I'm posting this here because I think its a great post that may be edited/deleted.
By tykrazen in the Dustin for Fan Club Prez! thread:
Philip,
I think your statement really brings into clarity why some members of the collecting community are feeling alientated from Rebelscum. You view running Rebelscum as a business whereas many of the sites who are distancing themselves are run as FAN sites with no desire to behave like a business.
The evidence of the underlying philosophy of Rebelscum as a business is overwhelming. The fact that news articles are laced with advertisement links is a clear indicator. Your analogy of Rebelscum to a for profit network also demonstrates that concept. The short lived practice of 3rd party e-mails is another testament.
There is nothing wrong with that... provided you recognize that run as a business, the community at Rebelscum are CUSTOMERS. To make a statement such as you did on the front page today clearly crossed that line. Does NBC tell viewers they are dissapointed no one tuned into Joey? They would recognize instantly that is bad business.
Philip, I know you are a very sharp business man -- you would not have accomplished all that you have if you were not. Part of the reason Dustin for President is not going as you have hoped is because Hyperspace is a bad product. And by pushing the sale of an inferior product, you are cheapening what brand respect there is for Rebelscum. Your comments today seem to be doing the same.
I personally think Dustin is a great guy and I admire his gusto with this. I wish that the fan club would have done something less commercial and more altruistic -- for example offering the presidency to the person who brought in the most contributions for a particular charity. Had they done that I would be supporting Dustin in an instant. But the fan club is using this to compensate for the lack of renewals since C3. It is a blatantly commercial move that the Star Wars community, as a whole, is not embracing.
Dustin, I wish you all the luck in the world on this, but I'm not buying.... I've been unimpressed with the fan club and their business practices and made a decision not to renew. I won't waste my money on a bad product like Hyperspace.