phhhhhhhhhhhh. fine. take your chair outside or something.

I don't get why people can go into the site forum and bitch and moan about bannings and modding. So you got banned, get over it, come back when the ban has expired and don't post like an idiot in the future. I got banned for spam a couple of months ago, but believe it or not: I did not bitch in the site forum for six months, I did not spam the Pit, I did not try to hack the site and I did not throw eggs on Jeremy's house this past Friday night. Since when is questioning authority on the Internet cool? And why didn't anyone inform me about this so that I could have been cool too?

actually, in this apartment complex, you can do any minor modification to the apartment, like painting the wall or something, but i don't think that we can rip out the carpet

besides, it's damn expensive to replace carpet

that's the point, you shouldn't replace the carpet. carpet is not good for sliding on chairs on.

you know what i meant :mad:

and what the hell have we done with jeremy's thread?

But it's good when you get up in the morning and the floor's cold.

Chad should really stop I don't know what he is complaining about.

unless it's cold and you wan't the floor to be warm. we don't all live in the desert. where you temps you complain are cold are max it gets here :(.
srs you were complaining about something like 20c when thats what we can hope for in summer and cold here really means -8c.

[QUOTE=Chaindrive;13665707]But it's good when you get up in the morning and the floor's cold.[/QUOTE]

i get home from work when the floor would be cold. if it was tile

[QUOTE=DarkLikePoe;13665700]you know what i meant :mad:

and what the hell have we done with jeremy's thread?[/QUOTE]

o shi

i am sorry jeremy!! :upset:


and cold floors are bad. cold is generally bad. damn the winter.

[QUOTE=mx;13665178]So I've reached a point to where I am pretty much fed up with the forums. There's some good things that go on here, sure, but ultimately it's a hassle and no fun to run at all. Our community is generally sarcastic, rude, disrespectful, and immature. Not the kind of site I'm proud to be running.[/quote]

Welcome to the real world. Most people don't get along in large enough groups and we have over 100,000 members. I suggested before that you implement some sort of screening at registration, which was recognized by a few moderators as a good idea, but ultimately fell on deaf ears. If you don't come around and pay attention to suggestions for improvement, how do you expect this place to improve?

[quote]Everybody knows about the hackings and the spammers. Also those who feel like they are above all the rules and the site is their personal playground. There is a site, nicely hosted by Klown, that is filled with personal attacks on the moderators and on me personally. Petty if you ask me. Do you guys have anything else to do with your time? Seriously, find a girlfriend, play sports, do something useful. Apparently, it's more fun to be dicks on the internet.[/quote]

Your website is represented by a medley of personalities, that seem to be running free of any central control at all. That's why you have so many people trying to harm this place. You show up to work with the forums rather than Sputnik about once in a blue moon. The rest of the time we're stuck dealing with a staff that acts more secretive than the KGB (yeah yeah yeah dramatic comparison). Maybe if there were some form of central leadership on these boards, you'd get better attitudes in return.

[quote]So what I'd like to ask is.. why? [b]Did we moderators screw up by not having enough oversight to begin with? Is there just an influx of members who are too young? Is there a bad culture on the boards?[/b] Are there too few rules, too many?[/quote]

A little bit of the highlighted, and far too many rules. There's an idea here that more rules are an adequate substitute for central leadership. "We'll just make a f[size=2]ucking[/size] essay length post full of rules and throw some moderators in there and see what happens." Well, you've seen what happened. The thing is though, you can't take away rules unless your staff is going to do a better of communicating with the community and doing their jobs in a fair and respectful manner. As it is right now, your moderators pretty much approach every situation (and I'm going to emphasize on TBF with this one) with an, "I'm a mod, you're not, stfu and don't question my judgement", attitude. That is not going to counter-act the negativity on here. All it's doing is perpetuating the cycle. And if mods like that don't want to change their style, then for heaven's sake, get rid of them. Demote them to regular users again because they're not representing you and these boards the way they should be.

[quote]In short, what's it going to take for you guys to shape up? We need to have a board where people can have fun, but that also has rules and where moderators and members are respected. There are plenty of examples of successful boards across the internet where this is the case... I honestly spend my time at these boards instead of at my own when I seek conversation. This shouldn't be the case.[/quote]

I've said all I can.

