Why do you all insist on leaving?
I'm sorry, but I am growing tired of all of the people saying their goodbyes. You think that you are hurting the owners of spanishdict.com, but you are not. You are hurting those of us who really need you. I mean, you are all leaving basically because you want to show that you feel unappreciated and used. But the ones who really matter appreciate you, and we count on your support.
I hate to say this, but now I feel unappreciated and used by the ones of you who are leaving. I have worked my heart out trying to learn Spanish, and this is the appreciation that I get from each of you?!? The users of this site are the ones that keep it going. And now many are bailing out in support of those that have a beef with management. Well, that's really telling them, isn't it. No, it's really telling the users that you have helped that you don't care about them (us).
I don't mean to be cruel or make any enemies. I just felt that I had to speak my mind. I mean, what can it hurt now? Right?
14 Answers
KD, you just don't get it do you. People aren't bailing to protest the management. No one is trying to force a hand or to demonstrate how unappreciated we feel. Have you ever left a job or anything that you felt wasn't working out for you? Did anyone get on your case for deserting them? People are free to come and go. How often in life have you told someone "if you don't like it here then leave", well, we're leaving. Right now I don't give a **** how the management feels or deals with the situation, it is no longer a concern of mine and I like it that way. Now, as far as how the users feel, you included, I do feel bad which is why many of us have already made our outside contacts firm but as a few others have said, life goes on so if you are happy with the site then stick with it, maybe it will come around but without Heidita keeping things going the way they were it just doesn't interest me anymore.
Sincerely, Gary
There are people who need help on lots of sites, I stayed here because I loved the atmosphere and I had friends here. If you read a book called "Tribal Leadership" you'll see we had a level 5 tribe, which is really unusual in real life and unheard of on the internet. There is nothing to keep me here. If I want to help people and learn Spanish I can go to wordreference and lenguajero.
I'm sorry you feel used by people who spent their free time - thousands of hours - answering your questions and helping you learn and creating activities for you and others.
It's funny how if you are nice to someone enough they start to feel entitled to it and when for some reason you have to stop they actually get angry at you, as if you were their slave. I'm not obligated to stay in a place when I don't feel happy there, no one is.
Excuse me? Have I understood you correctly? Those who are leaving are showing a lack of respect to you for all the effort you have made to learn?- I'm sorry, surely I have misunderstood.......because that just sounds plain selfish to me.
Actually those who of us who are moving on are leaving a clear trail for those who wish to follow,we are bailing out in a slow and orderly fashion trying to search for survivors! But this ship is useless without a rudder.( ie. without native Spanish speakers on board you might as well just use the computer translators here.....the problem is that doesn't show you how a native speaker would construct the sentence)
Kdrinning I think you are mistaken in your assessment and misreading the motives of most of the people who are saying their good-byes. It's true, a few people initially left because of a rift with management and a few more followed out of loyalty. But I don't believe that the motive for leaving is primarily revenge on the part of most, if any, of the defectors. Have you read this thread?
The abrupt launch of the new website made many people unhappy. The changes made were not seen as improvements, indeed, many users could no longer view or use the site with ease or find the features they had come to depend on. In fact, it seems to have been deliberately designed to attract a much younger crowd. The lack of communication on the part of management upset many people. The alienation and subsequent departure of a few key people alarmed many people, and rightfully so. The atmosphere here was becoming increasingly toxic and the fabric of the community was fraying. Even so, all was not lost.
But further developments have brought all these changes into focus, as management has eliminated all the moderator positions and has taken over the forum and posted "new" rules. This is no longer about any of those previous events, it's not even about Heidi. This is about a fundamental shift in the culture here, totally undermining a vibrant, organic, and very sociable community that (as Rabbit so eloquently put it) had sprung up under the nose of the site creators on the platform which they provided. It seems that this type of community is not at all what the owners have in mind, at least not anymore. Many folks feel about as welcome here now as an encampment of gypsies who have had the dogs set on them. Or maybe as welcome as a bunch of old-timers who are being forcibly evicted from their comfy but weather-beaten digs to make way for the bulldozers, as the landlord has figured out how much more money he could make by gentrifying the neighborhood to accommodate a very different sort of clientele. At least, that's the way it's looking from where I sit.
