Topic: RHDN Currently Down

[Lenophis]

- Seemingly no attempt at "professional web designer"- paid new features to their site that I can think of or notice

- Seemingly no updates to their forum like they said there'd be, as far as I can tell.

Two things here. First, the site is fully integrated with the SMF engine, which started out great but has kinda devolved into a pile of shit. There's no easy way out of it that doesn't involve a complete rewrite of basically everything. Nightcrawler has been open about that in the past, and you can likely still find those posts on archive.org's wayback machine.

Second, it's still just one guy working on the inner workings of the code. When that happens, things don't go fast. Trust me, I know this from personal experience. You should as well.

- People are still having threads deleted out of thin air for no reason

Lemme get some examples here.

There are many more I can cite. There are some which aren't bots or dumbassery, but they're just kids trying to get what they want. Of course those will get deleted. RHDN was never a place where someone can hold a personal journal. It was and always is a rom hacking site, nothing more. People abused General Discussion to constantly try and push the envelope on what is acceptable for such a site. Eventually NC just said "enough is enough, if you don't like it, there's the door." Those that value the site for what it is, a rom hacking site, stuck around.

- They have less traffic on the site than Pokecommunity on a regular, back and forth basis

Apples and oranges. Comparing a specific game/series to a site that is based on generality is asinine.

- Their General Discussion forum's still behind a paywall

General Discussion is gone. It has been replaced with something far more friendlier, now that the shitposters can't access it.

and is probably still more thought-policed than a North Korean news station

Nothing is "thought policed."

- Slick and the other forum I go on are still far more welcoming and civil

I try to keep things civil here. Knowing that people generally behave themselves is a good thing. 

[Madsiur]

It's just normal than a first post that is a shitpost, that is breaking rule(s), the forum values or is unrelated to the forum mission gets deleted. Same goes with closing or even deleting a thread that brings too much controversy and destroy the harmony or that is hateful, free speech has a limit, and those limits are set by the administration.

As a forum maintainer, coding can be slow, it destroy what you got of free time and that is free time you could spend doing something more interesting like ROM hacking, but at some point stuff needs to get done so you do it and postpone your other hobbies.