Something Awful and Friends - The roller-coaster train-wreck embarrassing downfall of a Web 1.0 giant and its tick offspring like from Cloverfield

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Kewpuh said:
no, not really. here is what hurt SA the most, more than the supposed cat ladies or sjws or other random things people point to. that big outage that we had a couple of years ago caused a loss of about 1500 daily users. those people never turned after that 2 month span of time when the site was just flat-out down or really slow and unresponsive. we know this because we actually had user count and bandwidth graphs to point to it. now add this on top of the fact that people grow up and the kind of humor that you thought was hilarious when you were in your late teens or early twenties is no longer really that funny and you have the declining userbase on SA. now look at bigger sites like reddit or whatever other shit that provides essentially the same thing as SA and you know that SA can never realistically catch up to that or even really get back to where it used to be. no amount of house-cleaning of mods or users or subforums will change that.
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I was focusing more on the internal squabbles than SA's bigger issues with user retention, but damned solid points and good information all around.
 
Jaimas said:
From what I've been told from several oldschool posters that have been around for at least a decade and change, the biggest issues SA's had in more modern times are analogous to what many other forums have had to deal with as time marches on and paradigms shift without the clutch. They described it thusly:

SA's always had kind of lassez-faire moderatorship (ain't nothing wrong with this), but a combination of secondary factors quickly led to the sort of hugboxing, clique-warring, and general idiocy that we saw on a lot of platforms.

Because of how SA as a whole works, it was a bit slower to react to this pattern of behavior; historically, for example, if there was a political sperg-fest, some swung banhammer swings and maybe a nuking of the worst offenders on a given subforum usually kept the worst offenses at bay. How SA handled election season was widely considered both elegant and hilarious and a pretty good, if measured way to keep the usual chimping from getting out of hand.

All of this sort of hit a snag when the more ridiculous shit started emerging from the crucible around 2010-2012, when several groups of users, including several mods that were openly complicit, basically decided that the bulk of SA was to be their own personal clubhouse and damn the consequences towards using it as their own personal autism outlet. SA had dealt with shit like this before - there's always been those users who have pumped like thousands of dollars into unbanning themselves - but never quite in the numbers that were seen here - and never so aggressively. Suddenly, SA had shit that mandated immediate admin response on a routine basis, and it forced multiple house-cleanings to even begin to scratch the surface.
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I've hung out in various forum communities for ... 18 years or so. SA has simply done the life cycle of most forums. It would take some sort of major event or need for people to visit the main page a site for their to be a return of what people call "the good ol days" It simply becomes more and more insular and dies a slow death. Places like reddit are similar in that regard, but due to it being considered "vital" to news and social media on the internet, they can be caught with their hand in the cookie jar and not get in trouble.

I see the early seeds of the same life cycle here. There are cliques forming, some people will want to make grabs for "power", they'll want to dictate the discussion. It's simply how things go in website communities.
 
Kewpuh said:
no, not really. here is what hurt SA the most, more than the supposed cat ladies or sjws or other random things people point to. that big outage that we had a couple of years ago caused a loss of about 1500 daily users. those people never turned after that 2 month span of time when the site was just flat-out down or really slow and unresponsive. we know this because we actually had user count and bandwidth graphs to point to it. now add this on top of the fact that people grow up and the kind of humor that you thought was hilarious when you were in your late teens or early twenties is no longer really that funny and you have the declining userbase on SA. now look at bigger sites like reddit or whatever other shit that provides essentially the same thing as SA and you know that SA can never realistically catch up to that or even really get back to where it used to be. no amount of house-cleaning of mods or users or subforums will change that.
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USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST

Type Date Horrible Jerk Punishment Reason Requested By Approved By
PROBATION 09/09/16 12:05am Kewpuh LACK OF CAPITALIZATON User loses posting privileges for 6 hours. Kewpuh Kewpuh
 
Brandobaris said:
I see the early seeds of the same life cycle here. There are cliques forming, some people will want to make grabs for "power", they'll want to dictate the discussion. It's simply how things go in website communities.
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It's up to the forum owner to make sure that doesn't happen. It's one thing for cliques to form, but it's another when people are banned or probated because they aren't in them or moderators don't like their opinions. Make a simple set of rules that aren't ambiguous and appoint people that will stick to them.
 
jace821 said:
It's up to the forum owner to make sure that doesn't happen. It's one thing for cliques to form, but it's another when people are banned or probated because they aren't in them or moderators don't like their opinions. Make a simple set of rules that aren't ambiguous and appoint people that will stick to them.
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Yeah, honestly, the forums were started down that path the minute the "crazy catch-all" or whatever it's called (we can ban you for any reason or no reason) rule was added, which for all I remember, may have been there from the very start.

It's what lead to people being banned, permabanned, probated for 11 years, etc. for such terrible rule infractions as "Fuck you", "Fuck off", "Go away", etc.
 
PTNR 2.0 said:
Yeah, honestly, the forums were started down that path the minute the "crazy catch-all" or whatever it's called (we can ban you for any reason or no reason) rule was added, which for all I remember, may have been there from the very start.
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That's always been our rule and it has been there since the beginning of the forums.
 