So you've been working your heart out to learn Spanish? And all those people who have been patiently teaching and mentoring you all this time for free have deserted you? Me too. Unfortunately, K, we need them a lot more than they need us. Obviously they found their role as mentors and teachers gratifying, but only within the context of the joyful, healthy, vital community setting which existed here before.... but no longer. I've seen people leave secure, well-paying jobs because management saw fit to make similar changes and the working environment became miserable and dreary. Why would volunteers stick around under such circumstances? I wish you well as you endeavor to learn Spanish. But I think you've also got a lot to learn about people and what motivates them.
I hate to say this, but now I feel unappreciated and used by the ones of you who are leaving. I have worked my heart out trying to learn Spanish, and this is the appreciation that I get from each of you?!? The users of this site are the ones that keep it going. And now many are bailing out in support of those that have a beef with management. Well, that's really telling them, isn't it. No, it's really telling the users that you have helped that you don't care about them (us).
I agree wholeheartedly with Gary. In fact, everyone who has left or who is planning on leaving is a "user" like yourself. To say that anyone who has left "doesn't care" about their own peers is ludicrous. Fellow members like Heidi and others have dedicated countless hours of their time and expertise in order to make this forum what it is. The word "sacrifice" just seems inadequate in describing kindnesses that have been shown by some of the amazing members of this forum. And the time and attention went far beyond Spanish/English. There are certain amazing SD members who have spent months comforting and encouraging other members who were very ill. Some have opened their own homes to others. Members who lost loved ones were embraced......all from members of this forum. Did any of them do it to impress the management? Absolutely not. But, the management has benefited from such sacrifices of time none the less. Are people leaving to "prove a point" so to speak? No. Some very gifted and wonderful people are leaving because they have enough self respect to know when they have consistently and repeatedly been treated unfairly. Most people will put up with a lot. But I think that any mature and self respecting person is entitled to move on when they realize that their talents and time are better used elsewhere.
I have worked my heart out trying to learn Spanish, and this is the appreciation that I get from each of you?!?
Hopefully, you are learning Spanish for the right reasons. I fail to see how any former or current members are indebted to show their appreciation to you. Do we encourage each other? Of course we do. If you are upset by everyone moving on, maybe you can carry on where others have left off. I must warn you: You will have very big shoes to fill. 
l'm leaving because l hate mess, and l hate seeing my friends being insulted, if all the good people leave then what would the forum be like? nothing but a bunch of questions about the differences between ser & estar!! l'm out for now and until things settle down, although l truly appreciated each minute l spent here and all the help l got here.
You make some great points, and I agree with them to a very large extent. See my "drama" post. I can't argue with any of them, and it's why I'm not leaving. I'm just waiting to see how the management here deals with their self-inflicted wound.
But I had a revelation a little while ago. I write software for a living for a company that I won't name but which has been in business for 175 years. You don't stay in business for 175 years by p*ssing off your customers. You become deeply involved with who they are, what they do, what they need, and what they want. The last two aren't always the same. If we make a mistake and our customers are unhappy, we pack our bags, book a flight, and stay in the field until the problem is fixed.
Then I realized that the users here don't pay the bills. The advertisers do. The management has absolutely no incentive to keep the users happy. Their customers have absolutely no interest in how the users feel about anything. They probably don't even know which web site is hosting their ads.
So the management here has been relying on the volunteer workers (forum members) to build their business to what it is, but they have no interest in listening to those workers. Then they dropped this bomb on the place, told the volunteer workers who built the place to take a hike, and they did.
Understandable. Sad. I've seen it before. I'm waiting to see what happens next.
I'm responding in part to Beatrice-Codder's answer above. Indeed there are more ways than a website to learn something. I use pretty much all the resources you mention and yet I still had a use for Spanishdict.com and kept coming back mainly and solely because of the wonderful, incredibly helpful and knowledgeable people who were active in the forum; some of whom are no longer here because of the way management has handled things lately.
I have friends who are native speakers who I can ask questions of but sometimes they don't know the answer either, or can only offer me a limited answer, or can only answer so far as it applies to the region of the Spanish-speaking world they came from. Or sometimes I don't want to bother them several times a day with language questions. In any case, I can post a question here and get an answer within hours, sometimes minutes.
