Old boards... what if...?

Discussion in 'THE TEMPLE' started by Garner, Sep 16, 2005.

  1. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    They've got a moderator. They appear to have a sudden rush of newbies.

    Juggicide and Dragonbiddy are doing their best to bend the ear of the mod.

    The mod has instated one of juggicide's requests, a way to report threads they want deleted. Dragonbiddy has told me flat out that she is deleting posts. Fatman has edited his posts so that he now appears to have been criticising us for being bullies from day one.

    History is going to be written by the victors.

    Juggicide and Dragonmother appear to be settling down to call the place home. swreader has announced she will be keeping an eye on the place.

    We had talked about what might happen if a new culture forms on those boards. What I think we forgot to consider is what if an old culture, one that was thrown in the trash ages ago, forms on those boards.

    The trolls will be the oldies, we will be the bullies, and if newbies believe it, they won't come here to visit.

    Well gang, that's the doom and gloom side of things. On the plus side, the moderator there has urged all posters, past and present, to speak up about issues pertaining to those boards.

    I urge that no one go posting on them. If you have anything to say about the situation, please email it to their moderator as politely as possible.

    It's probably too late to start now, but we should be above reproach.
  2. Maljonic Administrator

    I guess it'll be very tempting to stick up for ourselves, for some of us at least, but I don't see the point really; let them say and do what they want. It's actually very good for us too that they have a moderator; if anyone we suspect from the old board starts causing trouble here we have someone official to compare IPs with over at HC. :)

    P.S. they are talking about deleting stuff so some might want to get copies of stories etc, though it's very very unlikely they'll (HC) allow the moderator to get rid of stuff like that - there may be a few token deletions to keep the baboons happy but Harper Collins will never delete stuff en mass as long as they're keeping the board, it doesn't make any sense to do that and they can't afford to have lots of 404 errors (page not found) coming up in search results...
  3. Pixel New Member

    [quote:6cdfada4d5="Garner"]They've got a moderator. They appear to have a sudden rush of newbies.

    Juggicide and Dragonbiddy are doing their best to bend the ear of the mod.

    The mod has instated one of juggicide's requests, a way to report threads they want deleted. Dragonbiddy has told me flat out that she is deleting posts. Fatman has edited his posts so that he now appears to have been criticising us for being bullies from day one.

    History is going to be written by the victors.

    Juggicide and Dragonmother appear to be settling down to call the place home. swreader has announced she will be keeping an eye on the place.

    We had talked about what might happen if a new culture forms on those boards. What I think we forgot to consider is what if an old culture, one that was thrown in the trash ages ago, forms on those boards.

    The trolls will be the oldies, we will be the bullies, and if newbies believe it, they won't come here to visit.

    Well gang, that's the doom and gloom side of things. On the plus side, the moderator there has urged all posters, past and present, to speak up about issues pertaining to those boards.

    I urge that no one go posting on them. If you have anything to say about the situation, please email it to their moderator as politely as possible.

    It's probably too late to start now, but we should be above reproach.[/quote:6cdfada4d5]

    Yes, certainly no-one from the community should [i:6cdfada4d5]post[/i:6cdfada4d5] on the old board in response to the Moderator's invitation, but I had already begun to wonder if an e-mail to her would be a legitimate use of a loophole in our principles. I did think that there would be some justification for a polite e-mail asking her to consider certain points:

    1/ The fairly recent registrations of Juggears and Applestrudel, responsible for the quote-bomb attacks - OK they might be previous opponents under new names, but why would they bother?

    2/ The destructive tactics they employed, which denied use of the board not just to the "bullies" they were trying to get at, but to everybody else as well.

    3/ The number of established posters who have migrated to this board*, as against the number of them who have stayed there - also the number who have not come here but have also said that they are unlikely to go back there because they are not comfortable with the current posters.

    4/ Is it a good idea for a moderator to pay attention to the demands of posters who are proven to have used "terrorist" tactics to get their way?

    * Since the attacks were apparrently aimed at a few "bullies", but so many of us have come here as well, maybe this place should be called "The Unseen [i:6cdfada4d5]Masochists'[/i:6cdfada4d5] Board? :)
  4. Tephlon Active Member

    Pixel: I'd say e-mail her if you feel like it.
    Keep it polite. (I know you will)

    I won't e-mail but it makes me sad to see that threads that may have ended in flamewars but had good content before will most likely be deleted.

    Poor girl.
  5. Pixel New Member

    [quote:f3ddb41a4a="Tephlon"]Pixel: I'd say e-mail her if you feel like it.
    Keep it polite. (I know you will)

    I won't e-mail but it makes me sad to see that threads that may have ended in flamewars but had good content before will most likely be deleted.

    Poor girl.[/quote:f3ddb41a4a]

    This was one of the things discussed before the move - would we lose our history? If threads are going to be deleted, it looks like we will. However, why should we? The new rulers over there have already started new threads duplicating our old topics - they do not have to access the ones they find offensive.

    (Yes I do still read the old board - it's rather like a bad road accident - you don't want to look, but you can't help yourself!)
  6. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    At least three people from here have emailed the new moderator. Those emails were all polite and fairly level headed, I think.

    I see nothing wrong with emailing this Anna woman, i dont think that's against our 'rules'.

