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TeddyShardik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,649
Germany
It took me 3 hours to catch up amidst a million unrelated posts, so that really isnt a particularly good argument. And just for the record, I am willing to see how the changes affect the community in the future before just giving up on a community I hold dear, but yeah, I agree this thread was heavily derailed and isnt well structured to serve its information purpose.

You can see what the facts are within the first few pages of this thread. That doesn't take hours.
There's a huge range of reactions to those facts in the following 80 pages, but all you need to know, you can learn within 20 minutes.

All the theatrical concern for mods, the disdain for mods, is just dressing. Shit dressing, but it's dressing.
All the facts are there.

And the fact is, we can either wait and see how things go, or we abandon ship.

Again, if people are not willing to spend some time for the community they so proclaim to love, I can't take them seriously.
 

Cenauru

Dragon Girl Supremacy
Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,015
There's barely any more discussion to be had, it'll just go in circles repeating the same things and more JAQing off. Best bet is maybe asking/ sending in a ticket for a single locked megathread post with all the details later once mods are up again.
 

subpar spatula

Refuses to Wash his Ass
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
22,187
There's barely any more discussion to be had, it'll just go in circles repeating the same things and more JAQing off. Best bet is maybe asking/ sending in a ticket for a single locked megathread post with all the details later once mods are up again.
The discussion never existed in the first place.
 

TeddyShardik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,649
Germany
"bother to read" the damn thread turned into a tagfishing clusterfuck for 20 pages because the mods and administrators deemed it so.

We have people complaining they can't have their bite-sized info, right away.
Despite all the info being within, like 20 pages.
Forgive me if I am out of line for suggesting, that you should follow the discussion on a forum if you want to have a discussion.
 

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,832
You can see what the facts are within the first few pages of this thread. That doesn't take hours.
There's a huge range of reactions to those facts in the following 80 pages, but all you need to know, you can learn within 20 minutes.

All the theatrical concern for mods, the disdain for mods, is just dressing. Shit dressing, but it's dressing.
All the facts are there.

And the fact is, we can either wait and see how things go, or we abandon ship.

Again, if people are not willing to spend some time for the community they so proclaim to love, I can't take them seriously.
As I said, I do take a lot of time for this community or I wouldnt have read it for 3 hours.
There are a lot of facets to this that are worth discussing/knowing that you do not see within the first 20 minutes of reading the thread.

Again, I am fine with believing the mod team and seeing how things turn out, but I still would prefer this being a combined effort by mods and community to find answers/talk about worries:

  1. What was MOBAs statement and did they have similar statements in the past? How did those work out?

  2. How is MOBA treating the other networks? What is their history? What type of company are they? What are dangers we as community should be aware of? What type of Advertisement strategies are to be expected? What "increased potential for monetization" are they referring to based on their other sites?

  3. How is the moderation team being treated? How are they feeling now? I think I only read two mods who gave personal insights and would love to see how the others are feeling about the change. What are their experiences and thoughts? How have they been informed? Which contact exists to new owners? Who has reached out to the new owners, if any? As the data protection was discussed with MOBA, what else was discussed? What type of communication process will be in place for mods/MOBA? Will there be one point of contact? One MOBA representative in mod chats?

  4. As it came up multiple times, how can we as a community help the moderation team directly? Will they consider a more open ended mod application process to help with the work load? If not, why not and how can we help brainstorming other ideas to help the community?

  5. Is it a possibility to make a list of concerns/values that we as a community/mod team present the new owners and get their feedback/reassurance on it? Even if those statements might not be worth a dime, what reassurances/commitments have MOBA made with Cerium? Did he demand anything that they reassured him with? I am relatively sure, mods probably voiced these concerns internally and wonder if any got any reply.

  6. How do we as a community reconcile funding a network of other websites that uses our content to pay for bigoted forum administration on other websites? Do we care? Should we care? I honestly dont know and would love to read how other people are rationalizing it as I also want to stay here and this topic has been a huge point of discussion for me in the past as well (Do I still buy books of authors who expressed hateful views outside of their works? Is that the exact same thing? I have honestly no clue).

  7. How can these answers be pinned/structured in a way to be immediately accessible?

  8. Which part of the website administration is actually done by MOBA now? Like what are they handling exactly? Who is going to decide on future improvements? Server infrastructure? Forum features? When is that supposed to start?

  9. Can we still report problematic ads? What about their guidelines on ad blockers or their comments on moderation suggestions on treating paid members?

There is a good bit more, some of those arent even answered in this thread, so no, I disagree with this thread being a useful source of information for the topic. Collecting answer to all of these would be a good and productive way to come together as a community after we had some easygoing tag fishing fun. To be clear, I want this to be the best course of action for the community and after managing a community of 300.000 players myself, in my humble opinion, this is the best way to do that.
 
Last edited:

Dave.

