GoS Forums Announcement

[punkUser]

Alright guys, the time has come to start considering serious alternatives for the Myth community to forums here. I'm not going to reiterate all the reasons why it doesn't make sense to be here, but suffice it to say there's no compelling reason the forums here should even exist at this point let alone host all the random topics. I've given a few suggestions on easy sites to migrate to in the past and I think Discord is a good place for day to day stuff.

I realize this will make a lot of people initially mad, but I'm used to any change in Myth producing those sorts of responses and claims of how it will "destroy myth for realz this time" In all seriousness I get that the Myth community is largely just an amusing place to joke around for a lot of folks who barely even play anymore and while that is fine, the time has come to move that elsewhere.

In any case I will continue to host the directly-metaserver-related stuff here (stats, etc) and probably even continue to add features. If people need API access for running future tournaments at 3rd party web sites or whatever, a lot of that is already in place too and more can be added.

Going forward I will likely simplify registration and removing the forums entirely for simplicity. The infrastructure to run the forums and associated services (email and accounts and all that) are pretty gross for 2016... phpbb has not aged well and it shows both in terms of time drain on me keeping it all working, and directly on the cost of running the server. While cost is not a primary limiter, it's getting wasteful at this point compared to superior, free alternatives.

For those who are interested technically, the end goal would be to host the non-forums parts of this site directly via the metaserver itself down the road. This not only simplifies the interface between the two and opens up new possibilities and features, it significantly reduces the amount of management and setup and maintenance that GoS needs which is something that simply has to happen going forward.

I was hopeful that at some point we could just co-opt "login via Steam" or similar and remove registration stuff entirely from here as most folks have Steam these days. Unfortunately some plans on that front fell through (out of my control) and thus I still need to investigate if it's feasible to do. Login via Google/Facebook/etc. is also possible but less desirable as those don't have any particular gaming focus.

Anyways I am well aware this will not be a popular decision, but it is one that I have been forecasting for a while now and there is really no reason it needs to produce any disruption. When folks have settled on what they want to do in terms of a community hub/site/whatever (Discord or otherwise), I'll happily link it from here and in blue bars such that there won't really be any difference or "splitting" of anything. I'll certainly leave the forums up here for a little while longer so that people can coordinate a plan and execute it, but my patience on this front will not last indefinitely so I implore you all to not wait too long on this

[dac]

can you just disable creation of posts and leave them up? it's nice to have the record of old threads, especially when it comes to looking at old tournaments for maps/teams/etc

people frequently lament lost mwc sites of the past, and i realize that some of it is in the games, but the forum content is content too.

[punkUser]

can you just disable creation of posts and leave them up? it's nice to have the record of old threads, especially when it comes to looking at old tournaments for maps/teams/etc

That's the plan for the short term. For the long term I'll try and come up with a low-overhead way to maintain the archive as well, at least for the tournament forums.

(Aside: I'm also happy to dump the database for anyone setting up a community site elsewhere to grab.)

[Lord---Scary Owl]

ill write down all old teams, matches, and scores on a text file

[DBSeeker]

What type of free forum software would you recommend other than phpBB?

[par73]

we could just make a myth Reddit

[punkUser]

we could just make a myth Reddit

Yeah at this point it's the whole notion of a "forum" or similar software that someone "hosts" somewhere that is getting kind of dated. I'd suggest just finding a site that will properly host the community aspects like reddit or Discord or Steam or whatever is needed and going with that.

That's largely unrelated to the problems of the integration and management of GoS's phpbb though, which is mostly technical.

[grim]

I'm not going to reiterate all the reasons why it doesn't make sense to be here, but suffice it to say there's no compelling reason the forums here should even exist at this point let alone host all the random topics.

Could you, though? Because I can't think of a single reason why it wouldn't make sense for the community to be centered here. I can think of many clear cut reasons for them to be here.

http://forum.gateofstorms.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=716

The whole purpose of Gjol was to be the community hub. We ditched it for this place since it made sense for the community hub to be hosted at the same place as the server itself.

A reminder why we even created the gjol: http://mwc2012.proboards.com/thread/909 ... site-which

[switch]

Recreate the Gjol, Grim.

[Giant Killer General]

June 1st, 2013

Hey guys,

So toxyn, grim and I have been chatting and we've decided that in the interest of simplicity and having a single account/site for forums, tournaments, stats, replays, metaserver, etc., we're going to move these forums over to GateofStorms.net and over-write the ones there. All of the content and accounts from here will be preserved, while the (minimal) content and accounts over there will be lost/overwritten. This will centralize all of the competitive myth content and accounts in one place.

