Wednesday 29 January 2014

The end of the line

It's been a long time since I last posted something here. I've been very busy doing other things, including building lots of other non-military models and nowadays I am a contributor to the Brothers Brick, the world's most popular LEGO-blog.

It was fun, but not lately

Now, I've also left the Lego Military Models flickr group. Magnus Lauglo, Chandler Parker and I started this group in July 2010to accompany this blog. It was fun. We organised build challenges and many of the on-line Lego community's best military builders joined our ranks. The group had a fantastic photopool and most of all, there were no arguments. Chandler, Magnus and I decided from the start that major decisions, such as banning people, would be taken jointly, by majority vote if necessary. In more than three years, we never had to do this and never banned anybody. Chandler left the Lego community a while ago and Magnus and I have been very busy lately. To add new life to the party, we added new admins late last year: Aleksander Stein, Justin Vaughn (Mainman), Andy Baumgart (D-Town Cracka ) and Dale Regan (Project Azazel, aka. PA). Unfortunately, things didn't work out as planned. A few weeks ago, several of us received messages from other flickr members whose pictures were being removed from Lego Military Models or who had been kicked out of the group. None of the other admins knew about this, but all of these guys had conflicts with PA. It has become clear that he is using his position as admin to fight personal vendettas behind our backs. We have told him that this is not right and we have offered to discuss this further, but to no avail. Andy stepped down last week, because he was fed up with this affair. All other admins, myself included, have subsequently asked PA to step down. He hasn't replied, except by once again kicking somebody out. I know there are plenty of military builders who think highly of PA. He is a good builder and he can be very friendly, but be aware: he absolutely cannot deal with people whose opinions differ from his own. I can't work with a fellow admin who I cannot trust and who cannot be reasoned with. It only takes one rotten apple. I wish Andy, Magnus, Aleksander and Justin all the best and like to thank them for our collaboration. I'd also like to thank the many excellent builders who are a part of LMM and the readers of this blog. It was fun while it lasted.