[quote]So I guess we have two options:

1) Moderators and me can become draconian and enforce our authority (which does exist, and has to exist to keep the site running). We can go on banning sprees, delete posts entirely, and clean up spam by deleting anything remotely close to it.

2) You guys can stop acting like jerks to the moderators and members at the site, and create a peer-supported culture that discourages trolls, hackers, and flamers. This means that instead of laughing or posting spam posts in spam threads, you tell people to stop. Pretty simple. It's perfectly possible to have fun without being idiots.

Right now #1 is probably going to happen very soon if things don't shape up. We've lost the impetus to explain our actions to the community, hence the removal of the site forum. We're close to the end of the line.[/QUOTE]

Another tip; stop offering ultimatums. Get down in the s[size=2]hit[/size], interact with the users that you need to interact with and solve problems. Stop saying, "It's my way or the highway." We get that you own these boards, but turning totalitarian due to the actions of four or five users that keep giving you a headache is ridiculous. I can't tell you not to shut down the boards and, honestly, I wouldn't care if you did. But doing it just because you think it's not worth the effort to make some real changes around here is bogus. There are over 100,000 people that come here for advice on everything from music and their instrument to love and relationships. If you really want to improve this place, then do it and stop taking away parts of this community because you think it's easier than making effective changes.

I hope I didn't come off wrong with this post. I'm not trying to stir the pot, just speaking my mind.

shut up noob no one cares about your noobish post cause youre too new to not be a noob

Though really, it [i]is[/i] jeremys way or the highway.

im sure mr ferwerda doesn't care to be told to 'get down in the ****' but the noob is right in a way

the noob is jared. he asked for his old account to be permed. the joke is his account is an 06 noob but postcount and joindate dont really matter.

and i'm sure his post will be taken completely wrong and as an attack on jeremy instead of a suggestion.

That's usually how my posts are always taken, even though I can't really remember the last time I did anything even remotely worthy of a ban on here. The last ban I got was requested by myself.

[QUOTE=Apollyon;13665745]Welcome to the real world. Most people don't get along in large enough groups and we have over 100,000 members. I suggested before that you implement some sort of screening at registration, which was recognized by a few moderators as a good idea, but ultimately fell on deaf ears. If you don't come around and pay attention to suggestions for improvement, how do you expect this place to improve?


[/QUOTE]

Obviously if he doesn't agree with your suggestion he mustn't have listened to it.

People play the hardman on the internet because they can't get beat up.

i know its jared (iscariot), like i said on irc
[QUOTE]People play the hardman on the internet because they can't get beat up.[/QUOTE] jared actually looks pretty hard

[quote]People play the hardman on the internet because they can't get beat up.[/quote]

I don't have to "play" anything.

[quote]Why did you ask for your old account to be banned again?[/quote]

There was too much of a negative stigma on that account. It's a lot easier to be a good user when you're not posting on an account that everyone recognizes as trouble.

jared isnt a hardman, he just likes to play with hard men ;-*

he was a long time ago but turned good ages before he got permed.

[QUOTE=Kalmah;13665855]I suppose, but now you have to go through the hardship of being the 06 "noob", whatever the hell that means[/QUOTE]

I don't really care. It's just a forum. The people that know who I am or are in the process of figuring out who I am, are the only ones that matter anyway.

Seriously, make me mod, been here 4 years, I'll sort the place out.

Long ago, I asked for a simple change in the way we accept members.

Anyone caught with 2 accounts be permabanned. IP ban em as well. Even though you childish losers find workarounds, thats ok too. Just keep banning them. We never allowed 2 accounts or 3 accounts per user, and we banned people for it. Why did that change? How hard is it to query an IP address and match them up? Based on WHOIS and DNS lookups, you can always tell someone who's using a proxy. Ban them. No questions asked. I don't care if this affects losers who post on school time. So sorry, post when home from now on.

Every single user who signs up MUST use a valid email address, and it cannot be used again. Yeah I know hotmail accounts are easy and free, but if someone is willing to go through all that trouble just to have multiple accounts, their issues run a lot deeper then banning them would solve.