Aug 20th, 2016

Wasn't the purpose of the gjol --> GoS to be a centralized location for ALL THINGS MYTH? (other than map dls/project magma)

No, that was and has never been the intention of GoS. Read back in the old threads if you doubt it, but if that was the goal then we would have just put it all at PM.net from the start. Remember how GoS started - MariusNet shit the bed and I kindly offered an alternative. My goal for GoS has always been to add various features to bring multiplayer Myth into a semi-modern/usable place. Even though it has taken a while, you might notice that I've done nearly all of the things from the original features thread, including most recently the ability for anyone to host... which frankly is kind of a big deal

The gjol merge was sort of tangential and mostly at the request of those guys...

At the very least punk, you must admit that your assertion that it was never your intent to have GoS be a centralized community forum (and only done at the request of others) is / was very unclear indeed to everyone else in the community who looks at this (as Asmo's statement is proof of, and even Grim disagrees with you, who was one of the guys who talked to you about the forum migration in the first place years ago). Obviously if the community could have been better informed back in June 2013 about what this different intent of yours really was, we could have made a better informed decision / agreement of what we (as the community) wanted to do. Perhaps we would have decided to keep the gjol forums going given that information.

In any case, the community is of course at your mercy at this point, and you are of course free to do whatever you want as it is your right to. We can only hope toxyn (or some other very reputable member of the community) can recreate the gjol eventually at this point to go back to what the community had before the forum migration to GoS (which occurred after mariusnet had already shit the bed for some time). I just find your explanation to a be bit of smoke being blown at the community.

Personally, I just think you really didn't like the political discussions that were happening on the forums and that is what has gotten to you more than anything else. Which is fine and (somewhat) understandable if that is the case, but let's call it what it is. I don't know exactly what it is, but I really don't think it's whatever you are trying to say it is. On the other hand, I'm sure you don't care what people think on this issue, or care to clarify / argue it either, which is fine too. But that's just my 2 cents.

[DBSeeker]

A few of us are game planning ideas.

I might make a post detailing our proof of concept & areas of disagreement. Get to the community to weigh in as well.

[punkUser]

Could you, though? Because I can't think of a single reason why it wouldn't make sense for the community to be centered here. I can think of many clear cut reasons for them to be here.

I did actually go through some of them in the original post, but to summarize again, it's as much about the necessity of having forums here *at all* going forward, not about there being multiple forums all over the place, etc. There were only ever forums at GoS as a way to hyjack the user registration aspect, but phpbb has just been too terrible in practice to run much with that system and thus it literally only serves as a far-too-heavyweight system to that end rather than a tightly integrated piece of tech. My hope had been that it would be better in practice, but through experience it's clear that I need to just extract the registration/authentication stuff into a different system, at which point there's no compelling reason to continue to have forums here.

The whole purpose of Gjol was to be the community hub. We ditched it for this place since it made sense for the community hub to be hosted at the same place as the server itself.

A reminder why we even created the gjol: http://mwc2012.proboards.com/thread/909 ... site-which

Yeah at the time there was concern over having two forums, which makes sense. I'm not saying we should go back to two forums, I'm saying we need to just *move* the forums off of the GoS site. As I stated, this could be done pretty seamlessly (like I said, happy to cross-link directly to a new community site from the top bar here) but it frees up the technical bits that I need to evolve, and let's the community "self manage" again more easily.

At the very least punk, you must admit that your assertion that it was never your intent to have GoS be a centralized community forum (and only done at the request of others) is / was very unclear indeed to everyone else in the community who looks at this (as Asmo's statement is proof of, and even Grim disagrees with you, who was one of the guys who talked to you about the forum migration in the first place years ago).

See above reply to grim.

We can only hope toxyn (or some other very reputable member of the community) can recreate the gjol eventually at this point to go back to what the community had before the forum migration to GoS (which occurred after mariusnet had already shit the bed for some time).

To follow on my above reply, creating forums elsewhere (gjol or whatever) again is exactly the point here. As I said, I'm happy to provide the forum DB if people want to migrate posts too, just like was done from the gjol -> GoS migration in the first place. Personally I would highly suggest using something more modern and capable than phpbb (and there's no need to even host it yourselves in this day and age), but it's totally up to the community what they want to do. See LSO's upcoming post and discussion for more discussion I guess.