Member
Oct 27, 2017
6,155
Okay, but, this thread has been a really shitty place to have that discussion, because:
The OP is terrible and fails to include a lot of pertinent information, and the thread itself has been abandoned by its creator.
The pertinent information that is available is spread over 100+ pages, interspersed with a lot of unrelated bullshit.
The thread itself is buried in a forum few people check, and the notification banner is vague and unenticing.
There are two whole threadmarks (and one of them is about the tag party rather than being in any way useful to meaningful discussion).

Don't take my word for it, multiple posters have come in here saying the same thing. Heck, even the staff admit this thread is mostly derails:



There's a very simple and workable solution:


People can keep having their dumb tag parties and discussions about racism against white people in here, and we can have a separate, focussed, detailed thread where people can be informed about and discuss the ramifications of the change in ownership.

I totally understand why the staff would want to contain everything to this single thread, but what's best for the staff does not seem to be what's best for the community in this instance. I really, really don't appreciate the repeated insinuation that a desire to inform is some nefarious scheme to "start a crusade" against the staff. I just want people to know what is happening, and this thread is self-evidently a terrible way of doing that.




Side note, but I really don't think this sort of derail would be accepted or welcomed by staff in any other thread on an even vaguely serious subject, but maybe I'm wrong.

If I went off on a multi-page tag fishing exercise in the next Microsoft buyout thread I'm pretty sure I know which tag I'd be ending up with, and it begins with a B.

Well fucking said.
 

TeddyShardik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,649
Germany
As I said, I do take a lot of time for this community or I wouldnt have invested the time.
There are a lot of facets to this that are worth discussing/knowing that you do not see within the first 20 minutes of reading the thread.

1. How is MOBA treating the other networks? What is their history? What type of company are they? What are dangers we as community should be aware of? What type of Advertisement strategies are to be expected? What "increased potential for monetization" are they referring to based on their other sites?
2. How is the moderation team being treated? What are their experiences and thoughts? How have they been informed? Which contact exists to new owners? Who has reached out to the new owners, if any?
3. As it came up multiple times, how can we as a community help the moderation team directly? Will they consider a more open ended mod application process to help with the work load? If not, why not and how can we help brainstorming other ideas to help the community?

There is a good bit more, some of those arent even answered in this thread, so no, I disagree with this thread being a useful source of information for the topic.

Those are all consequences of what this thread is about.
I completely agree that there needs to be discussion about these things. No question.
That is all in the future though. We are not reaching a satisfying conclusion on 1, 2 or 3 in this thread, at this time. There was never a chance of that.
We literally just have to wait. It's hard as fuck, I know.

What I'm really opposed to, is the delusion that somehow all the staff here are trying to hide the facts from the broader forum. That's just stupid.
If you claim that you're either trying to stirr the pot of shit, too lazy to read or you don't really care.
 

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,832
Those are all consequences of what this thread is about.
I completely agree that there needs to be discussion about these things. No question.
That is all in the future though. We are not reaching a satisfying conclusion on 1, 2 or 3 in this thread, at this time. There was never a chance of that.
We literally just have to wait. It's hard as fuck, I know.

What I'm really opposed to, is the delusion that somehow all the staff here are trying to hide the facts from the broader forum. That's just stupid.
If you claim that you're either trying to stirr the pot of shit, too lazy to read or you don't really care.
I suppose by "if you claim" you dont mean me in particular :p But yeah, some people are just living to stir up shit, but that shouldnt keep us from trying to find some decent answers. I added 4 more questions to my post since you replied to it and some of it were answered, but sporadically in the middle of a long ass derail, or in a banned thread (which actually had very good input on the MOBA questions if I remember correctly). There are people willing to spend time asking and trying to answer these questions, but this thread is currently not a good haven for that. As others have said, a new thread/OP updated with this type of FAQ would be really helpful to reach the goal of figuring this out together, as the mods seem to have been similarly left in the dark about consequences and possible options.
 

apocat

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,072
There's barely any more discussion to be had

I'm not sure I have that much more to add to any discussion myself, other than that a community several years in the making has been bought by a company that hosts transphobic formus under their banner. That turns the inclusive aspect this forum has into a brand. Something to help MOBA diversify their customers so that they can cater to both sides of the human rights discussion, and ultimately profit from both.

Resetera is sold, and at the mercy of a company that at this moment doesn't have a vested interest in changing anything over night, but very possibly over time. The crux of it is that any discussion we have here can't actually change that simple truth. The transaction is made, with little transparancy. But having the opportunity to discuss it will at least help the community process these unexpected turns of events, and both collectively and individually revise their stance towards the forum.

I will personally stay and hope for the best, as I really like this place and have some faith in the people gathered here. But users should have the opportunity to vent and process, if nothing else than for their own sakes. And it should go without saying that this should be without abusing the staff. They're ultimately in the same boat as the rest of us, and they've been working for free to keep this place running for a long time. Missteps will always happen, but they and their contributions should still be respected.
 

