MTGnews, or MTGNews, is a Magic: The Gathering website and forum, known as the main source for the Magic: The Gathering online community of "spoilers"--the contents of new sets of cards prior to being publicly released.

History

MTGnews.com, a Magic: The Gathering website, was founded by Ray "DG" Yu in 1998. It grew out of DG's personal site, Land of Destoguardiana, and eventually became part of the CCGnews network and grew to include a larger staff. In 2001, the popular forums switched to vBulletin software, which has been used ever since.

DG became increasingly inaccessible and remote to the staff after the installation of the new forums software and after several months the forums increasingly ran themselves. In 2002, Ray Yu was involved in a motor accident, which kept him from accessing the site for several months, but this was hardly the first time he had been absent for an extended period, although this notable for its length. DG got his friend Night Dakkon to help administrate and develop the site until he returned. However, after a period of activity he resumed his pattern of becoming less involved in the site, in order to work and pursue a masters degree in computer science. Various volunteer moderators and staff members began to exercise more influence on the website, including for the first time access to actually editting files and making programming changes on the site.

In early 2004, DG posted on the main page of the website stating that he would be closing the website after one month, although he would allow the transfer of the forums to another site chosen by the community. Almost immediately, a group of members headed by moderators JeffVondruska and rancored_elf set up a PayPal account for donations towards maintaining and establishing a new site in the event that the community moved. However, soon after, DG changed his mind, and sold the entire site to Greg Woodruff ("Raa") of FindMagicCards.com.

On January 1, 2005, much of the forum staff resigned from their positions, in protest of Raa's inaction in improving basic website features. A message was posted on their news board on the first hour of the new year by a prominent moderator, rancored_elf, stating that he and a large portion of the other moderators were leaving the site, giving as the reason for their departure the inactive nature of the owner and use of what once was a great community as a stagnating advertising vehicle. Within hours, Scott Gerhardt, "Subterranean Spirit," an administrator chosen by Raa to help run the site, deleted rancored_elf's post and shut down the forums for 8 hours. The forums had returned, but they were being run in a fashion that was deemed by many to be the opposite of what MTGnews had represented only a day before. Posts mentioning rancored_elf's departure, trying to repost his deleted message, or advertising for "MTG Salvation", a sort of MTGnews refugee camp, were deleted, and the posters usually banned. A vicious cycle developed of posts being deleted, people complaining about Subterranean_Spirit's heavy-handedness in the situation, and those posts being deleted as well. For a short while, the word "salvation" was put on auto-censor, though it was later removed.

On January 6, Subterranean Spirit was removed from his position of site administrator, to applause from the community. Users carelessly banned will have had their accounts returned, and Raa made promises to return the traditional ban/suspension policy, create a system whereby banned users can contact moderators, and has freed users to speak as they please again. These actions have also been met with praise, although it will remain unclear for some time if MTGnews will continue to be perhaps the most prominent internet community in the Magic: The Gathering world.

Since the incident, the site has lost much of its former traffic, including its main draw of Magic: The Gathering rumors, to MTG Salvation, but the site is rebuilding and there is certainly no end in sight for this paragon of Magic forums.

External Links

MTGnews.com

MTGnews Forums