Close the spam areas. FOREVER. Just keep the Instrument forums and the Genre forums, and that's it. Keep a "Penthouse" for users with VALID reputation and/or membership length, and thats really it. With the way users abuse rep like it's a popularity contest, it's no surprise to find spammers and hackers with massive amounts of rep.


The fact that anyone would maintain this place for you ungrateful co[size=2]c[/size]ksuckers is almost shocking. Jeremy was truly nice and professional back in the day. Now you d[size=2]i[/size]ckheads proved you deserve none of it. I mean really. It's not serious business, but it aint like anyone is making money of your idiocy. This place was once truly enjoyed for music and players and musicians alike. Beinding to a whim of illegal tabs? Should Jeremy go to jail because you suck at transcribing?

I swear I'd shut it all down at this point.

Haha quite petty really

[QUOTE=DBoon's Ghost;13665899]Long ago, I asked for a simple change in the way we accept members.

Anyone caught with 2 accounts be permabanned. IP ban em as well. Even though you childish losers find workarounds, thats ok too. Just keep banning them. We never allowed 2 accounts or 3 accounts per user, and we banned people for it. Why did that change? How hard is it to query an IP address and match them up? Based on WHOIS and DNS lookups, you can always tell someone who's using a proxy. Ban them. No questions asked. I don't care if this affects losers who post on school time. So sorry, post when home from now on.

Every single user who signs up MUST use a valid email address, and it cannot be used again. Yeah I know hotmail accounts are easy and free, but if someone is willing to go through all that trouble just to have multiple accounts, their issues run a lot deeper then banning them would solve.

Close the spam areas. FOREVER. Just keep the Instrument forums and the Genre forums, and that's it. Keep a "Penthouse" for users with VALID reputation and/or membership length, and thats really it. With the way users abuse rep like it's a popularity contest, it's no surprise to find spammers and hackers with massive amounts of rep.


The fact that anyone would maintain this place for you ungrateful co[size=2]c[/size]ksuckers is almost shocking. Jeremy was truly nice and professional back in the day. Now you d[size=2]i[/size]ckheads proved you deserve none of it. I mean really. It's not serious business, but it aint like anyone is making money of your idiocy. This place was once truly enjoyed for music and players and musicians alike. Beinding to a whim of illegal tabs? Should Jeremy go to jail because you suck at transcribing?

I swear I'd shut it all down at this point.[/QUOTE]

"This place was"
"Jeremy was"
"There was a time"

No offense man, because you know I respect you and your opinions on here, but you've been here since 2001. You've been here only two years longer than I have and you make it sound like this place was a paradise and I know that it sure as hell wasn't when I signed up. If the forums went downhill that fast, in just a couple of years, that suggests that the staff is doing something wrong to provoke negative changes.

unfortunately, I don't think anyone that is guilty of this, to some degree, would even pay attension to this thread.

I'd say be harsher

mx should have a secret police, like unnamed mods who just look like regular users with low post counts. They can perma ban and temp ban people and not get bitched at because peopel won't even know who they are. Seriously, they can have all the features of a regular user.

[QUOTE=Apollyon;13665926]"This place was"
"Jeremy was"
"There was a time"

No offense man, because you know I respect you and your opinions on here, but you've been here since 2001. You've been here only two years longer than I have and you make it sound like this place was a paradise and I know that it sure as hell wasn't when I signed up. If the forums went downhill that fast, in just a couple of years, that suggests that the staff is doing something wrong to provoke negative changes.[/QUOTE]

I take no offense, as I trust your opinion and respect you as well bro, and you know that. I just think everyone was a lot "closer" knit, and it was less of a spamming flamefest and more of building a good place for discussion.

However, as far as popularity, the place blew up and got a lot more popular. It was never a paradise persay, but we had this place under lock and key. We didn't have too many issues with hackers, because the spam wars were kept in check because of good moderation and excellent communication among the staff at the time. Hacking was never a problem for us until certain users, who oddly enough are more or less still members. What happened to permabanning people? Criteria has also changed apparently for picking new mods. Popularity overruled sensability.

