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).
Definitely agree. We have a webcomics mega thread in SE but that's not because of any rules, we just like it that way. There'd be nothing stopping someone from making a thread for a specific comic as a whole or a thread for each instance of a comic if that's how they prefer to do it. It won't be automatic anymore but I'm sure that's not a huge concern.
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.
Also to be clear PA has told us they want ALL connection to these forums broken. They will not do any sort of link to us or cooperation.
+1
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
Fine by me. If someone still wants to maintain a more-than-casual link to the comic, that sounds like something they can do somewhere else. No need to continue giving space to something that doesn't want us back.
I think the consolidation of like threads will actually generate a lot more traffic. Right now at a casual glance we have 2 book threads, 2 movie threads, 2 tv threads, and i am sure probably a dozen others. Having one thread, in one sub forum, will increase the number of posts, which will in turn cause more people to post, further increasing traffic. I think whatever sort of beef there is between d&d and se++ is actively reducing traffic to the community as a whole by spreading the discussion thin. Despite being here for almost 15 years i still have no idea who has beef or why but i really hope we are able to work through it and come up with solutions like adults.
Anyway I'm going to declare we are ending discussion on the PA hub issue in this thread because it's out of our control. It sucks, but so does this whole affair. That's life.
When the planning subforum spins up, we should probably have a rule that it's not the right place for jokes/banter/shitposts. Migrating, if we're gonna do it successfully, is a complex project and should be handled like one.
Yes, I agree - maybe there could be a joke thread for people who just want to post silly name ideas etc., and the rest of the discussions can be on-topic.
That's what the "Reaction suggestions" thread will be for. It'll be the place where we have all our hot takes on the color of the agree icon while Ramius will just be spinning up the mySQL server free from "No, we need to go for perconaDB, it's 5% faster!"
I think the consolidation of like threads will actually generate a lot more traffic. Right now at a casual glance we have 2 book threads, 2 movie threads, 2 tv threads, and i am sure probably a dozen others. Having one thread, in one sub forum, will increase the number of posts, which will in turn cause more people to post, further increasing traffic. I think whatever sort of beef there is between d&d and se++ is actively reducing traffic to the community as a whole by spreading the discussion thin. Despite being here for almost 15 years i still have no idea who has beef or why but i really hope we are able to work through it and come up with solutions like adults.
Ignoring the beef for the moment, which is mostly tied up in political threads, the reason why there's a split between SE++ and D&D for things like movie threads and whatnot is that D&D is an on-topic forum, where SE++ allows for more freeform discussion. If you force people into one style, then you're basically destroying the other.
I think the consolidation of like threads will actually generate a lot more traffic. Right now at a casual glance we have 2 book threads, 2 movie threads, 2 tv threads, and i am sure probably a dozen others. Having one thread, in one sub forum, will increase the number of posts, which will in turn cause more people to post, further increasing traffic. I think whatever sort of beef there is between d&d and se++ is actively reducing traffic to the community as a whole by spreading the discussion thin. Despite being here for almost 15 years i still have no idea who has beef or why but i really hope we are able to work through it and come up with solutions like adults.
There’s more to it than just forum beef. SE++ allows threads to meander off topic, D&D and G&T does not. I prefer the more relaxed posting style in SE++. I do not post in D&D much if at all for reasons mostly unrelated to whatever forum beef is going on. If we were forced into on-topic D&D or G&T style posting I would not want to hang around.
I guess i just never noticed that big of a difference. Like the entertainment threads in both forums are all over the place. But i guess to some of you it clearly matters. Oh well. Just a thought i had.
I think the consolidation of like threads will actually generate a lot more traffic. Right now at a casual glance we have 2 book threads, 2 movie threads, 2 tv threads, and i am sure probably a dozen others. Having one thread, in one sub forum, will increase the number of posts, which will in turn cause more people to post, further increasing traffic. I think whatever sort of beef there is between d&d and se++ is actively reducing traffic to the community as a whole by spreading the discussion thin. Despite being here for almost 15 years i still have no idea who has beef or why but i really hope we are able to work through it and come up with solutions like adults.
There’s more to it than just forum beef. SE++ allows threads to meander off topic, D&D and G&T does not. I prefer the more relaxed posting style in SE++. I do not post in D&D much if at all for reasons mostly unrelated to whatever forum beef is going on. If we were forced into on-topic D&D or G&T style posting I would not want to hang around.
I think some underutilized threads like the sports threads could likely survive a merge (I say as a sports person) but others very much rely on the differentiation between styles, yeah
D&D and SE are definitely their own things. I get the appeal of defragmenting the forums a bit, but SE is a bit more relaxed by nature and if you take that away, that’s a lot of your userbase instantly gone.
