I joined in 2007 because I got selected for the Omegathon (curse you Halo 3!!!). Been here ever since. This has been the most consistently stable online place in my life for almost 20 years. I'll be here until the end and will follow to the next location until it's gone too. My money and my voice will do their part.
In my case, Fishman's Let's Play of the original X-COM led me here (specifically, to G&T, and then to the Steam thread) back in 2012. Several other things happened in my life that year (many not so good), so it holds particular significance for me.
A dozen years is still a pretty long time.
Commander Zoom on
+3
ToxI kill threadsDilige, et quod vis facRegistered Userregular
edited October 2024
I don't see any benefit in caring right now about hypothetical future new users on a hypothetical new forum.
That's so many steps down the line.
The odds are whatever system we migrate to will have built-in, out of the box, base level the ability to register new accounts.
That's already more than we're focused on right now, so anything past that should be a later decision
Tox on
maybe the real panopticon was the friends we made along the way
I joined in 2007 because I got selected for the Omegathon (curse you Halo 3!!!). Been here ever since. This has been the most consistently stable online place in my life for almost 20 years. I'll be here until the end and will follow to the next location until it's gone too. My money and my voice will do their part.
In my case, Fishman's Let's Play of the original X-COM led me here (specifically, to G&T, and then to the Steam thread) back in 2012. Several other things happened in my life that year (many not so good), so it holds particular significance for me.
A dozen years is still a pretty long time.
For me it was Synthetic Orange's LP of the original X-COM. Even then I'd already lurked for a few years prior. I think some of the people who bravely volunteered their namesake to that LP are still around...
Earl Grey on
0
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I still am very confused where these new members are going to be coming from. What unique selling point is a forum of a few hundred middle aged nerds going to have to attract people?
I still am very confused where these new members are going to be coming from. What unique selling point is a forum of a few hundred middle aged nerds going to have to attract people?
Free Commander decks?
A Fortnite ARG where the clues are scattered throughout the forums in our in-jokes and end with a unique emote.
I mean, the theory would be the focused discussion forums not being blocked off from the rest of the world for casual browsing would allow people to stumble in on topics that interest them via search. They can at the moment, but retention is definitely not encouraged with the current visibility setup.
Right now, if you go to the forums through a link without an account, you can view a topic, and even click out via breadcrumb to an otherwise hidden subforum, but as soon as you go top level of the forums themselves, you can't get back to what you were just reading without registering or backing up in the browser window and can't discover the other subforums at all.
I'm not surprised the forums are slowly hemorrhaging folks, if you land in top level it looks like it's SE and a myriad of dead PA related subforums. One might think it was a fluke they found a discussion on an otherwise abandoned subforum and move on. Arguably the most stable, focused forum in G&T has no public exposure at all to keep drawing people in.
I don't necessarily think that generating new traffic should be an extensive focus in the transition, but it's probably something to at least keep in mind if we are looking to continue to sustain this community past the next year or two.
the current setup has the majority of forum categories (including the big 3) hidden by default to non-logged in users
so even just moving to a setup where the random street traffic can see the lights are actually on and people are enjoying themselves inside will be a step in the right direction
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
the current setup has the majority of forum categories (including the big 3) hidden by default to non-logged in users
so even just moving to a setup where the random street traffic can see the lights are actually on and people are enjoying themselves inside will be a step in the right direction
I'm not sure the arguable benefits of making our entire forum and everything said in any part of it that isn't a private message.
And letting it all be indexed and scraped by whomever, AI training models, archives that persist forever, etc. Is worth the maybe handful of folk who might wander in on their own.
Maybe an Awesome public forum where (curated, but anomous best posts of the week) are shared for public consumption would be a lure for people to join themselves, and be a hell of a throwback to the old days, but I don't want my posts to be forever public.
+2
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
I still am very confused where these new members are going to be coming from. What unique selling point is a forum of a few hundred middle aged nerds going to have to attract people?
An entire subforum dedicated to 1990s Toyota vehicle maintenance and repair.
the current setup has the majority of forum categories (including the big 3) hidden by default to non-logged in users
so even just moving to a setup where the random street traffic can see the lights are actually on and people are enjoying themselves inside will be a step in the right direction
I'm not sure the arguable benefits of making our entire forum and everything said in any part of it that isn't a private message.
And letting it all be indexed and scraped by whomever, AI training models, archives that persist forever, etc. Is worth the maybe handful of folk who might wander in on their own.
