Ok, gonna tell you my story. I found this website because of Hate to Fly's famous King Kong post. Until that time, I never realized there were forums out there with "insiders" like this. I had always gotten my knowledge from Screamscape (which is a cuss word on this site). And the only theme park community forum I knew was the DIS, which in my opinion is full of super nice people who genuinely try to help each other with theme park questions and they tend to be a very patient bunch with things like repeat questions. We could learn a lot from them. I was also part of one other community, and that is merqurycity.com, which is a video game community for fans of the snowboarding game, SSX. And if you've ever been to that site, its a place where you actually feel like "family" and everyone treats each other equally and with great respect. So obviously when I joined this site, I just expected it would be the same.
So I joined...and my first post was something that I had in my head for a really long time (years) and now I could finally tell people about it. So I created a thread basically saying wouldn't it be cool if one day someone decided to build a VIDEO GAME theme park? Well...I got trashed. I mean I literally got destroyed. And dude..it broke my heart. I was thinking to myself, wow this place is full of some really arrogant, cold-hearted people. It was a dose of reality for me. I went away telling myself I'm never coming back to this evil place again. But then I was like...man, I want to find out more about King Kong though. So I came back. And for a long time, I would just read only and never post. I finally got the nerve to post again. And now I've been here a while and I am not a noob anymore. And I see how they like things done here. I learned that this forum is for a certain sub-set of people. This is not a forum that is really friendly to questions like "where is guest services located" and things like that.
And every time I see some NEW person post here I cringe because I know the zing is coming from the veterans. And I want to just reach out to this person by private message and save them from being hurt. I want to tell them, hey you should ask that question over in DIS. In general, this forum only gives respect to those that have "inside" knowledge. And you can't be a new person with inside knowledge because you'll automatically be shot down because you don't have a high post count. And instead of giving the person a chance, they are made to feel like they are a liar because they said something that Teebin or Jungle Skip didn't say (just throwing those 2 names out there as examples...not trying to call them out).
That is my ONE BIG GRIPE about this site, is that there are about 3 or 4 really cocky arrogant posters who want people to hang off their every word, or who make sarcastic comments putting others down, or both. And there are those who get upset when someone says something that they don't agree with. And they resort to name calling and then it goes to a back and forth until it devolves into seeing which one has the biggest measurements. And to me, some of the biggest offenders are the ones who have the most knowledge and have been here the longest. So it seems like they get a bigger leash than someone who hasn't been around as long. And that's understandable, and in a way I have no problem with that. Because without the insiders, then this forum wouldn't be nearly as active. But still, it does not mean that they should be able to get away with everything in the book just because they have power.
I really enjoy the recent trend of people saying "welcome to the forums" when a new poster arrives. That is something that was never done when I joined. And over the time I've been here I've seen some really nice people get run off because they were accused of being a false insider for stealing other people's inside information, or basically because they had the gall to bring up DC land or dare I say it...they actually say something nice about Disney. So the fact that there are some of us who are NOT insiders and we are still here, I see it as a badge of honor. We made it through the boot camp. And my skin is much thicker now thank you very much.
I keep reading comments about nice this forum is. I am a member of WDWMagic, but I never post there. So I guess compared to that place, this place overall is pretty nice. I specifically want to call out Mad dog. But in a good way. That dude is like one of the nicest people you'd meet anywhere. For one..he "likes' everything. hahaha. And two, he always makes his posts friendly, even when he disagrees with someone. We need more people like that here. And they are out there, but they are afraid to join. I think this forum needs to be more friendly to newcomers, specifically those from the "DIS" mindset. I once made a comment saying that when Nintendo comes, this forum will be full of soccer Moms. And the comments that followed were basically saying things like Oh please no, hopefully not. Why not? Don't they have a voice too? Its a whole segment of the population that could make this forum even greater, but they are turned away by the few bullies who think they own the place.
