Thought you guys would be interested.
http://www.mercurycougar.net/forums/showthread.php?59960-Hey-Everyone-my-apologies
Glad you posted it, I never made it down that far on the page so would never have seen it. 
i just read it… hopefully they turn it around.
Bob, thanks for posting that. My reaction to Helena…Really? She just noticed no communication. I did not have a special forum to ask questions behind the scenes. I asked her on the main discussion board about ROTM and you answered my post but she did not. Glad she got the problem with the board straight and apologized. It’s just a little over a year late. Oh well. Thanks for being a voice Bob, Helena’s is falling on deaf ears.
Steven
If it took that long to figure out you can pretty much understand how much they care.
There has got to be some way of buying MCN back before they bury it
Steven, you are right. Sadly, it is even worse than that. She would have continued to not notice if it were not for the mod forum issue coming up with the recent problem. It speaks to what level of importance/priority the board has to her/Vertical Scope that these things were so far out of her consciousness/awareness. Even after the mod forum access was restored, four days passed before she did anything about what I was discussing/pointing out. Not a good sign.
Guess the solution is what it has always been, ownership of the board needs to be by someone who cares about what we care about, the Mercury Cougar. I doubt anything but that is going to have an effect or be effective. I don’t know but I have some small inkling that Helena has many other boards she is responsible for overseeing. How many I can only guess. Judging by the attention that MCnet gets it is either many other boards or she does not give MCnet a proportionate amount of her time. Which is the case doesn’t really matter, the result is the same.
Here’s another thought: I am sure some effort/time/thought was put into whatever they used to market the site to prospective advertisers/sponsors, shouldn’t the site be worthy of looking at/understanding what makes it tick, what works, what doesn’t, etc.? At some point doesn’t the intrinsic value of what they are selling go away if the proprietors have no clue about what made it valuable to begin with?
This is what I posted over there:
Now all that’s left to do is:
- the site to start living up to it’s former reputation
- the “super moderator” to apologize for alienating a very large contingent of the former faithful through his aggressive & self-serving over moderation, and promise to never do it again.
In other words, Bob, try to be more like Royce (who we love).
Then perhaps the healing can begin…
Geez, you Jersey guys don’t hold anything back… LOL! How’s things under the bus there Bob?
I have said it before, the people that own MC.Net should not be sticking Bob with the job of playground monitor. Bob has made huge contributions to that site and that should be enough. They pretty well bitch slapped him when he asked for assistance when their site crashed for better than 48 hours. I think the apology is pretty amazing. They didn’t notice in over a year that no one was responding? Really?
Bob, the intrinsic value of the site is not the membership base, it is the lurkers and the passers through. This is not immediately obvious, but follow the money. They make money by displaying ads. IF you are a registered member, you don’t see most of the ads. Let that sink in. Registered members are seen as content generators, not revenue generators. What they do is like hanging a virtual billboard around your neck every-time you post a thread. IF they cared about happy members, they would not hand off the moderator duties. What is important to them is keeping a steady flow of new eyes on the site, and that comes from optimizing search. Have you noticed the increase in the number of people posting stuff about not so classic Cougars?
^bingo.
Also, not everyone loves Royce and not everyone blames Bob for doing it wrong.
Indeed. 
Too little to late. I’m happy hanging out here.
^^^^What he said.
Ditto
Yup, CCC is the place to be. 
I meant intrinsic value as in what makes the forum worth anything, the membership, what they know, what they post, etc. I get the money thing but without a membership that enjoys the forum and contributes there is nothing to sell. This was my point.
Unfortunately for the hobby, all that content (the discussion, the sharing of vast knowledge) already happened there and is now in the hands of Them. They don’t even need the active participation of gurus anymore, they already have enough content-- and positioning for Google searches to find it-- to draw the click-through crowd to the site. I say unfortunately because it would be better for the hobby if that vast resource was in the hands of people who care about it, like here for example.
I haven’t been to mcn at all in the past weeks, or months now, except when someone posts something here linking over there, so I can’t really say what it feels like for a noob to show up there today. I do know however what it was like to show up there a little over a half year ago, and it wasn’t bad.
Things like the “coming soon (never)” ride of the month or the increasing ads wouldn’t really make too much difference for me. All I’m really after, as anyone who hasn’t missed my 50,000 posts here knows, is a place to come with my noob’d-out questions and get helpful guidance on how to best care for my cat. Probably I could still get that there just fine. But like I said, 50,000 posts here and haven’t been there in weeks or months. The vibe here is just… right.
So my question is why does it have to be MC.Net or CCC? Why can’t both be used and both prosper? How many sites are
dedicated to Mustangs, Camaros or Chevelles? Why can’t a car like the Mercury Cougar have 2? Or even more? I visit both
sites and will continue to do so. One is not better than the other. Just different. Making money isn’t a bad thing. Do we
work to make money? Yes. I have no problem with them making money as long as the Mercury Cougar is the subject. Of
course within reason. The more resources on Mercury Cougars the better off we ALL will be. Now I would suggest all the people
with their noses bent out of shape Don’t take it personal. We all are in a very small group(Cougars) and it would be in our best
interest to stick together and make and use both site to their fullest… If I pissed anyone off…Well I guess be pissed.
I’m here for the Cougar information and to get and with my little knowledge give whatever help I can. I can say that I
have gotten loads of great information on the MC.net site. I’m sure I will get some great info from here in the weeks/
years to come.
GO MC.net and CCC!!!
Live long.
Larney
Like a dog with a bone I guess Bill.
I can see what you’re saying, and it does seem like a really crappy, thankless job. Hopefully they paid him 6 figures to deal with it (but I suspect that is not the case). Much easier to shoot arrows from the sidelines than catch them, I’m sure. Perhaps all that must be factored in…who knows?