[QUOTE=DoMiN8ToR;2697185]Mikemn, thank you for bringing this up, I really love it that there are still old CDFreaks here, that even miss the name. I would give so much for all those old members to return! Within the staff forums the name has been a much discussed issue and I think many still would love the old name back, but also understand the reasons why we can’t make it happen.
Kerry already explained what happened, I was the founder and owned the site with someone else. Years ago we couldn’t agree on the direction of the site, it was clear that the optical storage market was declining. We both had different views on the future of the site and due to health issues I was unable to continue to fight for my ideas, I had to give up and go out.
Exactly why I left and what I feared happened, the site went downhill, name, layout, content all was not what people expected from us and I understand that a lot of people left. I created the site for CDFreaks, the people that visited the site and I was always trying to think how we could serve them better. To me the site was not as a money machine that had to be full of adverts. Something that it ended up to be.
In 2012 I had the opportunity to get it back. From the site as I left was fortunately something left, the great team of dedicated people that decided to stay, they stayed while they didn’t agree on the direction and the name of the site. They weren’t supported by the owner but without any support but somehow they stayed together and kept the site up, something I’m really really grateful about.
Now I’m back and I hope to make clear that it’s a site for our members again, not to fill with adverts and other crap. Yes we need money to keep the site running, but it shouldn’t affect the usability of the site too much. I also try to support our review team as much as possible and try to initiate new ideas.
By focusing on optical storage alone we wouldn’t have a bright future, as unfortunately the market of our beloved plastic shiny discs is declining. But we also don’t have the resources to focus on a large market like consumer electronics. Instead we’ve decided to focus on computer storage at its whole, optical storage, HDDs, flash memory cards, SSHDs and SSDs. In this market we hope to bring the extensive quality reviews as you were used from our optical storage era and we hope that soon people will also find our ways to our forums again to discuss these products. I think that if you see our SSD reviews they are high quality reviews that are the or among the best reviews on the internet.
Why we don’t go back to CDFreaks is not only just the name, as Seán once mentioned, why not call it computer drive freaks? The change from CDFreaks to Myce.com made the site lose almost 50% of its visitors, if we would lose another 50% again, the loss would be too big and that would be very frustrating to everyone who dedicated their spare time to the site.
We hope that the spirit of CDFreaks will continue to live due to the presence of our dear members, the new ones but also the old names that seem to be residents here and have never gone away for long. After all the spirit of our members and the discussions together is what this site what makes it. Neither I, a name or an individual can make this site, it’s a great group of people that together make it to what is.
Things got wrong a couple years ago and I sincerely regret that, it was my baby and I didn’t see it grow up as I liked. But fortunately there were some people who took care of her very well and now I’m back we’ve started to build again.
I really hope you will stay and contribute, I hope you will ask your old friends to return, get other people here and bring back that great atmosphere for which you joined, years ago. I hope also other people reading this will, help is much appreciated, I can’t do it alone![/QUOTE]
That’s a fantastic explanation DoMiN8ToR! 
TBH I think the community here has always been the important thing, and it was this that inspired us all to stick together, even when things were being pushed in the wrong direction.
The community is still paramount and with all our members’ help we can not only make this the place where everyone feels valued but also the place where everyone wants to be.
[B]Wombler[/B]