Yeah, if people leave this place due to whatever bad move from the owner, they would have a hard time attracting new folks because anyone that isn't part of this site already hates it with a passion that I can't describe in words.
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ResetEra Ownership Update
- Thread starter Cerium
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Yeah, if people leave this place due to whatever bad move from the owner, they would have a hard time attracting new folks because anyone that isn't part of this site already hates it with a passion that I can't describe in words.
There is a certain level of naiveté from both users and and mods from this 🤣
Whatever tho, it's been real. I honestly used to like this site but the mod shenanigans (thread banning some guy from his own thread for meta commentary is peak era, also not the only time yall been tweaking) and other users here really soured me.
It would have been nice if you had mods actually be transparent about who did bans and why instead of appearing like some secret police that comes out and clips people in the night but with new management that is very unlikely. All this approach did was throw gasoline on an US vs them mentality that is already inherently present with Mods vs Users by default. I feel bad for the mods that are nice but this is what happens when you all hide away as a faceless mob when actions are taken.
Though I guess that would exposed some of the inherent biases here, as I've been banned several times for "having a history of console warring" when ever I said anything bad about Sony, but it was always OK when I roasted Nintendo and Xbox. (For the record, all three have a presence on my coffee table at home. I'm just vocal about the BS each of the three pull. Violent Sony has happened to been on a good roll as of late. 🤣 )
I'll probably just be back to drifting on the webs while working on my own projects in real life. Feel free to send your team at me for meta commentary if you wish.
Whatever tho, it's been real. I honestly used to like this site but the mod shenanigans (thread banning some guy from his own thread for meta commentary is peak era, also not the only time yall been tweaking) and other users here really soured me.
It would have been nice if you had mods actually be transparent about who did bans and why instead of appearing like some secret police that comes out and clips people in the night but with new management that is very unlikely. All this approach did was throw gasoline on an US vs them mentality that is already inherently present with Mods vs Users by default. I feel bad for the mods that are nice but this is what happens when you all hide away as a faceless mob when actions are taken.
Though I guess that would exposed some of the inherent biases here, as I've been banned several times for "having a history of console warring" when ever I said anything bad about Sony, but it was always OK when I roasted Nintendo and Xbox. (For the record, all three have a presence on my coffee table at home. I'm just vocal about the BS each of the three pull. Violent Sony has happened to been on a good roll as of late. 🤣 )
I'll probably just be back to drifting on the webs while working on my own projects in real life. Feel free to send your team at me for meta commentary if you wish.
Yeah... I speculated about this in a slightly earlier post - https://www.resetera.com/threads/resetera-ownership-update.499677/post-75268146
You are most likely correct about the site maintenance and running costs...
But a bare-bones forum that has the same level of functionality as Resetera... I don't think the cost for setting up the infrastructure can be THAT much... Maybe $1000... TOPS.
A small board for you and your friends can obviously run on a cheap web server you've rented somewhere for $5.I can imagine that one can scale their server costs over time... Like any "business" that relies on ad money and subscription costs.
But I don't think setting up a bare-bones forum like Resetera (minus the users that will obviously require bandwith) is all that expensive.
The cost of setting up the infrastructure should be "practically nothing" (ie less than $1000 on a good day).
I mean... the license for Xenforo (which Resetera runs on) costs $160. And all the other extras on the Xenforo site add up to $695 in total.
So I honestly think $1000 should be sufficient for setting up the necessary infrastructure...
Upscaled systems like Era run on a whole different network architecture where you have to think about additional http nodes and load balancers and stuff.
That gets really pricey pretty quick.
Specific mods already get enough harassment as it is. Why would you want them to get even more? Mod decisions aren't done by one person, so having a "this user was banned by X" message wouldn't increase transparency, it would just put further targets on mods' backs for being the person unlucky enough to have their name on the ban-line when someone gets banned that a Discord doesn't agree with.
You will have to pay for hosting, which depending on the traffic could be a lot. $1000 setup costs doesn't mean much unless you intend to keep a site even half the size of era online for a few weeks only. The opex cost is the big item.
I think this and FinalFireworkers posts are great that sum up my thoughts.
I hope this has no negative effects, but obviously can't be sure. In the meantime we need to treat the staff and mods appropriately.
The basic costs...Probably. But this site has been heavily customized. Looking at some of the newer, smaller forums that have spun off, it's apparent that the user experience is much better off here. That dev work isn't free (even if the volunteer input leading to the customizations was). It's obvious there were many meetings and much thought put into the "vibe" here.
