I don't really understand...

[Rishwin]

Do you think I care who made those threads? And yes I knew, you do realize that I looked those threads up yesterday...
The point is the section was full of spam, I was against those threads, if it had been my call they would have been closed forever. But they didn't get closed, hence the spam continued, not just in those topics, but in all topics.

The issue with that section has always been that it was full of spam, and due to the various views on how to deal with it, it stayed as a spam section. Hence why I said that it needs very clear rules and none of those crappy topics should be allowed, that way it will also be doable for a mod to control, personally I could never be bothered to read every thread and I never went into those large threads due to the massive spam and I didn't feel like spending a hour of my day reading spam from people who had nothing better to do all day.

So Spamzilla should NOT return, it would be good to put something like a chat forum, but we would need some actual rules and they would need to be enforced, basicly anyone that is obviously spamming gets a warning, second time a infraction etc.

I hope you realize that when we say "Spamzilla", we are talking about the ENTIRE section - ie. including when it became 'The Lounge' and had proper rules and proper moderating. All of these things that you are listing did NOT occur after we had rules implemented there, which was done within 2 weeks of that section being opened.

Every post you make, simply indicates to me the lack of attention you paid to the section. You may not have read every thread and gone through those ridiculously long threads, but i did. Hence why i keep repeating that I really am the only person who can give a proper account of what actually happened there.

This idealistic forum you speak of, it did once exist. Once. Back when RsX, Negata, FragFrog, DTB and Kaoii were the top dogs around here. But the shit has reached the fan, and like i have said multiple times here, the forum has been put into the hands of incompetent people. The times are changing, and if bringing back Spamzilla is going to bring this forum back from literally the verge of death, then why would anyone be objecting to it?

The ONLY active threads in this entire section over the past month, have been threads relating to Spamzilla, and how much people want it back. Take a hint people.

[Ron]

I'm not saying give it up exactly, just give someone who wants to see it prosper a chance to turn it around.

I know its not a site aimed for profit either. My point was it could be used to make a fair amount of money if more effort was put in to the site. More people would be willing to wear a RaGEZONE T-shirt if the site had better reputation.

I understand the "lets keep everything under control" thing but I'd rather risk something unfortunate happening for the chance for something great happening. At least we could say "I was around back in 2010 when ____ happened." Like people are now with "I was around when we had the quarter of a million posts thread" or "I was around when devin went to iraq" (lol)

[GohanSSJ]

I hope you realize that when we say "Spamzilla", we are talking about the ENTIRE section - ie. including when it became 'The Lounge' and had proper rules and proper moderating. All of these things that you are listing did NOT occur after we had rules implemented there, which was done within 2 weeks of that section being opened.

Every post you make, simply indicates to me the lack of attention you paid to the section. You may not have read every thread and gone through those ridiculously long threads, but i did. Hence why i keep repeating that I really am the only person who can give a proper account of what actually happened there.

This idealistic forum you speak of, it did once exist. Once. Back when RsX, Negata, FragFrog, DTB and Kaoii were the top dogs around here. But the shit has reached the fan, and like i have said multiple times here, the forum has been put into the hands of incompetent people. The times are changing, and if bringing back Spamzilla is going to bring this forum back from literally the verge of death, then why would anyone be objecting to it?

The ONLY active threads in this entire section over the past month, have been threads relating to Spamzilla, and how much people want it back. Take a hint people.

Spamzilla is spamzilla, not anything else, if you are talking about something else, use the correct name, that way people actually understand what you are talking about.

Right, you are the only person qualified to talk about this, let's all bow down to the mighty Rishwin who read every topic and every post. You know what I saw when I went in those topics, spam, shit and more shitty spam.
I just went through a couple of pages, and it's all the same crap, like this http://forum.ragezone.com/f83/last-p...index3001.html or let's skip to last year http://forum.ragezone.com/f83/last-p...index4051.html

It's all shit. Pretending it's not only makes your point weaker and weaker. Aslong as you are being ignorant about the facts, people will not take you serious. So yes you might have followed it all, but since you are among the people who 'posted' all day there, you really don't have a clear view on what's spam and what's not anymore.

As for what my idealistic view was, you obviously have no clue at all, especially since none of those people would be in my list of ideal Smods, some of them I would never want as Smods or mods for that matter.

