68kmla MIA

[cc333]

@mac27 We were recently discussing the software packets for Rev. A-D iMacs, weren't we?

Alas, you're probably right, and I second your encouragement. Anyone who's a member there and has been relatively active (especially since the Crash of Summer '21) should save, at the least, their own threads and posts, photos, PMs, binaries, etc.

c

 

[mac27]

@mac27 We were recently discussing the software packets for Rev. A-D iMacs, weren't we?

Yup, and I am working on copying all of the written exchanges with useful info I've had like this into a separate document. Though it is obviously somewhat "on hold" until if/when the site comes back up again.

In this case it's probably only useful to me (at least for now), but depending on how much I end up with I might decide to put it up here or something. TBD

 

[NJRoadfan]

I heard the Mac chime, its back.

 

[cc333]

Confirmed!

c

 

[JDW]

In coming years the summary of posts in this thread will be...

It's down.
It's up.
It's down again.
It's up again.

He loves me...
He loves me not...
He loves me...
He...

Yes, I do find it a bit amusing, I certainly don't take pleasure in the plight of others.

I have spoken privately to some members of the other forum who have told me in confidence that they like it better. They cited some complex reasons that have more to do with the technical nature of posts there versus here. We have technical posts here too, just of a different sort. I don't want to get to deep into that, but everyone has their reasons for being on one communications platform versus another. For example, I dislike Discord, so I'm never on our own Discord. You'll only find me here in the open forum.

I'm 54 years old. I'm old school. It goes against my nature to post into a black hole that is ignored in Google Searches, which is why I like the open forum. I am assured that whatever I post here will be picked up by Google and help others one day. But that doesn't mean I wish to bash Discord or the good people who actually like it. I don't wish to bash other forums either. Each of us must choose a place that makes us happy. And it just so happens that some are members of this forum and the other forum too. And that's perfectly OK!

I just would like to repeat what Kai said on page 1 of this thread. We setup TinkerDifferent to be a reliable option for the community. Indeed, all the founders are from the community. People who run this forum 10 years hence will be different than today because board members are elected. We hope the structure of this forum, combined with a good server foundation, great backups, fast member registration, and a general air of freshness and excitement will keep this forum as a serious option for everyone far into the future. It will ultimately be whatever we in the community make of it. I'm therefore overjoyed with each new face I see here in TinkerDifferent. Everyone is welcome, and we're excited to have you!

 

[cc333]

I came back here to say that Cory5412 actually still exists! He's made his first post in almost a year, and explained that it was due to life things beyond his control, basically (If interested, his post has all the details*).

So, is this a turning point, where we'll see the site pulled back from the brink of oblivion? We'll see....

@JDW Agreed!

I basically have stayed over there for the most part out of inertia, but the recent multi-day outage got me to realize that I better start to build up a more meaningful presence over here, so that, if I collaborate with someone on something or I'm in the process of buying or selling something, it won't be interrupted by an outage (this happened recently while I was working on getting my NuPowr 167 PB 500 PPC upgrade back, which was immensely frustrating).

c

*I hope linking to the 68k MLA is OK to do here.

 

[Kai Robinson]

Given the constant and horrid unreliability, at this point it might be wise to assume that anything written/listed/stored/archived there WILL be gone at some point, soon. The admins clearly don't care whatsoever.

Would encourage anyone who has anything of value to back it up immediately.

We have plenty of storage space, and the resources section. Also if anyone wants us to host larger items, archives of stuff, we can certainly discuss it.

 

[3lectr1c]

I came back here to say that Cory5412 actually still exists! He's made his first post in almost a year, and explained that it was due to life things beyond his control, basically (If interested, his post has all the details*).

I don't doubt that Cory has been too busy to spend much time working on new features/improvements to the site, but if he has time to post on his social media almost every day, he has time to log onto the forum more than twice in 6 months.

I just hope he follows-through on promoting new moderators and staff to keep things running smoothly. It's badly needed.