I just find your explanation to a be bit of smoke being blown at the community.

I understand there's confusion, but that's not my intention of course. Realize that from my point of view there being forums here has always been primary just about supporting user registration (technical necessity). Merging with gjol was about reducing confusing given that there were going to otherwise be two forums because of that necessity. In hindsight I should have simply developed a different registration mechanism from the start, but if you recall it was kind of a scramble at the time to get anything working well enough after MariusNet went down. Remember that initially there were *only* guests on GoS

Personally, I just think you really didn't like the political discussions that were happening on the forums and that is what has gotten to you more than anything else.

I don't read any of that (as it probably clear ), so the only impact of that stuff is in terms of people reporting stuff or asking for moderation. That aspect is certainly slightly annoying to deal with but it's not the primary issue here. As I said if phpbb didn't suck I would easily just let someone else moderate and manage tourney forums and so on but given the way it is tied into the metaserver registrations it isn't really possible to do cleanly. Thus the right decision is just to extract the user registration portion, after which there will be no need for a forum to be hosted here.

If toxyn or anyone else wants to just duplicate and continue with this forum hosted elsewhere in its entirety, you guys are more than welcome to do that (like I said, happy to provide the db dump). Like I said I'd recommend going with something more modern and manageable, but it's up to you.

[Giant Killer General]

Fair enough, I am more satisfied by that response.

I think the big concern is about who is going to be managing / moderating these new forums. There are very few people that everyone is going to be comfortable with not abusing moderation powers, being neutral, etc. You worked out well in this regard since you were largely hands-off, but there's no guarantee of that with most anyone else. I would almost say its highly unlikely, given myth's terrible history with abusive community admins / moderators. I would nominate toxyn, but who knows if he wants to do it, as well as who knows if he is even active enough to be in contact in case of emergencies or requests or what not.

This could turn into a whoever-can-grab-it-first situation, and the community will be stuck with the default decided by whoever put up new forums first. And that default decision may not be so good.

[DBSeeker]

With the plan a few of us are working on, garnish would moderate the forums.

[punkUser]

I think the big concern is about who is going to be managing / moderating these new forums. There are very few people that everyone is going to be comfortable with not abusing moderation powers, being neutral, etc. You worked out well in this regard since you were largely hands-off, but there's no guarantee of that with most anyone else.

There's definitely people who disagree with the latter assertion - obviously not everyone is going to be happy regardless of the choice. But particularly since I have less time to devote to Myth these days (but still non-zero!) I think it's definitely time to pass the torch on that.

This could turn into a whoever-can-grab-it-first situation, and the community will be stuck with the default decided by whoever put up new forums first. And that default decision may not be so good.

It's worth considering options that don't have or need as much policing. I keep mentioning discord - although it's not a forum per se, the style of letting users pick and choose their own channels and interactions is a lot less moderation-heavy, which is probably desirable at this point. I think for various reasons the community probably wants conventional "forums" in addition to discord or similar options, but it's probably possible to find something more manageable than phpbb in that regard.

Anyways it's not like I'm going to shut things down next week or anything, but it's definitely time to start the conversation. In parallel I'll be sorting out a better/simpler registration system.

[dac]

moderation has never been a need on myth in general.

unfortunately you have a community of kids who um, struggled, for various parts of their life who wind up with authority for the first time ever and you get results like mahlon, undead ed, blades, and omylrake.

I hope that its not simply moderation that leads to this. The proper response is to tell people to thicken skin and grow a fucking backbone, not go crying to an unwilling authority figure every time somebody gives their ego a little booboo.

[punkUser]

I hope that its not simply moderation that leads to this. The proper response is to tell people to thicken skin and grow a fucking backbone, not go crying to an unwilling authority figure every time somebody gives their ego a little booboo.

No, it's pretty unrelated as I explained in the previous post. Community drama is a minor annoyance at best; not really a factor here.

[Pogue]

Just pull the plug Punkuser. It'd be worth it knowing half these queers would probably turn into fentanyl addicts without this game.

[BIG KROK V8 SS]

Why can't the server continue on as it is now? I don't understand computers and how this shit works.

[Revan]

Why can't the server continue on as it is now? I don't understand computers and how this shit works.

Is that why you went AWOL? Deleted Myth and can't figure out how to get back on to Garm v3.

