Why people stayed with RS is a head scratcher, they were helped by the April 23rd surge of 2002 but I would think the lack of community would have driven people away
A community aspect is definitely nice. I do like dropping by here where there's only a handful of active posters and everyone knows everyone else. It's definitely the model for what a community SHOULD be in a perfect world. But it's also probably only a tenth of the size of RS or the bigger sites, and that's why it doesn't have the problems they have.
If someone shows up here and being a jackass....there are like 8 active mods to that one guy who will pounce on him and squelch the problem before it becomes one. If RS had the same level of moderation, they'd be in the same boat. But the moderators aren't as plentiful, and the decisions about who to ban and who to let continue to wreak havoc are not always their own.
For me, it's the collecting aspect of Rebelscum and the traffic it gets that helps to make it the best collecting site on the web. Find me another site where I can get more responses to a classifed ad, get more local collectors from my area doing store reports and find more answers to my questions faster and I'll gladly go there instead. The local collectors in my area all hang out there or at GH....and that's how I get in touch with them. And none of them are affected by the Wuher's drama or any site policies. Most of them ONLY post to let others know what's at the local Target.
GH is kind of close as far as that whole thing goes, but it's the only one that's even a contender as far as Star Wars collecting is concerned. I find it to be a mirror of RS, so I just stick with RS.
Why go there for chat? Eh....no reason. The chat stuff is just an offshoot of me being there all the time. I'll see (and reply to) a topic in Wuher's because I'm over there checking out my local "Look what I found" thread.
Sure, there are a lot of kids there....and a lot of bickering back and forth, but that's because it's one of the first places people check for Star Wars stuff. TFN refers people there.....and as a Star Wars newbie, that's where you head.
Scum isn't in a "Downward spiral" as this thread title might imply. It's just business as usual in a non-movie year. They could use more moderators. They should empower those moderators to take care of the people that drag the site down, but ultimately, there's still not another collecting site on the web that can touch it as far as what it offers, so that's why I keep going back.