I was a frequent lurker at Max Jax but I never knew of the problems it had until I read this thread. I just liked it because there was actual discussion. Whereas in every other forum I've been to, it's just constant hating on MJ's family/friends, obsessing over the kids and drooling over his gold pants.
Quoting for emphasis.
MaxJax was one of the best places to discuss Michael's art (and music in general) and was full of brilliant, colourful personalities that were being systematically banned or marginalised to the detriment of the place - it was supposed to be a community, not a trigger-happy demagogy seeking to destroy dissenters.
There's much to be learned from those who may disagree with you.
Support and love for a community must be fuelled more by constructive criticism than ignorant head-nodding, in order to weed out problems and make it a better place. It's a shame how people seem more inclined to be defensive than deal objectively with such criticism but it takes a good leader to break the mold here.
I've personally always preferred MJJC, even before it became MJJC, because this was the first site where you could get all the info about Michael Jackson and his music. I've been long enough around to witness it and as a witness I am defending that position.
However, the scope here is not which site is better. If time after time people went off topic and drooled over golden pants, well that's fine too. Nobody got killed. In other words instead of banning and trashing people, the very people had their cool off periods instead of constantly locking the threads and banning people. The actual discussion took over after the cool off periods anyway. On top of that people befriended, laughed and shared good memories.
If we take a closer look at it, it is not a question of forum itself, but how it has been managed. So let's not compare forums and judge which one is better, but rather welcome all MJ forums and consider them as complementary. Which one is the best, that's something personal and pointless to debate. It's like debating which chocolate is the tastiest or which country is the best or which religion is the best... We, MJ fans, should be free to go to any forum we want without being systematically censored, silenced, speech castrated, unless we start insulting each other.
And the core issue, as far as I am concerned was that we had some founders considering themselves above thier own rules of the forum. This couldn't generate anything good but eventual implosion of the forum.
This is a good lesson not only for those founders but also an example not to follow in the future by anyone else. Forums with lots of devoted banned members can only lead to very bad publicity which spreads like a viral disease and lead to serious damage, and eventual death of the forum.
There aren't many solutions:
either the legal founder gives up, which is understandable
or he gets rid of those who dragged the forum into quagmire and restarts it, but with a new crew who will also respect the rules and won't be full of themselves.