Maybe an Awesome public forum where (curated, but anomous best posts of the week) are shared for public consumption would be a lure for people to join themselves, and be a hell of a throwback to the old days, but I don't want my posts to be forever public.
What about the people who you like but who don't like you?
Wtf who? Anyway, this is historically an indication that they're very attractive in some way, so they should probably be around.
Should these forums port over the Penny Arcade Comic subforum thing?
Sure, it'd be funny like the Swiss Guard.
PA getting rid of the PAX forums seems weird, but I haven't been to PAX since 2019, so I have no idea how popular it is anymore.
more popular than ever. and i would wager the vast majority of attendees not only do not know about the penny arcade forums, but dont even know what penny arcade itself even is.
With apologies to Dennis and other users who might be here primarily for Penny Arcade comic and newspost discussion, we are only in this situation because PA wants to actively sever all ties with this forum. I don't see why we couldn't discuss PA wherever we go next in the sense that we can discuss whatever people want to have conversations about, though I imagine it will not be the same as the current PA Hub subforum. But if you're looking for an official PA-supported discussion forum, this was it and they don't want it to exist anymore. We'd keep this forum around if we could, the decision has been made above the heads of everyone here by people who do not read these discussions or even really talk to us in the volunteer moderation staff.
+25
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
In much the same way, everyone here could just go use reddit to do all the same things we're doing here. But we all know why that's nonsensical.
A community isn't defined solely by its software. It's also defined by the people that frequent it. Much like how there's plenty of pubs, but then there's your local. If they were going to rip out all the pub booths in the pub you've been frequenting daily for decade plus, you could, in theory, just start going to a different pub. That has about the same appeal as using reddit.
the current setup has the majority of forum categories (including the big 3) hidden by default to non-logged in users
so even just moving to a setup where the random street traffic can see the lights are actually on and people are enjoying themselves inside will be a step in the right direction
I'm not sure the arguable benefits of making our entire forum and everything said in any part of it that isn't a private message.
And letting it all be indexed and scraped by whomever, AI training models, archives that persist forever, etc. Is worth the maybe handful of folk who might wander in on their own.
Maybe an Awesome public forum where (curated, but anomous best posts of the week) are shared for public consumption would be a lure for people to join themselves, and be a hell of a throwback to the old days, but I don't want my posts to be forever public.
tbh the joke would be on whatever ai training model scraped the forum. poison pill
In much the same way, everyone here could just go use reddit to do all the same things we're doing here. But we all know why that's nonsensical.
A community isn't defined solely by its software. It's also defined by the people that frequent it. Much like how there's plenty of pubs, but then there's your local. If they were going to rip out all the pub booths in the pub you've been frequenting daily for decade plus, you could, in theory, just start going to a different pub. That has about the same appeal as using reddit.
Apologies if I misunderstood what you were asking for, I skimmed. I certainly agree with everything you said here about reddit, and discord or some other not really a forum platform, it really isn't the same. I just am not sure what you want us to do differently since we have no power to make the PA hub space keep existing any more than we do to keep the other spaces here in existence. We are not trying to migrate by choice or because we think it's a good idea, but out of pure necessity of it being that or quietly disbanding.
The holiday forum always goes off without a hitch, so there's a precedence that it'll all smooth itself over one way or another.
I unironically enjoy the holiday forums, but hoooooo buddy, if they went on for literally 2 seconds longer than they do, there would be chaos. I mean, the fireworks usually start kicking off a few days into it, as-is.
I don't know what the solution is for the cultural clash situation that would actually appease everyone (insofar as a solution like that even exists), but I think jamming everyone together and saying "get along!" is probably not the best way to go about it.
I don't have that much time to follow most threads, and tend to stick to a few. So I was super suprised at how explosive the Holiday forums were. The new forums should have a "recap" functions, telling me personally why people are angry at each other.
I still don't know why the cat was banned, I always thought they were a mod, and then suddenly, gone. (edit: in the spirit of keeping this on topic, I don't particullary need to know either)
How would a "recap" function work, if not relying on genAI (eg, ChatGPT)?
I doubt the majority of our members would be comfortable with their posts fed into ChatGPT (above and beyond what gets scraped anyway by Google). And even if they were, large language genAI is currently in a loss-leader strategy. It's "free" because investors keep it afloat. Someday in the near future OpenAI et. al. will have to monetize and it'll turn into a monetary cost.
