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Post by hebibebi on May 20, 2016 17:42:26 GMT
I never really went on the forum except fantroll business and fan projects, but this is kinda really sad. I mean, its like 4 webcomics that started with reader input, and now all of that is just kinda gone. It seems weird for something that started on a forum to no longer have a forum. Almost a contradiction. There's just so much context lost on the development of early homestuck, and even some of the later stuff like the canon fantrolls.
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Post by fiduspawn on May 20, 2016 18:40:18 GMT
Forum isn't ever coming back tbh That a shame to be honest. Since I was hoping that at the very least that a earlier version of the forum was saved somewhere and could be used when the forums return someday. Because some of the forum surviving was a better alternative to none of it coming back. |
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Post by mementovivere on May 20, 2016 19:46:52 GMT
I never had any real direct contact with Softowl myself, but in her defense, I seem to recall reading somewhere that at least most of her more overbearing rulings were due to her feeling a (prolly non-existant) responsibility to maintain a PG13 atmosphere in the community, safe for highschool computer lab browsing level. IIRC of course. Yeah, there was a big push to foster more of a "community of respect" in order to move away from the days when the atmosphere of the forums was a little more irreverent and abrasive. I personally interpreted that as partially being caused by WP becoming a Real Company and wanting the brand's primary online community to be seen as palatable to the public, as well as to prevent any potential legal liability (considering the huge number of minors that were members). Wanting people to be nice to each other is a decent enough goal imo, although sometimes that COULD admittedly result in some slight overreaction to things. I think MOST of the time the response to people was appropriate, though. Forum isn't ever coming back tbh That a shame to be honest. Since I was hoping that at the very least that a earlier version of the forum was saved somewhere and could be used when the forums return someday. Because some of the forum surviving was a better alternative to none of it coming back. But yeah honestly at this point I'm not really expecting them to come back, though I will be pleasantly surprised if they someday do. |
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Fish
Rungjumpin' Ragamuffin
mostly on discord
Posts: 285
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Fish on May 21, 2016 0:31:20 GMT
Yeah, one of my least favorite moderation decisions (banning laserdogbad, a true artist whose only crime was making too much art) was probably part of that rebranding effort. I've got my complaints like everyone else, but this isn't the place to rant about specific people. |
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Post by Wesley Foxx on May 21, 2016 0:57:05 GMT
Yeah, one of my least favorite moderation decisions (banning laserdogbad, a true artist whose only crime was making too much art) was probably part of that rebranding effort. I've got my complaints like everyone else, but this isn't the place to rant about specific people. I've never been able to decide if he was just deeply committed to a dadaist madman persona or if he was genuinely that incomprehensible. He'd have random bursts of lucidity/coherence then descend screaming back down into madness at the blink of an eye. |
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Fish
Rungjumpin' Ragamuffin
mostly on discord
Posts: 285
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Fish on May 21, 2016 16:55:21 GMT
It was a persona, but he seemed to have a sort of addiction to playing it online. He once stated he was tired of being seen as stupid and wanted to stop doing the SBaHJ RPing, but then a few weeks later put up another thread. He's still active on youtube and steam and stuff, doing the same thing, though still completely capable of dropping out of the persona (unlike some of the other shitty adventure creators, where probably just too young to be on the forums). My last contact with him was when we heard of autoglassmasterclass' passing.
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Post by judgedeadd on May 22, 2016 16:04:35 GMT
I have been away from the fandom for a long time, so if anyone knows, I'm curious: just how important were the forums for the fandom, say, for the last two years or so? Back in my day I remember the forums were the fandom's center of gravity, though with community offshoots on fanfiction.net or AO3 or deviantart gaining in importance.
Now it seems like What Pumpkin could afford to essentially shut down the forums and comparatively few people noticed.
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Post by gimeurcookie on May 22, 2016 16:23:39 GMT
Seeing as the forums did get shutdown and only a few people noticed (relative to the size of the whole fandom) it's likely that as a gathering place of fans it had much much much less then how many fans were on tumblr for instance. The forums going down have likely done more damage to fan/forum adventures then they did to the fandom themselves. Still a lot of live reactions to updates are lost for now as a forum is better for archiving then lets say, a tumblr feed.
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Post by aquilus3 on May 22, 2016 17:20:31 GMT
So I'm taking a guess that the mspaforums have been completely destroyed?
