Wayne wrote:
... and the community has been taken over by a group of people whose attitudes and agendas are in direct opposition to the way the Amiga community used to be.. It feels less about the Amiga than a war room for sycophants and discussion of sexual/political preferences.
The fact of the matter is that its only a minority of people who constantly argue, troll, {bleep} and moan. The majority of people use Amigas old and new, or clones, because they enjoy it and its a nice hobby. When you get a group of Amiga fans together for a show or other real life face-to-face meetings, the community of old is still present; people get along fine and have a beer. Morphoseans, AROSeans and Amigans all get along fine face to face, on the whole.
I think the cold nature of textual communication, combined with people who actually just like stirring up arguments have damaged the appearance of the Amiga community to anyone whos only contact with it is via the internet, and that is what I think is really sad.
I honestly think if the internet was expensive and geeky like in the old days, we'd have a healthier usergroup scene and you'd feel a whole lot better about the state of the "community", i'm sure. The internet is a double edged sword in this instance.
What can we do about it? *sigh* Thats the $64,000 question alright... But I think things will get better. Either:
1) One, two or all of OS4, AROS or MorphOS will become moderately successful and bring in an infusion of new blood, and a new community will form as the ratio of idiots to normal people on Amiga forums gets better.
2) All the Amiga companies die. This would be horrible from my POV, as I would really like to see the Amiga continue commercially in some form, and speaking personally, I *really* like OS4. But even if this happened, the arguments would die down, and we'd probably become like the C64 online community; one that is friendly, and content with the fact that their favourite computers chance has come and gone.
Either way, it CAN only get better...