I think the consolidation of like threads will actually generate a lot more traffic. Right now at a casual glance we have 2 book threads, 2 movie threads, 2 tv threads, and i am sure probably a dozen others. Having one thread, in one sub forum, will increase the number of posts, which will in turn cause more people to post, further increasing traffic. I think whatever sort of beef there is between d&d and se++ is actively reducing traffic to the community as a whole by spreading the discussion thin. Despite being here for almost 15 years i still have no idea who has beef or why but i really hope we are able to work through it and come up with solutions like adults.
There’s more to it than just forum beef. SE++ allows threads to meander off topic, D&D and G&T does not. I prefer the more relaxed posting style in SE++. I do not post in D&D much if at all for reasons mostly unrelated to whatever forum beef is going on. If we were forced into on-topic D&D or G&T style posting I would not want to hang around.
I guess i just never noticed that big of a difference. Like the entertainment threads in both forums are all over the place. But i guess to some of you it clearly matters. Oh well. Just a thought i had.
For certain values of On Topic. The Steam thread in G&T occasionally goes on history tangents (both real and Imperium of Man) and we don’t get mod-slapped for it.
So even “on-topic” forums aren’t being ruthlessly kept on topic, tending to self correct back to “hey, how about that backlog,” or “gift Pixie” quickly enough.
Also every time I see D&D I keep wondering why dice-rollin’ RPG keeps getting So Serious.
Also, kind of weirdly, the most ontopic threads in SE are themselves joke threads/topics that would likely not get a thread at all in D&D. They're definitely different flavors of forums even if in many cases some of that distinction has faded over time.
The main changes I really want to see in whatever comes next are some improvement on the ignore features so those folks who can't help but respond to something that makes them upset can stop seeing it, and some better verbose post/tree management (i.e. when someone posts their whole manifesto and it gets quoted twenty times). There are a lot of people who can get along in 80% of threads who then go berserk at each other in the other 20% and being able to just snip out that 20% would be great.
If we can find something that can sticky definitions and thread rules as a header, that would be nice too.
I don't understand any sour grapes to PA for this decision. Like they've pretty much given us a place to hang out hands off for over 20 years, paid the rent and kept the lights on. They fostered a pretty progressive place by the standards of the Wild West days of the internet. I'm sad the current iteration is coming to a close, but I feel nothing but gratitude for what was.
Plus 15 months of paid runway. Which is pretty much unheard of.
They don’t owe us anything.
For real, for at least a few years I've been half expecting to come to forums.penny-arcade.com and get a 404 that they flipped the lights off at random. I've honestly wondered why they have spent tens of thousands of dollars keeping the forums going when it has barely any connection to PA as a whole.
Just going off the estimated costs and number of active users, Penny Arcade has been paying something like $20 / year per user to keep the forums around. That they are being beyond generous in the amount of time we are given, and there are definitely legal ramifications for making this anything but a 'completely severed, no connection' break-up.
I have nothing but appreciation for what PA has done and their generosity in letting us determine the future of these forums.
I don't understand any sour grapes to PA for this decision. Like they've pretty much given us a place to hang out hands off for over 20 years, paid the rent and kept the lights on. They fostered a pretty progressive place by the standards of the Wild West days of the internet. I'm sad the current iteration is coming to a close, but I feel nothing but gratitude for what was.
Plus 15 months of paid runway. Which is pretty much unheard of.
They don’t owe us anything.
That runway was already paved before the decision to axe the forums was made. Had the contract run out in 2024 and not 2025, I'm not sure they would have popped for another year. We got lucky.
I don't understand any sour grapes to PA for this decision. Like they've pretty much given us a place to hang out hands off for over 20 years, paid the rent and kept the lights on. They fostered a pretty progressive place by the standards of the Wild West days of the internet. I'm sad the current iteration is coming to a close, but I feel nothing but gratitude for what was.
Plus 15 months of paid runway. Which is pretty much unheard of.
They don’t owe us anything.
That runway was already paved before the decision to axe the forums was made. Had the contract run out in 2024 and not 2025, I'm not sure they would have popped for another year. We got lucky.
Most service contracts are paid annually, over the length of the term. They could absolutely decide not to cut the 2025 check.
I’ve done it with vendors in my role. It happens all the time.
This really comes across as looking for a reason to be mad TBH.
Firstly, did I come across as mad? I said I was a bit miffed, but that's a natural reaction to being faced with a big change that's going to require a lot of work.
Secondly, I was just repeating what was told to us.
