Censorship leads to people secretly questioning the authority behind closed doors. Banning any mention will only turn all the pro-ROM people against us! Landorus isn't going to come to power again, not with the current system. The only reason that it happened last time was because the club, as well as shiny hunting in general, went through a Dark Era in which all co-owners left at the same time, leaving a vacuum of power. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that not only were the co-owners gone, but everyone was gone. Everyone. Like, there wasn't a single member of the club for ~8 months. From April 2010-March 2011, the club was essentially dead. It did in fact die and was legally ineligible from being posted in, but Chr. Draco broke a few rules on the club's behalf and single-handedly raised it from the dead. Without him, there would be no SHC today. And if you go back to May-November 2010, the entire spectrum of the club was literally Fufu and some new member wanting to join. For pretty much the whole year, every single post was by someone who came to just say they wanted to join and then never post again, with Fufu posting between them to keep the club alive. Those are two great heroes of the SHC history, and in the far future, they will be remembered as the two who kept the club alive. Without them, Landorus wouldn't even have a club over which to become an evil dictator. But Landorus got the economy back on track and started attracting members, and he started the club on an upward slope to get it where it is today. But the only reason he was able to come to power was because the club had fully died and was hanging on by a tiny thread. The thread even broke!! We're really lucky that Chr. Drace duct taped it back together, and that there weren't any mods back then who saw what he was doing!!
As long as we have a co-owner, the club will be fine. There was no owner from October 2004-March 2011, and those 7 years have the highest average awesomeness out of any 7-year span throughout the SHC's entire history. Clearly, the co-owners and the members are the two most important dynamics of the club. If ever there are 90 (ninety) consecutive days in which no co-owner, owner, or FOUNDER posts, you are hereby granted interim co-ownership. You can use this VM as proof, and you will be the emergency plan to ensure the SHC never dies. May we always have a co-owner!
But really, the probability of a 90 day period in which Latios Master, LDD, MM, and Yami are all inactive is practically neglibile. Latios Master hasn't gone 90 days without posting since his triumphant return over a year ago, and I fully expect the club to be in excellent hands for a very, very long time. :)
Yes, ROMs are bad and illegal and we have nothing to do with them. But if somebody wants to shiny hunt, they're allowed to post in the Club. None of their shinies will count for official contests, races, or cards, but we can't stop them from posting about hunting shinies. We don't endorse what they're doing, but the last time we had a battle about ROMs it led to a crazy power surge where I got demoted (so I personally understand the repercussions of this), the #1 ranked shiny hunter of all time left the club, and every active member of the club was made co-owner (!!). Things really get crazy when people start talking about ROMs!
Landorus had the entire tainted epoch deleted, so if you see a string of about 20 deleted posts in a row and wonder why there is no mention in the SHC history archives of my shiny Abra, you'll know why. :) But repression is bad, and silencing people who disagree with you is never a good way to solve problems. If your stance really is right (like we are, in this case, by saying ROMs are illegal), then there's nothing to worry about. We calmly explain our position if pressed and allow the dissenters to have their voices heard. Making them resort to other means to express themselves practically forces them to cause an underground rebellion against us, which would be bad. :cer_wink:
The entire debacle was deleted last time, but I took a screenshot of all the posts, so I still have the "Forbidden Section" of the SHC archives. I could show you if you wanted, but you would have to pass many tests to prove your worth... ;)