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,832
I'm not sure I have that much more to add to any discussion myself, other than that a community several years in the making has been bought by a company that hosts transphobic formus under their banner. That turns the inclusive aspect this forum has into a brand. Something to help MOBA diversify their customers so that they can cater to both sides of the human rights discussion, and ultimately profit from both.

Resetera is sold, and at the mercy of a company that at this moment doesn't have a vested interest in changing anything over night, but very possibly over time. The crux of it is that any discussion we have here can't actually change that simple truth. The transaction is made, with little transparancy. But having the opportunity to discuss it will at least help the community process these unexpected turns of events, and both collectively and individually revise their stance towards the forum.

I will personally stay and hope for the best, as I really like this place and have some faith in the people gathered here. But users should have the opportunity to vent and process, if nothing else than for their own sakes. And it should go without saying that this should be without abusing the staff. They're ultimately in the same boat as the rest of us, and they've been working for free to keep this place running for a long time. Missteps will always happen, but they and their contributions should still be respected.

I like you.
 
Summary 1

ArkkAngel007

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
5,010
For newcomers and anyone actually taking part sincerely after reading the OP:
  • Cerium alone made the sale as sole owner of ResetEra. Some on staff were aware ahead, but otherwise had ZERO control or involvement in the sale, and nothing can change it.
  • Staff are volunteers. They aren't paid. The majority who have spoken aren't looking to be paid, and disagreements there are between them and the new owners to figure out. There's no 'bottom line' to consider for them as they don't own this forum. They know what pay is. They know the difference between jobs and volunteering. They are capable of making their own choices. No, they don't want to be lectured on the concept of payment or that they don't know how to take care of themselves.
  • The staff and other users aren't Cerium. If you're actually mad at the seller, don't bring others into it. None of us (as in staff and users alike) are your swappable punching bags.
  • M.O.B.A. Network is claiming to let ResetEra operate independently as far as moderation and operation is concerned. Ads though are in their corner and stated interest, so those will likely become more prominent and intrusive.
  • A number of [read: probably all] other forums under M.O.B.A. Network are hateful cesspools this community wishes to avoid. Hateful as in transphobic, racist, sexist...you get the gist. This is likely due to them having the similar autonomy that was promised to us, rather than M.O.B.A. Network mandating alt-right/GG/hate speech tolerance.
  • ResetERA membership and moderation is independent of others on M.O.B.A. Network, as many of those likely are as well if they were brought in independently of each other. Users and policies of those other sites will not automatically be a part of this place.
  • M.O.B.A. Network sites tend to have a banner at the bottom showcasing the various sites under that umbrella. This is the next likely change after ad considerations. This means those other sites are more visible to our community, and we're more visible to their communities if our name/link is added. Again, ResetEra membership is still separate, but this does mean more sign ups from these communities that don't hold the same values ours strives for. The result could be increased trolling at best.
  • Everyone, EVERYONE, is in the same boat here. We're all waiting to see what happens to ads and how well the claim of independence holds. No one can claim with a straight face that most staff and users who are waiting, instead of chomping at the bit, are for any of the garbage present in M.O.B.A. Network's other sites.
  • IF M.O.B.A. Networks decide to push for relaxed moderation or replace staff to achieve the same effect in order to increase traffic (another stated interest) down that avenue, staff will inform us so we can figure out the next step. If all are somehow unable to (ex. all are banned), the change should be apparent enough that we will know to figure out the next step.
  • That next step is likely to be labor intensive and costly if it's moving the entire community. I'm not aware of the means available by our fellow community members who splintered off, but there's likely a traffic and size difference that makes it difficult to do without a Cerium or other affluent individual(s). Or without a good number of people able to provide those same resources collectively in a timely and trusting manner. Either way, that's going to take a lot of time to where if the interest and will is there it may be discord organizing and such as last time.

Can add and adjust things like linking the quoted hate speech examples from mmo-champions, but been up forever and have a long drive and day ahead with being out of town. Can try to repost every page if folks are happy with it, or people can quote it to post themselves if the thread runs away from my availability as I won't be much for the rest of the day. Probably a waste though with how some carry on.
Seeing that this question hasn't been answered yet in this thread: what are the planned changes in regards of the EU GDPR and is there an ETA for when Era will comply with the rules?

We are almost 6k posts in and all questions with this context seem to be unanswered until now.
I'm not sure if staff would currently know.

I'm curious to see how it plays out in practice since I don't have a great understanding of the EU GDPR. Like, do new privacy agreements have to be made because of new management, or are those still binding to either end since it was an agreement under the wing of ResetEra and not Cerium? Would it fall under legitimate interest, so long as the data remains within the operation of ResetEra? Or has ResetEra not followed the EU GDPR at all so far in the first place, and what would it take for us to do so?

Sorry if those details were covered by you earlier. A lot of noise and pages where things can get missed even if posted multiple times (not talking about the fun derail, the 90 pages prior). If anything, you may have a better chance in the Constructive Community Discussion thread since this incorporates more than the purchase itself. Hecht and B-Dubs are in there pretty often and is slower to where they'll catch it easier. But again, idk how well equipped staff are currently to answer that. If they can though, be sure to quote the post over here too since there is a relation and this has more visibility.
 
