An Account Of What Happened With A320.freeforums.org Forum, And An Ann


omgmog

Still Fresh
Joined
Oct 16, 2009
Messages
2
Age
37
Location
Oxford, England
Website
dingoonity.org
This is formally an introduction from myself, I'm one of the co-founders of the new "Dingoonity.org" Dingoo community, which will be launching within the next hour.

The site will be a news portal/boards and is being collaborated with Quadomatic's dingoowiki and opendingoo, to form a network of dingoo-related websites.

We've decided to make Dingoonity after the unfortunate fall of the a320.freeforums.org forums, at what seems to be the hands of a rogue moderator.

I will be pasting below a rather detailed log of the events that have occured since the freeforums became jeopardised, and you will see my efforts to get the existing administrator onboard for Dingoonity, only to have him throw the invitation back in my face and accuse Dingoonity of perpetrating these attacks.

I hope to see some fresh face on Dingoonity.org in the future, the log follows:
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To anybody arriving from the a320.freeforums.org forums, this message will hopefully provide a little insight into why we felt the need to start these new forums, and how Xap handled things badly.

I'm posting this here, because Xap seems too power hungry to be able to leave any posts that challenge his statements on the forum. He insists on swiftly deleting them, banning the member who posted them, and then not replying.

On Wednesday evening, members of the freeforums who were active on irc began to notice their accounts being banned/deactivated with the reason of "SPIKED HAIR. BUSTER BLADES. FANTASY! YOU ARE THERE.". As more of the members investigated, they too became banned from the forum.

Code:
    [18:31] <codiak> You have been permanently banned from this board.
    [18:31] <codiak> Please contact the Board Administrator for more information.
    [18:31] <codiak> Reason given for ban: SPIKED HAIR. BUSTER BLADES. FANTASY! YOU ARE THERE.
    [18:31] <codiak> ?????

At the time, the only moderator online was "Dan", so I, having previously been a lurker, decided to sign up and send "Dan" a PM to find out what was going on. My PM went like this:

Code:
    Hi there,
    I've been lurking the boards for a while now, and participating in discussions over at the #dingoo-a320 irc channel on freenode.

    Within the last 30 minutes a number of active contributors have had their accounts banned for what seems to be no reason.

    The reason for their ban given is

    "SPIKED HAIR. BUSTER BLADES. FANTASY! YOU ARE THERE."

    Which has led us to assume either the forum has been hacked, or somebody is playing a joke.

    Any insight into the cause would be welcome, as there are people wanting answers.

    Max

Shortly after sending this PM to "Dan" my account too became banned, with the same reason as the other members. It was clear to us now that "Dan" must be the one doing the banning.

We began to notice the number of threads on the boards getting lower and lower, as it appeared "Dan" was deleting threads now, so steps were taken by people on irc to attempt to backup the what they could of the forum posts using wget.

Code:
    [18:48] <zear> we need a dedicated forum on opendingoo.com
    [18:48] <joyrider> well the problem now is
    [18:48] <strider_mt2k> it's eerie
    [18:48] <joyrider> there is no backup
    [18:48] <zear> joyrider, google, wayback machine, there are lots of backups
    [18:48] <moglenstar> I'll email quadomatic and chase up my comments that I left to him last week
    [18:49] <Harteex> i think I'm going to move my native compilation guide to my homepage instead >_>
    [18:49] <joyrider> i rahter have someone paying for dedicated setup or use gp32x since it's well known and bene around for a while
    [18:49] <zear> joyrider, doing wget -r http://a320.freeforums.org

Following this, there was some discussion about asking Quadomatic about re-opening his (previously closed because of spam) forum over at opendingoo.com, which I had previously offered to help moderate.

While waiting for a response from Quadomatic, it was decided that buying a new host for a forum would be a better plan

Code:
    [18:51] <blizz> they should buy a real server for the homepage and board
    [18:51] <Harteex> I could even be willing to help finance that
    [18:52] <RadicalR> Ditto. Depending on how it's done.
    [18:52] <joyrider> same here
    [18:52] <CongoZombie> yeah, I think that there should be one place.

Half an hour after he had started, "Dan" had killed the freeforums, and all we had left as a community was a subforum on the gp32x forum, the chatrool on dingoo-scene, and the irc channel on freenode.

We believe that at some point "Dan" even made an appearance on the chatroll and irc channel, as he posted a thread on the forum containing part of the chatroll transcript - perhaps to gloat.