Yeah, in theory we have the banned and infraction thread for this, but it's an administrative burden that's hard on the mods.
(I'm basing that last part on the fact that most bans from it are missing, and half of them are a one sentence basically saying "banned for being an asshole" and that's fair enough, I guess.)
I don't know the right answer, but it's kind of impossible right now to follow these things unless you were a part of it, especially in chat-like threads.
And that doesn't feel right with a forum?
That's kinda going to be the nature of a forum this size. It's still big enough that there's no way to easily keep running histories about what's happened where.
If you go into your own profile there is a 'Moderation' tab that should show every warning / infraction you've received on your account, number of points, mod comments, and a link back to the offending post.
It's probably moot now and I doubt there were the resources to do so on Vanilla, but it seems like i t would be pretty easy to script sucking out a summary of that and posting that in the appropriate Infraction / Ban thread along with the update. Or at least give the mods a tool to let them easily copy that history.
I feel like the Moderation tab used to be visible on public profiles to everyone, but maybe I'm misremembering. Don't know if that's something too sensitive to post, but I think something like that would go a long way towards the transparency around bans and infractions some people have asked for.
Oh yeah... I just checked mine, and I received one warning for a "serious offense," and I'm not even sure what I did.
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
In much the same way, everyone here could just go use reddit to do all the same things we're doing here. But we all know why that's nonsensical.
A community isn't defined solely by its software. It's also defined by the people that frequent it. Much like how there's plenty of pubs, but then there's your local. If they were going to rip out all the pub booths in the pub you've been frequenting daily for decade plus, you could, in theory, just start going to a different pub. That has about the same appeal as using reddit.
Apologies if I misunderstood what you were asking for, I skimmed. I certainly agree with everything you said here about reddit, and discord or some other not really a forum platform, it really isn't the same. I just am not sure what you want us to do differently since we have no power to make the PA hub space keep existing any more than we do to keep the other spaces here in existence. We are not trying to migrate by choice or because we think it's a good idea, but out of pure necessity of it being that or quietly disbanding.
Basically, just be okay with us posting one new thread per PA comic+newspost, even if the replies are the usual 5-20. This could be in a specific Penny Arcade subforum to make it easy to find, but a more general one (Webcomics, Comics, Humor, etc.) isn't a big deal to me. That's really it. It's not a big ask. It costs nothing and it lets the community continue to exist.
Keeping the URL for PA Hub redirecting to it for as long as possible, with a warning to update your bookmarks would be a nice bonus.
Other people who are kind of mad at PA want to cram all talk of every PA comic and newspost into one thread, which I've been saying will probably kill the community.
+3
minor incidentpublicly subsidized!privately profitable!Registered User, Transition Teamregular
In much the same way, everyone here could just go use reddit to do all the same things we're doing here. But we all know why that's nonsensical.
A community isn't defined solely by its software. It's also defined by the people that frequent it. Much like how there's plenty of pubs, but then there's your local. If they were going to rip out all the pub booths in the pub you've been frequenting daily for decade plus, you could, in theory, just start going to a different pub. That has about the same appeal as using reddit.
Apologies if I misunderstood what you were asking for, I skimmed. I certainly agree with everything you said here about reddit, and discord or some other not really a forum platform, it really isn't the same. I just am not sure what you want us to do differently since we have no power to make the PA hub space keep existing any more than we do to keep the other spaces here in existence. We are not trying to migrate by choice or because we think it's a good idea, but out of pure necessity of it being that or quietly disbanding.
Basically, just be okay with us posting one new thread per PA comic+newspost, even if the replies are the usual 5-20. This could be in a specific Penny Arcade subforum to make it easy to find, but a more general one (Webcomics, Comics, Humor, etc.) isn't a big deal to me. That's really it. It's not a big ask. It costs nothing and it lets the community continue to exist.
Keeping the URL for PA Hub redirecting to it for as long as possible, with a warning to update your bookmarks would be a nice bonus.
Other people who are kind of mad at PA want to cram all talk of every PA comic and newspost into one thread, which I've been saying will probably kill the community.
To be clear, any URL redirection or messaging would be the sort of thing only the PA Corp website admin(s) would have any control over implementing. No one here involved with the forums has any say over that happening, other than asking them nicely if they’d would do it.
Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it!
In much the same way, everyone here could just go use reddit to do all the same things we're doing here. But we all know why that's nonsensical.