Thank you for that... Even though you are referring to regular running / maintenance costs.
I guess someone out there can think along the lines of Zuckerberg... Start small... Set up the forum infrastructure for $1000. Pay $5-10 per month for server costs. And then increase their monthly server costs as they draw in more users.
Just like any business... Start small...
Facebook didn't start with tens of thousands of users. It started with like 300. That's the core issue here - scale isn't something you can just extrapolate based on something some other guy did almost two decades ago. Every scenario has its own pitfalls and costs.
Yeah, I'm not going to worry about imaginary worst case scenarios.
if things go awry, then people will know about it when it happens
im in no rush to jump ship because of "what ifs" - that wasn't how the last exodus occurred either - that was a fairly unique situation which is not equivalent to the current situation IMO
if things go awry, then people will know about it when it happens
im in no rush to jump ship because of "what ifs" - that wasn't how the last exodus occurred either - that was a fairly unique situation which is not equivalent to the current situation IMO
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I like your post... I wish there was a "like" button.
Taking what you've said into consideration... I'd argue that someone would only need $2000 to have a full-blown equivalent to Resetera that has also been heavily customised.
And one doesn't even need that much money initially...
Like I said... Start small.
You can start with a $2000 set-up but you won't have the users to sustain that project.
Just so you get an idea how much network infrastructure can actually amount to: I've worked 12 years ago for the biggest german free webspace provider and we've had a monthly rental fee for the hardware alone of €60.000. That didn't include traffic, services or any wages. Only the 7 server racks (42 height units) we've used for the backend. And I'm sure there a thousands of architectures that cost even more than ours did at that time.
Big scaled networks are a whole different beast than setting up some random server and having apache run on it.
Absolutely could be done. You'd just have to have a plan for being able to quickly move to enterprise level hosting if it takes off...or be okay with loosing 2 grand if it doesn't.
See this.. this is what I want, sometimes I feel my voice is ignored while the more negative and hateful posters are engaged (if only to argue against them), and that leads to frustrations and perhaps a little spammy rabble rousing. So apologies if that frustration clouded my intention.
It is the only power I have though and if I can give an hour or so of a day to keep these thoughts fresh and relevant, so be it. Like I said I would rather we stood and fought to stay us than slink off one by one in the night as our personal lines are crossed.
Thanks for the reply ❤️
I saw something fly past my office window not too long ago. I only caught it out of the corner of my eye, but it could have been Cerium being propelled across the continental US by jizz.
If like, 5-6 people went in on it together it would be like the cost of a good night out on the town...
I give six months before the new owner decides to hide the staff tag, and another two before they replace the entire team with an internal team that is a third of the size, full of mimimun wage mods, so they can just ban and close threads that might hurt them financially.
I don't know much about the mods and admins but I do sympathize with the things they have to deal with. I feel like this can be an incredibly stressful position that forces them to think about taking action on things like racist attacks and users threatening self-harm/suicide. And that's why I would've liked them to have gotten some compensation from this buyout.
That said, I don't think they're stupid for the decisions their making and I certainly won't disrespect them by calling names and whatnot.
That said, I don't think they're stupid for the decisions their making and I certainly won't disrespect them by calling names and whatnot.
Yeah, my biggest issues are the same. All the promises I've seen so far are around content and moderation, but that's part of it. The rest of the reasons I joined (ad policy, strategies for growth/new accounts, community ownership and transparency, general website design, the ethics that people making money off the site have) not only have not been promised, they are in direct opposition to what was in that press release. I'm not going anywhere yet, but as others have mentioned this site is important to everyone here and I'm pretty nervous about how it's going to play out longer term.
Basically this, and it sounds like the mods feel the same way so right now it's a "wait and see" kind of thing.
So now everyone cares about mods and their well being?
Where was this "caring" when not even 4 weeks ago, hundreds of you over dozens and dozens of pages rallied together to bully, harass, and attack mods both on and off site for multiple days and posted some of the most cruel, vile, dehumanizing and harmful posts demanding all staff fired, blaming staff for everything wrong with era. Pages and pages of sharing unauthorized to share discord screenshots to attack and drag a mod that has routinely been one the main staff punching bags for many for over 4 years on this site until they finally quit. Not to mention that an additional 2 more mods are no longer mods in the aftermath of the media create threads. This doesn't even get into how over the years many other threads and situations have lauded mass amounts of viritol and resulted in further staff departures.
