I have a buddy that is still active on mafiascum and I don't think there's a single other person in my life who gets web forums. But as someone deeply in design and tech and all the bullshit people like me have done to the internet, I think I'd break if these actual open forum spaces weren't still around.
Just all these fuckers with investment money learned that people talking and sharing online are valuable so they all walled off some private gardens and closed off apps and they do everything they can to kill links from their domain to the outside internet.
Thank you guys for all that you do and for the transparency. I lurk 99% of my time on here but I’m sure there are others like me who don’t post much but are still active here, just appreciating the discussions from the community. It really is a special place and I rely on it as a source of information for various topics that I trust to be accurate because this is a community that holds the truth to be sacred. As the years go by I find that reverence for facts to be harder to find online and, sadly, offline as well. Also the occasional chuckle is a bonus.
Also, the cultural anthropologist in me really wants to archive the posts we've had. There's inherent value in keeping our progress as a community and subculture, and we will miss it if it's gone. Contemporary scholars are bemoaning the decay of things on the internet (hosted images, broken links, etc). I'm not saying archaeologists are going to be datamining us in a thousand years, but there are some good effortposts and jokes and things of cultural importance, even if they're just for us
It would take a good amount of digging and some luck that the hardware ain't failed, but somewhere I have a mysql dump of the original phorum. The one that looked like this:
I would normally think that with the Internet Archive it would be enough, but these past few weeks...
* gestures *
( < . . .
+15
RamiusJoined: July 19, 2000Administrator, ClubPAadmin
I grabbed that screenshot off the IA, but it doesn't have content for every post in the threads.
To be clear: Jerry is a good dude, and I can't say I fully blame PA for deciding that they can't keep providing financial support to keep a forum completely divorced from their brand going forever.
It was always a question of when the value of the forums on the balance sheet ended up going in the wrong direction, and however disappointed I may be, it's hard to debate that they've already provided plenty of material support to this place, even past the point where forums were eclipsed by Discord, Twitter, or even Facebook.
I just find the coincidental timing of these events... "funny" isn't exactly the right word, but it's the closest one I've got.
Everyone just start up a .plan file where you obliquely talk trash about whichever forumers you have beef with, pretty much a 1:1 replacement for the forums.
I have concepts of a .plan file
Also, language, but how about A G-dam Separate Forum
We should just pick a YouTube video and talk to each other in the comments section of that.
Or grab a shitty game's Steam Forum and just use that under the radar. Bonus points if the company already went under.
( < . . .
+5
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
Hey, I don't know what's needed (or will be needed) going forward, but it occurred to me that migration might need extra shoulderwork other than just financial at certain points.
I know and respect the talent and skill the mod team have, but if there's stuff volunteers can shoulder without being also weighed down by the responsibilities of, you know, active social moderation on top of a bunch of upheaval and change.. the mod team already does a lot, and I really value the difference active sensible moderation brings to a community. I don't want you to feel thin and stretched trying to juggle everyday BAU moderation responsibilities on top of an active migration planning and end up suffering needless stress from additional load.
If there's migration work that can be offloaded to a pool of volunteers, well, I don't know what I could do (or even if there's any tasks that fit the bill) but yeah, I'll put my hand up to see if I can help out in useful ways.
Well, got into a program that will help me get training on IT stuff. Don't know if I'll have the skills to be of any use, by the time the migration happens, I figure probably want to do that 1-3 months before thing shut down; especially, if we're looking at most of December and part of November as dead time. Anyways, if I happen to learn enough stuff to be of use between now and then, I'd be willing to help out with getting things setup, should extra man power be needed. Though that would be all I'd want to do because I'm have zero interest in dealing with moderation stuff; especially, when it's volunteer basis.
Part of me also wonders if the separation might help with getting new blood. Penny Arcade has kind of gotten a stigma in parts of the internet. Also wouldn't surprise me if some people that could do well here, that are looking for the forum feel, just passed the board up because they'd assume that people would make plenty of references to a web comic that doesn't interest them. I don't think we really lose out on anyone worthwhile as far as content goes, as being part of the Penny Arcade corporation hasn't resulted in us not being able to touch worthwhile topics that the community wants to talk about. Regardless of whether or not the concept of forums makes a come back, I'd agree that chances are pretty good that the forum eventually fades into obscurity because young people tend to want to make their own tree house, rather than take over the care of an old tree house that old farts built back int he day.
Like half of us hate each other so us all migrating to separate environments where we don't have to deal with each other ever again seems like a silver lining.
I actually want to say, as someone who butts heads with you a lot, I don’t hate you. I might vehemently disagree with a lot of people in some political threads, but that’s never really turned into animosity or hatred of the people themselves. I also wouldn’t be the person I am today without these forums and the ability to be exposed to disparate beliefs and ideas. So like, I think a lot would be lost if people scattered to the winds.