[Pogue]

Why can't the server continue on as it is now? I don't understand computers and how this shit works.

Because PunkUser has discovered there's life outside the house.

[switch]

Pogue and revan going gangsta hard a few days before mwc finals lmao

[punkUser]

Seriously just read through the post and thread again if you don't understand - it is fairly clear.

[Melekor]

I just read the thread twice and I'm still clueless about why the forum should close. It's completely unclear.

[punkUser]

Not sure if trolling, but if not then I'm not sure what to say - it's quite clear and I'm not sure how to dumb it down any further so I guess you'll just have to accept it

Anyways I have some reasonable ideas for a simpler registration setup that does not rely on the crappiness that is phpbb. Will try and carve out some time to implement them, which will properly decouple the metaserver from the forums, something that hindsight shows should have been the design in the first place.

[Melekor]

There wasn't any reasoning given besides phpbb costing money and work. You made reference to having made arguments in the past but I'm not aware of these and I'm not sure why you assume everyone is?

Does phpbb+metaserver actually require a more expensive server package than the metaserver itself? Seems surprising..

Given that you plan to keep the metaserver running, it seems to me like disconnecting the forum (some work) is more work than not disconnecting it (should be no work at all?)

[punkUser]

There wasn't any reasoning given besides phpbb costing money and work. You made reference to having made arguments in the past but I'm not aware of these and I'm not sure why you assume everyone is?

I'll quote it for you...

I did actually go through some of them in the original post, but to summarize again, it's as much about the necessity of having forums here *at all* going forward, not about there being multiple forums all over the place, etc. There were only ever forums at GoS as a way to hyjack the user registration aspect, but phpbb has just been too terrible in practice to run much with that system and thus it literally only serves as a far-too-heavyweight system to that end rather than a tightly integrated piece of tech. My hope had been that it would be better in practice, but through experience it's clear that I need to just extract the registration/authentication stuff into a different system, at which point there's no compelling reason to continue to have forums here.

Does phpbb+metaserver actually require a more expensive server package than the metaserver itself? Seems surprising..

It does (there is a separate VM for the web side of GoS), and additional cost for the required e-mail setup since modern e-mail servers will reject anything not from one of the main authorities as spam. But as per the above, that's not the primary reason just a supporting one.

Given that you plan to keep the metaserver running, it seems to me like disconnecting the forum (some work) is more work than not disconnecting it (should be no work at all?)

See above - the forum is ongoing work for a variety of reasons (updates, security issues, spam, tourney forums, moderation requests) and even the limited tie-in to the metaserver and web site means all of these are more painful than they need to be and can't easily be offloaded to anyone else to do. phpbb is just a really poorly designed piece of software running on an outdated and equally poorly-designed language and server setup, both of which require work that should not be necessary.

Tie that into the fact that folks want to moderate their own community content as they wish individually, and forums even as a concept don't make as much sense as they used to in the past. They are overhead with no real gain vs. the other options out there. It's time to evolve out of the early 2000s

Anyways hope that makes sense but if it doesn't, it's largely irrelevant Like I've said a few times, I encourage you to be proactive and set something up for the community that I can link to and integrate from here. If the community just wants another phpbb forum somewhere, go ahead and do that and I'll pass off the relevant parts of the database. Side benefit of that is you'll likely realize why phpbb is a pain in the ass in a few years, although the issues will be lessened by not having any custom stuff injected into it during updates and so on.

[Melekor]

I did actually go through some of them in the original post, but to summarize again, it's as much about the necessity of having forums here *at all* going forward, not about there being multiple forums all over the place, etc. There were only ever forums at GoS as a way to hyjack the user registration aspect, but phpbb has just been too terrible in practice to run much with that system and thus it literally only serves as a far-too-heavyweight system to that end rather than a tightly integrated piece of tech. My hope had been that it would be better in practice, but through experience it's clear that I need to just extract the registration/authentication stuff into a different system, at which point there's no compelling reason to continue to have forums here.

In this paragraph you make a bald assertion that the forum has no value. There no arguments given for why this is the case. Your original intentions for the system are completely irrelevant here. The fact that there is still a significant amount of posting going on here seems to directly contradict your assertion that the forum has no value.