Last edited:

Pixieking

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,956
I'm not sure I have that much more to add to any discussion myself, other than that a community several years in the making has been bought by a company that hosts transphobic formus under their banner. That turns the inclusive aspect this forum has into a brand. Something to help MOBA diversify their customers so that they can cater to both sides of the human rights discussion, and ultimately profit from both.

My first thought was actually that it's like Fox News having Chris Wallace on. The veneer of respectability he gives the network means that the trashier more awful side can skate by because they have a fairly decent respected journalist on too.

It's hella negative, but tbh, I genuinely think Era is going to be used to deflect from the company's network of trashier sites.
 
Summary 2

Zomba13

#1 Waluigi Fan! Current Status: Crying
Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,962
A recap to the best of my ability for those just joining or wanting to discuss certain "important" bits:

1) Cerium sells site to MOBA network for 4.5 million and the site made 700k this year up till August. Valuation and such shows that the site could've sold for more so Cerium wanted to sell fast or he saw declining or stagnating growth opputunity. Either way, website is owned by MOBA Network. Cerium (and the mods) have had assurances that MOBA Network will be hands off regarding this place and moderation with no current plans to change anything.

2) MOBA Network have a bunch of sites and forums around MMO and MOBA games and the moderation on those forums seems shit. Like, ranging from what you expect from capital G Gamer forums to worse (like one of their OTs banning discussion about inclusion and race etc on the same level of posts of graphic gore). So while the forums seem like shit holes, MOBA Network may just be hands off with them too, like they may just not care and want the forums to generate views and ad revenue while they just ignore the forums. Mods have said they would walk if MOBA Network interferes negatively.
MOBA Network sites also have a lot of ads and link to each other in the footers. Problems for some but Era also has a lot of ads (if you're not logged in) and I bet very few will actually see the footer stuff or bother to explore it (though I agree, it is worrying to be associated with those shit hole forums but if everything stays as it is, ideally it's like how there are good and bad Discords and sub-reddits. They don't cross police.)

3) A LOT of people angry that Cerium got paid because they thought this was a cooperative and don't like the idea of a website making someone money directly as they felt lied as they weren't told each time Cerium bought out a staff members shares (we don't know who had shares. Not the Mods, probably the technical staff).

4) A LOT of people got mad because Cerium should've paid the mods as he's making bank.

5) Mods come in and say "actually we're ok, we knew about this, Cerium is a decent guy, we're ok not getting paid as we do this for you, the users, not as a job, not to make money". This annoyed some user's because how dare the mods not want to get paid! Lots of user's being jerks towards moderation staff for this and showing a lack of basic respect when asked directly. Obviously the mods HAVE made mistakes before (and in the recent past) but they also get near constant shit on the best of days. Either way, a LOT of back and forth against the mods for what they've done.

6) Lots of back and forth regarding the communities that have left because they felt they were over modded or under modded, some for (in my opinion) fairly petty reasons or stemming from a misunderstanding from the mod side that then exploded when things were said in a private discord to vent while some were more valid such as the minority communities feeling they weren't being heard (and before someone twists my words again and doesn't read my posts like they did earlier I'm saying that the minority communities that felt unheard are valid, their feelings are valid and we all , not just the mods, need to be better there. I'm saying console specific communities leaving feels a bit petty to me.)

7) Lots of back and forths with user's wanting to leave, wanting account deletions etc.

8) I wasn't hear for this and skimmed over it but a user made a post about this thread in Etc which was quickly locked and they were juniored because of it then started erasing their previously made OPs saying the same stuff as what was in the thread they made and they were banned and the OPs restored. This sparked debate on right to be forgotten and if posts (specifically OPs of OTs or community threads) are personal or owned by the forum as they contribute value to the community and site.
I don't know where I stand on this as I agree we should be able to delete our accounts and posts but also feel that user's should work with Mods and communities if they want their OT OP removed as those usually hold value to the discussion in that thread (whether it's a nice game OP with details about the game or a community OT with links and resources relevant to discussion). Feels like a shame to lose that stuff when a user goes especially when their reason is citing community.

9) Because of that Mods faced another backlash here (Could've been avoided? I dunno, not a mod, don't know what happens there but they are clearly overworked right now because of this sale so likely more stressed or more prone to mistakes, lashing out or errors in judgement. Again, not privvy tot hat stuff so can only speculate based on how I'd feel in that position).

10) then at some point it became a tag free for all as a way to bring some levity to the ones still here in this thread when pretty much everything that can be said has been said. We haven't heard back from Cerium (we won't). We haven't heard from MOBA Network (which I feel if we want things to stay as they are, or an idealised version of how they are, we shouldn't hear from them). Mods have given their thoughts on the sale, Cerium, MOBA Network, being paid, our new "sister" sites (*shudder*) and a variety of other things related to and unrelated to the sale of the site.