Also, outside of the politics threads, shit ain’t that contentious at all. I’ve talked movies, tv shows, and video games with lots of people I also debate politics with here.
i thought the day would come unexpectedly and the forums would just blow away in the wind.. so getting over a years notice is actually pretty good all things considered?
how would archiving potentially work? Would it be everything? everything past a certain year? just specific subforums that people pick or what
because sad as it is theres a lot of stuff thats already lost forever thanks to photobucket nd etc type sites dying
Look at this darling creature. Don’t you want to see this inlined so you can watch them while you scroll through a thread instead of having to click out to see them?
Much less of “drop a tweet and walk away” in discussions.
Guess it might be nice for media, but that’s a price I pay gladly.
I am pretty sure the only place where it was a “problem” stopped having it as one because it literally banned doing that, not because the feature broke and no one fixed it.
Like we have YouTube embeds too but it seems ridiculous to say “you know what’d improve the forum? If we broke YouTube embeds so no one can just drop a YouTube video in and walk away.”
It’s silly and just creates more work to make a post to share images and video (the latter of which you can’t do at all under the current software glitch unless you go, rip the video, rehost it to YouTube, then link that as an embed) from elsewhere to solve a non-problem.
Unless embeds are somehow storing their content to the forum server as well, that’s another issue that’s created by breaking what became a standard feature in forum software. I’ve lost track of how many images I’ve had to rehost to the board’s storage because I can’t depend on the embed function doing its specific function, which arguably puts further strain on the board because over time those images add up when you’re talking relatively high res images.
This always felt like one of those “I don’t like Twitter and don’t want to see it” things rather than something that actually improved user experience or made things better.
EDIT: to say nothing of the fact sometimes you don’t need to add a giant explainer of something. If in the Gunpla and modeling thread you want to drop Bandai hobby’s tweets announcing upcoming kits, or post someone’s custom work, etc, there’s not really a reason to have to explain it when the official announcement or the modeler’s own tweet does it already. The thing to talk about is the commentary on the models in question, not “now go spent twenty minutes during an announcement event saving images, copying links and text from the tweets, and making sure you’ve posted and coordinated everything in the right order!”
Maybe for your use case you don’t need things to embed, but other people might so they don’t have to spent all that time recreating a preexisting message because the forum broke and never got fixed
EDIT: another example was the Tokusatsu thread; there was largely no way to share trailers for Toei’s new adaptation of Wing-Man because they just… didn’t put those trailers on YouTube, so Twitter is the only place you can see the trailer for this show. Or for certain Toei Tokusatsu Fan Club releases where yeah They’ll throw a trailer on YouTube in addition to Twitter, but they region lock the YouTube video because that’s just Toei being Toei. So this aspect of the community can’t share the things our thread is about, because Twitter is the primary means of releasing information from the companies that make the shit we like
So instead of spending time trying to talk about the things you want to talk about, you’re spending time creating a redundant, arguably hobbled, recreation of this mass communication release that already exists. It didn’t add anything to the conversation, it just made more work for anyone trying to have it. A fundamental degradation in user experience at both system level and community level
Contrary to some (if not most people here), I didn't see the writing on the wall in the past few years. So this is kind of a bummer for me. This forum is my main online space and has been for over 17 years now (registered in 2007). I visit daily, multiple times. I really hope we can keep this going in some form in 2026.
I don't have any technical skills to help out, but I can and will definitely chip in some money to keep things running.
I'd like to point out that AWS S3 is comparatively cheap for asset hosting and has a very good API. Every cloud service that allows file hosting is almost certainly just selling S3 integration with a markup. I don't think we need to migrate 20 years of content assets but a rolling window of the last X years might be viable. If we go pure off-site hosting via imgur or something it's gonna be awful. Worse user experience, worse performance, higher risk of enshittification and API/ownership fuckery.
+2
CaptainBeyondI've been out walkingRegistered Userregular
We just open a jira and put in new threads as new jiras and add comments there
Thanks, I hate it
We can put that in a spike for next sprint
Actually we're going to need to capitalize this work under a new project. Can you put in a DMND record in ServiceNow so the RDM team can go over it in next month's SoS meeting?
Posts
Just all these fuckers with investment money learned that people talking and sharing online are valuable so they all walled off some private gardens and closed off apps and they do everything they can to kill links from their domain to the outside internet.
I would normally think that with the Internet Archive it would be enough, but these past few weeks...
* gestures *
We can put that in a spike for next sprint
https://youtu.be/O7tiIWIm8Ys?si=kXUP6zuDunJNURGc
How about we open a confluence page to track your issues with Jira? I'll track your concerns in Jama, and then we'll sync over Slack to resolve them.
Look, if we have to pick one thing from the forums to guide us into the future by remembering the past...
I echo all thanks to any be brave souls trying to keep this ship sailing and would definitely pitch in financially.
Do not plan the migration for the holiday period 2025. It's all run on volunteers. Either target 1 november or something like 31/01/2026.
I have concepts of a .plan file
Also, language, but how about A G-dam Separate Forum
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Not exactly a shock, in 2024, but still. 💀
Or grab a shitty game's Steam Forum and just use that under the radar. Bonus points if the company already went under.
