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Post by Blaperile on Apr 6, 2016 23:09:46 GMT
How do you guys think the situation with the MSPA Forums is going to evolve? I really wish it comes back soon, but I sent an ask to IPGD if they know anything about what's going on over at the MSPA Forums and, at the request of some forum members, I asked if they could possibly contact What Pumpkin to potentially put up a link on the MSPA Forums maintenance page to direct towards these forums. And IPGD's reply was simply: According to Google, "daoots" means "Dead And Out Of The Story". That... is not really reassuring. EDIT: Important news.
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Post by ConstantTroublemaker on Apr 6, 2016 23:17:11 GMT
I find it quite bizarre that the forums wen down exactly when Homestuck resumed after the Omegapause. The only thing stopping me from believing they have been shut down on purpose is that I can't find any discernible purpose in such an action.
However, if they went down due to external actions (hacking) or due to a hardware/software fault, whatever happened should definitely have been fixed now. Unless those forums were managed so badly to not even have backups...
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Post by Shadow of the Lotus on Apr 6, 2016 23:20:41 GMT
I could see it as Andrew wanting to make a clean break to some extent. He was so active at first with the forum. I think it sort of turned into something he disliked, honestly.
Though I missed a few years here. From what I hear, the forums dropped pretty heavily in traffic? Seems like all the folks here were swell. *shrug* it's hard to say what Andrew has in store next and if he wants the forum there, etc... That the forum is down NOW of all times and that nothing has been done to fix it does bring up questions, certainly.
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Post by ConstantTroublemaker on Apr 6, 2016 23:26:39 GMT
I could see it as Andrew wanting to make a clean break to some extent. He was so active at first with the forum. I think it sort of turned into something he disliked, honestly.
Well, if the forums have been deliberately shut down without any warning or official announcement, that would be definitely rude.
But the fact that they are down and nothing official is being said about this by anyone is quite rude anyway, even if it's actually due to technical issues.
There were people using those forums. There is a community around Homestuck. The very same community that AH would like to turn into customers for Hiveswap.
Well, maybe it's time he starts to learn the basis of customer relationship management. Which is something that exists on a completely different plane of reality than "I'm writing some webcomics on my own site, if you don't like them go read something else".
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partymember57
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Post by partymember57 on Apr 6, 2016 23:27:34 GMT
I recall that there was some password security issues a few days before I found out that the forums went down. I assumed it had something to do with that.
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researcherwisemon
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Post by researcherwisemon on Apr 6, 2016 23:32:41 GMT
>MSPA FORUMS: Level UpThe MSPA forums have died from a Heroic Death confronting the notorious villain LORD ENGLISH. Had it not been slain it battle, it would have raked in SO MANY boondollars. So Many you don't even know... A great flaming nautical pyre carries it off to FORUMTHALLA and it shall be greatly missed. Everyone mourns in silence for a solid minute as the boat disappears into the setting sun on the horizon. ... Okay, (semi)jokes aside, I've had some experience with old forums going down before. Anyone ever heard of ye old URU Obsession? No? Let me tell you a story... A long time ago, they had a server crash and had to upgrade their forums. They were down for a great while and even when things came back all the old posts were rather... Broken. Spoiler tags didn't work, quotes were bugged, image tags were X'd out.... Eventually, the forum owners decided to put it down and archived the database with a promise of one day putting it up for people to see... That was at least four years ago now, and there hasn't been any progress on that since. Part of this might sound familiar. I know MSPA went through some theme changes a few years ago that broke a few things and they never got fixed. Then there was this supposed "Hacker" business... Worst Case scenario: every day it's down, I think it's increasingly likely the MSPA forums might not surface again. Either they'll be archived and stored away to one day be revived like Uru Obsession had been intended, or the "Hacker" managed to get to something sensitive and a great deal of history was lost. Either case, if someone in the know is remarking that it's "daoots," it's not a good sign. Forum goers are likely going to have to migrate to another forum (as we've sort of done here) if they want to continue as they were. Medium Case scenario: For now, the MSPA forums will remain down and we're likely never to see the old forum ever again, BUT What Pumpkin may create a new set of fourms from Scratch. This would basically be the same as migrating to another forum, but it's still hosted by the original people who did the old forum... Maybe the community will reband together as if nothing happened. But it's still not that great having lost all that history. That is really what killed UO- the loss of access to the history. Page of Hope's Best Case Scenario: MSPA forums are down until after EOA7, during which Jane LAST DITCH Resurrects them exactly as they were. Pinch of salt on this one, though. It's still going to be a rough patch for the community and it might not recover even if everything came back intact.