If you want more detail ask and someone will hopefully fill you in or read the whole thing and see the bits where stuff is just repeated over and over for pages.

Again, best of my ability/care. Obviously missed thing and glossed over things and it contains my biases. I'm firmly on team "wait until MOBA Network fuck us up before screaming to leave". Also on team "the mods are people too so you can disagree with how they run things but treat them with some fucking respect, like you're treat any user here. They aren't fucking cops."


EDIT: And of course I'm beaten to the punch with a better post.
 

dark_prinny

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 26, 2017
5,374
A recap to the best of my ability for those just joining or wanting to discuss certain "important" bits:

1) Cerium sells site to MOBA network for 4.5 million and the site made 700k this year up till August. Valuation and such shows that the site could've sold for more so Cerium wanted to sell fast or he saw declining or stagnating growth opputunity. Either way, website is owned by MOBA Network. Cerium (and the mods) have had assurances that MOBA Network will be hands off regarding this place and moderation with no current plans to change anything.

2) MOBA Network have a bunch of sites and forums around MMO and MOBA games and the moderation on those forums seems shit. Like, ranging from what you expect from capital G Gamer forums to worse (like one of their OTs banning discussion about inclusion and race etc on the same level of posts of graphic gore). So while the forums seem like shit holes, MOBA Network may just be hands off with them too, like they may just not care and want the forums to generate views and ad revenue while they just ignore the forums. Mods have said they would walk if MOBA Network interferes negatively.
MOBA Network sites also have a lot of ads and link to each other in the footers. Problems for some but Era also has a lot of ads (if you're not logged in) and I bet very few will actually see the footer stuff or bother to explore it (though I agree, it is worrying to be associated with those shit hole forums but if everything stays as it is, ideally it's like how there are good and bad Discords and sub-reddits. They don't cross police.)

3) A LOT of people angry that Cerium got paid because they thought this was a cooperative and don't like the idea of a website making someone money directly as they felt lied as they weren't told each time Cerium bought out a staff members shares (we don't know who had shares. Not the Mods, probably the technical staff).

4) A LOT of people got mad because Cerium should've paid the mods as he's making bank.

5) Mods come in and say "actually we're ok, we knew about this, Cerium is a decent guy, we're ok not getting paid as we do this for you, the users, not as a job, not to make money". This annoyed some user's because how dare the mods not want to get paid! Lots of user's being jerks towards moderation staff for this and showing a lack of basic respect when asked directly. Obviously the mods HAVE made mistakes before (and in the recent past) but they also get near constant shit on the best of days. Either way, a LOT of back and forth against the mods for what they've done.

6) Lots of back and forth regarding the communities that have left because they felt they were over modded or under modded, some for (in my opinion) fairly petty reasons or stemming from a misunderstanding from the mod side that then exploded when things were said in a private discord to vent while some were more valid such as the minority communities feeling they weren't being heard (and before someone twists my words again and doesn't read my posts like they did earlier I'm saying that the minority communities that felt unheard are valid, their feelings are valid and we all , not just the mods, need to be better there. I'm saying console specific communities leaving feels a bit petty to me.)

7) Lots of back and forths with user's wanting to leave, wanting account deletions etc.

8) I wasn't hear for this and skimmed over it but a user made a post about this thread in Etc which was quickly locked and they were juniored because of it then started erasing their previously made OPs saying the same stuff as what was in the thread they made and they were banned and the OPs restored. This sparked debate on right to be forgotten and if posts (specifically OPs of OTs or community threads) are personal or owned by the forum as they contribute value to the community and site.
I don't know where I stand on this as I agree we should be able to delete our accounts and posts but also feel that user's should work with Mods and communities if they want their OT OP removed as those usually hold value to the discussion in that thread (whether it's a nice game OP with details about the game or a community OT with links and resources relevant to discussion). Feels like a shame to lose that stuff when a user goes especially when their reason is citing community.

9) Because of that Mods faced another backlash here (Could've been avoided? I dunno, not a mod, don't know what happens there but they are clearly overworked right now because of this sale so likely more stressed or more prone to mistakes, lashing out or errors in judgement. Again, not privvy tot hat stuff so can only speculate based on how I'd feel in that position).

10) then at some point it became a tag free for all as a way to bring some levity to the ones still here in this thread when pretty much everything that can be said has been said. We haven't heard back from Cerium (we won't). We haven't heard from MOBA Network (which I feel if we want things to stay as they are, or an idealised version of how they are, we shouldn't hear from them). Mods have given their thoughts on the sale, Cerium, MOBA Network, being paid, our new "sister" sites (*shudder*) and a variety of other things related to and unrelated to the sale of the site.


If you want more detail ask and someone will hopefully fill you in or read the whole thing and see the bits where stuff is just repeated over and over for pages.

Again, best of my ability/care. Obviously missed thing and glossed over things and it contains my biases. I'm firmly on team "wait until MOBA Network fuck us up before screaming to leave". Also on team "the mods are people too so you can disagree with how they run things but treat them with some fucking respect, like you're treat any user here. They aren't fucking cops."