You won't get a good quality forum when people are able to join on their own accord.

Apollyon, I think its incredibly misleading to suggest that people posting p*orn pictures of my girlfriend is somehow my fault.

Here's my "welcome to the real world": MusicianForums is my hobby, not my life. Your statements suggest that you think I could spend about 10 hours a day policing the forums and adding all sorts of nifty features for people, pro bono. I go to school, have a life outside of the websites, and do this for fun and not as a job (I don't make any profit). So the whole "it's all your fault because you don't work hard enough" argument is ridiculous and fails to account for the true "real world." It's not my job to clean your guy's diapers, and it's not unreasonable for me to ask for a change. If you were paying me, maybe I'd owe you something, but you're not, not even with ad revenue, which doesn't cover hosting expenses. So pinning it up on me is really a copout.

Maybe if you guys were actually nice and at least somewhat respectful I would be around here more...almost everytime I post I get the opposite. No real incentive to help you guys, eh? Especially when some of the same people who made prank phone calls to my family and mauled pictures of my girlfriend are asking for features and changes! No thanks.

[QUOTE=Stevie;13665969]You won't get a good quality forum when people are able to join on their own accord.[/QUOTE]

Which is why you don't let people post until they verify their email address by clicking on a link in their mailbox. How many times would anyone really do that if they were just setting up spam accounts?

[QUOTE=mx;13665178]So what I'd like to ask is.. why? Did we moderators screw up by not having enough oversight to begin with? Is there just an influx of members who are too young? Is there a bad culture on the boards? Are there too few rules, too many?

In short, what's it going to take for you guys to shape up? We need to have a board where people can have fun, but that also has rules and where moderators and members are respected. There are plenty of examples of successful boards across the internet where this is the case... I honestly spend my time at these boards instead of at my own when I seek conversation. This shouldn't be the case.

So I guess we have two options:

1) Moderators and me can become draconian and enforce our authority (which does exist, and has to exist to keep the site running). We can go on banning sprees, delete posts entirely, and clean up spam by deleting anything remotely close to it.

2) You guys can stop acting like jerks to the moderators and members at the site, and create a peer-supported culture that discourages trolls, hackers, and flamers. This means that instead of laughing or posting spam posts in spam threads, you tell people to stop. Pretty simple. It's perfectly possible to have fun without being idiots.

Right now #1 is probably going to happen very soon if things don't shape up. We've lost the impetus to explain our actions to the community, hence the removal of the site forum. We're close to the end of the line.[/QUOTE]

I would start with #1. Perhaps after people see that this crap won't be tolerated, then #2 will begin to happen on it's own. As it is right now, #2 will never happen though without something to kick start it.

I also think it's good that you got rid of the site forum. People shouldn't have a place to whine about why they were banned. The fact that they were banned should be enough of a reason for them to improve their act and prevent further bans.

I also think your bans are way too short. If anything but the smallest rules were broken (double post, a single post of spam, etc) then permaban or at least ban for a couple of months. If people repeatedly cause trouble then ip ban them or permaban on sight. I'm not around as much as I used to be so I don't know the whole story but some of the programming forums that I frequent have stuff like this in place and I [I]never[/I] have to sort through a bunch of garbage like I do on here.

That said, I would definitely understand if you took the forums down. I would of probably done when mxtabs went down.

[quote]Which is why you don't let people post until they verify their email address by clicking on a link in their mailbox. How many times would anyone really do that if they were just setting up spam accounts?[/quote]

There are a lot of gimmicky email sites that are set up just for this purpose.

[QUOTE=DBoon's Ghost;13665899]Long ago, I asked for a simple change in the way we accept members.

Anyone caught with 2 accounts be permabanned. IP ban em as well. Even though you childish losers find workarounds, thats ok too. Just keep banning them. We never allowed 2 accounts or 3 accounts per user, and we banned people for it. Why did that change? How hard is it to query an IP address and match them up? Based on WHOIS and DNS lookups, you can always tell someone who's using a proxy. Ban them. No questions asked. I don't care if this affects losers who post on school time. So sorry, post when home from now on.

