Advertise No More!!! (But seriously...)

[Alura]

It needs to look professional. It needs to have it's own member base already, because we arn't going to be letting RPGs leech off our members. Right now, all of our current affiliates (SH, AD, Zensou, Goten's) all had their own member base when they asked for affiliation

Also, as far as we're conerrned, advertising with us benefits you more then it would benefit us. So because we would be doing you a favor, we usually need to actually respect you. For example, your above post offended me. A lot. You probably didn't mean to, but I can show you all the places where I got offended. Because I'm offended, I won't be bothering to vote 'yes' since all I'd be doing is getting you members, which isn't something I'm willing to do for someone who has to rude.

I'm sure you'll say "I wasn't rude" or "That wasn't my intention." All I can suggest is you look at what you posted, and see what needs to be changed next time you decide to ask

[Ashe]

Um, from a different point of view...

It does need to look professional, and it does need to be from someone in good standing with the site. We aren't going to refer people to someone's site that we have issues with. The manner with which you approach us on any subject is usually taken into account and it boils largely down to "Is this something we want to be known to work with" as well as "Is this something we are excited personally about and would like to get others to join?"

I wouldn't so much say that "We are the best and all other sites benefit from us; we need noone," because I view that as a rude interpretation myself, but I do believe that in a majority of cases where its a newer or smaller site, this is true, albeit in a differently worded manner. If its a site that's been holding its own for a while and they contact us or vice versa, then obviously we'll be mutually benefiting each other; I'll say if the old Vagrant Space or perhaps Swords Honor or even old school FoF wanted to, for example, and as you have seen by our decisions there.

[Ashe]

Requirements? No, the point is that it comes down to asking yourself "Is this site or person something that I wish to be associated with? Will this actually cause me further problems and are the types of members this site attracts unhealthy for our site if they decide to come over here? Do we have a problem with this person or the way things are run and do we mind if people automatically assume that we are the same way?" and finally "Is this something that we are willing to support in any way?" For example - Friend or Foe again. On a very personal level, I find it absolutely retarded to see some people over there roleplaying again. I understand the fact that some people are willing to overlook a large number of aspects for the sake of the friends they have there, but in doing so, they are ensuring the pulse of the place and indirectly supporting it so as to keep it running, which is all the owner would really hope for in such a case. Its one of those "Like me, hate me, you are still keeping my site active. Bad publicity is better than no publicity" type things.

[Ashe]

There is a difference. For example... Let's take Cuba. Let's say theoretically that the beaches are amazing there and the food is fantastic. Let's say that a family of Cubans has requested American support with their beachfront restuarant, and we have to give them an answer. We would refuse it, not because they are bad people or because their stuff sucks, but because we are making a stand about some political crap regarding Fidel Castro and how we disagree with his leadership or something to that effect. Specifics aside, we have the embargo set up for a reason. Its not to cripple the people that would benefit by trading between the countries, but its to refuse any form of support for the country and its economy. It maintains a seperation.

If someone is on the site that tends to constantly be on the edge of a ban or in general causes a general feeling of resentment, we tend to err on the side of not wishing to be associated with it. Let's say Sam randomly broke down and decided one day to go posting all over someone's site some crap about "Fuck all those raghead motherfuckers, marines ftw!" and got extremely and blatantly disrespectful and racial, for absolutely no reason. And lets say he did something like this on a regular basis and grew a reputation for it. We'd be forced to question whether our friendship with him and the greatness of his site was worth the reputation that his actions while being the owner of that site was bringing us. We've had members before that were constantly being begged to not cause problems on other sites and we'd still constantly see situations involving them to some degree or another that caused problems. No matter how much "he started it", the point is that they are responsible for keeping themselves out of said situations and yet while most people can do this, they somehow couldn't and still just happened to end up in this. This leads to backlash where people then think "Chubbs is sending its members to attack us" and we have a fucking war on our hands because we "encourage our members to fuck over other sites" when we were actually and publically begging people the entire time to quit. Finally we resorted to having to ban the person, and after we had to do it and some other things we got things to chill out a bit.

The person is back, btw, and everything is going great, no problems, but for the sake of the above conflict we had to put that on the side and look at the greater picture.

Max, the part some people get irritated with you about is an old saying. You can't see the forest for the trees. Meaning you focus on the nitpick specifics and somehow completely miss the overall picture.