Your view of RZ is what you think is ideal, what you are forgetting is that most of us older members thing your ideal RZ is far from ideal, very far from it. Back in the day we didn't have a large quantity of posts, but we loved that forum, now obviously since it got so big it's impossible to recreate that, however that doesn't mean that your version is what most of us see as a ideal forum.

Now whether you like it or not, you're not in charge, the current staff and mostly MentaL/Exy are in charge, if you want to change something then you need to come with arguments that work, so far I see a whole lot of complaining how they are doing things, and defending the massive spam that was going on, otherwise things will never change. So I'd say get a realistic view about that section, think of a way that will actually keep that clean without suggesting you as it's mod, because your view obviously isn't the same of those in power and they might actually consider it.

[Rishwin]

The Spamzilla IS the lounge, what exactly are you talking about? It is the same section, the name was simply changed. Spamzilla, Post-a-Holics, The Lounge... i don't care what you call it, it is the same section.

I never said that's what i wanted. I'm saying those were the people who were in charge when the forum was "at it's best" as far as I'm concerned. I clearly was not around before that, so i can't comment on anything before then, can i?

[CarterFTWWW]

We had a home page?

[Sergiu14]

Spamzilla was the place where I could act like the retard I am and not give a crap that some uptight MOD will ban me for not being on point. WE WANTS REVOLUTION WE WANTS FREEDUM

[GohanSSJ]

The Spamzilla IS the lounge, what exactly are you talking about? It is the same section, the name was simply changed. Spamzilla, Post-a-Holics, The Lounge... i don't care what you call it, it is the same section.

I never said that's what i wanted. I'm saying those were the people who were in charge when the forum was "at it's best" as far as I'm concerned. I clearly was not around before that, so i can't comment on anything before then, can i?

Everytime the section name changed, the policy surrounding it changed, so yes it is relevant which name is being used. Regardless of that, aslong such spam gets posted then it will always fail, because here is the thing, the very thing you are defending, which you don't see as spam, is what ticks most staff members off.

And indeed, you can't comment on anything before that. See where the problem is? You pretend to know it all, you even claim you know best what happened there etc, so here you are claiming we need to go back to a point, which personally I found anything but great. Now since it was closed down, I'm assuming atleast some of the staff agreed with that.

So instead of telling us great stories about the spam section, you should either find a way to get a similar section with basicly no spam back, or leave it as it is, but shouting around how RZ is dead, and how if nothing happens all the regulars etc leave, will only piss people off.

So I'd say go do something constructive, because trust me, you will never pressure MentaL or Exy into doing something they are not behind, so get them behind something new instead of digging up the past.

[No0b]

I really don't get the name change system but the homepage really should be worked on.

[Rishwin]

The content is the only thing that matters, not the policies. Regardless of what the name was or what the rules were, that section always remained the same and always remained the most active.

I never claimed to "know it all", i simply claimed to know more about that section than you do. Which is true, i absolutely do. Also i think you are either confused or lost, because during that "point in time" which i am referring to, the Spamzila never even existed yet. You are mixing two completely different conversations into one.

I'm not crusading to get any section back, I'm just saying what i believe would be best. In order for me to be "trying to get a section back", that would imply that i have some kind of swing over what decisions are made. Which i don't. You probably do, but i don't.

[GohanSSJ]

The content is the only thing that matters, not the policies. Regardless of what the name was or what the rules were, that section always remained the same and always remained the most active.

Before that section came around, this section was very active and due to the rules we had no spam, however due to people trying to get their post count up you had people who just wanted to chat and people who didn't really want to chat, but just increase their post count, with the introduction of that section that was removed and topics in this section were of higher standard.

Ideally we should have a section where you can chat, however because we get spam in it everytime, people get pissed off with it. The main issue is that too many people don't really understand the different between chatting and spamming, you could make a post with a few words and it could be perfectly fine, while others do the same and it's absolute spam. Because of the large amount of posts in that section, it makes it very hard to moderate properly, it's why most mods have been very lenient on the section, otherwise you would be there all day.

If such a section would go up, not a single word, counting, last person is best etc topics should be allowed, not a single one, it confuses people in thinking you can just spam in the whole section.

