Robb_K wrote:Sorry. You are quite right that my wording was uncalled for. I will make a retraction of my statement, and mention that our forum here is a good one, that people should check out. And I'll provide a link to McDrake's International Forum. I don't want to give the impression that i want this forum to die. On the contrary. I'd prefer THIS ONE to be the most successful, with the most activity, as it would be more convenient for me, as I'm here anyway on the Dutch Forum. It was only very depressing that we never got many non-Dutch members, and activity went down to almost nothing.
I will try my best to get other people here.
My apologies for being so hard and harsh to you about this. You are one of the most important members here on McDrake, both national and international. You have been a intermediar for both Dutch and international people. Seeing you go to DCF does turn McDrake into a failure.
For me a strong point of McDrake are the categories where people can show their own creativity. ("Fanfiction") My plan was to ask Outducks for data storage room, so that McDrake could preserve pictures. But now, with "DCF", I guess McDrake won't have a chance for that anymore.
What really hurts me is that McDuck/McDrake isn't even mentioned as a national Dutch forum on COA. This way I've experienced how other webboard maintainers might feel. On McDuck and Mcdrake I've always supported and recommended links to COA/Inducks. And now it turns out that "DCF" on COA/Inducks has become a competitor to other people's webboards, unless they are lucky to be mentioned under the selected "accepted" few.
As Cacou himself notes, "DFC" is NOT an Inducks project. In fact, the "COA" search machine isn't even Inducks. What has happened is that Cacou is slowly but rapidly becoming some independent Inducks celebrity, while his COA search machine website only exists in lack of other Inducks search machines. The Inducks search machine started at DCML, and possibly it still exists there in an old copy.
I've been very hard and impossible about the Inducks group, but I've always shown respect to other people efforts. Inducks is an institute for me. Overall I've promoted Inducks a lot. McDrake has links to both DCML and COA/Inducks. McDrake supports DCML and COA/Inducks. And so, with COA presenting young "brother" DCF, good old McDrake is supporting it's own death.
Despite my many complaints through the years I've always had a warm heart for DCML and Inducks. I'm really shocked about what's happening to Inducks. It's not a neutral project for everyone anymore.
I look at COA/Inducks as being a personality show of an individual and his many moderating friends. I can also have a busy forum if I would give away moderation options as if they are stocks, and if I would recommended my visitors to advertise for me.
I'm curious how DCF will grow. How it will re-invent wheels, for example. Will DCF now also take over the "Fanfiction" idea of people showing their own creativity? I wonder how DCF will grow without it being a plagiarism of McDrake, as McDrake already offers categories that DCF still is lacking. For example, DCF is now considering an off-topic section. McDrake already has one.
What McDrake boards deliberately don't have is a feature that derives information from IP addresses, like the flags that are shown on DCF. Reason is that McDrake has promised not to use privacy information from IP addresses. Otherwise i would mean that people could "follow" the course of traveling members, in which country they are. I think location is private information that no one needs to know. People can paste flags into their avatar if they wish their individual location to be public.
My big mistake here as McDuck/McDrake maintainer is that I never really promoted McDrake. I didn't want to promote, because I thought that McDrake shouldn't take away people from other people's boards and from DCML. I intended McDrake as an extra option for people to discover by themselves. Without luring away people from other boards.
I have brainstormed about asking COA to link to McDuck/McDrake, but I thought that would have needed a discussion first. I've been much too reluctant, it seems. And I just didn't expect that COA would offer a webboard service of its own. There are too many software-problems with COA to expect a new service that other people already are offering.
I've understood that at least Cacou of DCF deliberately ignores the existance of McDrake, even though he has been told about McDrake's existance. That was a stab in the back for me. Apologies over and over again for my temper, but I could never be so dominant as DCF is acting now. McDrake has always been open to other people's projects, including projects like COA/Inducks.
It seems to me that DCF's mutinity is the death of Inducks. DCF shows that Inducks is divided, like loose sand, and that individuals can (mis)use it for any project. The only ways to solve the problem are (1) trying to talk with Cacou on his own board, surrounded by his many moderators, or (2) to raise a new, neutral Inducks search machine that maintainers can safely link to without unwanted advertising for someone's personal webboard hobby. DCF acts like a competitor now. It even competes with Inducks itself.
It's very sour that McDuck/McDrake sees itself suddenly advertising Cacou's DCF, simply by providing links to Inducks on Cacou's COA. This way Cacou is misusing the power of Inducks for his own personal benefit, for everyone to see. This can't really be the purpose of Inducks.
Even if McDrake would become a dead failure that deserves to be overlooked anyhow, the presentation of DCF still is bad news for any neutral person linking to COA/Inducks.