Month after month many users routinely call staff cops, NYPD/LAPD, fascists and so much more, often using twitter and discord as off site avenues to continue attack, belittle, dismiss and harass mods when certain threads are locked. I can't tell you how many anonymous and non anonymous tickets I've personally witnessed that was some person using a certain thread or post to write a ticket to give XYZ reason why mods are all terrible, or a user disgruntled over a recent ban using a ticket to explain that we are no different then the NYPD for giving them a 3 day console warring ban they disagree with.
Now dozens of you, many of which are chiefly responsible for the damage caused with the MC thread situation, including forcing away some of the most hardworking and active mods, are now claiming to care about mods, their well being and heath? You'll excuse me if I don't believe it.
You want to truly help and care about staff? Maybe treat them as people instead of dehumanizing them. Listen to them when they say they care about era and just are trying to do what is best. You don't have to agree with every decision made and criticism, when healthy and toxic, is perfectly fine. However every single thread or post an admin or mod makes saying to treat them with respect and that the level of hate is unwarranted and staff are human too is met with the response of "Being a volunteer doesn't mean you're free from criticism!" or just deflections and doubling down on dehumanizing staff. So again, users love to remind staff that they are volunteers when it suits their narrative and that being volunteers doesn't make anyone free of "criticism", but now users want to claim staff shouldn't be volunteers but be paid and treated better? Which is it.
I work in nursing, I see more than my fair share of combative patients and family on a near daily basis, especially with this long going pandemic now. There's one word and thing that's needed more than ever now and that's empathy. The ability to put yourself in other peoples shoes and truly care about them as a whole, the same way you'd want to be treated if you were in there place. Like I said no one is free from criticism and disagreements when non toxic are perfectly healthy, but empathy and understanding would do far more to help out staff and users alike than money or being paid ever would. I can't speak for all staff, past and present, but at least that's my personal feelings having been on staff and worked extremely hard for a long time as staff to help make this site a better place as I truly do love it and all of you. Helping a site and people I love grow and be the best it can be, that's more valuable than money to me.
Where was this "caring" when not even 4 weeks ago, hundreds of you over dozens and dozens of pages rallied together to bully, harass, and attack mods both on and off site for multiple days and posted some of the most cruel, vile, dehumanizing and harmful posts demanding all staff fired, blaming staff for everything wrong with era. Pages and pages of sharing unauthorized to share discord screenshots to attack and drag a mod that has routinely been one the main staff punching bags for many for over 4 years on this site until they finally quit. Not to mention that an additional 2 more mods are no longer mods in the aftermath of the media create threads. This doesn't even get into how over the years many other threads and situations have lauded mass amounts of viritol and resulted in further staff departures.
Month after month many users routinely call staff cops, NYPD/LAPD, fascists and so much more, often using twitter and discord as off site avenues to continue attack, belittle, dismiss and harass mods when certain threads are locked. I can't tell you how many anonymous and non anonymous tickets I've personally witnessed that was some person using a certain thread or post to write a ticket to give XYZ reason why mods are all terrible, or a user disgruntled over a recent ban using a ticket to explain that we are no different then the NYPD for giving them a 3 day console warring ban they disagree with.
Now dozens of you, many of which are chiefly responsible for the damage caused with the MC thread situation, including forcing away some of the most hardworking and active mods, are now claiming to care about mods, their well being and heath? You'll excuse me if I don't believe it.
You want to truly help and care about staff? Maybe treat them as people instead of dehumanizing them. Listen to them when they say they care about era and just are trying to do what is best. You don't have to agree with every decision made and criticism, when healthy and toxic, is perfectly fine. However every single thread or post an admin or mod makes saying to treat them with respect and that the level of hate is unwarranted and staff are human too is met with the response of "Being a volunteer doesn't mean you're free from criticism!" or just deflections and doubling down on dehumanizing staff. So again, users love to remind staff that they are volunteers when it suits their narrative and that being volunteers doesn't make anyone free of "criticism", but now users want to claim staff shouldn't be volunteers but be paid and treated better? Which is it.
