like in order to improve it. And although we made a bunch of new friends (like the FoS people) and met a lot of wacky/insane people, the fact is that as of today, I'd say only 1/3 of the gutter regulars who were posting at the time people announced the shutdown are still hanging around and posting
here. That's some real damage right there, and just because some random corporation didn't like nasty words posted in hidden subsections of the site.
For all the assassination of character that iridium threw on me over this year, one thing they got right: I always put the interests of the Gutter at the forefront of everything else. That was my duty as a guttermod. And I'm not even sure that the sale of the site to Curse, and specially they way it was handled, was in the best interests of the community at large (heck, just look at how many are being left behind with the next site change), so I'd say that "
selfishly putting the interests of some specific group over the interests of the forum members at large" is a half-truth at best.
I said this more than once: If people had been honest and came forward with something like "
Hey guys, bad news, the site is being sold to a larger corporation, and there is no way that something like the gutter is
going to be allowed to stay. What can we do to help you guys move on with the minimum of casualties?" could things have gone more smoothly maybe?