 

[tom_B]

since that page can't be viewed without being logged in, here's both Cory and wthww's comments;

(agreed with everything 3lectr1c said, lets see if things actually get better)

 

[3lectr1c]

Yesterday, I posted an open letter to the 68kMLA leadership onto the forum. Multiple users had replied with support to it. Unfortunately, the thread has vanished. Cory hasn't logged in today, so I'm not sure exactly who removed it, but it was silently removed nonetheless. Not locked, nuked.

Below is a copy of the text of the letter, as well as a screenshot of the replies the thread received before being removed. I will be reaching out directly to Cory to see if I can get an answer as to why this happened. I think you will see that nothing in the letter was antagonistic, or meant to provoke anger.

Letter Contents:

To the administration of this forum, and to the community, I just want to start by saying that this message only comes from the love and appreciation that I have for this forum which I've been an active member of for over 4 years now. But we need a proper, open dialogue on what's going on.

This isn't about the outages - that happens with mostly self-hosted sites like 68kMLA. I don't like to join in on the people joking about how "68kmla is always down" when that isn't anywhere close to the case. What frustrates me has been the total inactivity from the upper administration here, which has gone on for several years at this point, and which I don't see coming close to an end anytime soon.

@Cory5412 - I understand that you've got a lot going on in your life. I don't doubt that it's gotten in the way of progress here. But there's a big difference between not getting around to making improvements to the forum, and logging in twice in six months. If you've got enough time to post on your social media almost every day, you've got enough time to spend 10 minutes, even if just once a week, to check the moderation queue and make sure there aren't any fires needing to be put out. Luckily, problems here are pretty infrequent, but it's been an issue before. I just don't see any possible reason why this isn't happening besides you just no longer having the motivation to do so.
And if that's the case, then that's fine! You've been here since the Snitz era. That's fine as long as you properly delegate responsibility to make sure things keep running smoothly when you're burned out, or away doing other things. But that hasn't happened, and it's been frustrating to see the decay that's happened due to this. The Wiki is dead. I believe member approvals still have to happen manually, or was that finally fixed? The forum rules have been inaccessible for multiple years now - fixing this shouldn't take more than 15 minutes, if that.

I don't think any of us are asking or expecting the world here, we just want basic moderation, and a forum where technical issues don't take months, or years to be resolved.

I do understand that you've just posted a list of things that are "planned and started", and they're all good things that absolutely should happen! I just, frankly, don't have faith that they will. I've routinely heard this whole "we've got these things in the works" since 2021, and they just never end up happening. I truly hope I'm wrong here, because I want these things to happen, but I just don't have any reason to believe that this time is different from last year, or the year before that, or the year before that... I get that you've asked us for patience, but you've been asking for that for years now.

And again, if you're too busy to make this stuff happen, that's fine and completely understandable. But there are many people in this community that would love to help get them done - let them help if you need the help!

I'm making this post because I want to prompt action - I want to be proved wrong here. I hope that you won't read this to be an attack on you, or your character, because that is far from my intent. You've kept this forum running for 16 years and I thank you and appreciate you for that. This community has been one of my favorite places to hang out at on the 'net since I joined. The last thing I want is a repeat of 2021's drama, and I ask that anyone replying here please remain civil. I think we can all agree that all we want is for this forum to thrive far into the future.

Looking forward to hearing back.
3lectr1c

Replies:

I will also attach a static download of the web page, which I luckily left open on another computer prior to it being removed.

Needless to say, I am incredibly disappointed with 68kMLA's actions here.

 

[Yoda]

@3lectr1c you and I have politely disagreed in the past about the way 68kMLA is run, and I respected your views then, as now, as a seasoned and continuing member of that forum, posting regularly as you do.

I won't rehash my opinions since history speaks for itself, and we both - along with many others - have contributed and benefited from the site's existence and the other members who post there, but the two screenshots posted above by @tom_B demonstrate the heart of 68k's problem. One is from the modern incarnation of the Bastard Operator From Hell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastard_Operator_From_Hell) who has posted a word salad of total gibberish to deflect from clear and certain failures, and the other from a self-serving serial self-excuser, who doesn't even have the decency to post the latest meandering fakehoods in a place where others could try and respond.

