www.retromags.com - A lesson learned

[TheValeman]

Hi everyone,

If you've ever been to the above website you'll probably agree that it is a lot like a sister site to ours.

Their goal is the preservation of old gaming based magazines while ours is the preservation of old game artwork. Some of our members choose to create new custom artwork too & it really shows the artistic talent they have which is great for our little community here.

Snowcone's management here is a little different than the other site though. As a result of recent issues we thought we would pledge the following:

The Administration staff of this site will, barring legal circumstances, NEVER remove any individual areas of this site [Xbox 360 etc] without providing you, the contributors, with sufficient warning to hopefully prevent purchases of items that may be rendered invalid by such an action.

This is our pledge and it is directed towards all those people here who scan or create the covers, labels, discs and manuals that make the site what it is today. You people are the heart and soul of the site ... not the freeloaders that download and run ... and to make changes that may impact purchasing decisions or leave you out of pocket as a result is not just doing a total disservice to you but is also rather impolite.

Having said that I would strongly encourage ANY of our members here to visit Phillyman's website. Hey ... if he can come and grab our stuff http://www.retromags.com/forums/Cover-Project-t3360.html&pid=16021#entry16021 then you guys should be able to look around and hopefully find that little gem of a magazine that you always wanted to buy but could never find as well. 

[Phillyman]

Wow how did you find my post that quick, I made that before going to bed last night. Anyways WAY cool website over here! I only hope that the excitement I experienced last night when I found you guys.....is the same excitement that people get when they find my project. With that said I would like to extend an offer to The Cover Project team. My site has scanned a ton of gaming magazines, and I know that the Nintendo Power collection is filled with artwork.....as such you guys are more then welcome to use our magazines artwork in your custom cases.

I would love to build a bridge between our sites, I am sure it would offer members the best of both worlds. Even if its just a member offering his opinions on how to edit scans to get the best results. Onto the issue about our recent decision to push back our acceptance date. The blame should fall directly on myself for this. My current contributors are small in numbers, maybe 10 active contributors in total. Of those 10 active contributors I believe 6 of them are Retromags staff. When I brought up the topic of possibly pushing back our acceptance date....it was met with total approval from my staff. So we moved forward in setting the rule in stone.

What I did not know is that in the process we negated out a member who had purchased magazines to contribute to our site, as such I am very sorry. The Retromags project as a whole is dependent on us not upsetting the publishers and copyright holders of the magazines we preserve. Since I started Retromags in 2005, we have been extremely lucky in the fact that publishers are turning a blind eye towards our project. As such the existing rule of staying 5 years behind was putting us in jeopardy of being a target for a "Cease and Desist" letter. Please know that we wish to provide the entire world with preserved copies of Nintendo Power, Gamepro, EGM and such before all of our wives make us throw such items out and they are lost forever.

Our current change is the only change since our birth, and you have our word that no other surprises will occur. So we hope you don't hold this against us, and will feel free to join us with our project.

To the admins of this site, please contact me through the PM system on this site, and provide me with your usernames on Retromags for upgraded accounts

-Robert

[Snowcone]

Phillyman,

Thanks for making the jump over here. I'll definitely check out your site. I tossed all my GamePros a few years back, but kept the few early issues that I had from the very first year.

[Phillyman]

Phillyman,

Thanks for making the jump over here. I'll definitely check out your site. I tossed all my GamePros a few years back, but kept the few early issues that I had from the very first year.

Very cool, for those people who think scanning a magazine is too much work.....we also are looking for people to just scan the covers of magazines for our wiki, which will be the largest magazine index in the world. It will allow members to search for video games and find all issues that a game appeared in.

[TheValeman]

I would love to build a bridge between our sites, I am sure it would offer members the best of both worlds. Even if its just a member offering his opinions on how to edit scans to get the best results. Onto the issue about our recent decision to push back our acceptance date. The blame should fall directly on myself for this. My current contributors are small in numbers, maybe 10 active contributors in total. Of those 10 active contributors I believe 6 of them are Retromags staff. When I brought up the topic of possibly pushing back our acceptance date....it was met with total approval from my staff. So we moved forward in setting the rule in stone.

What I did not know is that in the process we negated out a member who had purchased magazines to contribute to our site, as such I am very sorry.

-Robert

Phillyman ..... The affected person at your site was me.

Yep ... 10 contributors ... only 1 affected but still equates to 10% of your scanner base. Bad percentage indeed.

I always said I had no problem WITH your decision .... just with the way it was done. Hence the Admins here making the pledge not to do that to our contributors.

Yes .. there are people out there who purchase items purely because they think the goal is worth it etc. I provided probably close to 2/3rd's of the N64 box covers here, a large portion coming from the purchases of empty boxes off EBAY solely for the purpose of providing covers for this site. It's just what I do when I feel the cause is a just one.

