While the temptation to force EvilRocketeer to change his name to "Junkyard" is great... I think we will just circumvent that by stating the following.
We have sat down and really gone over the Marketplace/Junkyard issue and dug deep on our reasoning as well as what we are trying to achieve with the current changes and the long term direction we are trying to move the RPF.
So, once again I want to explain our reasoning and what we were after.
First, as you all know, we have been striving to take the RPF in a more "professional" direction. Professional seems to often have negative connotations attached to it because people tend to look at that as selling out or "going corporate" or something like that. That is not what we are trying to achieve. What we are instead trying to achieve is a site that doesn't look like some fly-by-night operation that is barely being held together with duct-tape and baling twine. When a potential member comes to the site, we want it to be something to which they immediately feel connected and would want to join.
Part of that process is making the site's visual elements more appropriately match its content. With that in mind, there was no question that the Star Wars theme was destined for retirement. As I pointed out previously, the Junkyard was originally "Watto's Junkyard" and has always been tied to the Star Wars origins of this site... at least in my mind. So... that meant with retiring the Star Wars theme also meant retiring any other Star Wars references, including the Junkyard.
Beyond that, we don't really feel that the Junkyard is a very good name because it implies what is being offered there is "junk." Yes, I have heard the arguments to the contrary (and no, we would have NEVER named it flea market for similar reasons), but it just seems to give a bit of a negative connotation to what is being offered.
I think I have already hammered home why we chose "marketplace" as the replacement. No need to beat that horse again.
Whether you agree with our reasoning or the conclusions we came to in making this decision, at least you now hopefully understand WHY this change was made.
After reading through all the comments and opinions that have been posted, we have looked at this situation again and really taken what a number of you have said to heart.
The main questions we looked at were;
1. Regardless of its origins, does the name "the Junkyard" make the site appear to be Star Wars centric?
2. Does the name "the Junkyard" imply a lesser quality to what is being offered?
3. What are the implications of leaving the forum as "The Marketplace" and are we willing to accept the bad along with the good?
As with almost everything that we do, there are our personal opinions on a matter, and then there are our "staff" opinions. Sometimes it is hard to seperate the two but the only thing that really matter are our "staff" opinions because those are focused purely on the well being of the site.
Here are the answers we came up with:
1. Clearly most of the membership (even long time members), regardless of whether they like the name or not, aren't even aware that this is a Star Wars reference. Maybe it is only so obvious to us because we know it, but that has little to do with the overall perception. One of our goals was to eliminate elements that made the RPF appear to be a Star Wars centric site. However, the Junkyard has become something of its own thing and doesn't lend to the Star Wars theme as much as we feel it does.
2. We have come to see that the name "the Junkyard" has come to have somewhat of an endearing quality to it in the eyes of the members, despite the negative connotations intrinsic to the name... somewhat like you often call your friends rude names but don't mean it negatively. Most are not viewing it with the implications that it contains junk.
3. There is no question that we, as the staff, have the ability to unilaterally do whatever we want, and when we truly feel what we are doing is best for the site, we will do it, even against a tsunami of disagreement. However, it is never our goal to purposefully create barriers between ourselves and the membership or damage the connection our members feel to the site. Even though it is beyond my personal ability to understand, our members have formed a very strong bond with the name "Junkyard" and while most of them would probably get over it if we left it as the Marketplace, at this point, the gain of doing so (given the answers to question #1 and #2) is not worth the loss.
What does that mean?
We will be reverting the name later tonight.
With that being said, I want to be very very clear on a couple of things because I do NOT want the wrong impression to be taken from this. We are not and will not be forced to make changes or rescind changes based on numbers of complaints/criticism. We aren't elected officials so getting a 51% approval on any subject is not our focus. However, many of you posted very reasonable and well thought out arguments that made us look at this situation in a different light. You will never win an argument through baiting, trolling, shouting, or browbeating us, but you can often get your point across through appealing to us from a logical standpoint, which is what happened here.
Surely someone is going to say "why didn't you ask us to start with and let us vote on it?" Again, we don't operate that way. We haven't from the beginning and we aren't going to start now. We do talk to numerous people privately any time we make changes like this and try to get a number of viewpoints. However, if we voted on every single topic or took ideas on every single concern, we would have as many opinions as there are members... and would end up bogged down in politics and bs instead of simply getting things done. If we had asked for ideas on changing the Junkyard name, we would have gotten 1,000 suggestions and then 10,000 debates on what was the better name. We just aren't going down that road. You may or may not agree with that approach to things, but that is how we will continue to do it.
Anyway, there it is. Junkyard will be back by morning at the latest. :thumbsup
lol:lol