Your proposal to do a bunch of work to create a new registration system undermines your argument that shutting down the forum creates a cost reduction. If it takes you 5 hours of work to build the new system, and we assume a very conservative $30/hr value on your labour, how many years of forum server does this buy?

the forum is ongoing work for a variety of reasons (updates, security issues, spam, tourney forums, moderation requests) and even the limited tie-in to the metaserver and web site means all of these are more painful than they need to be and can't easily be offloaded to anyone else to do. phpbb is just a really poorly designed piece of software running on an outdated and equally poorly-designed language and server setup, both of which require work that should not be necessary.

None of this work is actually needed to keep the forum operating, if you don't want to do it then don't.

The only legit argument that you made was the cost argument which you also admittedly said was secondary. But what is the primary reason?

Look, if you want to shut down the forum for any reason whatsoever that's obviously your right, and people should be (and are) thankful for the fact that you hosted the forums up till now. But the reasoning is far from clear - contrary to what you claimed - and I feel obligated to call you out on that. In the absence of legit reasoning we're left to speculate on your motives. Given the mention in the OP of "hosting random topics" and the temporal proximity of this thread to the locked debtate thread, I'm currently leaning towards GKG's interpretation.

Like I've said a few times, I encourage you to be proactive and set something up for the community that I can link to and integrate from here. If the community just wants another phpbb forum somewhere, go ahead and do that and I'll pass off the relevant parts of the database

Has an agreement already been made for who will be hosting the mirror?

[punkUser]

In this paragraph you make a bald assertion that the forum has no value. There no arguments given for why this is the case. Your original intentions for the system are completely irrelevant here. The fact that there is still a significant amount of posting going on here seems to directly contradict your assertion that the forum has no value.

I made no such assertion about the "forum having no value" - the assertion is that without registration there is no point in it being hosted *by me*, here vs. something equivalent managed by the community. As I already noted it's already a separate VM so it really isn't a technical difference either. It's also a great opportunity to evolve to a better setup.

None of this work is actually needed to keep the forum operating, if you don't want to do it then don't.

Yes it is. Security updates are required to avoid spam or worse (and phpbb is a common target - have already been hit by this 2-3 times in the life of the forums). Basic moderation is also a requirement since there are disputes that come up between folks that I get reported and PMed about fairly regularly. I ignore a lot of it, but some of it requires attention. Creating and managing tourney and team forums has been another overhead. There's no reason for all that content to not be centralized in one place, but the overhead on me and the additional tie-in of the tech to GoS registration is unnecessary moving forward.

There is cost overhead as well - I expect to eliminate around $18 (US)/month once all is said and done here due to a combination of things. And trust me I'm completely capable of doing my own math on what's worthwhile and how I value my time and what I do with it

Look, if you want to shut down the forum for any reason whatsoever that's obviously your right, and people should be (and are) thankful for the fact that you hosted the forums up till now. But the reasoning is far from clear - contrary to what you claimed - and I feel obligated to call you out on that. In the absence of legit reasoning we're left to speculate on your motives.

Everyone else seemed fine with the reasoning after my second post in this thread. I have no motivation to lie or omit facts here since - as you correctly note - I have no obligation to explain myself in the first place and do this only out of courtesy.

Given the mention in the OP of "hosting random topics" and the temporal proximity of this thread to the locked debtate thread, I'm currently leaning towards GKG's interpretation.

Step back from the situation and perhaps consider the fact that you and GKG were more invested in that thread - and thus the supposed interpretation that it had far reaching impacts to everything else - than anyone else Hate to burst your bubble here but I didn't even read it, and it has very little individual bearing on a situation that has been building for a few years.

Has an agreement already been made for who will be hosting the mirror?

Not sure, why not start a topic to organize it? I'd start by talking to grim, toxyn and par, all of whom have expressed some level of interest in doing community sites recently or in the past. Like I've stated, my personal opinion is that a conventionally managed forum is out of date at this point vs. other options, but hey, people still use Hotline and play Myth on PowerPC Mac's so change may not be embraced by this particular community

[wonka]

I am working on an alternative. "Working on" being the operative phrase.

http://www.myrgard.com/

Any comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[akira]

I am working on an alternative. "Working on" being the operative phrase.

http://www.myrgard.com/

Any comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

can you put what each forum is for (e.g. phelot is NSFW room) underneath the room name. something like:

Phelot
All things NSFW go here

[wonka]

Updated.

As per Seeker's suggested categorization schema.

[wonka]

And I have made CheezeFist moderator of the SPAM forum.

[CheezeFist]

And I have made CheezeFist moderator of the SPAM forum.

I am already drunk with power.