by the fans for the fans

I am posting this here and on the Robotech Facebook page because I do not believe that my comments will be allowed on the "new" Robotech website. I orignally posted my comments in response to "Rest in Peace, Old Robotech.com" that Steve recently wrote. Please feel free to discuss and share with me your thoughts.

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Steve,

What a lazy and most convenient way for you and Harmony Gold's leadership to use the alleged hacking to get rid of the old Robotech.com. You are well aware that the the Community section has been a place where Robotech fans could congregate and discuss Robotech and related topics on this site for 15 years. The treatment that you Steve, and the rest of Harmony Gold have treated the fans is a disgrace. You have no respect for the fans and users of Robotech.com and in my opinion, each of you at Harmony Gold should lower heads in extreme shame for the treatment of fans.

Steve you have done nothing but mismanage Robotech.com ever since you turned The Warzone into the Versus vs. Versus zone and eliminated all political debate from that section. You are the cause of Robotech.com's demise and your lack of vision and your incompetence has resulted in an unacceptable outcome regarding the future of Robotech.com.

Here's how Harmony Gold should have handled the alleged "hacking" scandal. Instead of rushing to separate the Robotech.com store(as though it's really a money making machine for HG), All HG had to do is hire a reputable web designer to simply redesign Robotech.com with both the same website as the original, as well as provide site enhancements. This has resulted in a missed marketing opportunity and has alienated your long time users.

My gut feeling tells me that their was no hacking of Robotech.com and this was used as a cover story in order to gut the website since Harmony Gold is suffering from an anemic cash flow. I can't prove it, but I'd place bets that the lincome statements for the last several quarters has shown consistently decreasing revenue. Therefore the decision was made recently to stop unprofitable activity(i.e Robotech.com) so the website was killed and the store separated into it's own site.

Harmony Gold really needs to get it's act together and decide if they are going to be a media production company or a in the business of simply selling Robotech related merchandise to fans. The latter is what is the case now, and part of the reason for ongoing fan disappointment(notice the lack of new Robotech material yet the excess of memorabilia).

The best thing for Robotech at this point is for Robotech to be purchased by a real media company such as Disney, Sony, etc. Until then, I do not hold out any hope in Harmony Gold's management of Robotech as a property or in their small minded attempt to have a Robotech website.

Ok this is quickly going to turn into a HG bashing thread. Everyone has been warned. So let's keep it civil.

What seems most likely is that the website was indeed running on old software that would have been out of the scope to update. I'm sure the enormous database was causing tons of lag on the server. Its amazing the website ran for as long as it did without crashing more often.

Hopefully the lesson was learned and the "new" site is running on scaleable software. Always gotta think about the future. We went through a few hiccups ourselves here. What's really a shame is that this website has been operational since 2007 for YOU the fans and just NOW we're getting members.

SIGHUP,

First let me just say that I think that RobotechX is a fantastic site. I really like the layout and like you I hope that more members join. This site deserves to have a large and thriving Robotech Community and I sincerely want this site to succeed because it deserves to do so.

With that being said, I appreciate your opinion regarding the scenario that you believe was the related to the issue of what happened to Robotech.com's original website. However from a business and marketing standpoint, I think that the leadership of Harmony Gold should be criticized here because of how the entire situation was handled. As such I would like to point out that this is not a Harmony Gold bashing thread but I intended this thread to be an outlet for those like me who disagree with the direction that Steve has taken with respect to Robotech.com as well as the overall neglect of both the site and its users. I respectfully ask that users who do agree with me respond in a civil and adult manner so that this discussion may continue on this thread.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I believe that the alleged hacking scandal was a manufactured issue in order to bring down the original Robotech.com for financial reasons. Harmony Gold has no growth and as such it must rely on revenue generated from its flagship product, Robotech. Be that as it may, I cannot prove this so I point out that this is my own personal opinion based on both my own business experience and personal dealings with Harmony Gold. I agree with you that they had website problems, what I don't agree with is how this situation was handled.

I don't doubt that running a website takes work and is filled with various challenges. That is clearly a given. Yet the draconian removal of The Community Section, along with fan fiction, points, polls, etc continues a trend of Steve's sloppy and blatant mismanagement of Robotech.com. I question his ability to properly run a site based on how Robotech.com has declined over the last 15 years.