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Post by aquilus3 on May 22, 2016 17:24:27 GMT
I never had any real direct contact with Softowl myself, but in her defense, I seem to recall reading somewhere that at least most of her more overbearing rulings were due to her feeling a (prolly non-existant) responsibility to maintain a PG13 atmosphere in the community, safe for highschool computer lab browsing level. IIRC of course. Yeah, there was a big push to foster more of a "community of respect" in order to move away from the days when the atmosphere of the forums was a little more irreverent and abrasive. I personally interpreted that as partially being caused by WP becoming a Real Company and wanting the brand's primary online community to be seen as palatable to the public, as well as to prevent any potential legal liability (considering the huge number of minors that were members). Wanting people to be nice to each other is a decent enough goal imo, although sometimes that COULD admittedly result in some slight overreaction to things. I think MOST of the time the response to people was appropriate, though. That a shame to be honest. Since I was hoping that at the very least that a earlier version of the forum was saved somewhere and could be used when the forums return someday. Because some of the forum surviving was a better alternative to none of it coming back. But yeah honestly at this point I'm not really expecting them to come back, though I will be pleasantly surprised if they someday do. I think them trying to keep a PG13 rating on the sight is kinda what ruined it for some people. Like the amount of discussion we could have on forum was nearly non-existant because of the overbearing rules. |
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Post by jacquerel on May 22, 2016 17:49:50 GMT
The rules were very far from overbearing and almost all discussion is easily possible in a PG13 environment. This forum has exactly the same set of rules.
Your guess is also literally as good as anyone's, we still know nothing more than we did when this topic was first made.
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Post by gimeurcookie on May 22, 2016 18:39:03 GMT
I have never been to a forum whose pg-13 rule was so severely limiting that I felt I couldn't make a topic or do a certain post. What sort of topics did you feel you were unable to make due to the rules?
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Post by aquilus3 on May 22, 2016 18:57:58 GMT
I have never been to a forum whose pg-13 rule was so severely limiting that I felt I couldn't make a topic or do a certain post. What sort of topics did you feel you were unable to make due to the rules? discussing what's going on in the world. Major societal issues, the fact that a girl attempted suicide because of some people on tumblr, people not knowing which "your to use" . Somehow I feel they didn't like that. |
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Post by Neptz on May 22, 2016 19:29:18 GMT
I have never been to a forum whose pg-13 rule was so severely limiting that I felt I couldn't make a topic or do a certain post. What sort of topics did you feel you were unable to make due to the rules? discussing what's going on in the world. Major societal issues, the fact that a girl attempted suicide because of some people on tumblr, people not knowing which "your to use" . Somehow I feel they didn't like that. Pretty much this, yeah. There's a lot of stuff I've wanted to argue with people about but that can't be done because of the rules. It always kind of made me sad, but oh well, that's how the world works. |
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Post by sigh on May 22, 2016 19:37:02 GMT
Yeah, for a comic that draws a remarkably high amount from pop culture and delves into a lot of what some would consider political issues, it was surprisingly difficult to create a topic or drive a conversation about many of those topics.
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Post by aquilus3 on May 22, 2016 19:39:20 GMT
discussing what's going on in the world. Major societal issues, the fact that a girl attempted suicide because of some people on tumblr, people not knowing which "your to use" . Somehow I feel they didn't like that. Pretty much this, yeah. There's a lot of stuff I've wanted to argue with people about but that can't be done because of the rules. It always kind of made me sad, but oh well, that's how the world works. In a case like this. It was less of arguing and more of just discussing. Because the tumblr goers were being pretty stupid. All this because she drew the characters differently. |
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Post by mementovivere on May 22, 2016 20:01:43 GMT
I mean, there WAS once an entire "serious business" subforum for serious discussion and stuff like that on the MSPA Forums. It just tended to be a hotbed for heated arguments and negativity, so eventually (before I was a mod) they were deemed more trouble than they were worth for a forum for webcomic, and it's not like there aren't other forums meant specifically for discussing those topics.
I suppose we don't necessarily have to follow that same model here if people really want a place to talk about those things, but I am wary of discussion topics about touchy subjects just because I've seen them turn toxic so many times, or result in a lot of resentment between users. Like, in the recent past people have had trouble discussing the classpect system without being rude and attacking each other, and that's about something that's completely fictional. That effect tends to get amplified if it's an issue that hits closer to home for people, like politics, religion, belief systems, social justice issues, race, sexuality, gender, society, etc etc.