A community isn't defined solely by its software. It's also defined by the people that frequent it. Much like how there's plenty of pubs, but then there's your local. If they were going to rip out all the pub booths in the pub you've been frequenting daily for decade plus, you could, in theory, just start going to a different pub. That has about the same appeal as using reddit.
Apologies if I misunderstood what you were asking for, I skimmed. I certainly agree with everything you said here about reddit, and discord or some other not really a forum platform, it really isn't the same. I just am not sure what you want us to do differently since we have no power to make the PA hub space keep existing any more than we do to keep the other spaces here in existence. We are not trying to migrate by choice or because we think it's a good idea, but out of pure necessity of it being that or quietly disbanding.
Basically, just be okay with us posting one new thread per PA comic+newspost, even if the replies are the usual 5-20. This could be in a specific Penny Arcade subforum to make it easy to find, but a more general one (Webcomics, Comics, Humor, etc.) isn't a big deal to me. That's really it. It's not a big ask. It costs nothing and it lets the community continue to exist.
Keeping the URL for PA Hub redirecting to it for as long as possible, with a warning to update your bookmarks would be a nice bonus.
Other people who are kind of mad at PA want to cram all talk of every PA comic and newspost into one thread, which I've been saying will probably kill the community.
To be clear, any URL redirection or messaging would be the sort of thing only the PA Corp website admin(s) would have any control over implementing. No one here involved with the forums has any say over that happening, other than asking them nicely if they’d would do it.
For a while, the penny-arcade.com URLs will still access the forum. Today is included in that "a while". Hopefully, the forum will be switched over to a new URL with stickies/redirects (as much as vanilla allows) before that "a while" is over, or we will be in a disastrous situation where people who didn't know what the new site will be before the old site is closed.
Hence, you can redirect people "for as long as possible" (really, end of 2025) to the new area to discuss things. If vanilla supported it, true browser redirection could be used. If not, simply a banner at the top redirecting people to a link for the new place to discuss the comics.
We could get started on having a new place to discuss PA comics today, simply by asking Buland to turn off the job that posts the comic (I've chatted with him many times when Dog goes wild, and he's always been very helpful) and stickying a post that says "go here now to discuss the comic."
None of this is infeasible from a technical/administrative standpoint.
I'm not understanding how having a separate thread for each comic is required for that community?
Because each comic drives a separate topic of discussion?
Because that’s what that part of the community is requesting?
My take is a lot of folks are only thinking about how they interact with the forums and I’m seeing a lot of “you’re doing it wrong” when someone else advises they interact differently
Also, who cares? I'm not clear on why the idea generates any pushback at all. What skin is the request off anyone's back?
The holiday forum always goes off without a hitch, so there's a precedence that it'll all smooth itself over one way or another.
I unironically enjoy the holiday forums, but hoooooo buddy, if they went on for literally 2 seconds longer than they do, there would be chaos. I mean, the fireworks usually start kicking off a few days into it, as-is.
I don't know what the solution is for the cultural clash situation that would actually appease everyone (insofar as a solution like that even exists), but I think jamming everyone together and saying "get along!" is probably not the best way to go about it.
I don't have that much time to follow most threads, and tend to stick to a few. So I was super suprised at how explosive the Holiday forums were. The new forums should have a "recap" functions, telling me personally why people are angry at each other.
I still don't know why the cat was banned, I always thought they were a mod, and then suddenly, gone. (edit: in the spirit of keeping this on topic, I don't particullary need to know either)
How would a "recap" function work, if not relying on genAI (eg, ChatGPT)?
I doubt the majority of our members would be comfortable with their posts fed into ChatGPT (above and beyond what gets scraped anyway by Google). And even if they were, large language genAI is currently in a loss-leader strategy. It's "free" because investors keep it afloat. Someday in the near future OpenAI et. al. will have to monetize and it'll turn into a monetary cost.
Yeah, in theory we have the banned and infraction thread for this, but it's an administrative burden that's hard on the mods.
(I'm basing that last part on the fact that most bans from it are missing, and half of them are a one sentence basically saying "banned for being an asshole" and that's fair enough, I guess.)
I don't know the right answer, but it's kind of impossible right now to follow these things unless you were a part of it, especially in chat-like threads.
And that doesn't feel right with a forum?
That's kinda going to be the nature of a forum this size. It's still big enough that there's no way to easily keep running histories about what's happened where.
If you go into your own profile there is a 'Moderation' tab that should show every warning / infraction you've received on your account, number of points, mod comments, and a link back to the offending post.