I never claimed to "know it all", i simply claimed to know more about that section than you do. Which is true, i absolutely do. Also i think you are either confused or lost, because during that "point in time" which i am referring to, the Spamzila never even existed yet. You are mixing two completely different conversations into one.

Seeing as the discussion is about spamzilla or whichever other name you want to give, you btw named it spamzilla aswell

and the removal of Spamzilla (our most active section), has without a doubt killed the Evo sections.

You do claim to know it all, you seem to think because you visited more topics there that you know more, this is however not true, I've visited that section with all it's incarnations lots of times, both posting there and moderating it, I know what went on there, plenty of fun decent topics, however most of them got filled with random shit, both from n00bs and regulars, which made it quite hard to have a decent thread in there, people seemed to think that because post count didn't count, that it didn't matter what you posted where, so even your daily rant got spammed with shit.

I went through that topic I linked to before by like 500 pages a time, the only thing in common was that each time atleast half the post on the page was spam, whether it was 2006 or 2009. While slight changes might have occured over the years, in general there was too much crap.

So yeah go ahead and tell me that the 499 pages in between those were good and not filled with spam, tell me that I happen to visit the bad thread all these years and that the ones I didn't click were good ones... just know that it just makes you even more unbelievable, especially since the reason why so many staff members didn't like it was because of the same reasons I had.

You obviously didn't mind all that, that's fine, but most of us didn't like a lot of the stuff in there, and that made the section quite often more of an annoyance than an addition to the site.

I'm not crusading to get any section back, I'm just saying what i believe would be best. In order for me to be "trying to get a section back", that would imply that i have some kind of swing over what decisions are made. Which i don't. You probably do, but i don't.

When you again and again are posting that it would be better to get it back, how the evo section has died etc, then it's obviously you want it back and you have been repeating that, now must of us would consider you trying to get it back, otherwise you wouldn't spend any time into posting all that.

As for having influence to get it back, everyone can get it back if they make a solid argument, I'm sure that if you made a good argument with ideas how to keep it from turning into a spam section and such, that they would listen, at that point you will have as much influence as I do, because my influence purely comes from the fact that they will listen to me, that they won't ignore me, so when I have such a strong argument that I can convince them, that they will listen, and as a long time member yourself, you will be heard, everything else will be upto you to convince them of your truth.

[Rishwin]

I also want legal weed and euthanasia, doesn't mean I'm going to start a political party and run for government. I can post all i want about wanting Spamzilla back, but you cannot classify it as "trying to get the section back" if my actions aren't going to bring it back.

Also, i call it 'Spamzilla' because that really is the easiest thing to call it. I sure as hell am not going to type out "Spamzilla/Post-a-Holics/The Lounge" each and every time i make a reference to it.

You are also making the assumption that the Outerworld lost activity due to people going to Spamzilla instead. You can speculate till the cows come home, but neither of us can prove nor disprove that. I obviously believe that the new section coincided with a large amount of older members leaving, but you will of course disagree.

Please stop referencing those 2 huge threads. FYI, i have closed and deleted them several times but Dan insisted on bringing them back. If you really have such a huge problem with it, take it up with him and leave me alone.

You truly are naive if you believe that regular members have as much influence as "ranked" members. Anyone who has been here for more than 3 months knows that the entire forum is based on user ranks and popularity.

[GohanSSJ]

I also want legal weed and euthanasia, doesn't mean I'm going to start a political party and run for government. I can post all i want about wanting Spamzilla back, but you cannot classify it as "trying to get the section back" if my actions aren't going to bring it back.

You seriously got 1 of the most limited minds ever.

First of all, how do you know this all won't result in it returning? A active topic is filled about that section. Second there are many ways to change something, creating a political party to allow weed is 1 way to do it, another is to protest against the current policy, but even just educating someone about it is a step towards it.
Even the tiniest actions can result in changes, right now you've been talking about that section for a while now, that gets people attention, wether you intented for this to happen or not, the fact is your actions resulted in these re-actions. If you truely weren't after any of that, why would you even bother posting? Why would you talk about something that should return when you aren't even trying to get it back, that's just a waste of time.

Also, i call it 'Spamzilla' because that really is the easiest thing to call it. I sure as hell am not going to type out "Spamzilla/Post-a-Holics/The Lounge" each and every time i make a reference to it.