    Anyway, bad accidents aside, the real reason I started this thread was a question I forgot to properly ask...

    If a new culture springs up, but folks like dragonbiddy and juggicide are part of it, I think we should say it's still not safe to go back to post on the old site. Anyone see anythign wrong with that?
  7. chrisjordan New Member

    I was under the impression that the move to .org was permanent. Wasn't it?
  8. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    well, I certainly intended to treat it as such, but there was talk about going back to visit the old boards once a new community had formed.

    This became an important issue when some people wanted to argue about it after they got scolded for trying to post on both.

    the general attitude was one of 'MAYBE later we could return, but no posting there for now.' i'm thinking that there aint no maybe about it anymore.
  9. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    by the way... CJ? that milk carton is SERRIOUSLY starting to creep me out
  10. Pixel New Member

    [quote:95ba0c54c6="Garner"]well, I certainly intended to treat it as such, but there was talk about going back to visit the old boards once a new community had formed.

    This became an important issue when some people wanted to argue about it after they got scolded for trying to post on both.

    the general attitude was one of 'MAYBE later we could return, but no posting there for now.' i'm thinking that there aint no maybe about it anymore.[/quote:95ba0c54c6]

    I'm not sure what you mean by "aint no maybe about it anymore" - do you mean that later we [i:95ba0c54c6]could[/i:95ba0c54c6] return, or that we [i:95ba0c54c6]couldn't[/i:95ba0c54c6]? I am in favour of couldn't - the only reasons that I would like to email the moderator are to protect our history should we wish to use links to it (which was regularly stated as an option during the original discussions about moving), and to try to avoid leaving a totally open platform for the wreckers over there to discourage newbits from coming here.
  11. chrisjordan New Member

    Good. :)
  12. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    Pixel, I'm saying that since our reasons for leaving were the various incarnations of stroopwaffle and juggicide. If they're going to stay and be semi-scantioned by the moderator, then we can never go back.

    However, the moderator has asked ALL posters to speak up, so if you want to email her, email her. I'd also say that if anyone feels they MUST post publicly over there, this is a special circumstance. I'm not encouraging it, but if it's just one post, and if it isn't inflamatory, i won't say it's a problem. I'd prefer if anyone who felt the need just emailed Anna instead.

    Now, I can see that they've already linked to this thread from the old boards, and raised a few issues that bear commenting on for anyone who follows the link to visit us:

    1) What does a moderator do if you don't have rules? Nothing. You have anarchy with a castrated official watching it from above. I certainly hope that Anna does more than just delete spam, but the important thing for the old boards is that the newbies who're already showing up there get to talk about Thud. NOT 'bullies' and 'Dragonmother's daughter' and the like. They already destroyed our old home, and now they're poised to destroy a wonderful source of advertisement for pratchett.

    Funny, and they say *I'm* not the fan?

    2) After dragonmother made her second post about that old fight she lost, I PM'd her to ask her to keep it off those boards because newbies are going to be scared off by it. lord knows I would be. She's not quoting me fully, but why should she? I offered, for the third or fourth time, to give her a venue for her ranting, and once again she's spurned it. She wants a public audience to try and sway... I feel sorry for people who find that place after they read Thud.
  13. Saccharissa Stitcher

    Anna is not paid for patrolling the old site and HC doesn't want the archives lost. So I doubt there will be any loss of history.

    Second, I would like to give the newbies the benefit of the doubt. They will come into a board that was abandoned by an entire thriving community, our posts are quoting the offenders and cannot be deleted by them, no matter how much they would wish to AND we had been very vocal in our protests when posts were deleted. I think that they will realise with what kind of people they are dealing with and that time Dragonmother and Stuppenwhatever will not be able to justify the hostility directed towards them by blaming Garner.

    All in all, I am against going back to the old board. Yes, the waters have receded, but the air is still putrid.
  14. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    Juggicide and stroopwaffle have ignored the moderator's request not to post about us anymore, and Shaman has brought this up again as well.

    On the one hand, it will be best for the old boards if they finally shut up, but *we* know that they invent provokation and justification for their vendetta against me so if they ARE forced to clam up for the good of the community they were 'rescuing', I'm sure we're going to see them register more accounts over here.

    Who knows.

    I was thinking about something Dragonmother said in a PM though, how she only goes to message boards 'for friendship'... Given that she last came to us for 'friendship' when she was looking for a cure for writer's block, I'd have guessed that it's only a matter of time before she comes here. But, she's turned that option down.

    It *is* possible that they're going to leave us alone and just try to bait us into posting on the old boards. I mean, Juggicide did claim to be posting over here in disguise, but if he has he's been behaving himself and proving our point that he COULD have fit in all along if he'd tried. Most likely, he just said that to make us paranoid.

    Watch this space, I suppose.
  15. Garner Great God and Founding Father

    Some of the people who've emailed the moderator have received an acknowledgement promising a full reply once some policy issues are sorted out with Harper Collins.

    Who knows what the future holds, gang. Back up anything you want saved.

    In the unlikely event that the old boards are properly fumigated from pests, I expect there'll be some people who might want to go back to the old site. I personally can't see wanting to go back, but if it does happen, we need to keep in mind that they won't be 'boardania' anymore anyway.

    Just a thougth.

Share This Page