This forum is like owning a 1988 Corolla as your daily driver. Yeah, it runs (mostly), and it gets you to work every day, but when you're carpooling your passengers expect basic things like A/C, power windows, and comfort.

Simply put, these forums are bland and largely useless beyond basic message board posting. Which is fine if that's your goal. But as Sheldon and Gavin discussed, that's not where Magic players are on the internet right now. The RC doesn't need to spend thousands of dollars an year on the best site, but if they want to maintain a professional image that should be representative of the official website/forum that doesn't crash every time there is a.ban list update that doesn't contain the words "no changes". Beyond basic reliability and an image that looks like it was from this century, they should also modernize these forums with features that people want, if they want to keep this as the go-to place for edh enthusiasts (although I am skeptical that there would be much growth regardless given their moderation philosophy).

What moderation policy?

It is terue that now MTG players are everywhere else but forums, most forums have died and now people uses "facebook pages", some people Reedit.

I am oldschool and I like forums like MTGSalvation and this one and I hope they never die but .... meybe they will.

But dont mind me, I saw USENET (I loved USENET) being killed by forums like this one and am sad to see it happen again

Exactly. They seem to have a largely laisez-faire approach to the forums in terms of features and moderation, and until they choose to be more hands on I don't see the user base growing much. And if it did grow, it would not be healthy growth.

What do you mean by "hands on" what do you want? what do you think the forum needs to grow?

This is not a toxic forum, I havent seen any comments that needed "moderation" what should that change?

Compared to somewhere like Reddit or Sally, we have a tiny userbase here and it is largely just the "regulars". New users for the most part pop in, throw their two cents out about some gripe and then are never seen again. Outside of announcement days, high traffic is when there are double digit amount of users on at the same time. If we are lucky there is one new thread created a day. Simply put, this is not a forum that requires constant moderator presence. And there absolutely are trolls, jerks, and toxic users, but they are kept in check because we the users keep them in check.

If this forum grows larger then it will require more resources: a better infrastructure capable of supporting more traffic and features, and more admins/mods to keep the site and people running smoothly.

Given what we publicly know about the RC doing all this with their own resources and without external financial support, I would think that it would be most advantageous to get a new RC member who has an online presence that can be officially integrated. This is the likeliest scenario anyway, since the most qualified candidate will be a Wizards employee like Gavin or Ken Nagle, or an established internet personality like Jason Alt, all of whom can bring with them resources that can bring the official EDH/Commander presence into the 21st century.

Ok, goofy light-hearted question for all the RC: what super secret tech card are you surprised is still flying under the radar?

If the RC did some sort of Kickstarter/crowdfunding effort for upgrading this place, people would throw buckets of money at you.

I know I am probably in the minority, but I like it the way it is. I don't care for extra knobs and whistles.

I like it too, but honestly it needs some minor work, probably to include:
- Some back end upgrades, to make sure site doesn't crash with ban-update-time traffic spikes
- More mobile-device-friendliness
- An updated color scheme (the blue on grey isn't the most reader friendly)
- Some actual content to the website part of the website, even if it's just links to other sites articles or some social media links

I suspect the RC probably has the skills to do this stuff, but they probably don't have the time. It wouldn't be too complicated or expensive to hire a web developer to do it, so a pretty small crowdfunded goal probably hires someone and pays hosting for the forseeable future.

I'd be disappointed if the forum went away entirely.

There are quite some sites that produce EDH content, and linking to that content is something the mothership does (poorly; come to think of it, maybe Wizards incorporating this website would be A Bad Thing). I wouldn't mind MORE content, but I don't see why this site should provide it.

I don't need anything else but a messaging board, but I can see how this one is technologically backward. That does not mean it has to migrate to a userdata harvesting lich like MTGS some other site.

Cryogen has a point that this community won't really grow without change. I have to admit that I think some growth is required to sustain this community. There are a lot of previously very active members that left (and sometimes they return, hi Kemev), and we get new spammers valued members in return. But not in large numbers. With a low influx you might end up with periods of no influx, and then it'll end up pretty empty.

What would help if this site has a clear role. That role should be rules and banlist discussion, I suppose. That is already happening here, so why not.

Wizards of the Coast definitely should not be trusted to adopt these messaging boards after they bafflingly decided to delete their own D&D and MtG forums in 2015. I didn't see much fuss about that from the MtG community, but those forums were very important to the online D&D community and nobody understood why they were deleting them.

No, I just meant bringing the technology of the website and forum into the 21st century.

The first part of this question is getting answered this week. I may at some point in the near future take on the second part.

Mobile support would be fantastic.
You do know there is a choice of board style under board preferences? I use minimal which is mostly white and easy on the eyes.