That's fine, but when you talk about spamzilla then you can't pretend that the section in the time that it was actually called spamzilla, doesn't count. Besides there was always spam, so regardless of the name, things haven't changed much.

You are also making the assumption that the Outerworld lost activity due to people going to Spamzilla instead. You can speculate till the cows come home, but neither of us can prove nor disprove that.

Seeing as it would be impossible to gather that kind of data years later, I guess I don't have factual proof. However trust me on this, this section lost a lot of activity after that, which was another issue with the other section, back in the day everything was posted here, in time more and more sections were made for specific things, however it wasn't until the creation of spamzilla that people no longer knew in what section to post, thinking it wasn't worthy anymore of this section, because of that it ended up among lots and lots of topics, many of which were spam or filled with it. And yes, for me that's a fact.

Please stop referencing those 2 huge threads. FYI, i have closed and deleted them several times but Dan insisted on bringing them back. If you really have such a huge problem with it, take it up with him and leave me alone.

Ah but here you are claiming that section wasn't filled with spam. Now you want me to look for other topics to prove my point, or will you just accept that the section was filled with it.

As for him bringing them back, I've always been against those topics, I've stated that before quite a few times in the past when I was trying to reorganize it, like you, I couldn't get it done either.
Hence why I said, if that section would come back, then that kind of stuff should never be allowed again, once people start spamming, they just won't stop.

You truly are naive if you believe that regular members have as much influence as "ranked" members. Anyone who has been here for more than 3 months knows that the entire forum is based on user ranks and popularity.

Dude, you got your own rank, 1 of the highest post counts and you were a mod and you want to label yourself as a regular member rather then a ranked member? Maybe they won't take you serious, but that would only be because you won't take yourself serious.
Oh and I'm sure I've got more influence here then pretty much everyone else, but I don't see how you don't have enough influence to get something changed, like I said, if you were to speak to say Exy, then I'm sure he would listen, I mean I have no clue how you 2 are, but he's always been fair and open for things, MentaL is usually harder to reach, so it's easier to talk to Exy. So like I said, if you made a solid argument, then I don't see how mine, or anyone elses with a supposed rank, would have more influence.
It's ofcourse true that lots of regular members have pretty much no influence, but if you got enough to have either one of them to hear you out, then that's all you need.

[foxx]

You can speak to exy how much you want, you can even induce(is this the word?) into something, but then MentaL comes from his *insert number of months here* hybernation and changes everything to his image and does not listen to advices from regular members such as myself.

[GohanSSJ]

Look you can argue about how he should be around more, make changes quicker etc etc, fact is that either doesn't have the time for it or is not willing to spend as much time on it, though remember that while you might not see him do anything, doesn't mean he isn't.

Now this is still his forum, if you want to change something fairly big then he needs to agree first. Seeing as there are so many people who are giving him suggestions on things, it would actually be best to suggest stuff to someone else first, open a topic regarding a situations, make a clear post with all your ideas etc and just ask for Smods to respond, if they don't respond, just keep poking them, I always forced Smods out of retirement to react on my ideas.

Seriously, I do know how annoying it can be, especially when you got this brilliant idea, but your view doesn't have to be someone elses and RZ has changed a lot over that time, there has been a lot of trial and error, so I'm guessing MentaL is quite happy how most things are.

Personally I would love to actually really do something with RZ, but for me it would be pretty much all or nothing now, I've done the mod and supervisor thing, but the last couple of times I just left again because with everything I got going on, I can't really spend that much time anymore unless I'm making serious progress. I'm guessing that won't change, which is a shame, RZ has been a huge part of my life, not just the site, but also traveling to the UK to meet the guys etc etc, so yeah I care about what happens to it, but yeah it's MentaL's site and we all gotta respect that even if you would do certain things different.

[Phantom*]

I don't even know why people subscribe. You get nothing from it and the money goes to dan because RZ is sponsored. He doesn't have to pay for the server. :/

I don't believe Frantech is covering costs for vBulletin and it's associated costs for upgrades, plug-ins, and themes. It's the reason I subscribe.