EDIT: And of course I'm beaten to the punch with a better post.

You missed the tag fishing part.
 

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,832
Thank you both of you taking the time for that Zomba13 & ArkkAngel007 . Both of those should be threadmarked/linked in an OP as they provide different insights on the topic.

And now I would love if we could find a place to focus on the questions I posted in here, feel free to add more questions:

As I said, I do take a lot of time for this community or I wouldnt have read it for 3 hours.
There are a lot of facets to this that are worth discussing/knowing that you do not see within the first 20 minutes of reading the thread.

Again, I am fine with believing the mod team and seeing how things turn out, but I still would prefer this being a combined effort by mods and community to find answers/talk about worries:

  1. What was MOBAs statement and did they have similar statements in the past? How did those work out?

  2. How is MOBA treating the other networks? What is their history? What type of company are they? What are dangers we as community should be aware of? What type of Advertisement strategies are to be expected? What "increased potential for monetization" are they referring to based on their other sites?

  3. How is the moderation team being treated? How are they feeling now? I think I only read two mods who gave personal insights and would love to see how the others are feeling about the change. What are their experiences and thoughts? How have they been informed? Which contact exists to new owners? Who has reached out to the new owners, if any? What type of communication process will be in place for mods/MOBA? Will there be one point of contact? One MOBA representative in mod chats?

  4. As it came up multiple times, how can we as a community help the moderation team directly? Will they consider a more open ended mod application process to help with the work load? If not, why not and how can we help brainstorming other ideas to help the community?

  5. Is it a possibility to make a list of concerns/values that we as a community/mod team present the new owners and get their feedback/reassurance on it? Even if those statements might not be worth a dime, what reassurances/commitments have MOBA made with Cerium? Did he demand anything that they reassured him with? I am relatively sure, mods probably voiced these concerns internally and wonder if any got any reply.

  6. How do we as a community reconcile funding a network of other websites that uses our content to pay for bigoted forum administration on other websites? Do we care? Should we care? I honestly dont know and would love to read how other people are rationalizing it as I also want to stay here and this topic has been a huge point of discussion for me in the past as well (Do I still buy books of authors who expressed hateful views outside of their works? Is that the exact same thing? I have honestly no clue).

  7. How can these answers be pinned/structured in a way to be immediately accessible?

  8. Which part of the website administration is actually done by MOBA now? Like what are they handling exactly? When is that supposed to start?

There is a good bit more, some of those arent even answered in this thread, so no, I disagree with this thread being a useful source of information for the topic. Collecting answer to all of these would be a good and productive way to come together as a community after we had some easygoing tag fishing fun. To be clear, I want this to be the best course of action for the community and after managing a community of 300.000 players myself, in my humble opinion, this is the best way to do that.

Should we do that in here? In a different thread? Will this thread be normally moderated from now on to allow focussing on the topic? Can we get a mod to update the 2nd post of the thread for a FAQ? I am fine with stating/figuring out that some of those questions dont have answers yet, but we should still archive them and come back to answer them in the coming weeks, so a FAQ might be useful for the current mod team to figure out what the community wants to know/info they should ask about.
 

TeddyShardik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,649
Germany
I'm not sure I have that much more to add to any discussion myself, other than that a community several years in the making has been bought by a company that hosts transphobic formus under their banner. That turns the inclusive aspect this forum has into a brand. Something to help MOBA diversify their customers so that they can cater to both sides of the human rights discussion, and ultimately profit from both.

Resetera is sold, and at the mercy of a company that at this moment doesn't have a vested interest in changing anything over night, but very possibly over time. The crux of it is that any discussion we have here can't actually change that simple truth. The transaction is made, with little transparancy. But having the opportunity to discuss it will at least help the community process these unexpected turns of events, and both collectively and individually revise their stance towards the forum.

I will personally stay and hope for the best, as I really like this place and have some faith in the people gathered here. But users should have the opportunity to vent and process, if nothing else than for their own sakes. And it should go without saying that this should be without abusing the staff. They're ultimately in the same boat as the rest of us, and they've been working for free to keep this place running for a long time. Missteps will always happen, but they and their contributions should still be respected.

That's a very good summary of what is going on here. Minus the tags and memes.
 

Kalik

Banned
Nov 1, 2017
4,523
I'm sad that all the best forums are dying out...I thought ResetERA would be the exception due to its popularity and member counts but it seems Discord is the future

how many forums that were bought out and promised independence actually ended up being that way?...I'm guessing zero
 

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,832
Everyone in here will be warned or banned for derailing in the next 24 hours.

Where is your consistency, Mods???
Darn it, did we derail the thread by not posting memes now? :-o

I'm sad that all the best forums are dying out...I thought ResetERA would be the exception due to its popularity and member counts but it seems Discord is the future
Discord just doesnt work for me, its not a good place for a structured discussion. There always be dozens of us, needing that safe forum haven. DOZENS.

