Dear Odd Thought Community

[Treadon]

Dear Odd Thought Community,

As you may have already noticed, the Odd Thought forums have now merged in to an existing community and over the next several weeks, the games in the Odd Thought portfolio will join the Clipwire Game Network. I’d like to take a minute to talk about what these changes mean to Odd Thought and how the community and games will benefit from this change in the long run.

When DopeWars Online and Odd Thought where first launched, I had never imagined it would grow in to such a rich community. As time progressed and the network grew larger and larger, it started to need more and more maintenance to operate. As the personal responsibilities of myself and all the people involved also grew, it had gradually become more and more difficult to allocate time to maintain and update the software, hardware and games. With this lack of attention, things have begun to grow out of date, resulting in the quality of the user experience greatly diminishing. It recently became apparent that without action, the community and games would soon be on financial life support, and slowly fade away.

Not wanting to lose something that we all worked so hard on creating, we began looking for a solution where the existing community could get access to the skilled developers and up-to-date web servers they need. Clipwire can provide all these necessities to keep Odd Thought alive. Clipwire has a pool of very talented programmers and modern hardware that can give DopeWars, Global Conflict and the Forums the attention they need.

I’m truly looking forward to all the great things Clipwire will bring to the table following the merger and hope to see the Odd Thought spirit last well in to the future!

Yours Truly,

Ritesh Khanna
Odd Thought Founder

[hoos]

Thanks for the message buddy.

[ZERAT]

i thought you owned clipwire?

[Uganja]

How much did you get buddy... c'mon... how much?

[!clo!]

as good as it sounds i feel maybe there could of been another way

[Sir Brian]

I completely accept the reasons behind the merger. And i think it is a good idea.

However, the forum over there is poorl maintained, poorly modded and in itself "out of date". The Terms Of Service, and thus the controlling powers they give the mods; are frankly atrocious. One cannot expect to merge Oddthought with it's tremendous range of freedom of speech, with a "family forum" of such restricting mannor. ClipWire needs to slacken it's rules.

As for the point that they are providing a "family friendly forum"; well they point out to us that they serve for kids as young as 11. This seems very perculiar to me, as the minimum age for MySpace usership is 14. And, if a parent is willing to let a child use MySpace (where these games are based as applications.); then they must clearly realise their children would be open to material of an adult nature - and thus the strict rules imposed on the ClipWire Forum hold no valid moral grounds.

To summarise, you cannot run a game site for "all ages" when the games are based upon social networking sites. Thus, the strict anti-expletives rule is mere heavy handedness rather than morally correct. Furthermore, how does a "family friendly forum" tie in with www.treadon.us and/or www.sepica.com ; which are Drugs, Gangs, Guns and War based games respectively.



Edit:

Thankyou for the message.


EditII:

To summarise it in another way... (From the OT Chat Box).

It really really riles me. I spent a lot of this morning talking to their Mods. If parents really cared about wheather a few expletives were shown to their children then they wouldnt give them free rain on the interent. And thus they wouldn't be on MySpace etc... I feel the rules have been set by a control freak, without them realising how open the internet is; and how people will move to pastures new if they are constantly restricted.

[EviLWaYz]

Originally Posted by ZERAT

i thought you owned clipwire?

works for clipwire

[Sir Brian]

President and CEO.

[vixen]

So very sad.....even though I don't come here all that often anymore, there was a time that this place was like family. I have made some great friends here. I don't speak to you all the time anymore friends - but you know who you are and that I love you to bits. I will miss the comfort of knowing that I could type in forum.oddthought.com and find my friends....too bad the forum can't remain for the "family" its created and the game can go to its new home.....

[newportbadboy]

Idea is good,presentation sucks