No no, money is not required. The donations aren't the difference between life and death. They're more like a difference between beer and water. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket, then by all means, line mine. Otherwise, seriously, don't worry about it.
I always feel bad taking money because I wish I could spend more time on the site. All I can really do is send thank you notes and chat a bit about cel collecting. Thanks for the thought, though.
I'm not trying to infer that you need to pay in order to use RS. But since the hosting fees aren't exactly free for this site, I can't understand why, if you're spending $1K on a cel that you can't donate $10 as a courtesy for using the site. Obviously, my comment earlier was geared towards these people and not those who can not afford to donate.
Happy Birthday Rubberslug!! :)
This was/is such a great idea. I remember when everyone was lamenting about not being able to find ways to show their cels due to lack of money, lack of html experience, lack of memory, etc. You should feel so proud of just creating a PLACE for everyone to go to. :D
I haven't been in this for 15 years, but I have for almost 10 years and some of my best and closest friends are cel dealers and collectors. I can't imagine not having them and this community in my life now. :)
With that said, the flaming, the backbiting, the snarkiness, the tears, the drama, the arguments, the jealousy, the intimidations, the fear, the offensiveness, etc, etc, etc - this has been going on for ALL of the 10 years that I've been involved and I'm sure much longer than that based on stories that I've heard. It's honestly the nature of collecting, it's part of human nature, and it's practically impossible to create a "cease and desist". Especially with the Internet making it easier to bring it all out in the open (blogs/journals, comments, feedback, open forums, open chat rooms)
I think cutting the ratings is a good idea, but I don't think the ratings is what is part of the bigger problem.
You could "hire" a lot more Forum Moderators to troll postings and people to make sure things are kept to an email basis and not on an open forum/open flame/open market.
You could "hire" Moderators for the Chatroom so that if someone starts talking about porn (or whatever rule that you want to consider wildly inappropriate), they could boot that person out of chat as a warning for the evening. Then if they come back and do it again, then they are banned from the chatroom.
You could set up different Chatrooms with different topics instead of one big Chatroom.
You could start setting up local Rubberslug chapters that meet once or every three a month or something like that at a local restaurant, which may help drag people from behind a screen and actually meet people face-to-face. Rather than waiting for the one big convention in the summer. For example, Foechadan sets up a DC chapter for people who live in the NoVA, DC, and southern MD area. She picks a restaurant (one month it's in NoVA, three months later it's in DC, three months later it's in Rockville), all Rubberslugers meet up, chat it up, take pictures, look at cels, hang out, decide to go over to someone's house and watch anime, everyone's up until 6am. Foechadan reports back to Rubberslug official and tells us how it went, etc.
Even with these ideas said before, all ideas mentioned here, and all ideas still left unsaid, you're still going to have the backbiting, snarkiness, drama. It's just you might be able to regulate it a bit more - if that is even a possibility. :)
Don't let it get you down, though - Rubbersulg is an amazing achievement. Those of us with our OWN URL, have a Rubberslug gallery - so that should tell you something right there. ^___^
Kudos! :D
I would love to see some organized regional cel collector outings! :) To be honest, my primary reason for attending most cons is to see my cel collecting friends. I would certainly save quite a bit of time and money, and would probably enjoy a gathering not directly tied into a con much more than any of the regional anime conventions in their current state.
As far as snarkiness, I'm not sure how much can really be improved. The rubberslug community seems to be in so much better shape than any of the other cel collecting forums I've been to in quite a while, that I'm not really worried about it. As others have said, you are always going to have some level.
BTW, I always seem to be late on these things, but Happy Birthday Rubberslug! ^_^