R.6e4dbfb527f34607d0f8ce99a39c5869


*fulfills the meme quota to not derail the thread too much*
 

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,832
This. Real-time chat services, or forums which emulate chat functionality (Reddit), are terrible for structured discussion. And their search functions are awful.

Your username is terribly.. inconvenient this week, haha. But yeah, there are enough people to still want a forum.
 
Oct 25, 2017
3,122
Should we do that in here? In a different thread? Will this thread be normally moderated from now on to allow focussing on the topic? Can we get a mod to update the 2nd post of the thread for a FAQ? I am fine with stating/figuring out that some of those questions dont have answers yet, but we should still archive them and come back to answer them in the coming weeks, so a FAQ might be useful for the current mod team to figure out what the community wants to know/info they should ask about.
This thread should definitely be updated with a FAQ and/or more threadmarks to have a neater discussion. I'd argue there should be a locked, pinned post in gaming/etcetera too that contains a link to this thread. Mods aren't hiding this thread but there's no downside to that extra bit of visibility because people did note how they missed this thread earlier
This thread is fascinating as one of the more derailed ones on this forum.
lol yeah, major fourm controversies are interesting in general
 

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,832
history really does repeat its self….
Not entirely, which is kind of the point that the productive posters are making currently. We dont know, and we would like to find answers / steps forward to stay together as a community. I dont think its on the same level as the GAF fallout 4 years ago, but we need to make a concerted effort as mod team and community to work towards that goal of being better and staying a healthy community.
 

Embiid

Member
Feb 20, 2021
5,931
This 'forums are dying, Discord is the future' stuff is becoming a meme. You can't replace the structure and long-form discussion of a forum with a chatroom. They're fundamentally completely different mediums.
 

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,832
This 'forums are dying, Discord is the future' stuff is becoming a meme. You can't replace the structure and long-form discussion of a forum with a chatroom. They're fundamentally completely different mediums.
Not sure, I interacted with a lot of 20y olds who transitioned massively towards Discord for instant gratification and less focussed discussions. Whenever I hop onto a discord server, trying to be more elaborate, people are usually shocked I write more than 2 sentences about a topic. I do think there is some truth to this shift as we also saw a lot of forums dying/closing, but its not like we need to be afraid of it of it going away completely during our lifetime.
 

Helix

Mayor of Clown Town
Member
Jun 8, 2019
23,843
This 'forums are dying, Discord is the future' stuff is becoming a meme. You can't replace the structure and long-form discussion of a forum with a chatroom. They're fundamentally completely different mediums.

Agreed, Discord these days is too fast paced to hold a meaningful discussion or long form conversations. In-depth analysis, discussions, LTTP & RTTP threads are all beneficial when there aren't a shit ton of people overlapping your conversation and talking about something completely different.
 

TeddyShardik

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,649
Germany
Not entirely, which is kind of the point that the productive posters are making currently. We dont know, and we would like to find answers / steps forward to stay together as a community. I dont think its on the same level as the GAF fallout 4 years ago, but we need to make a concerted effort as mod team and community to work towards that goal of being better and staying a healthy community.

You kinda have my stance in a few sentences there.
We don't know yet. We will have to have discussions when we do.

I treat this thread like a press announcement. All we had to discuss, was discussed.
And now we're all waiting for the follow-up.
 

Zomba13

#1 Waluigi Fan! Current Status: Crying
Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,962
As I said, I do take a lot of time for this community or I wouldnt have read it for 3 hours.
There are a lot of facets to this that are worth discussing/knowing that you do not see within the first 20 minutes of reading the thread.

Again, I am fine with believing the mod team and seeing how things turn out, but I still would prefer this being a combined effort by mods and community to find answers/talk about worries:

  1. What was MOBAs statement and did they have similar statements in the past? How did those work out?

  2. How is MOBA treating the other networks? What is their history? What type of company are they? What are dangers we as community should be aware of? What type of Advertisement strategies are to be expected? What "increased potential for monetization" are they referring to based on their other sites?

  3. How is the moderation team being treated? How are they feeling now? I think I only read two mods who gave personal insights and would love to see how the others are feeling about the change. What are their experiences and thoughts? How have they been informed? Which contact exists to new owners? Who has reached out to the new owners, if any? What type of communication process will be in place for mods/MOBA? Will there be one point of contact? One MOBA representative in mod chats?

  4. As it came up multiple times, how can we as a community help the moderation team directly? Will they consider a more open ended mod application process to help with the work load? If not, why not and how can we help brainstorming other ideas to help the community?

  5. Is it a possibility to make a list of concerns/values that we as a community/mod team present the new owners and get their feedback/reassurance on it? Even if those statements might not be worth a dime, what reassurances/commitments have MOBA made with Cerium? Did he demand anything that they reassured him with? I am relatively sure, mods probably voiced these concerns internally and wonder if any got any reply.