Oh I thought it was ending January 2025 not December 31 2025
Eh we have 11 months to sort it out
No rush
Definitely December 2025, not December 2024. Thirteen months and a bit of change.
There was a brief scare internally on that where we weren't sure if the Vanilla contract signed in 2022 was a two-year one, a three-year one, or something else. We got the former ruled out shortly before Sterica posted the initial update last week, but wanted to be as sure as possible about the actual length of the contract before this update in order to keep forumer heart attacks at a minimum.
I don't see a reason to keep a PA-specific subforum out of allegiance to the original brand, nor do I see a reason to not have one out of sour grapes or whatever.
I think it's worth keeping a subforum with per-comic threads just because that's what people are used to and it doesn't really harm anything. A newcomer might think, "why do some webcomics have their own thread, some are discussed in a webcomics megathread, and this one has a subforum?" To which there is the easy answer, "the site used to be hosted by Penny Arcade and people got accustomed to a subforum so we kept it. If we get a really big fanbase for another comic we can consider adding a subforum for them, within reason."
+4
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
Also: would there be a fresh slate for anyone who was permabanned before? Personally, I'm of the opinion that a fresh start means a fresh start, and if they screw up again, deuces(but they could be kept under scrutiny).
There are a lot of accounts that were permabanned for good reasons that I do not think should be given a fresh slate, for things like stalking users who are still active on the site now. I don't know if we'll be able to import a ban list, but if we are I don't think a general amnesty is a good idea.
Listen, I'm just gonna point out that The Oosik Irregulars not only have a funny name but also come with an art package, design schemes, and mechs armed with tactical nuclear keg launchers if y'all need a new name at some point.
Seriously tho, it's kind if a gut punch seeing the announcement. I've been inactive for a looooong while but I just wanted to say thanks to these forums. It has been an honor leading yearly armies of drunken bastards on charity bar crawls for PAX and helping to get a forum dick joke canonized in Battletech lore. I've gotten to do a lot of cool things and literally wouldn't be where I'm at in life right now without these forums and I'm eternally grateful for that.
I just thought of at least one change i want to see, does anyone know if there is a forum software that will show the name of a YouTube video without clicking on it on mobile? Not sure how it looks on desktop as i pretty much exclusively use mobile but it is annoying to have to click just to find out the name/if i even want to watch it.
There are a lot of accounts that were permabanned for good reasons that I do not think should be given a fresh slate, for things like stalking users who are still active on the site now. I don't know if we'll be able to import a ban list, but if we are I don't think a general amnesty is a good idea.
I support this, with the caveat that there are a lot of people who got banned simply because they were unpopular with certain moderators who are no longer active/posting. I think anyone who wasn't banned for something egregious--or isn't/wasn't a spambot--should be given the chance to come back. The future of this community won't be made better for continuing to lock out those whose only crimes were saying things that were politically unpopular (at the time) in brusque manner.
I think it's important for various reasons for permanent bans to carry over to the new forum if at all possible. I think that's non-negotiable in that starting at 0 with spammer blocks is a huge amount of extra work for mod staff, as well as the safety concerns for the stalkers, harassers, and otherwise just odious people who earned themselves a permanent.
Otherwise there is already a long-standing process in place in the sticky forum rules thread that seems to be perfectly adequate for people who got banned but have turned over another leaf to appeal their decision and potentially be reinstated.
There's no reason rewriting a perfectly fine rule and process that already exists needs to be part of the migration process. If some person (feels they were unfairly) permanently banned in the past and wants the opportunity to plead their case, I don't see what this new news about the forum migration changes at all. Same mods / admin / forum / rules / process it was a week or a month ago, and most likely the same mods / admin / forum / rules / process it will be for months to a year.
There are a lot of accounts that were permabanned for good reasons that I do not think should be given a fresh slate, for things like stalking users who are still active on the site now. I don't know if we'll be able to import a ban list, but if we are I don't think a general amnesty is a good idea.
I support this, with the caveat that there are a lot of people who got banned simply because they were unpopular with certain moderators who are no longer active/posting. I think anyone who wasn't banned for something egregious--or isn't/wasn't a spambot--should be given the chance to come back. The future of this community won't be made better for continuing to lock out those whose only crimes were saying things that were politically unpopular (at the time) in brusque manner.
We can discuss unbanning specific people maybe possibly later but again, I don't even know if we will be able to import a functional ban list to a new site yet.
+1
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
Or we could grant a bunch of people amnesty who never should have been banned in the first place, without bogging the mods down with a process that doesn't even work fully anymore (no more staff email that links directly to forum moderation policies, remember?). I don't think we need to create more work for people who are already going to have a bunch of work ahead of them in the coming weeks and months.
