5729482

and I suspect the effect is very small or else this group would be growing more quickly than the larger Foalcon

Which is wrong. The other Foalcon group, the one by StormHoof, shows up second in Google, so if someone finds the Foalcon groups here and then makes an account, he is more likely to join StormHoof's group, because it's bigger and looks more impressive and active (at first glance) that way, so this is just making more clear why we have to take care of as much advertisement for this group here as possible.
Changing the name "Foalcon" to something else would remove that advantage and therefore, would go against our goal.

With the exception of Fluttercheer, every member so far who has spoken up has stated that they joined this group and Foalcon Punch! solely because they didn't want to miss out on any foalcon stories or discussion which did not appear on the larger Foalcon. Most of them have stated they joined it reluctantly, and would prefer all the foalcon content were in one location.

You got to be kidding me..... Letting admins and StormHoof aside, exactly four members, myself included, have spoken up. From 968 members at the moment of writing this post.
This is not anywhere near representative and definitely not representative enough to make a claim for it that no one joined because of following Flutterpony and just for more Foalcon.
If that is how you run the group, letting four users decide everything because they obviously have the same opinion as you, then you will drive the group against a wall and you will definitely have to reckon with tons of complaints and angry messages over such a radical change that the majority does not anticipate.

Edit: And letting that aside, we don't have to worry about author complaints for getting their stories added. These are groups and groups are meant to collect stories in order to make it easier for readers to find stories.
With that in mind, authors shouldn't have a say about if their stories get added or not anyway (and that counts for every group), as this would do a disservice to the readers on the site. I'm completely on Flutterpony's side here when he refused to remove stories from the group, an author should never hinder others in finding his/her stories or be able to do any steps that lead to lesser users being able to find and enjoy his/her stories.
And it's not like the authors have any valid point in complaining either, not anymore since they can just remove group listings at the side of their stories if they fear getting associated with a certain group.
And neither do they have any power over us or are a threat for us, past cases have shown that the site mods don't step in and just tell the authors to remove the group from the side of their stories.
We really don't need to cater to the authors here or keep them in mind, nor should we, for the sake of the readerbase here.

5729131 none of this changes the fact that these posts are completely off-topic and are contributing nothing to the subject at hand besides visual noise.

place. and. time. please make a new fucking thread.

this is exactly how you don't make people sympathetic to your cause: by forcing it down everyone's throats in contexts where it's not appropriate. i had no stake in the Flutterpony drama prior to this, but by invoking his name every ten seconds, you are making me hate it every time i see it.

if this kind of attention-whoring is what Flutterpony advocates, then i disagree with his methods and will never support him. if it isn't, then you are doing an awful job representing him, and he deserves better than someone like you standing up for him.

5732662

if this kind of attention-whoring is what Flutterpony advocates, then i disagree with his methods and will never support him. if it isn't, then you are doing an awful job representing him, and he deserves better than someone like you standing up for him.

Nice scape-goating. You're trying to make me stop talking about him and standing up for him here to preserve his legacy by pretending that you get a bad picture of him because of me arguing in his favor.
And it's not working. If you really would have any desire to be "sympathetic to my cause", then you would actually grasp the gist of what I'm saying here, not trying to guilt-trip me for it, and you also would do research and read up on what happened in past threads, or, at least asking me for more infos, so I can tell you about the whole case myself.
But you're not doing any of this, you just try to make me feel bad for speaking up for him, so, you are also just another guy who gives a shit about Flutterpony and what he did for all of us.

And yes, I am in the right thread for this. Trick Question and Zontargs want to get the group on track again and discuss ways to do so. I'm explaining what certain things we shouldn't change during that process, to honor Flutterpony's legacy and efforts, and why we neither need to change these certain things.
I'm also talking about what changes would be detrimental for the group's popularity and advertising and what generally be best for it.
This thread is exactly for the things I'm talking about here, whatever you read into my posts.

Honestly I would love nothing more than for our two groups to work together. And who knows, maybe in the future we can have competitions between the two groups, that way we can still satisfy those who see it as more of a competitive rivalry. I'm all for working together with everyone to bring us all closer. I know that's probably not what you wanted to hear but I know me and many others are probably all for it. :)

5723942 I absolutely love the idea if you don't mind me saying. I think even if the groups all have differences, I feel they are all part of our community at large. And with the changing of the way this group is run, it allows members of our community to pick and read stories from the groups they see fit to choose. I am absolutely on board with this and would love to help in any way I can, if you'll have me of course. It's entirely up to you. :)

can all the groups merge to form one big? It's not convenient to have so many foalcon groups.

OK, so I haven't heard any more from anyone on either side of this, so unless anyone has any new information to bring up, I'll roll with this 5723942 in the near future.

5957504
I've been kind of incapacitated, sorry for dropping off like that.

I'm going to pm you in the next day or two.

OK, we're switched over. Please feel free to add all your favorite cute shipfics that don't have that M tag.