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Post by ConstantTroublemaker on Apr 6, 2016 23:46:55 GMT
Okay, (semi)jokes aside, I've had some experience with old forums going down before. Yeah, software can fail, we all know that. The point is how you handle the failure. Not only from a technical standpoint (do you understand what happened? Can you fix it? And if you can bring the damn thing back online, do you have some backups or have you actually lost everything?), but from a communication one. No announcements, no explanations, no information about what's happening next... that's bad, very bad. Especially if you want to move from writing webcomics to producing and selling games.
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researcherwisemon
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Post by researcherwisemon on Apr 6, 2016 23:50:41 GMT
The point is how you handle the failure. Yeah. The lack of communication is a disturbing point towards it not coming back too. Even when UO was down and being worked on, we still had the occasional note of progress from the admins. Hearing nothing much from WP is... not good. I can understand holding off saying anything until the whole situation has been fully understood, but... to not say anything at all is... yeah. Really concerning. If there was a hacker, it does not bode well for the database's integrity.
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Post by ConstantTroublemaker on Apr 7, 2016 0:07:02 GMT
Yeah. The lack of communication is a disturbing point towards it not coming back too. Even when UO was down and being worked on, we still had the occasional note of progress from the admins. Hearing nothing much from WP is... not good. I can understand holding off saying anything until the whole situation has been fully understood, but... to not say anything at all is... yeah. Really concerning. If there was a hacker, it does not bode well for the database's integrity. I'm quite more concerned about their e-commerce than their forums... to say nothing of the upcoming game.
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Post by Shadow of the Lotus on Apr 7, 2016 0:11:30 GMT
The lack of communication is probably the most telling, yeah. Geez, back in the day, I think Andrew would have actually considered postponing the final updates until the forums came back on. Really shows how things have fallen...
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sporkaganza
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Post by sporkaganza on Apr 7, 2016 0:29:03 GMT
i think ipgd has a habit of just saying whatever the hell she wants about what pumpkin things even if she shouldn't be saying them
like. regardless of what's actually going on, just coming out and saying that shit could have bigger repercussions than i think she realizes
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partymember57
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Post by partymember57 on Apr 7, 2016 0:29:57 GMT
Assuming the forums come back, was anyone here expecting anything to happen there after Homestuck? I had always assumed that the end of Homestuck would mean the end of MSPA. Fans would still be fans and look back on all the memories fondly but everyone would just move on. Not that I would really want that to happen, or that I don't love the comic and community as much as I did at the beginning, but I feel like that's sort of an inevitable thing with fandoms (and anything else that's once popular and trendy).
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researcherwisemon
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Post by researcherwisemon on Apr 7, 2016 0:32:25 GMT
I'm quite more concerned about their e-commerce than their forums... to say nothing of the upcoming game. Hrm, yeah. That could be a problem... But on the same hand it's entirely possible there are background legal reasons we've had radio silence because of the game. I've seen it before sometimes. A game company goes silent to deal with legal issues and you only ever hear from them again after it's sorted out. I can only imagine what kind of legal stuff What Pumpkin has to go through now as a game company, let alone running a forum. I'm only speculating at this point from my own observations of things, but if the attempted hack was serious enough they might have to deal with some legal issues along side the normal technical ones. IF, like the TOG situation, that's the case, then there may be little we'll hear from What Pumpkin until the situation really is resolved. If it isn't, then... :/ Who knows. We don't nearly have enough pieces information to get even a loose frame of the picture, let alone try to understand it. i think ipgd has a habit of just saying whatever the hell she wants about what pumpkin things even if she shouldn't be saying them like. regardless of what's actually going on, just coming out and saying that shit could have bigger repercussions than i think she realizes Agreed. Stating the the forums are dead prematurely could cause some nasty unintended backlash.
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sporkaganza
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Post by sporkaganza on Apr 7, 2016 0:35:36 GMT
Gotta be honest, if the forums get lost I'm going to be pissed. Especially since it's been radio silence from WhatPumpkin.
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Post by karkat on Apr 7, 2016 0:37:00 GMT
its obvious that they have been seriously understaffed for ages and nobody really wants to host it anymore. tbh i can't really blame them, though i hope they put up a static archive at least. they should announce something!