We discussed further some arrangements for starting up a new forum

Code:
    [19:24] <Harteex> moglenstar, I'd like to help building a complete site around dingoo-scene :P 
    [19:24] <Harteex> but I'll wait for now, and see what happens, and if the opendingoo forum gets back up
    [19:24] <moglenstar> Well, I've contacted quadomatic and told him what's what, and that there are people who want to get a community going away from freeforums

    [19:43] <moglenstar> at the moment I'm holding out hope that quadomatic will get back to me with regard to relaunching the opendingoo forums, I'd gladly run that for him if he hasn't got the time. failing that, it wouldn't be too hard to have a domain and forum setup by the end of the week
    [19:44] <zear> moglenstar, he doesn't need to physicly host the forum
    [19:44] <zear> if he links to it, it's all fine
    [19:44] <moglenstar> yeah
    [19:44] <rebelphoenix> well you have 2 days if you want to get one set up
    [19:44] <codiak> but its a good time to start a nice new portal
    [19:45] <moglenstar> any ideas?
    [19:45] <moglenstar> I have the motivation to get a portal online tonight
    [19:45] <codiak> maybe with joomla?
    [19:45] <codiak> its opensource
    [19:46] <moglenstar> joomla has a lot of bloat though
    [19:46] <codiak> i used it for a couple of sites
    [19:46] <moglenstar> I could strip down wordpress as a cms, I have lots of experience working with that, and can setup a phpBB3 board with better security
    [19:46] <codiak> great
    [19:46] <CongoZombie> It would make sense to have one main place
    [19:47] <moglenstar> anything would be better than blogspot or drupal
    [19:47] <blizz> most important would be an own server
    [19:47] <RadicalR> Assuming we can't get anything with OpenDingoo
    [19:47] <blizz> and the ability to make backups of the database
    [19:48] <moglenstar> I'll take a look, I don't mind setting it up out of my own pocket if it's cheap enough
    [19:48] <Harteex> one.com might not be so good, but probably good enough, and definitely cheap.

And so I eventually bought this domain and hosting for Dingoonity.org from one.com, at no cheap cost to myself.

For the past two days I've worked to bring this website together and setup a new forum.

During this time I've contacted moderators/staff of a number of Dingoo-related blogs and forums, in the hope to bring some more hands onboard to make this a well-driven website.

After two days, Xap finally returned to regain control of his freeforums. He read but didn't reply directly to my PM's which I had sent him, which read:

Code:
    Hello,

    I'm sending you a PM regarding the recent moderator outburst by Dan, and the new plans for the community that are going into action.

    We're yet to know whether Dan had done this of his own freewill, or if his account was hacked.

    Much of the forum content was lost, and many of the communityhave agreed that allowing something like this to happen just isn't good enough.

    I, along with some other community/irc members, am formaing a new central location for the Dingoo community over at http://dingoonity.org - The forums and portal won't be online until the weekend, but this is how we plan to do things:

    Dingoonity will be the forum/news portal - this will bring together features of your current freeforum and of the dingoo-scene news blog.

    Quadomatic from opendingoo is working with me, and so opendingoo will be repurposed as a host for developer blogs, while his dingoowiki will remain as a wiki, as part of the community network.

    You should realise that we're opting to move the community forward in this way so that we can avoid such losses of data and downtime for members in the future, and we would like your support.

    The last thing we want is a split community, with some of the posts coming here, and some coming to dingoonity, so I'm proposing that once I've got the new boards online, I could enlist your help as a board moderator.

    If you would like to contact me about this further, you can e-mail me at moglenstar@gmail.com, or you can reach me on irc.freenode.net in #dingoo-a320 or at "moglenstar".

    I hope to hear from you soon

Instead of replying to my PM, Xap decided to instead perma-ban me from freeforums, and write a thread with the following message:

Code:
    Hello people,

    I just wanted to let you know that several people at the freeforums support forum stated it won't be possible to get the forum back. The message status was set to resolved, so I think there's little hope left that we'll get the forum back that way.

    I think the only solution is to just start posting again and I'll see what can be salvaged from the several partial backups that I've been offered.

    I have to say, just now I got the offer to help out at a new forum, which should be online by the weekend or something, but I personally find this quite suspicious and a bit to coincidential and I won't be going there period, I think we have a nice and good user base here and I'll get the rollback feature, so this can't happen again in the future, but I'll rather drop dead than to allow these people to start a new forum on everybody's back, they deleted all this hard work with a laugh, so they can start anew somewhere else, while all the time we're doing just fine here.

