And here I thought that the color scheme had finally been changed.
I feel that this COCU action had such an impact on me because of 3 primary reasons:
1) COCU had been here for so long it felt and depicted the early BEA in some ways. Something like a nostalgic time capsule that was representative of the community as it was back in the late 90's. Not like it was comprehensive or especially unique but there was a large amount of material, especially being on the "free" side of things - like everything was back then I might add. Sort of like an old vintage car that has sat out on a dealer's lot for years, that you see all the time as you drive by, which suddenly one day is yanked back into a closed up garage... You miss it and hope that they don't mess it up or sell it for scrap. Not like you needed, wanted, or even liked everything about it but it had just been a part of the fabric of the place and to suddenly see it uprooted is a shock.
2) The whole "We need to evaluate old content to see if it complies with our continuously updated set of rules" just feels off for some reason. I totally understand that in order to maintain the current BEA presence as unencumbered as possible it is necessary to take on a much more stringent review of the actions and content that is here. However, it feels just slightly to me that the "attitude" that the older content is somehow at fault for the fact that it is the "environment" (the rules) that are changing when the content is as static as COCU was comes off as being a bit backward. Please blame the modified rules that are **77** the review of the content and the removal (sequestering) of the content and not the content in the explanation as to why it is being done. Yes, I do expect the blame the rules for they are what has changed.
3) My final critique comes from and parallels
Palomine's comment about manpower. Yes, there is not much of it to go around here at the BEA and yet for a site such as this the place functions surprisingly well. Numerous times over the years totally random people have commented on how special this place is. Part of it is the age of the site, part of it is the subject matter or the large percentage of long time participants helping to temper and direct the upstart nubie. But with apparently such a small workforce able to upkeep the place and the long list of other "things to fix" the fact that time was taken to go out and pull for review one of the larger collections of stories again just feels off. Why not try and get the
BEA chat updated so it consistently works? or improve the
vetting of new content, participants or
encouragement of appropriate or compliant submissions. Will messing around in the BEA's attic really get the lawn mowed, the house painted or the rusty mailbox fixed?
One suggestion - I would ask that for posterity sake that some comment, tag or other indicator be left in the remnants of the COCU content saying that "
This content has been reviewed and edited to contain only subject matter compliant with the current BEA website submitting criteria as of (insert date). Some material from (original submit date) may have been removed."
Not only will this be a memorial to the necessary censoring (long live the lost content) but also as an alert to the newer User that content should comply if there is any hope of it staying on the BEA, even if it is nearly 15 years later that the removal occurs.
Keep up the good work.
Trying not to sound sarcastic, really - good work Mods.