Unfortunately things got way out of control and having German Jewish Grand Parents some remarks made by one of your Mods caused a backlash that resulted in a banning. Sorry about that but maybe you could have got on-board the argument a little sooner and prevented it spiraling out of control. Still, all that's in the past now.

As I said in the first post .... Your site IS fantastic and I hope it goes well over there with the archiving old gaming/ computing magazines etc to ensure they aren't lost forever. I'd love to contribute my Atari Antic & other magazine front pages to the wiki but I don't believe it's appropriate in doing the dopelganger thing by sneaking in under a new account so I'll just move onwards I guess.

Good to see you like our site though. Like your site there's something for everyone here too. Oh ... and feel free to ask anything about printing covers or sourcing boxes etc for your games. Plenty of people here who have the knowledge on where to go etc to get the best looking covers imaginable 

[Phillyman]

I would love to build a bridge between our sites, I am sure it would offer members the best of both worlds. Even if its just a member offering his opinions on how to edit scans to get the best results. Onto the issue about our recent decision to push back our acceptance date. The blame should fall directly on myself for this. My current contributors are small in numbers, maybe 10 active contributors in total. Of those 10 active contributors I believe 6 of them are Retromags staff. When I brought up the topic of possibly pushing back our acceptance date....it was met with total approval from my staff. So we moved forward in setting the rule in stone.

What I did not know is that in the process we negated out a member who had purchased magazines to contribute to our site, as such I am very sorry.

-Robert

Phillyman ..... The affected person at your site was me.

Yep ... 10 contributors ... only 1 affected but still equates to 10% of your scanner base. Bad percentage indeed.

I always said I had no problem WITH your decision .... just with the way it was done. Hence the Admins here making the pledge not to do that to our contributors.

Yes .. there are people out there who purchase items purely because they think the goal is worth it etc. I provided probably close to 2/3rd's of the N64 box covers here, a large portion coming from the purchases of empty boxes off EBAY solely for the purpose of providing covers for this site. It's just what I do when I feel the cause is a just one.

Unfortunately things got way out of control and having German Jewish Grand Parents some remarks made by one of your Mods caused a backlash that resulted in a banning. Sorry about that but maybe you could have got on-board the argument a little sooner and prevented it spiraling out of control. Still, all that's in the past now.

As I said in the first post .... Your site IS fantastic and I hope it goes well over there with the archiving old gaming/ computing magazines etc to ensure they aren't lost forever. I'd love to contribute my Atari Antic & other magazine front pages to the wiki but I don't believe it's appropriate in doing the dopelganger thing by sneaking in under a new account so I'll just move onwards I guess.

Good to see you like our site though. Like your site there's something for everyone here too. Oh ... and feel free to ask anything about printing covers or sourcing boxes etc for your games. Plenty of people here who have the knowledge on where to go etc to get the best looking covers imaginable 

As I stated, it is unfortunate that you purchased magazines for our project only to have a rule changed. The rule was changed only to protect our project so that we can keep providing members with scans. We were going about this in a "proactive" way.....rather then wait for a publisher to contact us and ask for content to be removed.....we decided to try to take the cross hairs off our project. Keep in mind that a good many magazines are published by the same company. So even if 1 company contacted us, we would probably end up loosing 3-4 magazines. I was under the assumption that you were taking on early 80's Atari magazines, and had no clue that you had any intent on scanning anything from the years of 2000-2004.

Again this was the only change of this type we have ever made, and I see no abrupt changes coming in the future. I did not even know you were banned until this morning. I take it was done to allow people a chance to step back and take a breath. It pains me to lose ANY member of the Retromags team, the only members we should be banning are members who disrupt the community and/or make the site a hostile environment. I have taken the ban off of your account Kiwi, if you choose to return that is up to you. I hope that we can all realize this was a needed change to ensure that the Retromags Project stays around for years to come. I do apologize for the change that was made and I should have probably mentioned that the idea was floating around in my head a few months back.

[Phillyman]

I was able to grab the covers for 99% of my GBA collection, I searched for Sonic The Hedgehog for the GBA (not the Sonic Advances).....and noticed it was missing, I just scanned the front and back of the box. The game is a total turd....it lags like crazy.....but I figured I would scan the box for you guys, I will poke around and see what else I have......feel free to hit me up if you need me to rescan any thing.

-Phillyman

[TheValeman]

And I am busy scanning the covers of all my Atari magazines for the Wiki. I have been working on fully completing one issue at a time ... it's slow going as you know ... game covers are so damned easy compared to mags ... but I've stopped that to scan all the covers and I'll get back to the mag when they are out of my hair.

Thanks for the box scan too. The mods all have their area's of interest so whoever looks after GBA submissions will no doubt be delighted to get it online for anyone who wants it.

BTW.... Did you want all the Atari & Amiga Format magazine covers etc I have as well?

[juan0tron]

Wow that site is awesome! I always liked to read my old backlog of gaming magazines (specifically EGM, now that they're out of print :C ) but they've been lost over time. Now I can read them all again, in convenient internet-form!