I agree entirely with your post, phrased far more politely than I could have achieved! I'm not shocked at all that it got taken down since criticism of the leadership there is absolutely not tolerated. One can only hope that having removed your thoughts, Cory will reflect on them and things will improve somewhat as a result.

I have no small amount of experience of large scale site management and forum administration, and I know, as any reasonable person does, that things can go wrong, outages can happen, and failures can take sites down. It's not about getting it right all the time, it's about learning from mistakes, and building in robustness. Those things appear to be missing 'over there', which is a great shame because 68k's users deserve, and have earned, much, much better than that.

 

[3lectr1c]

I agree entirely with your post, phrased far more politely than I could have achieved! I'm not shocked at all that it got taken down since criticism of the leadership there is absolutely not tolerated. One can only hope that having removed your thoughts, Cory will reflect on them and things will improve somewhat as a result.

Turns out it was actually Defor, not Cory, who removed the thread. I've spoken with him on IRC. His opinion is basically:

- we are working on things behind the scenes
- these things are not ready yet
- because we've said this before and not delivered, nothing i can say will change people's opinion on that
- therefore, this thread isn't productive
- delete thread

If they actually, truly are working on things behind the scenes, then I can understand his perspective. But this is about the worst PR job they could have possibly done. Anyone who's not on the IRC (most of us, myself included until someone else let me know that defor was online there) is just going to think they're censoring discussion (which they are) and don't care about what we have to say (which may not be the case).

Time will tell if any of these things they're working on make it to production.

 

[mac27]

Man, nothing like some good ol' mushroom management and literally just deleting constructive feedback to quell the masses. Agree with you, not sure how they could have done a worse job beyond just taking out the whole site. Emphasis on the "we've said this before and not delivered." What a mess. And a shame.

 

[Yoda]

Turns out it was actually Defor, not Cory, who removed the thread. I've spoken with him on IRC. His opinion is basically:

- we are working on things behind the scenes
- these things are not ready yet
- because we've said this before and not delivered, nothing i can say will change people's opinion on that
- therefore, this thread isn't productive
- delete thread

If they actually, truly are working on things behind the scenes, then I can understand his perspective. But this is about the worst PR job they could have possibly done. Anyone who's not on the IRC (most of us, myself included until someone else let me know that defor was online there) is just going to think they're censoring discussion (which they are) and don't care about what we have to say (which may not be the case).

Time will tell if any of these things they're working on make it to production.

I wasn't suggesting that Cory was the deletion culprit, just that after the thread removal, they would have opportunity to consider the content, regardless of it no longer being public. I'll grant Cory one thing, and that is the ability to mull an issue over and consider it.

But nothing is likely to change on the basis of a leadership who may opt to broaden the moderation base, but still get to pick the moderators and set the rules and tone - as clearly they have given Defor's explanation, which is about as mainstream Cory as Cory.

It is a case of censoring those who disagree with the leadership, which is fine for a military operation (to a point) but not when it flies in th face of a stark reality: that 68kMLA is the sum of the membership and their contributions, not the people who 'lead' it- all they do is build the machine. It's you and all the others who go there who power it and give it life. They do seem to be forgetting that not untrivial fact.

Of course, that's part of why TinkerDifferent came to exist, so deep breath and a small offering of gratitude to the Founders here for a job rather more expertly done!

 

[Volvo242GT]

@mac27 We were recently discussing the software packets for Rev. A-D iMacs, weren't we?

Alas, you're probably right, and I second your encouragement. Anyone who's a member there and has been relatively active (especially since the Crash of Summer '21) should save, at the least, their own threads and posts, photos, PMs, binaries, etc.

c

Yep. Most of what I've talked about is here, in addition to the 'mla. All my photos are stored on my computer and on my flickr account, so they can be accessed if Cory changes his mind and decides to just pull the plug.