Every single user who signs up MUST use a valid email address, and it cannot be used again. Yeah I know hotmail accounts are easy and free, but if someone is willing to go through all that trouble just to have multiple accounts, their issues run a lot deeper then banning them would solve.

Close the spam areas. FOREVER. Just keep the Instrument forums and the Genre forums, and that's it. Keep a "Penthouse" for users with VALID reputation and/or membership length, and thats really it. With the way users abuse rep like it's a popularity contest, it's no surprise to find spammers and hackers with massive amounts of rep.


The fact that anyone would maintain this place for you ungrateful co[size=2]c[/size]ksuckers is almost shocking. Jeremy was truly nice and professional back in the day. Now you d[size=2]i[/size]ckheads proved you deserve none of it. I mean really. It's not serious business, but it aint like anyone is making money of your idiocy. This place was once truly enjoyed for music and players and musicians alike. Beinding to a whim of illegal tabs? Should Jeremy go to jail because you suck at transcribing?

I swear I'd shut it all down at this point.[/QUOTE]

I was going to post something like this, but wasn't sure, so I didn't.

Yes, there should be more banning. None of that temp ban crap. Just ban problem users straight out. We've got an admin that can undo the ban if it perhaps wasn't justified. The temp ban serves no purpose whatsoever.

Yes, only one account per member. I think you need a unique email address as it is, anyway. But there's no reason to have more than one account. There should be a waiting period before you can post. There should be a longer TIMED waiting period before you can start threads. Not based on post count, but how long you've been here, like a week or something.

Not sure if this is possible, but there should be a limit to the number of threads a user can start in a week. Seriously. If you can only start two threads a week, you're not going to waste them on stupid bullshit that makes this place suck. I hate it how a thread is here one day and gone the next. Threads should stick around on the front page for at least a couple days before being bumped off. I mean, if I don't post for a couple days, then all the threads I'm involved with are gone when I come back. So what's the point in even posting?

Threads should be deleted, not closed. I don't see the point in keeping a useless thread around, taking up space on the front page.

Mod elections.

there just needs to be some other source of internet drama

[QUOTE=mx;13666010]There are a lot of gimmicky email sites that are set up just for this purpose.[/QUOTE]

Yeah I know. It's ridiculous the extent people would go to just to spam a message board.

It's almost like you should make it private and make membership a much tougher process somehow. Like having to be referred and approved or the forums are unreadable and you cannot post as a guest.

I dunno man. People really do benefit from it and enjoy it. It's not fair to make 1000 suffer because 100 a stupid.

[QUOTE=mx;13665977]Apollyon, I think its incredibly misleading to suggest that people posting p*orn pictures of my girlfriend is somehow my fault.

Here's my "welcome to the real world": MusicianForums is my hobby, not my life. Your statements suggest that you think I could spend about 10 hours a day policing the forums and adding all sorts of nifty features for people, pro bono. I go to school, have a life outside of the websites, and do this for fun and not as a job (I don't make any profit). So the whole "it's all your fault because you don't work hard enough" argument is ridiculous and fails to account for the true "real world." It's not my job to clean your guy's diapers, and it's not unreasonable for me to ask for a change. If you were paying me, maybe I'd owe you something, but you're not, not even with ad revenue, which doesn't cover hosting expenses. So pinning it up on me is really a copout.

Maybe if you guys were actually nice and at least somewhat respectful I would be around here more...almost everytime I post I get the opposite. No real incentive to help you guys, eh? Especially when some of the same people who made prank phone calls to my family and mauled pictures of my girlfriend are asking for features and changes! No thanks.[/QUOTE]

I had nothing to do with any of that. If you want to take that out on me and everyone else then so be it. It isn't just your fault, but you're not free of blame either. Your methods for picking staff members are laughable, your public relations are nearly non-existent, and then you want to sit back and say, "It's all your guys' fault! I did nothing wrong!" It's pretty much a one-sided debate on both sides of the spectrum and no one is ever going to gain any ground with attitudes the way they are right now.

Anyway, thanks for blowing up on me when all I did was reply to your thread with much the same mindset that you seemed to be in when you made it.