I have found answers here that I couldn't find elsewhere in a scouring of google search or in my grammar books and such answers came from members that this site by its management decisions have managed to drive off. I completely sympathize with the members' decision to leave though am greatly saddened by it and judging by the response management has left, I can only surmise that they do not understand nor value the extent of the talent and dedication of the members they were so lucky to have drawn incidentally and at no cost to them.
In regards to the members who have left, does anyone know if they will be frequenting any other language forum elsewhere?
Do whatever you want. And so will everyone else. This is magical web space that floats around through the atmosphere. There are more ways than a website to learn something. You have become too dependent. Go find a long-haired dictionary so that you have something a little more tangible. Or just buy a book and some CDs. Call me old fashioned, but sometimes you need to throw your cellphone and computer in the closet and just go outside for a few days. It might make you feel better.
Kdrinning, you have received some excellent answers here.
People have explained that the heart and soul of what we valued here has been ripped away, leaving very little to offer. I just want you to know that I am not leaving to "punish" anyone...I've never been one of the "stars" here and I don't think that the management of SpanishDict cares a whit about where I go or what I do.
I am leaving because :
1) I won't support a business doesn't value it's own usership. This has already been explained in detail.
2) The questions (not to mention the answers) that have appeared on this site in the last 24 hours are not of interest to me. If this is a site that is going to limit itself to a beginner level, without a spectrum of native speakers to give authoritive answers to more advanced questions...then I have no reason to be here.
3) I valued the cameraderie and the support that we formerly experienced here. We pulled each other through the frustrations of learning a language and the frustrations of life. We celebrated and laughed and cried here. Since that fundamental quality that many of us valued so highly has been removed, I have no motivation to continue on the "new" Spanishdict.
So please understand, I don't want to hurt or punish anyone by leaving. In a way, it's not so much that I am leaving SpanishDict but that my own personal SpanishDict doesn't exist anymore.
If it ever resurfaces...I will be back!
I am taking more of a back seat and withdrawing so that the management can start to appreciate first hand/from personal experience all the hard work that goes into making a forum successful. and appreciate all that Heidi has done in making this the excellent forum that it has become!!! I am hoping that the more they have to work to answer the questions and to keep people happy the more they will come to realize her invaluable skills in motivating people to work together for the common good!
Many people have completely left in protest, partly becuase of the way that the management failed to show even the most basic respect to the previous moderators by communicating their planned intentions about the new beta website. The moderators could not tell us because they knew nothing about it until it had happened. They themselves told us that they had been kept in the dark! Apparently, the management could not even show the courtesy of letting some of the moderators know in advance that they were going to have their role taken from them. Many members also left because they were not kept informed for much of the time of the technical developments going on in the background and whether their feedback had been acknowledged and acted upon. The lack of 2 way communication failed to impress people like Gekkosan, who I think, left in disgust!
Then there were the technical problems that people consistently experienced. This new Beta version was like a Microsoft release: too premature and too rushed so that many of the problems had not been fixed before its release. The vast numbers of posts complaining about new and repeated technical problems bears testimony to that.
Most of all it was the lack of appreciation and courtesy shown to Heidi herself who has worked harder than all of us here to create a family atmosphere, in the forum. She has insisted on applying a strict code of rules so that the forum remains free of inappropriate material and so be suitable as a family friendly forum and she always has done this fairly! She has created countless learning threads and corrected each post herself which takes many hours with so many responses! This is probably just a small part of what she has done. Then, to be treated with such disrespect is like being kicked in the teeth and it was the last straw! She has too much self respect to continue unappreciated, since I understand her role has been completely voluntary for the last 4 years!
Now there may be other reasons besides these, since this is not an exhaustive summary of the reasons why many people have left! You may not agree with their resaons but hopefully you can understand and respect them 
I'm not understanding what is happening here... There is a problem with the adds? o.o
Is anyone in any doubt any longer why people are leaving and how it is affecting the site?
If you are then I am amazed.
Just have a look at the number of replies / answers on the "new" page versus the number of such on the "hot" page. The site is no where near as active as it was a week ago.
This site has lost it's lustre,now it is just another also ran site with not much to offer ,I think it will become very dreary unless the blood returns. Without the people who made this site what it was it has become insignificant ,unless the people return the wells will run dry the animals will die off and we will all be feeding on crap!!! Power to the people!.
