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An Update on DJ Eebs
Sterica
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
YesRegistered User, Moderator mod
Hello Everyone,
Some of our members have been asking where DJ Eebs is, as it has been noticed that he has not been present and posting to the forums as of late. The mod staff wanted to give him time to return in the event that he was dealing with a personal crisis demanding all his attention. However, we also want to keep in mind the needs of the community. Therefore, over the course of last few months, we started looking into things to figure out how to proceed.
The Question: Where is DJ Eebs?
The Answer: We have been informed that his responsibilities no longer include the administration of the forums. We don't know the circumstances of this change and the specifics are none of our business, but we know that he is alive and still employed by Penny Arcade.
Moving Forward: As far as we can tell, the site ownership does not intend to replace him or provide specific guidance for how to proceed, so the mod staff has decided to assume a council-type structure to make larger decisions for the time being rather than having a Penny Arcade-appointed administrator in charge. We do have Ramius, a previous admin, who still has the admin status and can assist with anything requiring admin level access to the forum controls. By splitting this work across the mod staff we hope to manage the load better.
Keep in mind that all of this can change the moment Penny Arcade decides that it will change, and we're still in the process of reaching out to the PA staff for more information. They have expressed that they do not want to be sent forum issues directly by users when they have almost no connection to the running of the forum beyond paying for the site hosting, so please let the moderator staff deal with discussing things with the Penny Arcade staff. We will provide you with definitive answers as soon as we have them.
Everyone likely has questions, so feel free to ask them and we will answer them to the best of our abilities.
Some of our members have been asking where DJ Eebs is, as it has been noticed that he has not been present and posting to the forums as of late. The mod staff wanted to give him time to return in the event that he was dealing with a personal crisis demanding all his attention. However, we also want to keep in mind the needs of the community. Therefore, over the course of last few months, we started looking into things to figure out how to proceed.
The Question: Where is DJ Eebs?
The Answer: We have been informed that his responsibilities no longer include the administration of the forums. We don't know the circumstances of this change and the specifics are none of our business, but we know that he is alive and still employed by Penny Arcade.
Moving Forward: As far as we can tell, the site ownership does not intend to replace him or provide specific guidance for how to proceed, so the mod staff has decided to assume a council-type structure to make larger decisions for the time being rather than having a Penny Arcade-appointed administrator in charge. We do have Ramius, a previous admin, who still has the admin status and can assist with anything requiring admin level access to the forum controls. By splitting this work across the mod staff we hope to manage the load better.
Keep in mind that all of this can change the moment Penny Arcade decides that it will change, and we're still in the process of reaching out to the PA staff for more information. They have expressed that they do not want to be sent forum issues directly by users when they have almost no connection to the running of the forum beyond paying for the site hosting, so please let the moderator staff deal with discussing things with the Penny Arcade staff. We will provide you with definitive answers as soon as we have them.
Everyone likely has questions, so feel free to ask them and we will answer them to the best of our abilities.
Sterica on
+21
Posts
In an ideal world? A year if we had concrete confirmation, so that people can make plans accordingly.
My observation: I feel like at some point a value proposition will have to be made about what this forum can be for PA. There's currently a bit of a revaluation of forums going on and I just really hope this place looks good in that movement. I think that seeing a webforum as a useful resource and easily searchable database is something to be proud of. We've got a lot of history here and I think that we appear in some deliciously obscure search queries with great information. If we can promote or enhance this usefulness, that could help with keeping this show on the road.
I was also wondering about as regular fans/audience?
Notice?
They're not republic serial villains, Tyn.
It expired thirty-five minutes ago.
Celeste [Switch] - She'll be wrestling with inner demons when she comes...
Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age [Switch] - Sit down and watch our game play itself
I’m not trying to stir anything up but I just…I dunno. It feels very weird to me.
it's super off-putting. that said, there have been a fair amount of threads in the past year that would have made me want to wash my hands of it too. Still would have been nice to mention. text or email takes all of 5 seconds
Otherwise, it seems that if we are reliant on someone who just used to be an admin and they forgot to take away the privileges etc, we are very much living under the knife here and it may be a better plan to start trying to rebuild our community 'in advance' in another location, such a private reddit or discord channel or wherever else text and chat can be had. A 'proactive' end to the forums may let us maintain more of our community than just waiting for the plug to get pulled, which it seems could just happen at any time.
I think it's just one of those "we have no good news, we have no plan, let's ponder how we approach this after we are done with everything else we are actually excited about" and then it was just forgotten. I don't read it as hostile, but neglectful. Which is not good! But easier to cope with for me!
There's ways to handle it, but it's definitely one of those minefield things balancing people who legitimately are propping a community up versus those who proceed to treat the community as their personal property.
Once upon a time I was briefly modding another biggish forum which ran into that; one of the better-off users effectively, and then explicitly, purchased exemption from the forum's rules and, let's just say, proceeded to behave accordingly when it came to airing their views.
It's not something I'd expect from people here - that situation was someone with a substantial amount of money doing that to a forum with a much younger userbase than this one - but it's definitely one of those scenarios that's stuck in my head ever since.
hasn't got me any special treatment yet!!
You don't get ads!
But, Penny Arcade no longer really seems to have any interest in the role of maintaining and running a forum. For now they are willing to keep the lights on, but, have already pulled back the 'officer' they left in charge. There seems no read of this which is not the precursor to, even in the most positive interpretation, an announcement in a few months that they are pulling the plug in X more months. Without someone 'at the helm', they have no control over us, but are still paying for us. We're nothing but a liability for them, from which it is hard to detach themselves. Our mods here do exceptional work, and our community is relatively benign, but, without a clear line of authority from Payer -> Admin -> Mods -> Users, our community here is always at risk.
Do we even know how 'much this costs'. Would we need to raise like, $100 a month, or $10000 a month? Its hard to get real estimates but, posts I've seen elsewhere indicate that ongoing server costs might be in the $10s of dollars a month range? With startup costs and 'bug fixing' being additional yearly expenses.
There's a discord!
Please do not attempt to organize another raid of Area 51.
They can't stop us all if we all activate our Naruto runs at the same time!!
Let him cook.
I believe someone that knew about Vanilla fairly in depth said quite a while back that we're paying them around $1,000 a month for our customized setup, where the basic service is now completely free and open source. Maybe this has changed since then, but it's the only time I saw a quote by someone with experience.