In a democracy, everyone's voice should count, not just those who are able to pay/donate. Your idea would seemingly be moving away from that.

As it is right now, everyone's voice is heard and all ideas are taken into consideration.

My wording was probably poor in saying the site is not a democracy. It was wrong to even use the term democracy in connection with a site like this.

Of course the input of all users is important. The game itself is powered by users. The game survives on the creativity of users.

That having been said...

I think you have to make a distinction between governments and private non-profit community run websites.

Mania Exchange is one of those non-profit community run websites. And by community, I mean it's run by a group of players from the community that have no official or financial ties to the developers and publishers of the game. We run the site simply for the love of the game and the community itself.

We certainly appreciate the input of all the users on the site. But it must be understood that the site is not run by vote, and the moderators and leaders of the site are not chosen in an election.

You know, businesses are run in a similar manner. Decisions are based on what will generate the most revenue, and how the product will impact the end-user and improve the value of the brand.

Well, here on MX, features are added based on the belief that they will add value to the site for all users, not just a few. Other considerations also have to be looked at, such as if said feature will put too much strain on the server and possibly disturb other services. Only a select few can make those decisions, because only a select few have the whole picture, as it should be.

As I said before though, we have a single coder currently. He's not paid. From what I've seen, he's doing his best to implement features. If you look over the changelog, you'll see consistent updates have been made to the site since we launched back in August. Not every update is a glamorous one, but they all go towards making the site a better place.

As a team, we're all doing the best we can. But of course we're only human and there's only so many hours in the day.

We love this game as much as you do. And I don't just mean Canyon. We love TrackMania. Many of us have been playing over 5 years, some even longer. Some of us have dedicated years to running or moderating the predecessor to this site, TMX. But we look to the future. We love this community... and we hope to be with you for many years to come on this wild adventure known as ManiaPlanet.

But we ask you not to be overly concerned with how the site is run. I mean, that's not really very fun, is it? What would really help us is if you can help make the site a healthy and productive place for all builders. Make it a fun and interesting place, a welcoming place for new builders.

Write tutorials, discuss features of the game and how to use some of the new features in different ways, start competitions, share your ideas, most of all... build tracks and drive other people's tracks! These are some of the most valuable ways to participate.

Feedback about the site is of course appreciated too. After all, we've dedicated two whole forums to it. The "Site Bugs" and "Site Discussions" forums. But don't get so absorbed in it that you miss the game and the reason the site exists.

I'd like to be the first to tell you that MX is but a small slice of the community that plays this game. I think sometimes we live in our own little bubble here and don't realize there's a lot more to the game.

There's only about 4000 users registered on this site. If you look at the multiplayer ladder, there is over 80000 users that have gained ladder points by playing on an online server. That's not even all the players who own the game. But it gives you some idea to the scale of the game compared to this site.

There's also a whole organized competitive side to TM that's rarely seen on Mania Exchange. Competitions run by ET, ESL, PMC, etc. pull in users from all over the world, many of which aren't very active on the building side of the game, and so you may not notice them here.

The world of TM goes far beyond the borders of Mania Exchange.

We're just here to help you share your tracks, to find great tracks to drive, to provide a place for conversation with like-minded players, and to offer some engaging contests to play in like the MTC and the KO.

Simple as that.

I would implore you to not limit yourself to only things taking place here. Find a team to join and race in some competitions, make some videos for TM-Tube, write a tutorial for the official ManiaPlanet Wiki.

There are so many ways to participate if you're really wanting to make your voice heard among the community.

I think we are in a Forzzy-ocracy

He does what he has time for and when he wants to. So we are pretty much at his mercy ^^ We cna vote all we want here, still wont make a difference if Forzzy does not have the time.

Yep.

I guess it doesn't hurt to be persistent in our requests though.

@ eyebo : about how mx is only a small part of the community...

I think MX is the most important part of the community. Without MX, there would be no place for the mappers to meet the server admins. Imagine what all the online servers would look like. You could only play maps by Nadeo or Maps made by the server admins. It would be terrible ! And every mapper would have to make his own server, otherwise people would never play their tracks at all, or even know tat their tracks exist...

MX is the most important, most central meeting point for TM players. It's beyond me why Ubisoft is not supporting you. Without MX, their game would be dead. They totaly profit from the work you guys do here.

You have a good point smiggles.

I think it's indeed very important. It's perhaps one of the most integral pieces of the puzzle.

However, theoretically... I believe the competitive side of TM would survive without MX, because in most cases track builders share their creations directly with the event organizers. And server owners get their maps directly from the event organizers. Many times the tracks for competitive events never even end up on MX.

Of course, if that happened... TM would end up being nearly 100% tech.

So I think MX is very important for a diverse ecosystem of track sharing. It offers a place for everyone to share their creations, regardless if they're used in competitions or not... and regardless of how they approach track design. As you say, all player benefit from it if they play online on a server where maps from MX have been downloaded.

That's probably a very large percentage of servers.

It's a tricky thing though. If Ubisoft supported the site financially, they'd really need to support some of the other community sites, and where does it end? But maybe that's not the issue at all for them. They haven't given their reasons, and they don't really need to.

We know individuals within Nadeo have personally contributed to this site. They know it's importance to the community.

Well, we've went pretty far offtopic I guess. Oh well, it's my own fault for bringing it up.

eyebo (701) says:

However, theoretically... I believe the competitive side of TM would survive without MX, because in most cases track builders share their creations directly with the event organizers. And server owners get their maps directly from the event organizers. Many times the tracks for competitive events never even end up on MX.

Of course, if that happened... TM would end up being nearly 100% tech.

OK you convinced me ^^ Let's shut down mx ^^

smigles says:
OK you convinced me ^^ Let's shut down mx ^^

what, WHAT?!?!

lol

eyebo (701) says:
lol

eyebo, doooont!

Some moderator can move this somewhere, iam not sure where to put it
Please Forzyy add real AT time in maps, this is enoying me, to have to dl track to find out what my at is or draw map to notepad and find "109561"..works to, but very tedious
I want to see direct what my at is.

Now ==>> Author Time: 1:10.00
FIX ==>> Author Time: 1:09.561

Or add AT IN Author Options
AT 1:09:561
_______________________________________
Status : Visible : Hide
At: 1:09:561
Update : Files (track or screenshot)
Details
Delete : Track
Screenshot
_______________________________________
i like the last one best becouse we dont even have to click on detail to see it. ^^

btw: you can remove the fake at "Author Time: 1:10.00" and save ALOT bandwith ^^