I work in nursing, I see more than my fair share of combative patients and family on a near daily basis, especially with this long going pandemic now. There's one word and thing that's needed more than ever now and that's empathy. The ability to put yourself in other peoples shoes and truly care about them as a whole, the same way you'd want to be treated if you were in there place. Like I said no one is free from criticism and disagreements when non toxic are perfectly healthy, but empathy and understanding would do far more to help out staff and users alike than money or being paid ever would. I can't speak for all staff, past and present, but at least that's my personal feelings having been on staff and worked extremely hard for a long time as staff to help make this site a better place as I truly do love it and all of you. Helping a site and people I love grow and be the best it can be, that's more valuable than money to me.
For sure! I honestly thought that's how this site started, cerium spending a couple of hundred on a license and hosting, and the Admins putting in the work getting it customized, logo, icons, bringing users over, ect. I thought it was a group effort.
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Is this a gaming side thing? I for one have no idea what you're referring to.
I really don't understand the concern by regular users of this forum for how much the owner made, unless I missed posts about people being cheated out of promised money?
The migration from Gaf was quite simply astounding with how it was coordinated and executed.
The end end result from that and the work of the backend/mods team is this forum that is used by many, it could have easily gone sideways and flopped.
The migration from Gaf was quite simply astounding with how it was coordinated and executed.
The end end result from that and the work of the backend/mods team is this forum that is used by many, it could have easily gone sideways and flopped.
All the "from my point of view, the userbase is evil!" takes in response to suggestions that Cerium share a small portion of his wealth with the people that made said wealth possible is also sad.
Why would there be? He obviously knows to not become involved with the toxicity of the community.
This seems to be hitting those who bought into the echo chamber the hardest.
For the rest of us, I don't see how it's going to impact our use of this site.
For the rest of us, I don't see how it's going to impact our use of this site.
I feel sure that when Cerium et al scrambled to put ERA together, Cerium actually had to front more than $10k for the setup of everything and to keep everything sustained, and that was with a motivated army of community organizer, mods, and technical specialists helping out.
It'd be amazingly hard to redo that, and probably really likely that anyone trying will just eat massive losses or have their forum die in obscurity as it gets annoying to maintain a domain name and pay meagre server expenses.
Anyway, I don't really feel like ERA will go anywhere for a while. It will probably continue trucking on while hopefully some of the more dramatic or incendiary members chill out or leave for their own mental health.
It'd be amazingly hard to redo that, and probably really likely that anyone trying will just eat massive losses or have their forum die in obscurity as it gets annoying to maintain a domain name and pay meagre server expenses.
Anyway, I don't really feel like ERA will go anywhere for a while. It will probably continue trucking on while hopefully some of the more dramatic or incendiary members chill out or leave for their own mental health.
I genuinely do not believe that a single one of the people chiding him would show their face if they were actually in his position.
Yeah I'm completely lost on that post. Weird how the people saying that mods should be paid here may not overlap with the people harassing mods.
Honestly... Even if everything was paid for (including the customisation), I still think that the whole thing would only have cost around $2000.
Running the forum however... Including server costs... That's a totally separate thing altogether.
But, yeah... Initial set up costs wouldn't be more than around $2000. Tops.
I do not understand this schtick. This happened with sales era fiasco and is happening here. Why are you so insistent on just blame shifting without addressing the actual issue? Every thing happened in MC chronicles is purely on few mods and trolls. Mods banned people without doing their due resarch and then badmouthed the community on discord. These people in the community are not people too? they don't deserve respect? it is ok to talk shit about them and making fun of them because they are lowly users? The ironic thing is that community was doing far more to resolve the situation than the Mods and an action of the mod damned it all to hell. That discord post was posted in response for banning a poster for something they said about another user on twitter, it was fair game right?. You have to understand that most of the user here don't hate the mods, they are just frustrated with their lack of understanding and opaqueness. You want proof? see how many communities left Era.
This kind of "No you are the actual evil!" does not help anyone. You need to talk to users and understand what they want. Blaming them will only increase the pent up anger towards the people in charge. I understand there are some posters who do not act in good faith and just want to stir up shit, but this still does not invalidates the other users who have genuine misgivings with the staff.
For the sake of both the site and staff i hope the team do better.
does anyone know how to set up a preferred pronoun on our new sister site HEARTHPWN.com? i'm trying to get signed up but i can't find it.
There is nothing for him to say which he has not already stated in his OP. People just want him to show himself so they can tar and feather him.
Wow, kinda shocking to hear people who got screwed this hard actually defending it still
Huh well, that explains the sole owner thing.
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