When the new Descent Chronicles took shape in my mind six weeks ago, I would have never imagined it being as successful as it is now. Yet very recently, we have experienced a lot of criticism for some of the projects which we have done and some of the people who are now on the staff. Although many of the flames are unsupported in every way, a few of them bring up valid points. One of the arguments which was brought against us is that, "The Descent Chronicles is trying to play Microsoft." Literally, this means that we are trying to gobble up sites and take whatever is worth taking. Looking back, I could see how someone could think this. Xanadu did shut down his site to move to ours. Remora shut down the Webring to move to ours. But perhaps the biggest issue is that of Peter Drake, whose phenomenally successful FRED documentation is currently residing on the Descent Chronicles server. Yet, many people did not understand the fact that WE were approached by Remora and Drake to become part of the Descent Chronicles family. We are not trying to be a monopoly, but a conglomerate. We are not trying to shut down other sites, but prevent that from happening. As all the FreeSpace megasites of the early FreeSpace age have closed, they took with them many of the smaller sites. As I read in a newsgroup posting sometime back, there is a dangerous lack of FreeSpace sites. With only 37 sites in the Webring, it is very clear that there is something different about the FreeSpace community. Our goal is to provide the FreeSpace community with everything they need in one place, something that past sites have failed to do. In one way or another, they lacked something. And in the course of doing this, people may assume that adding so much content so soon conceals the hidden goal of shutting down all the smaller sites. This is not our goal, nor will it ever be. Its just that we have the staff power to do things other sites couldn't.

Another point that has been said to one of the staff members is that "Elemental and Xanadu seem to be along for the ride, while Remora, Zarathud, and Ouroboros are the only ones doing work." This is completely untrue. Xanadu does all of the scripting work which allows us to do news and reviews with ease. He ALSO does the mission archive, which is part of the Descent Chronicles.And I, Elemental, stay busy doing emails, working with Gamestats, and sending out staff emails and running chats. Remora was brought on the project to easy my load, and that’s why he seems to be doing a lot of the work I used to do. Everyone on the staff is busy. It just so happens the most visible stuff – reviews and news – are done by Remora, Zara, and Ouroboros.

I want to make our intentions clear – we do not have any hidden goals. We are not trying to shut down other sites, and we are not trying to acquire people and whatever is good off smaller sites. We are simply trying to create a FreeSpace site that provides everything. To do this, we have a rather large team, which works hard. We have business and social lives, too, so naturally we can’t spend eight hours a day working on this site. Most of the staff is rather young and in high school or college, so the amount of the we can spend working on it varies daily. We are not in this for pay, and hence other things do take preference to this site. But rest assured, every staff member is working hard.

Thank you for reading this. I hope it clears up any questions you may have had. If it doesn’t, please feel free to email me.

Comments? Email them to Elemental (joeyk@hallwood.com)

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