Whereas the first two years the site was thriving, under Steve's bombastic leadership the site gradually became a shell of what it was intended to be, and the bulk of the activity became an outlet for versus vs. versus threads in The Warzone and random chit chat in The Lounge. Yet old time users still used The Community Section as a place to socialize with one another even though Steve was more focused on moderating the forums instead of maintaining and enhancing Robotech.com. I realize that challenges exist for any web content because of major social media outlets such as Facebook, but that is not an excuse to become complacent and mismanage a website. Harmony Gold needs to be held accountable for this and as such this is why I believe users have a right to not only be disappointed, but angry with how this debacle was handled.

Interestingly enough, shortly after I posted my open letter to Steve, it was removed from the comments thread. However, I will continue to make this an issue until this is properly addressed. Users of Robotech.com deserve acceptable resolution to this matter, even if Steve just wants to pretend their isn't an issue at all.

never the less i think steve did a good job, he's right the site is pretty old and was often attacked by the drreaded lag monster lol! but he did a great job in advising everyone i cant wait for the new site to start up.

Fire Bomber, we're all entitled of course to our own opinion of course but I think you are the first person who has stated they felt Steve has done a great job with Robotech.com. Other than being the police for the forums, I can't think of anything that I can credit Steve Yun with doing that has been creative, innovative, or simply a good idea. Under his leadership, Robotech.com became a stagnant site and by the time the social media age started, HG's Steve Yun did nothing but create a Robotech.com Facebook.

Please feel free to point out anything that I am missing regarding Steve's success with Robotech.com. And you're right lag monster lasted for quite a while, the site was showing it's age, but it still had a community of members that had been part of that community since day one.

As one of the original members, I remember signing up in either late '99 or early '00 to become a member of the new Robotech.com thinking that finally a place for Robotech fans and for HG to have a not only a site where news and information about Robotech could exist, but also thought it was cool that there was a place to have various Robotech related discussions.

So at the risk of repeating myself, I will say it again but this time in a more blunt manner. Steve Yun has failed you, Steve Yun failed me, and Steve Yun has failed every member of the Robotech.com community by effectively gutting that community after about 15 years in existence. That's just plain wrong however you look at it.

I will give Steve this much. He is consistent with respect to stiffing any descent. Post any critizism of what he has done to the old Robotech.com and it gets deleted. It doesn't matter if the post is done tastefully and has no expletives, he deletes any and all criticism of his action.

In any case, glad to know that at least one person thinks Steve did a great job. If this is the best that Harmony Gold can give us to run Robotech.com than truly we can all hope for better days ahead with the new website!

I will definitely miss the old site. We had a lot of great threads, and a few heated debates that were truly classic.

Regarding Steve's handling of the RT site, its a situation where "failure" truly is an orphan. A lot can be said of Steve's tenure, and yes, there are a lot of legitimate reasons why many people didn't approve of his " I am the Law" tactics, but he had a lot of people (working in the background) that helped make the site uninspired and stale. To be sure, Steve sat in the captains chair, so he gets the lions share of the blame, but HG made a lot of bad decisions that certainly didn't make his job any easier.

IMO, HG really doesn't care about the fandom, otherwise, the old site would have gotten a major overhaul and the community would still have a place to congregate. Its a shame, because despite all its flaw, the old site was the place many protoculture addicts came to be with like minded people. I sincerely hope that many of us can reconnect here .... for my part, I really miss the old gang.

heyo its me deepspace55 from the ol rt.com.
i was fire bomber,but my computer upgraded to windows 10 and i lost everything.

ds55 wrote: heyo its me deepspace55 from the ol rt.com.
i was fire bomber,but my computer upgraded to windows 10 and i lost everything.

DANG!
SORRY TO HEAR THAT.

I am sorry about your info being lost. Window's 10 looks good, but I will sit on the fence until all the bugs have been worked out. Anyway .... its good to see an old familiar face from RT.com. I really hope more of the old gang shows up here. Protoculture addicts have to stick together.

yup sure do
anyway im glad this is here, windows 10 is free for me iit was an aotumatic upgrade.
i like the features on it. no bugs yet.