whirlygirl Escribi�:

I'm hoping things don't go the way of MySpace for I would truly be bummed if there was no more forum.

NOOOOOOOOO! dont even mention that! :(

Darkstarexodus Escribi�:

I would hate to lose all the posts we have here and would hope we'd at least get a bit of notice so we can archive some of the classic threads ourselves (Buzzed Posting, anyone? )



I've also accumulated quite the post count that I'm not sure I should be proud or ashamed of. Not that it really matters, but I'd hate to lose that either.

Yeah, the post count thing wouldn't upset me, but I would be a little sad to say bye bye to all of it. There's a lot of blood sweat and tears in them!! X-D



There are some threads worth saving just for the entertainment value - the Pink Shoes thread, buzzed posting... plus the live show reviews from New Zealand to South America to the UK. It would be a real shame to not have the threads archived somehow. As corny as it sounds it's a piece of chemical history that we've all been apart of in some way.

Bosco Escribi�:

whirlygirl Escribi�:

I'm hoping things don't go the way of MySpace for I would truly be bummed if there was no more forum.

NOOOOOOOOO! dont even mention that! :(

I'm sorry man, I'm just making my fears known being a doomsayer and all. I'm a bit resistant to change - if it ain't broke don't fix it. The forum works and I think we have a great thing here... the forum has gone on a long time and the great thing about this place is new people come, old people stay, and when old people check out for a while they will resurface at some point. And we can talk about the Chems music and it's great because it brought us here and keeps us together. God, I sound like a cultish lunatic but I don't mean to... I don't know... I like it here, forum herpes and all and I really hope the label decides to keep this place for us freaks. Plus it's ace that Ed pops his head in here from time to time. And of course the random blue moon post from Tom. It's good. :)



I checked the Chems myspace page a couple of weeks ago (and yeah, the Chems are now one of like, my 5 myspace "friends") and while it is a great medium to bring more people to the music and what is going on in band land, at the same time it does seem like it's not very much a community at least not like here and I don't know if I like that at all. It's cluttered with tons of messages from people asking to check out their bands and stuff - just from people passing through with nothing much to add except for pimping out their garage bands or whatever. It's nice to have options and myspace can't be all bad if it brings more people to the music, but I would not want myspace to be the only option we have.

whirlygirl Escribi�:

Bosco Escribi�:

whirlygirl Escribi�:

I'm hoping things don't go the way of MySpace for I would truly be bummed if there was no more forum.

NOOOOOOOOO! dont even mention that! :(

I'm sorry man, I'm just making my fears known being a doomsayer and all. I'm a bit resistant to change - if it ain't broke don't fix it. The forum works and I think we have a great thing here... the forum has gone on a long time and the great thing about this place is new people come, old people stay, and when old people check out for a while they will resurface at some point. And we can talk about the Chems music and it's great because it brought us here and keeps us together. God, I sound like a cultish lunatic but I don't mean to... I don't know... I like it here, forum herpes and all and I really hope the label decides to keep this place for us freaks. Plus it's ace that Ed pops his head in here from time to time. And of course the random blue moon post from Tom. It's good. :)



I checked the Chems myspace page a couple of weeks ago (and yeah, the Chems are now one of like, my 5 myspace "friends") and while it is a great medium to bring more people to the music and what is going on in band land, at the same time it does seem like it's not very much a community at least not like here and I don't know if I like that at all. It's cluttered with tons of messages from people asking to check out their bands and stuff - just from people passing through with nothing much to add except for pimping out their garage bands or whatever. It's nice to have options and myspace can't be all bad if it brings more people to the music, but I would not want myspace to be the only option we have.

no, no. X-D ha, sorry if that sounded like i was deffending myspace.....i was saying NOOOOO! to the fact that i dont want my chemical world controlled by myspace.



i hate everything myspace stands for, except for the music feature... I love the idea that bands can get their music out to the public for free! But other then that, i absolutely hate myspace.



Chems forum forevarrrrrrrrr!!!!

Bahaha, I think you may have misinterpreted what I didn't mean to misinterpret. Or something!! X-D It's been a long freaking day... I knew you weren't defending myspace and I was just ranting and sort of preaching to the choir, so to speak. Noooooooooo! is right, da forum lives!!

whoops :P

I see no reason at all to lose all the old threads while migrating to a new server. It's all quite simple if a few of us fans turned out to be nerds and we could do it inhouse, like some friends did with another forum.



That's if we ever get the attention of the admin, tom, or even surface2air. We have no clue who this person is and what's his level of connection with the Chems. I don't believe the Chems have not been informed of so many problems n they can't pay one geek to fix all this, or astralworks can. How many "pop" artists do they have with such a huge forum anyway? Right slipvin?

All i can say is i would HATE for all the threads that i read every day to go. When i'm bored i like to read back in Buzzed Posting , Party Pics or Chems Reviews. I really have an emotional conenctions with many topics on this board :'(

There's enough posts in Buzzed Posting to publish I reckon. Seriously, I reckon copying and pasting every post into a Word document, including the header-type information of who posted it, would make a fantastic book. Think of the concept - any of you read "Adrian Mole's diary" years ago? That was a great concept, and it worked. I reckon copying a big forum thread would work too. If not Buzzed Posting, maybe the BS thread?

haha! that's an awesome idea!

like the whirly calling jeanie incident a few days back n leavin a voicemail apologizing for not being able to take jeanie's call! jeanie's reply just fuckin SO cracked me up!