It's probably moot now and I doubt there were the resources to do so on Vanilla, but it seems like i t would be pretty easy to script sucking out a summary of that and posting that in the appropriate Infraction / Ban thread along with the update. Or at least give the mods a tool to let them easily copy that history.
I feel like the Moderation tab used to be visible on public profiles to everyone, but maybe I'm misremembering. Don't know if that's something too sensitive to post, but I think something like that would go a long way towards the transparency around bans and infractions some people have asked for.
Oh yeah... I just checked mine, and I received one warning for a "serious offense," and I'm not even sure what I did.
Maybe it was a holiday forum infraction? There was one year when a lot of people got dinged with an infraction for "failing to show appropriate amount of holiday cheer."
In much the same way, everyone here could just go use reddit to do all the same things we're doing here. But we all know why that's nonsensical.
A community isn't defined solely by its software. It's also defined by the people that frequent it. Much like how there's plenty of pubs, but then there's your local. If they were going to rip out all the pub booths in the pub you've been frequenting daily for decade plus, you could, in theory, just start going to a different pub. That has about the same appeal as using reddit.
Apologies if I misunderstood what you were asking for, I skimmed. I certainly agree with everything you said here about reddit, and discord or some other not really a forum platform, it really isn't the same. I just am not sure what you want us to do differently since we have no power to make the PA hub space keep existing any more than we do to keep the other spaces here in existence. We are not trying to migrate by choice or because we think it's a good idea, but out of pure necessity of it being that or quietly disbanding.
Basically, just be okay with us posting one new thread per PA comic+newspost, even if the replies are the usual 5-20. This could be in a specific Penny Arcade subforum to make it easy to find, but a more general one (Webcomics, Comics, Humor, etc.) isn't a big deal to me. That's really it. It's not a big ask. It costs nothing and it lets the community continue to exist.
Keeping the URL for PA Hub redirecting to it for as long as possible, with a warning to update your bookmarks would be a nice bonus.
Other people who are kind of mad at PA want to cram all talk of every PA comic and newspost into one thread, which I've been saying will probably kill the community.
The principal push-back that I've seen here has not been against posting one thread per comic; it has been against having one special area of the new forum dedicated uniquely especially to Penny-Arcade. If you don't care whether or not a Penny-Arcade subforum exists on the new forums, I don't think anyone will really be opposed to you making a new thread per comic in the "Webcomics" subforum (or whatever ends up being created on the new forums).
Posts
In my case, Fishman's Let's Play of the original X-COM led me here (specifically, to G&T, and then to the Steam thread) back in 2012. Several other things happened in my life that year (many not so good), so it holds particular significance for me.
A dozen years is still a pretty long time.
That's so many steps down the line.
The odds are whatever system we migrate to will have built-in, out of the box, base level the ability to register new accounts.
That's already more than we're focused on right now, so anything past that should be a later decision
For me it was Synthetic Orange's LP of the original X-COM. Even then I'd already lurked for a few years prior. I think some of the people who bravely volunteered their namesake to that LP are still around...
Free Commander decks?
A Fortnite ARG where the clues are scattered throughout the forums in our in-jokes and end with a unique emote.
"That's so raven" mo-cap by Raven Simone herself.
Surely this is a winner, get Epic on the phone.
Whose the one we've all got to sleep with?
I'm not rejecting the idea outright, just want to make sure I'm not joining the wrong cult.
Right now, if you go to the forums through a link without an account, you can view a topic, and even click out via breadcrumb to an otherwise hidden subforum, but as soon as you go top level of the forums themselves, you can't get back to what you were just reading without registering or backing up in the browser window and can't discover the other subforums at all.
I'm not surprised the forums are slowly hemorrhaging folks, if you land in top level it looks like it's SE and a myriad of dead PA related subforums. One might think it was a fluke they found a discussion on an otherwise abandoned subforum and move on. Arguably the most stable, focused forum in G&T has no public exposure at all to keep drawing people in.
I don't necessarily think that generating new traffic should be an extensive focus in the transition, but it's probably something to at least keep in mind if we are looking to continue to sustain this community past the next year or two.
the current setup has the majority of forum categories (including the big 3) hidden by default to non-logged in users
so even just moving to a setup where the random street traffic can see the lights are actually on and people are enjoying themselves inside will be a step in the right direction
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I'm not sure the arguable benefits of making our entire forum and everything said in any part of it that isn't a private message.