    I can't force anyone to stay, but if you find it in your heart, please keep posting here, I'm sure we'll be back at it in no time, and I don't want them to get their way with their new forums, because I don't think they deserve it, they destroyed all your hard work and that shouldn't be left like that.

    I for one won't let them win anything by it, but ofcourse that's up to all of you. I can only say I'll take the payed for rollback option, so this can't happen again in the future, but in the end it's the users that make a forum and it will be the users that decide whether they want to stay here or give those others what they want and get started over there.

    Sincere regards and thank you,
    Xap

He practically outright accused us here at Dingoonity of sabotaging his forum, and as he had banned me he assumed I could not reply. I asked codiak to post a reply for me, this read:

Code:
    Hello Xap,
    This message is being posted on behalf of moglenstar/omgmog and the Dingoonity community.

    When your a320.freeforums.org were ruined/hacked by "Dan", I was there in #dingoo-a320 with the rest of the community members, and was just as surprised by what was happening.

    We witnessed countless accounts of members who were on irc, being banned from the forum. Up until this point I have only been an observer of the dingoo community, participating in the irc channel because I'm a long-time irc.freenode.net user.

    I'm currently awaiting the arrival of my own Dingoo a320, so getting involved with the community isn't a bad idea as any person with a logical mind would agree.

    While people tried to salvage what they could of a320.freeforums.org before "Dan" deleted the threads, we unanimously discussed the formation of a new independently hosted board/newsblog. The decision was made by many active Dingoo developers/community members, including  CongoZombie, joyrider, Harteex, codiak, zear, and myself.

    You seem to have jumped to the conclusion that because we took affirmative action, after you appointed a destructive mod, that we or even I personally am to blame for your short-sightedness.

    This would be like blaming a paramedic arriving to the scene of a crash of causing the car crash.

    Your mistakes in handing out moderator privelages because you were unable to give enough time or passion to the community.

    I've invited you to the new Dingoonity community, because I was hoping you would be able to bring with you some experience in moderating this kind of community, but I can see now that this was a bad idea.

    With or without your blessings, Dingoonity is going to be live, and it's just unfortunate that you don't want to be part of this.

    I've had to ask somebody else to post this because, without even responding to my requests, you've banned me from your freeforums.

    Max Glenister
    omgmog/moglenstar
    http://omgmog.net
    http://dingoonity.org
    http://twitter.com/omgmog

Shortly after this was posted, he removed the comment without so much as acknowledging anything I had said.

That pretty much brings us to now, and the reason I have written this lengthy log/post up - so that you can all know what has been going on, without the timeline being at all blurred by deleted posts.

It's a shame that Xap didn't want to take part in Dingoonity. As the admin of a previously popular board, I would have assumed he would have been great for us, but it seems I was wrong. His ego seems to be clouding his judgement, and he lacks the ability to look at the facts.

I hate to post such a downer of a post on our newly launched site, but this had to be put out there.
 
Good luck with the site, it'll be better for Dingoo users to have dedicated space rather than something on freeforums, "rollback feature" or no. I know a lot of level headed developers and users were taking part in that scene and you deserve better than what happened to you.

With the events that happened and Xap's current behavior I don't think you'll have much problem jumping ship. Assuming that you are out to sabotage the site with no evidence for and plenty of evidence against is completely foolish, and banning you/removing the comments on site without response or explanation is completely unacceptable. If I were a regular on those boards I would feel very nervous about having an admin like that, he seems barely any better than the guy who caused all of these problems. Not to mention, he didn't have the good sense to avoid giving mod status to people who couldn't be trusted.

Anyway, I hope this goes well for you and I hope this all indirectly serves as a boost to the Dingoo community rather than just damaging it.
 
Right now, theres only this post on a320 forums

Sorry, but the site is down, please continue at http://boards.dingoonity.org/index.php Thanks to all of you for a fun time we've had here, but it's time to move onwards, Xap!

So maybe it's possible for everybody to take a deep breath and start new. I loved the A320 Forums, loved the work of Xap and the others, I can completly understand he was pissed about what happened to the forum. I would still love to see him working on Dingoonity, with this in mind I don't think threads like these are useful, but that's just my two cent.
 
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