0
Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
There are a lot of accounts that were permabanned for good reasons that I do not think should be given a fresh slate, for things like stalking users who are still active on the site now. I don't know if we'll be able to import a ban list, but if we are I don't think a general amnesty is a good idea.
General amnesty? No. But a case by case review for people who wanna come back and are not toxic, hostile, or evil? Sure!
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
+4
HacksawJ. Duggan Esq.Wrestler at LawRegistered Userregular
There are a lot of accounts that were permabanned for good reasons that I do not think should be given a fresh slate, for things like stalking users who are still active on the site now. I don't know if we'll be able to import a ban list, but if we are I don't think a general amnesty is a good idea.
I support this, with the caveat that there are a lot of people who got banned simply because they were unpopular with certain moderators who are no longer active/posting. I think anyone who wasn't banned for something egregious--or isn't/wasn't a spambot--should be given the chance to come back. The future of this community won't be made better for continuing to lock out those whose only crimes were saying things that were politically unpopular (at the time) in brusque manner.
We can discuss unbanning specific people maybe possibly later but again, I don't even know if we will be able to import a functional ban list to a new site yet.
I get the feeling that a lot of what's imported will be done so via sticky notes and scratch pads. Something tells me a complete content migration is going to be more trouble than it's worth.
Or we could grant a bunch of people amnesty who never should have been banned in the first place, without bogging the mods down with a process that doesn't even work fully anymore (no more staff email that links directly to forum moderation policies, remember?). I don't think we need to create more work for people who are already going to have a bunch of work ahead of them in the coming weeks and months.
It feels like there is a very specific person or small set of people who you have in mind here, and I don't understand why this is bogging down part of the migration discussion instead of whomever you're thinking about just working through the process that exists and has existed for a decade plus.
And fuck no on general amnesty.
If someone earned a permanent they should at least be reviewed to determine if they should be back in the community. There are several posters who have eaten a ban who are credibly known to have stalked / harassed other forumers (in real life or off-site) and at least one who is known to have sexually assaulted multiple other forumers.
I know I'm right about in the median in terms of how much I engage or consider this forum a part of my life. But I still have a hard time imagining people who were permabannned unjustly five or ten years ago are going to have any interest in returning. I need to be careful because I know some of those would be genuinely considered friends by people still here and I'm not trying to say they don't matter. But since we need to carry over permabans en masse (to not open the floodgates to old spambots) I think it's a bit absurd to expect the bans to be gone through on a case-by-case basis to find any unjust actions. And more absurd to expect a mod to reach out, outside the forum, to that person to let them know the no-longer-a-webcomic-forum they were part of a decade ago would like them to come back, and for that gesture to mean anything to a person who has presumably moved on.
If current users have someone specific in mind they can reach out to a mod in regards to it. Expecting a case-by-case review of old bans is just not realistic.
"What if long-permabanned users want to come back to the new site" doesn't really seem like a useful thing to focus on; it seems basically the same as "what do we do to get new people to join"; it isn't going to happen enough to be a point of any degree of focus.
Have we considered starting a cult? We could get new users and innovate new revenue streams.
Someone beat you to it decades ago.
+14
AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
If it means anything, I'm on team "individuals can PM the admin about reinstatement" now that we have an active admin again. I admit I have at least 1 name of a permabanned person who I feel shouldn't have been, but said person has made peace with the decision and has moved on from the community. It's not my place to go advocating for them.
Also, there are a handful of posters who got banned, were granted a second chance, and then got banned again. I feel pretty confident that granting them amnesty should be a no-go, as I suspect that a person in that situation does not respect the space, the people, or the management.
He/Him | "We who believe in freedom cannot rest." - Dr. Johnetta Cole, 7/22/2024
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Definitely agree. We have a webcomics mega thread in SE but that's not because of any rules, we just like it that way. There'd be nothing stopping someone from making a thread for a specific comic as a whole or a thread for each instance of a comic if that's how they prefer to do it. It won't be automatic anymore but I'm sure that's not a huge concern.
Also to be clear PA has told us they want ALL connection to these forums broken. They will not do any sort of link to us or cooperation.
PSN:Furlion
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Ignoring the beef for the moment, which is mostly tied up in political threads, the reason why there's a split between SE++ and D&D for things like movie threads and whatnot is that D&D is an on-topic forum, where SE++ allows for more freeform discussion. If you force people into one style, then you're basically destroying the other.
... because why the actual fuck do we care?
Especially at this point in the game?
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I guess i just never noticed that big of a difference. Like the entertainment threads in both forums are all over the place. But i guess to some of you it clearly matters. Oh well. Just a thought i had.