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sporkaganza
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Post by sporkaganza on Apr 7, 2016 0:38:38 GMT
Honestly, I'm angrier than I probably should be just now, but finding out that ipgd was just like "The forums are probably gone forever L O L" has really ticked me off. So I guess me saying that I was "going" to be pissed is kind of an understatement. or... um... laterstatement? is that a thing
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Post by therationaldove on Apr 7, 2016 0:55:54 GMT
Is IPGD even involved with the forums? I never saw her on there, but manybe someone else knows better than I do. Personally, I wouldn't ingest too much about the situation until we get word from someone at WP or from Hussie himself. Unless IPGD is a better source for this info than I have been lead to believe.
If they were closing the forums down, then I find it really hard to believe they wouldn't at least make a mention of it or let the forum users know. I mean, I'm sure that even though Hussie doesn't use the forums himself anymore, he knows that they exist and that people use them.
Hopefully, WP addresses the problem soon.
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The One Guy
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Post by The One Guy on Apr 7, 2016 1:02:34 GMT
I'm less concerned about the Homestuck community; if the forums stay down, we can always regroup elsewhere (such as here)! But I'm more concerned about the forum adventure community. The few adventures still persisting have scattered and there's no central hub to perpetuate the community. Eagle Time and minor presences in other forums just doesn't have the same atmosphere. Also, I fear for the forum's history. There is a lot of interesting stuff captured in old threads for people to look through if they so choose (Heck, I was in the process of reading through the old "different context" threads before the forums went down, not to mention all the old forum adventures I planned to read through), but if the forums stay dead, all that is lost.
Assuming the forums come back, was anyone here expecting anything to happen there after Homestuck? I had always assumed that the end of Homestuck would mean the end of MSPA. Fans would still be fans and look back on all the memories fondly but everyone would just move on. Not that I would really want that to happen, or that I don't love the comic and community as much as I did at the beginning, but I feel like that's sort of an inevitable thing with fandoms (and anything else that's once popular and trendy). Well, there's three major reasons stuff would still happen: - The Forum Adventures: A long time staple of the MSPA forums. It's less of a big thing than it once was, but it was still pretty active before the forums went down. And likely would continue doing so if restored since it consists of original works not directly related to Homestuck or the other MSPAs.
- The upcoming game and whatever other peripheral Homestuck stuff that may come in the future. Homestuck will be over, but Hussie won't be.
- Fandoms don't instantly go away once the source material ends. They'll die down and get smaller, yes, but that happens gradually over time. There will still be people wanting the forums for quite some time.
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Post by thezcmme on Apr 7, 2016 2:07:54 GMT
Are we sure it has nothing to do with those awkwardly made "COMPROMISED PASSWORD" messages? Those happened a few days before they broke down and stayed like that until the forums were down. I feel like if they were honestly down for a different reason Hussie or anyone from WP would've given a straight answer at this point.
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sporkaganza
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Post by sporkaganza on Apr 7, 2016 2:36:31 GMT
PS: The reason I was so mad about it is that I was hungry. Now I'm eating a cheesesteak so it's all good
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Post by mementovivere on Apr 7, 2016 4:46:37 GMT
I wish I could say that I knew what was going on, buuuut I don't. Unfortunately I'm sorta inclined to trust the word of ipgd, but fingers crossed that the temporary maintenance is just that (or at least that people can get important stuff off of them somehow, like fan adventures and projects).
And even in the worst case scenario of "daoots", at least we've banded together as a nice lil fandom refugee camp of sorts. It's cozy, and feels a bit more personal.
While it sucks that nothing from the forums can be accessed, maybe Blap could be convinced to start a forum adventure/RP subforum here ;P I've always kinda wanted to try doing a forum adventure...
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orngjce223
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Post by orngjce223 on Apr 7, 2016 6:52:57 GMT
I don't want to believe it, but there's a part of me that suggests that the best we can expect is a static version of the MSPA forums, frozen in amber at the time of its disappearance.
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Holly
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Post by Holly on Apr 7, 2016 9:12:40 GMT
I would be really REALLY sad if the forum never comes back... Im tearing up just thinking about it; I have so many memories, and stuff Ive bookmarked.
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Post by BlackholeOU on Apr 7, 2016 11:58:00 GMT
...Helpful. /sarcasm
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Post by Shadow of the Lotus on Apr 7, 2016 12:03:22 GMT
I suppose a question to ask is "how best to get the attention of Andrew/his staff?" or is there some community project that could be drummed up here to show Andrew that the forums are worth saving? Operating under an understanding that nothing is currently being done (which very well might not be the case! they could be hard at work to fix things for all we know).
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