  6. How do we as a community reconcile funding a network of other websites that uses our content to pay for bigoted forum administration on other websites? Do we care? Should we care? I honestly dont know and would love to read how other people are rationalizing it as I also want to stay here and this topic has been a huge point of discussion for me in the past as well (Do I still buy books of authors who expressed hateful views outside of their works? Is that the exact same thing? I have honestly no clue).

  7. How can these answers be pinned/structured in a way to be immediately accessible?

  8. Which part of the website administration is actually done by MOBA now? Like what are they handling exactly? When is that supposed to start?

There is a good bit more, some of those arent even answered in this thread, so no, I disagree with this thread being a useful source of information for the topic. Collecting answer to all of these would be a good and productive way to come together as a community after we had some easygoing tag fishing fun. To be clear, I want this to be the best course of action for the community and after managing a community of 300.000 players myself, in my humble opinion, this is the best way to do that.

These are good questions. I feel we don't have the answers to some of them because of the lack of communication with MOBA. I think we'll either find out on Monday of just be in the dark until thing start to change (if they do, they could still just leave us alone and gather the cash, maybe just throw the links in the footer to the other sites and keep their word about not changing stuff).

I very much agree in having a collection of community concerns and wanting MOBA to address them directly. At the very least, even if no reply from MOBA or answered with false promises it's needed that we have the concerns collected and voiced to the new owners.

And regarding 6, it sucks. It really does. But the best way I can look at it is something like Discord or Reddit, where even the actually good communities are still hosted on a platform that has vile stuff. You can of course not use Reddit or Discord (like you can not use this place now it's on the same network as those other horrible places) and while using this place will line the pockets of the people also having their pockets lined by the bigots on the other forums, it could be worse. I feel in some way no matter what we do hateful people are profiting. My only hope is that the MOBA Network owners (as in the ones that own the forums) are just very hands off, so that while they are profiting from those places, it's out of not caring rather than malice and mandating a lockdown on progressive subjects. I mean, it's not much better but I'd feel better if they took an equal hands off approach to all the sites to where it's the individual forums moderation staff rather than a mandate from on high.
But yeah, this one sucks and is hard.
 

Embiid

Member
Feb 20, 2021
5,931
Not sure, I interacted with a lot of 20y olds who transitioned massively towards Discord for instant gratification and less focussed discussions. Whenever I hop onto a discord server, trying to be more elaborate, people are usually shocked I write more than 2 sentences about a topic. I do think there is some truth to this shift as we also saw a lot of forums dying/closing, but its not like we need to be afraid of it of it going away completely during our lifetime.
Maybe interest in forums is decreasing or consolidating, especially with teens and young adults, but my point was in general a chatroom can't replace a forum in the same way a one sentence tweet can't replace an editorial so these boards are always going to be around.
 

Toma

Scratching that Itch.io http://bit.ly/ItchERA
Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,832
These are good questions. I feel we don't have the answers to some of them because of the lack of communication with MOBA. I think we'll either find out on Monday of just be in the dark until thing start to change (if they do, they could still just leave us alone and gather the cash, maybe just throw the links in the footer to the other sites and keep their word about not changing stuff).

I very much agree in having a collection of community concerns and wanting MOBA to address them directly. At the very least, even if no reply from MOBA or answered with false promises it's needed that we have the concerns collected and voiced to the new owners.
Even if we write "We dont know yet" after trying to answer it, that would already be a good first step. Have the moderation team acknowledge the questions, answer to the best of their ability, keep the rest in a FAQ and update the community on the process of getting answers in the next few weeks and everyone would work together.
 

Kyuuji

The Favonius Fox
Member
Nov 8, 2017
32,403
How do we as a community reconcile funding a network of other websites that uses our content to pay for bigoted forum administration on other websites? Do we care? Should we care? I honestly dont know and would love to read how other people are rationalizing it as I also want to stay here and this topic has been a huge point of discussion for me in the past as well (Do I still buy books of authors who expressed hateful views outside of their works? Is that the exact same thing? I have honestly no clue).
I hope you're not attempting to draw some sort of comparison with J.K. Rowling with that last line lol.
 

Embiid

Member
Feb 20, 2021
5,931
Agreed, Discord these days is too fast paced to hold a meaningful discussion or long form conversations. In-depth analysis, discussions, LTTP & RTTP threads are all beneficial when there aren't a shit ton of people overlapping your conversation and talking about something completely different.
Imagine taking the time to type up some nice, detailed impressions for a game and having it scroll up into the void in a matter of seconds. It's just silly. This is from yesterday:
www.resetera.com

Back 4 Blood |OT| Come Slay With Us OT

Some of the cards just make me think, "Why is this a card? Why wasn't this just a default part of the game?" B4B has grown on me overall, though. But yeah, the UI feels less intuitive to me in many ways than in L4D. And control-wise, I'm just now getting to a point where I feel okay with it...
I asked someone what their melee build was and got back a banger of a response… detailed, thorough, and something I can easily keep track of. Forums will never completely die off.
 
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