As for Spamzilla, a forum isn't an appropriate technology for such. It's better left to realtime chat as there is no reason to store such nonsense. (P.S Take notice of my post count, If I require a rapport with someone or just have something to shout, I use better alternatives to do so. This thing called the world wide web was designed to link context.)

I do agree with everyone that better leadership or attention is needed but we're the minority. The majority that visit don't stick around for years to come. As with any investment you do just enough to please the majority.

[CrashOveride]

My 2 cents:
http://forum.ragezone.com/5908283-post61.html

That's my opinion based on only really following the Evo section's of RZ solely since 04~Super.
"The Lounge" killed the evo sections, not "spam-zilla", not "post-a-holics" and especially not "the removal" of them since they had been dead for at minimum a year by then.

Ask any of the current Supers about it and you'll likely get the same explanation, hell there are plenty of threads in the staff section's from the time and knowing it was the problem then.

I even remember one "staff meeting" at the time when it was first causing problems and everyone except for Junkers, Pieman and yourself Rish was in favour for removing for the very reason as it was destroying the Evo sections.

Crash

[No0b]

I agree about the RaGEZONE sub shit cause I think that MentaL makes a boat load of money every month or so but he is making t-shirts hoodies, and hats and like that shit so uhm he is still helping out.

[GohanSSJ]

My 2 cents:
http://forum.ragezone.com/5908283-post61.html

That's my opinion based on only really following the Evo section's of RZ solely since 04~Super.
"The Lounge" killed the evo sections, not "spam-zilla", not "post-a-holics" and especially not "the removal" of them since they had been dead for at minimum a year by then.

Ask any of the current Supers about it and you'll likely get the same explanation, hell there are plenty of threads in the staff section's from the time and knowing it was the problem then.

I even remember one "staff meeting" at the time when it was first causing problems and everyone except for Junkers, Pieman and yourself Rish was in favour for removing for the very reason as it was destroying the Evo sections.

Crash

Yeah that's pretty much the whole problem, this section only gets a few kind of posts because everything else (music, games, tech etc etc) gets discussed in it's own forum, by removing the daily stuff this section pretty much dies. At the same time right now a lot of threads are not made probably because they would be considered spam, even though most of us wouldn't mind reading them. Because of the spam section, this section got labeled as a serious section, even though before that spam section was around, we had lots of silly topics.

I agree about the RaGEZONE sub shit cause I think that MentaL makes a boat load of money every month or so but he is making t-shirts hoodies, and hats and like that shit so uhm he is still helping out.

Obviously I can't look at his account, however over the years so many people have thought he was making money, hell even I thought at times that he was atleast breaking even while infact he was still losing money, we even had a Smod once who called him a liar over it.

This forum has a major issue with getting money in, the content we offer is illegal, almost no one wants to sponsor that and the ones that do won't pay nearly as much as ones that would do if things were legal.
The store with shirts and stuff doesn't get him a lot of money btw, on a €15,- shirt he might get like €1,- or something, those stores are more for fun then to make money of it.

As for Spamzilla, a forum isn't an appropriate technology for such. It's better left to realtime chat as there is no reason to store such nonsense. (P.S Take notice of my post count, If I require a rapport with someone or just have something to shout, I use better alternatives to do so. This thing called the world wide web was designed to link context.)

We've tested several things, mostly IRC, here is the thing though, people generally don't use it, sure there are people who use it, but only a small amount. On top of that, personally you won't find me in there, I usually have time here in there to comment, early in the morning before I leave home, in the evening while I'm busy cooking etc etc, joining a chatroom won't be a option.

Storing it is not a problem, size is not a issue and you could just remove it from the search engine.


Imo the section can work, but it needs to be kept clean and it will leave this section crippled.

[foxx]

I'm sure he would get quite some money from google ads(if he's not getting already - can't really see ads since I got everything adblocked), also I think he's selling mmo section ads, and I think he wants at least like $20/month, considering there is like 7(or more?) sections with those ads, that should make him at least $140/month? how much is this old vbulletin per year? like $100? Of course, maybe he only wants like $1/month for those mmo section ads, but hey, that's very unlikely and we all know it.

---------- Post added at 09:07 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:06 AM ----------

Oh and then there are money from subs :)

---------- Post added at 09:09 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:07 AM ----------

Oh and not that I really care whether he makes money or not..