After a talk with the mod team and reading trough the comments here and elsewhere it became clear that if this site is going to have a future it can’t be with me on it. Under any capacity. I started this site to streamline the process of uploading romhacks, I think, by listening to the feedback from the few people that actually tried it, that I did a good job.
However, it’s worthless if people don’t want to use it.
And the main reason is me, given the choice to either keep developing a site that most won’t touch or leave, I choose to leave. Thus removing the main issue. I think leaving is the best solution for the site.
WordPress Criticism:
I also want to address some concerns I read online about the site not been worth it because it’s just a WordPress site. Let me tell you for what is worth, that WordPress powers 43% of the internet, there are huge websites running WordPress like https://techcrunch.com/ or https://www.nytimes.com/
WordPress is also an excellent content management system, ideal for a site like this, it can (and we are) categorizing everything in the most efficient way with custom post types, taxonomies and fields, which can be used to filter and sort the hacks by.
If ran properly, it can handle hundreds of thousands of entries, much more than what RHDN collected in 20 years! and still load incredibly quick.
Just because there are bad WordPress sites doesn’t mean you can’t make a good one.
The future:
BenjaminCM who has been developing a hacks review system for the site will become the sole admin of the site. In this transition period I will give him access to the server to make a backup of the files and database so he can host it on his own server, then we’ll flip the IP at DNS level. I’ll transfer the domain name to his registrar. I’ll hand over social media accounts and the Discord server and quit it. Finally when he has full control over everything and everything is working as it is now, I can be removed from the site for good.
It’s a transition period that will take some days to get done. Under his control the site gains a great guy as admin, much more knowledgeable and capable than I am.
I’m fine with this, I set to do something and I did it, there’s no point on keep pushing to be part of a scene I don’t belong to.
Thanks for your time.
As people interested in romhacks and old games, we are all with our eyes turned a bit towards the past, to our childhood and a time we wish we’d preserve or repeat. By necessity, this makes us a bit peculiar. It’s good to feed the child in us, and adult gaming is certainly a common thing, but for some people this obsession with restoring the past turns into strange, peculiar and very stubborn opinions about how romhacks should be treated. There is no way of pleasing these people. You probably need to have a very thick skin to be able to ignore all this sh*t, and continue doing what you want to do, without being affected.
You know I love your project. I have nothing but good things to say about you! Where ever you go I wish you the best luck and a community that appreciates your effort and talent and can give you the joy you need to keep going and have a good time. I am sure most of us will miss you here one your side.. so many thanks.. And goodbye, I guess?..
I only hope that this has the effect you want it to. If this isn’t going to work, it would be incredibly sad to see someone step away from something they were clearly at least at one point incredibly passionate about.
I really hope to see this place step up and become a hub for those fractured by the closing of RHDN. I hope the burden placed by such a sudden influx of traffic isn’t too much for the new Admin. Best of luck to the team here, I just want to see romhacks continue to flourish.
It definitely won’t have said effect, the same characters that ruined RHDN and that are driving him away from the site *he made will lead RHDO to the same place RHDN was.
Happens *every single time.
Makes no sense whatsoever anyway, the community was already fractured and people started coming here to find something different, not more of the same.
I’m completely against that.
If you worked hard to create something and now have it, you shouldn’t let go because of annoying people who think they are the voice of reason.
Most of these people probably don’t contribute anything and you can be sure that they have already used a lot of your services.
This is fucking hypocrisy.
I would like to make a suggestion:
In troubled moments, we enter a level of stress, anger, impulses and other confusing feelings that prevent us from thinking straight. Take some time to rest, disconnect for a while, reflect on the contributions you made, how much you made life easier for so many people who didn’t have the resources to do everything you did and have it ready for them.
Most are on your side and love your work in the scene.
So if you can rest, reflect better and think about your return, come back with everything, ignore the rest.
I completely agree, you shouldn’t have to step down as admin of this site just because of the complaints of certain individuals with nothing better to do in their spare time, but to complain and find fault with everything around them. You’re doing a great job so far with running both CDR and RHDO and a lot of people respect you for it.
Do try and take some time to carefully consider if this decision is truly what you wish to do. In all honesty, I think that you should remain as the admin of both sites and allow this one the time it needs to slowly grow and increase in popularity as well. Otherwise, RHDO might end up in the same exact situation as RHDN and its numerous problems with both the staff and toxic users that only complain and contribute nothing at all in return.
In the end though, it’s your decision and I will respect it either way.
Just to speak my mind: you’re fucking great, Spike. And will surely be missed. Many know the petty and hypocritical reasons why some people don’t want you around. It’s sad to see you bend, but I understand your reasons: being constantly stressed out is annoying and takes the joy out of hobbies.
For those of the staff who stay: be warned, it’s not wise to grow up at any cost. Keep bending, and RHDO won’t be any bit better than RHDN. Growth takes time, and you were doing a fine job until then. If this community became a place where people like Spike isn’t welcome, then it’s already infected and lost its purpose. Just rename it RHDN 2.0. It should have been a newer community, with the good traits of RHDN and none of a minority (though vocal) of annoying users from there. I don’t even understand why you actually give those destructive people a voice. They barely care about the hobby.
It’s both wild and sad to see the same overactive subset of the community basically pester two romhacking site owners into going “Fuck this” and stepping down in the same week.
That’s precisely why they should be completely ignored and not welcome here. What do those people even do besides destroying things?
Fuck that.
Just do a news post or forum post where people that are upset about their stuff being prepatched can go to list what they like removed from cdr. Make a point to let them all know explicitly that nothing from here ends up over there without permission in the first place, or going forward.
Lastly just let them all know it’ll take a bit of time to get sorted out since you weren’t expecting to randomly become basically the only general hacking site out of left field. 99.99% of people would end up cooling down and likely respect your openness in like two weeks tops.
And at that point, the other .01% that want to just start drama regardless of what you do can go straight back to the RHDN boards that they just slowly burnt to the ground for the past eight years. They won’t be hard to spot; they all sound like the rich couple from Gilligan’s Island with the way they word their posts.
Either way digging the site (well, outside of the imitation reddit upvote/downvote thing, seems borderline pointless on a romhacking site but that’s just my personal opinion). Wish you the best man.
Yeah, I was thinking of some kind of simple permission option where people can choose not to have their stuff distributed without agreement.
I hope that Spike chooses to stick around, in any case. I can see the pressure involved, but we all appreciate the great work he put into building an alternative ROM hacking site. Luckily, BenjaminCM was a good addition to the team and would do his best to keep things going.
Best wishes, Spike. Mull it over before making any final decisions.
Sucks that your involvement has to end this way but if this is how you feel I understand. What you have done for us cant be taken away. There are a lot of us out there that would consider you a part of the group so don’t forget that. Wish you all the best in whatever you choose to do afterwards.
There are people who use this site just because of you, Spike. Not the best move to leave but it’s your decision in the end.
I don’t think you leaving is going to put RHDO in a better situation. Other things can be done with you still staying here. If I were you I would think about this before you start transferring the site over to someone else. You’re more than welcome to directly message me if you want to.
Spike, without you we would have nothing at this point.
Thank you so much for this home, and you’ll always be in our hearts for what you did for us.