Jeanie I know what you mean, I think there are a lot of us who are attached to some of the things said here. I love the California thread that documented your guys' stay at my house, I love the reviews - especially the first timer ones... I was a bit burnt and lazy on Sunday and I spent god knows how long reading old threads, just killing time.



I like chemicalfan's idea of publishing Buzzed Posting. X-D Even better we would not have to change the names to protect the innocent. Except for maybe Jeanie. hahahaha!!

Hahahahaha i'm not embarssed for my buzzed posts X-D

We can't solve the spam issue just by cleaning up. What if we wake up one day with 10000 spam posts on the forum?



Even if the amount of spam is slightly less than it doesn't make sense to fight machines on their terms. I don't understand why anyone would want to propose themselves as moderators when the work just includes never-ending removal of machine-generated messages. (Of course, this is something that just has to be done in the current situation.) Which brings me to another point:



What is the "job description" of moderators here? Should they be doing anything else other than deleting spam posts? Should they lock topics? Should they remove/edit insulting posts? If you think that "yes, some of these things should be allowed" then don't we need some kind of rules to go by?



For my view of an ideal solution to these problems see my next message.

There are at least two theoretically good alternatives:



1. We are able to contact the true administrators of this forum and convince them to make an upgrade to our forum software. (this has been proposed time after time and hasn't worked very well in reality)



2. My ideal solution:



Inception:



- someone volunteers to run a webserver (let's call it W) on some machinery that he/she has access to

- new version of phpboard or a better alternative is installed on server W and it is made sure that i) automatic registration is very hard and ii) only registered people can post

- the owner of the webserver W is the administrator, he/she has final word on any actions

- some volunteers are chosen to act as moderators



- people move over to this new forum running on W

- surface2air makes a topic called "WE HAVE MOVED, THE NEW "OFFICIAL" FORUM IS LOCATED AT [...]", locks and stickies the topic

- we let spammers take over this forum



Administration on server W:



- administrator updates the forum software when it is required and forum members are able to contact him/her when needed

- moderators are just responsible for removing the occasional spam posts and banning spammers

- moderators are NOT allowed to touch the conversation in any other way than to delete spam posts

- moderators are thanked for their commitments



If we are someday able to contact administrators of this forum and they upgrade the forum software then we can move back.



Our old posts stay in good care here and if they need to be salvaged at some point in the future the administrator can just go into the database and delete all the new posts that were made on this forum after we moved and then export the database containing just our posts out.



Of course the toughest part of this solution is to get someone to run the server. Here we need to remember that the administrator wouldn't have to work daily on the forum after it has been set up, the occasional (once a year or something, depends on how much work it is) software updates would be his/her only commitment.



Please take your time to think about this proposed solution and post if you have a better one or can come up with improvements to this. We have to solve the spamming problem sooner or later, the amount of spam bots hitting this forum seems to be increasing.

In the past someone proposed to move to another forum (which he already set up) with more options and better protection, and it was put away as being nonsense. What makes you think the people want to move, especially when they will lose their precious post(count)s?



This forum will eventually die because it will be run over by spambots. Unfortunately, some people are too stubborn to realize that, and think they can handle the situation by deleting their posts. WRONG!



I think your proposition is a good idea, but if you can't migrate stuff from this forum to the new one, you won't get much cooperation I'm afraid.

People can put "Actually, my post count is what it says here + 1847192847 in the other forum so I'm better than you" in their signatures. :-D

The damn page changes again, people



please read my suggestion on the previous page, it's important



Thank you.

I dunno if it's possible, but could forums.thechemicalbrothers.com have been added to spam lists by someone? This shit can't be random.

soundertow Escribi�:

We can't solve the spam issue just by cleaning up. What if we wake up one day with 10000 spam posts on the forum?



Even if the amount of spam is slightly less than it doesn't make sense to fight machines on their terms. I don't understand why anyone would want to propose themselves as moderators when the work just includes never-ending removal of machine-generated messages. (Of course, this is something that just has to be done in the current situation.) Which brings me to another point:



What is the "job description" of moderators here? Should they be doing anything else other than deleting spam posts? Should they lock topics? Should they remove/edit insulting posts? If you think that "yes, some of these things should be allowed" then don't we need some kind of rules to go by?



For my view of an ideal solution to these problems see my next message.

The job description of us mods as of late is primarily rid this place of spam. If you go to any messageboard, the job of moderators is to play - to a degree - forum cop and this includes locking topics, deleting posts and editing. This is also laid out in the FAQ's.



You may not agree with the above and you have been critical in the past which I really do think is a good thing because criticism is constructive, but it is up to the mods to use their judgment within their capabilities. Has this been abused? Yep, sure has - it sucks and fucking with troll's posts may have been wrong on some levels but no worse than what was being dished out originally against the band and other forum members, but it has happened. Have people besides the mods abused other forum members without a mod stepping in and babysitting. Yep, sure has. It goes both ways.



I think your ideas are good and sensible ones but personally I do like being apart of something that is official and for better or worse I don't really want to abandon this place. I could give a rat's ass about post count and frankly if this forum were wiped out and started fresh tomorrow, I have no problem starting over. As for the mods, the whole thing is and will continue to be a battle either with spam bots, trolls or established people here who will test how far they can push people which is the worst in my opinion.



My general feeling is either this place will disappear with the next album or it will get an overhaul. It is a shame that this place is infiltrated with spam bots, but it's a sad fact of this forum's life. . Nobody's being forced to stay. Simple as that.

Going back to the hacking idea, i know someone who has hacked the FBS forum in the past that could have a go on here.