And letting it all be indexed and scraped by whomever, AI training models, archives that persist forever, etc. Is worth the maybe handful of folk who might wander in on their own.
Maybe an Awesome public forum where (curated, but anomous best posts of the week) are shared for public consumption would be a lure for people to join themselves, and be a hell of a throwback to the old days, but I don't want my posts to be forever public.
An entire subforum dedicated to 1990s Toyota vehicle maintenance and repair.
No no no, zagdrob. We're not part of the cult. We're running the cult. Stop reading the holy books, those are for the rubes!
It... already is. D&D is currently unlisted and yet this resolves fine https://www.google.com/search?q="Today+is+gonna+be+the+day+that+I'm+gonna+order+chat"
I only join free love cults, thank you very much.
My love cult charges a membership fee, but we might be able to get you sponsored.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
would it suck? i think that's one of the finest labours of love i can imagine.
Now, this is a pretty broad policy and I'm sure you all have many questions.
Do you like me?
Oh, you're unsure? Well, paypal.me/gollygoshwhocouldsay
What about the people who you like but who don't like you?
Wtf who? Anyway, this is historically an indication that they're very attractive in some way, so they should probably be around.
Should these forums port over the Penny Arcade Comic subforum thing?
Sure, it'd be funny like the Swiss Guard.
Comments on this video agree with that assessment, by the by
I'm not looking for that, though.
In much the same way, everyone here could just go use reddit to do all the same things we're doing here. But we all know why that's nonsensical.
A community isn't defined solely by its software. It's also defined by the people that frequent it. Much like how there's plenty of pubs, but then there's your local. If they were going to rip out all the pub booths in the pub you've been frequenting daily for decade plus, you could, in theory, just start going to a different pub. That has about the same appeal as using reddit.
tbh the joke would be on whatever ai training model scraped the forum. poison pill
Apologies if I misunderstood what you were asking for, I skimmed. I certainly agree with everything you said here about reddit, and discord or some other not really a forum platform, it really isn't the same. I just am not sure what you want us to do differently since we have no power to make the PA hub space keep existing any more than we do to keep the other spaces here in existence. We are not trying to migrate by choice or because we think it's a good idea, but out of pure necessity of it being that or quietly disbanding.
Oh yeah... I just checked mine, and I received one warning for a "serious offense," and I'm not even sure what I did.
Like Mega Man Legends? Then check out my story, Legends of the Halcyon Era - An Adventure in the World of Mega Man Legends on TMMN and AO3!
After 20 years as a mod I'm already dead inside.
Basically, just be okay with us posting one new thread per PA comic+newspost, even if the replies are the usual 5-20. This could be in a specific Penny Arcade subforum to make it easy to find, but a more general one (Webcomics, Comics, Humor, etc.) isn't a big deal to me. That's really it. It's not a big ask. It costs nothing and it lets the community continue to exist.
Keeping the URL for PA Hub redirecting to it for as long as possible, with a warning to update your bookmarks would be a nice bonus.
Other people who are kind of mad at PA want to cram all talk of every PA comic and newspost into one thread, which I've been saying will probably kill the community.
To be clear, any URL redirection or messaging would be the sort of thing only the PA Corp website admin(s) would have any control over implementing. No one here involved with the forums has any say over that happening, other than asking them nicely if they’d would do it.
For a while, the penny-arcade.com URLs will still access the forum. Today is included in that "a while". Hopefully, the forum will be switched over to a new URL with stickies/redirects (as much as vanilla allows) before that "a while" is over, or we will be in a disastrous situation where people who didn't know what the new site will be before the old site is closed.
Hence, you can redirect people "for as long as possible" (really, end of 2025) to the new area to discuss things. If vanilla supported it, true browser redirection could be used. If not, simply a banner at the top redirecting people to a link for the new place to discuss the comics.
We could get started on having a new place to discuss PA comics today, simply by asking Buland to turn off the job that posts the comic (I've chatted with him many times when Dog goes wild, and he's always been very helpful) and stickying a post that says "go here now to discuss the comic."
None of this is infeasible from a technical/administrative standpoint.
I refer you to my (probably too many) messages in this thread explaining why already. If you disagree, that is of course your prerogative.
Also, who cares? I'm not clear on why the idea generates any pushback at all. What skin is the request off anyone's back?
Maybe it was a holiday forum infraction? There was one year when a lot of people got dinged with an infraction for "failing to show appropriate amount of holiday cheer."
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