PSN:Furlion
Some people still care a lot, apparently.
I think some underutilized threads like the sports threads could likely survive a merge (I say as a sports person) but others very much rely on the differentiation between styles, yeah
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For certain values of On Topic. The Steam thread in G&T occasionally goes on history tangents (both real and Imperium of Man) and we don’t get mod-slapped for it.
So even “on-topic” forums aren’t being ruthlessly kept on topic, tending to self correct back to “hey, how about that backlog,” or “gift Pixie” quickly enough.
Also every time I see D&D I keep wondering why dice-rollin’ RPG keeps getting So Serious.
Twitch: akThera
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Clearly, you've never played Tomb of Horrors.
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If we can find something that can sticky definitions and thread rules as a header, that would be nice too.
For real, for at least a few years I've been half expecting to come to forums.penny-arcade.com and get a 404 that they flipped the lights off at random. I've honestly wondered why they have spent tens of thousands of dollars keeping the forums going when it has barely any connection to PA as a whole.
Just going off the estimated costs and number of active users, Penny Arcade has been paying something like $20 / year per user to keep the forums around. That they are being beyond generous in the amount of time we are given, and there are definitely legal ramifications for making this anything but a 'completely severed, no connection' break-up.
I have nothing but appreciation for what PA has done and their generosity in letting us determine the future of these forums.
That runway was already paved before the decision to axe the forums was made. Had the contract run out in 2024 and not 2025, I'm not sure they would have popped for another year. We got lucky.
Firstly, did I come across as mad? I said I was a bit miffed, but that's a natural reaction to being faced with a big change that's going to require a lot of work.
Secondly, I was just repeating what was told to us.
I think it's worth keeping a subforum with per-comic threads just because that's what people are used to and it doesn't really harm anything. A newcomer might think, "why do some webcomics have their own thread, some are discussed in a webcomics megathread, and this one has a subforum?" To which there is the easy answer, "the site used to be hosted by Penny Arcade and people got accustomed to a subforum so we kept it. If we get a really big fanbase for another comic we can consider adding a subforum for them, within reason."
Seriously tho, it's kind if a gut punch seeing the announcement. I've been inactive for a looooong while but I just wanted to say thanks to these forums. It has been an honor leading yearly armies of drunken bastards on charity bar crawls for PAX and helping to get a forum dick joke canonized in Battletech lore. I've gotten to do a lot of cool things and literally wouldn't be where I'm at in life right now without these forums and I'm eternally grateful for that.
PSN:Furlion
I support this, with the caveat that there are a lot of people who got banned simply because they were unpopular with certain moderators who are no longer active/posting. I think anyone who wasn't banned for something egregious--or isn't/wasn't a spambot--should be given the chance to come back. The future of this community won't be made better for continuing to lock out those whose only crimes were saying things that were politically unpopular (at the time) in brusque manner.
Otherwise there is already a long-standing process in place in the sticky forum rules thread that seems to be perfectly adequate for people who got banned but have turned over another leaf to appeal their decision and potentially be reinstated.
There's no reason rewriting a perfectly fine rule and process that already exists needs to be part of the migration process. If some person (feels they were unfairly) permanently banned in the past and wants the opportunity to plead their case, I don't see what this new news about the forum migration changes at all. Same mods / admin / forum / rules / process it was a week or a month ago, and most likely the same mods / admin / forum / rules / process it will be for months to a year.
We can discuss unbanning specific people maybe possibly later but again, I don't even know if we will be able to import a functional ban list to a new site yet.
General amnesty? No. But a case by case review for people who wanna come back and are not toxic, hostile, or evil? Sure!
I get the feeling that a lot of what's imported will be done so via sticky notes and scratch pads. Something tells me a complete content migration is going to be more trouble than it's worth.
It feels like there is a very specific person or small set of people who you have in mind here, and I don't understand why this is bogging down part of the migration discussion instead of whomever you're thinking about just working through the process that exists and has existed for a decade plus.
And fuck no on general amnesty.
If someone earned a permanent they should at least be reviewed to determine if they should be back in the community. There are several posters who have eaten a ban who are credibly known to have stalked / harassed other forumers (in real life or off-site) and at least one who is known to have sexually assaulted multiple other forumers.
If current users have someone specific in mind they can reach out to a mod in regards to it. Expecting a case-by-case review of old bans is just not realistic.
Someone beat you to it decades ago.
Also, there are a handful of posters who got banned, were granted a second chance, and then got banned again. I feel pretty confident that granting them amnesty should be a no-go, as I suspect that a person in that situation does not respect the space, the people, or the management.