PTNR 2.0 said:
It's what lead to people being banned, permabanned, probated for 11 years, etc. for such terrible rule infractions as "Fuck you", "Fuck off", "Go away", etc.
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Agreed. You now have nonsense like people banned because a mod doesn't like their opinions or people being chain probated for two weeks because they dared to post in fyad and they're too gbs.
 
jace821 said:
Agreed. You now have nonsense like people banned because a mod doesn't like their opinions or people being chain probated for two weeks because they dared to post in fyad and they're too gbs.
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In general, people don't get banned because "a mod doesn't like their opinion," unless their opinion is something obviously meant to troll people or just bullshit up the joint (ie "rape should not only be legal, but mandatory" or "the moon doesn't exist"). If there are mods banning people for rational opinions that they simply don't agree with, then I'd be open to looking at the bans and reversing them if unwarranted, and speaking with or removing the mod.
 
PTNR 2.0 said:
Yeah, honestly, the forums were started down that path the minute the "crazy catch-all" or whatever it's called (we can ban you for any reason or no reason) rule was added, which for all I remember, may have been there from the very start.

It's what lead to people being banned, permabanned, probated for 11 years, etc. for such terrible rule infractions as "Fuck you", "Fuck off", "Go away", etc.
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That rule has been around since at least 2003. I think that one thing that led to this clique feeling, as well as the decline in posting quality, was actually the introduction of probations. Back in the day mods would try to keep threads on track and only banned people who actually deserve it. A typical day would have something like 8 bans total and that was it. With probations there were a lot more moderator actions taken, many for stupid petty bullshit reasons but at the same time the people who really deserved to be banned were likely to get off with a more minor form of punishment.
 
I love how I'm constantly being accused of either being King SJW or a member of Gamergate. Like people can only belong to one extreme or the other, and any free thinking or jokes made about either side results in you automatically being labeled a member of some stupid movement. Currently, I'm apparently an anti-SJW and I've been "laughed out" of SA.
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Lowtax said:
I'd be open to looking at the bans and reversing them if unwarranted, and speaking with or removing the mod.
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I hope you do this. I hope you also stop shit like people being chain probated for weeks for a post they made 30 days ago in fyad because the current IK thinks they're too gbs.
 
Lowtax said:
In general, people don't get banned because "a mod doesn't like their opinion," unless their opinion is something obviously meant to troll people or just bullshit up the joint (ie "rape should not only be legal, but mandatory" or "the moon doesn't exist"). If there are mods banning people for rational opinions that they simply don't agree with, then I'd be open to looking at the bans and reversing them if unwarranted, and speaking with or removing the mod.
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Lol he actually believes the moon exists.

Lowtax said:
I love how I'm constantly being accused of either being King SJW or a member of Gamergate. Like people can only belong to one extreme or the other, and any free thinking or jokes made about either side results in you automatically being labeled a member of some stupid movement. Currently, I'm apparently an anti-SJW and I've been "laughed out" of SA.
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We totally get that here. Seriously, we get accused of being radical feminists by the inbred MRA retards we make fun of here, and of being MRAs and gators by the tranny idiots.

Every single person we have a thread on here thinks the entire site is about them personally and that we are all whatever weird enemy they've made up as the antagonist in their empty, pathetic lives.
 
AnOminous said:
We totally get that here. Seriously, we get accused of being radical feminists by the inbred MRA exceptional individuals we make fun of here, and of being MRAs and gators by the tranny idiots.

Every single person we have a thread on here thinks the entire site is about them personally and that we are all whatever weird enemy they've made up as the antagonist in their empty, pathetic lives.
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It's sad how polarizing the internet has become, it's basically binary at this point. Oh you're not a 1? Then you must be a 0! There's no room for free thinking or refusing to subscribe to a set and established system of beliefs. You're either with us or against us. God forbid a comedy website make fun of both SJWs AND Gamergate, that's inconceivable, it's almost as if we just laugh at what we think is humorous, not follow a rigid social agenda!!!
 
Lowtax said:
It's sad how polarizing the internet has become, it's basically binary at this point. Oh you're not a 1? Then you must be a 0! There's no room for free thinking or refusing to subscribe to a set and established system of beliefs. You're either with us or against us. God forbid a comedy website make fun of both SJWs AND Gamergate, that's inconceivable, it's almost as if we just laugh at what we think is humorous, not follow a rigid social agenda!!!
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I think that's just society in general. Everyone is subscribing to an Us v. Them mentality.
 
Lowtax said:
It's sad how polarizing the internet has become, it's basically binary at this point. Oh you're not a 1? Then you must be a 0! There's no room for free thinking or refusing to subscribe to a set and established system of beliefs. You're either with us or against us. God forbid a comedy website make fun of both SJWs AND Gamergate, that's inconceivable, it's almost as if we just laugh at what we think is humorous, not follow a rigid social agenda!!!
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Speaking of Gamergate, any chance of a hellthread revival? Those threads were one of the only places (besides here) where I could make fun of both sides and not get yelled at.

EDIT: The last incarnation of the hellthread ended especially poorly, with FluffieDuckie gassing it on the flimsiest of grounds after she claimed she didn't want to kill it, and ralp probating several prolific posters there for 14 years.
 
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Lowtax said:
God forbid a comedy website make fun of both SJWs AND Gamergate, that's inconceivable, it's almost as if we just laugh at what we think is humorous, not follow a rigid social agenda!!!
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But if you make a thread about Gamergate on SA you get banned/probed and the thread deleted now. And you can't even mention the word SJW because its word filtered in a way to make it hard to make fun of.
 
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