I know and respect the talent and skill the mod team have, but if there's stuff volunteers can shoulder without being also weighed down by the responsibilities of, you know, active social moderation on top of a bunch of upheaval and change.. the mod team already does a lot, and I really value the difference active sensible moderation brings to a community. I don't want you to feel thin and stretched trying to juggle everyday BAU moderation responsibilities on top of an active migration planning and end up suffering needless stress from additional load.
If there's migration work that can be offloaded to a pool of volunteers, well, I don't know what I could do (or even if there's any tasks that fit the bill) but yeah, I'll put my hand up to see if I can help out in useful ways.
Don’t forget to add the wheels!
Part of me also wonders if the separation might help with getting new blood. Penny Arcade has kind of gotten a stigma in parts of the internet. Also wouldn't surprise me if some people that could do well here, that are looking for the forum feel, just passed the board up because they'd assume that people would make plenty of references to a web comic that doesn't interest them. I don't think we really lose out on anyone worthwhile as far as content goes, as being part of the Penny Arcade corporation hasn't resulted in us not being able to touch worthwhile topics that the community wants to talk about. Regardless of whether or not the concept of forums makes a come back, I'd agree that chances are pretty good that the forum eventually fades into obscurity because young people tend to want to make their own tree house, rather than take over the care of an old tree house that old farts built back int he day.
I actually want to say, as someone who butts heads with you a lot, I don’t hate you. I might vehemently disagree with a lot of people in some political threads, but that’s never really turned into animosity or hatred of the people themselves. I also wouldn’t be the person I am today without these forums and the ability to be exposed to disparate beliefs and ideas. So like, I think a lot would be lost if people scattered to the winds.
Also, outside of the politics threads, shit ain’t that contentious at all. I’ve talked movies, tv shows, and video games with lots of people I also debate politics with here.
how would archiving potentially work? Would it be everything? everything past a certain year? just specific subforums that people pick or what
because sad as it is theres a lot of stuff thats already lost forever thanks to photobucket nd etc type sites dying
Because look at this
Look at this darling creature. Don’t you want to see this inlined so you can watch them while you scroll through a thread instead of having to click out to see them?
Cute widdle sleepybear friend shaped friend?
I am pretty sure the only place where it was a “problem” stopped having it as one because it literally banned doing that, not because the feature broke and no one fixed it.
Like we have YouTube embeds too but it seems ridiculous to say “you know what’d improve the forum? If we broke YouTube embeds so no one can just drop a YouTube video in and walk away.”
It’s silly and just creates more work to make a post to share images and video (the latter of which you can’t do at all under the current software glitch unless you go, rip the video, rehost it to YouTube, then link that as an embed) from elsewhere to solve a non-problem.
Unless embeds are somehow storing their content to the forum server as well, that’s another issue that’s created by breaking what became a standard feature in forum software. I’ve lost track of how many images I’ve had to rehost to the board’s storage because I can’t depend on the embed function doing its specific function, which arguably puts further strain on the board because over time those images add up when you’re talking relatively high res images.
This always felt like one of those “I don’t like Twitter and don’t want to see it” things rather than something that actually improved user experience or made things better.
EDIT: to say nothing of the fact sometimes you don’t need to add a giant explainer of something. If in the Gunpla and modeling thread you want to drop Bandai hobby’s tweets announcing upcoming kits, or post someone’s custom work, etc, there’s not really a reason to have to explain it when the official announcement or the modeler’s own tweet does it already. The thing to talk about is the commentary on the models in question, not “now go spent twenty minutes during an announcement event saving images, copying links and text from the tweets, and making sure you’ve posted and coordinated everything in the right order!”
Maybe for your use case you don’t need things to embed, but other people might so they don’t have to spent all that time recreating a preexisting message because the forum broke and never got fixed
EDIT: another example was the Tokusatsu thread; there was largely no way to share trailers for Toei’s new adaptation of Wing-Man because they just… didn’t put those trailers on YouTube, so Twitter is the only place you can see the trailer for this show. Or for certain Toei Tokusatsu Fan Club releases where yeah They’ll throw a trailer on YouTube in addition to Twitter, but they region lock the YouTube video because that’s just Toei being Toei. So this aspect of the community can’t share the things our thread is about, because Twitter is the primary means of releasing information from the companies that make the shit we like
So instead of spending time trying to talk about the things you want to talk about, you’re spending time creating a redundant, arguably hobbled, recreation of this mass communication release that already exists. It didn’t add anything to the conversation, it just made more work for anyone trying to have it. A fundamental degradation in user experience at both system level and community level
I have spurts of active posting but I am always lurking, reading, reacting. I love it here and there is no place like it.
TLO or Deune?
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
I don't have any technical skills to help out, but I can and will definitely chip in some money to keep things running.
Dreaded Continuity: The Forum
Resetera but better-a
But seriously, you’re gonna stick around to see the new boards.
I can provide childcare while the adults work!