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Post by jacquerel on May 22, 2016 20:16:18 GMT
I think that was much less because of a wanted "PG-13" atmosphere and much more simply because every time such topics were discussed people could rarely conduct themselves in an appropriate or respectful manner (which you are still expected to do on these forums).
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thedude3445
Scampermaster
Homestuck? More like, Homo suck... oh wait...
Posts: 212
Pronouns: other (see signature)
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Post by thedude3445 on May 22, 2016 20:19:06 GMT
I've been writing really long rambles about failed MSPA projects of mine over the past 5-6 years of being a Homestuck fan (and some others), and it's been fun to think back to all the stupid ideas I had and all the cool-but-failed group projects I contibuted to... but when I actually want to go back and revisit all that stuff, I realize that the MSPA Forums are gone and there's just not much left for me to find. One idea I had revolved around a really cool fan theory from back in the very first Fan Art thread, but now that's lost, as are all the amazing threads where Hussie would make mediocre music or get in bad-comic-offs with other members or make book edits. It's really sad. I'm glad that people went through the early Homestuck fan music threads and found all the music made by future Music Team members, but there's still a whole lot of other fan music and fan art from the early days of the fandom that will be extremely difficult to relocate now. Has there been any official word from WhatPumpkin whatsoever about this? Have any admins commented, because I haven't seen any MSPAF admins on this forum so far (not even Drillgorg??  ) and that's really weird to me. |
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Post by jacquerel on May 22, 2016 20:30:20 GMT
We've heard no official word of any kind.
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thedude3445
Scampermaster
Homestuck? More like, Homo suck... oh wait...
Posts: 212
Pronouns: other (see signature)
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Post by thedude3445 on May 22, 2016 20:53:06 GMT
That's just incomprehensibly bad PR. Konami's got better PR than them. I just don't understand why a company trying to branch out into more expansive mediums (Namco High, Paradox Space, Homestuck 2.0, Hiveswap, WeLoveFine Merch) would go silent for months at a time, not give any word when the official forums, the central hub of the fandom, go down suddenly, and just generally seem to continue making bad with the people who spend the most money.
Hussie used to be one of the most transparent creators out there, talking to fans directly, posting on his own forum frequently, and putting out news updates when things happened. But sometime in 2012 he just kind of fell off the map, and I'm not sure what happened to cause it...
In a cool alternate universe, What Pumpkin used their clout to become a sort of publisher of more indie projects. Lots of webcomics with ties to Homestuck like Ava's Demon or NEO-KOSMOS would have merchandise from What Pumpkin and that kind of thing; Undertale would have been published by What Pumpkin; non-Homestuck solo albums by Music Team members would have been released under some netlabel where What Pumpkin would promote the Music Team's endeavors... it all seems so simple and not even a cynical brand move, either, to do any of this kind of stuff.
I lost track of the original point of the thread, but the forum collapse is really a sign that What Pumpkin needs to do a significantly better job than they are doing now.
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Post by Arashi500 on May 22, 2016 21:39:53 GMT
Has there been any official word from WhatPumpkin whatsoever about this? Have any admins commented, because I haven't seen any MSPAF admins on this forum so far (not even Drillgorg?? ) and that's really weird to me. Doesn't look like it. Seems like no part of the totem pole has any clue as to why it fell or how to get it standing again. |
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Post by obsidalicious on May 22, 2016 23:43:33 GMT
So I'm taking a guess that the mspaforums have been completely destroyed? Not only are all but the hacker's own page 404'ing but all the sites image assets(emoticons etc.) are gone too. So I'm guessing the hacker pretty much ctrl-a, deleted everything in the web server. |
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Post by gimeurcookie on May 22, 2016 23:50:45 GMT
Yeah I'm absolutely sure the reason behind not allowing those topics was because of drama. I remember the serious business area on the MSPAF and I also remember never going in to it because nearly every topic turned from peaceful discussion to toxic drama by the 2nd page of said topic. So while I understand you might have wanted to host those topics, honestly, there are better forums to host it then a forum centered around a single fandom. So honestly I think they were in the clear to shut down those topics given the track record those topics had.
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Post by Neptz on May 22, 2016 23:55:31 GMT
Then there's also people who are very, very passionate about headcanons. Fuck, if I told some people I know I see all of the kids as white (with the exception of jade, which I think is some strange breed of asian) I'm getting choked out.
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) and that's really weird to me.
