Bigot Brigade Something Awful and Friends - The roller-coaster train-wreck embarrassing downfall of a Web 1.0 giant and its tick offspring like from Cloverfield

[Brain Problems]

To say reddit leans left is a bit unfair. It's more like the left and right sides of reddit don't really interact. Unless you're in a sub like worst of reddit or subreddit drama they don't acknowledge each other much. Sometimes in popular subs someone will karma whore by going "DAE think the_donald/redpill is the worst?" There are subs were lefties and conservative interact which is met with downvotes for conservative opinions when politics are at play but there will be a good amount of right wingers commenting. Right wing subs are super autistic like most of reddit, though, I give you that.

edit: It's worth noting that Something Awful users think reddit is the worst and too right wing. There is a good reason why most of them moved to twitter, you can create your own hug box on that platform.

Goons bitching about reddit will never get old for me. They all secretly go there anyway but it's important to bookend anything related to it with some sort of dig about how inferior it is compared to the Shining Forum on the Hill that they pretend SA is.

 

[The Jerkstore]

Goons bitching about reddit will never get old for me. They all secretly go there anyway but it's important to bookend anything related to it with some sort of dig about how inferior they are compared to the Shining Forum on the Hill that they pretend SA is.

sort of like when a super walmart moves into town and the local hipsters go on at great length about how much better it is to spend 3x more on wilting produce and dented cans at the mom and pop bodega

 

[northstar747]

your giving me flash back to hank hill and meglomart.

SA has the left police who run around threads. Remember the shit that happened in the gun sub. and how the mods struggled to deal with a fucking year old post of a movie quote? They have to say that shit least they get put on the naughty list.

 

[BillionBisonBucks]

We've pretty much established that the current state of the SA forums' technical problems is not a hard fix. It's not a pretty or an ideal fix, but given the circumstances it's probably the best course.

Throw the current forums into the web equivalent of cryogenic storage, export the user database, convert the user data from vBulletin to some other format (XenForo etc), import it to the new database, done. It's gonna suck, and it's gonna take a little bit of work, but it will function - better than the current forums - and Lowtax just doesn't want to do it. It's literally as simple as that. He could give all the pre-upgrade legacy users another dumb little badge for their profile and they'd eat that shit up because SA's userbase is just as autistic as ours with internet stickers.

This would also actually have the added benefit of neutralizing the alleged "dead man switch" that ZDR installed on the forum, as well as also negating all of radium's jank code and whatever else busted shit some well-meaning but uneducated admin shoved in there during the past 20 years.

(Source: I formerly did web development work for years. vBulletin offers all sorts of conversion tools to take data from non-vBulletin forums and convert them to vB and vice versa. It's in the customer account page of the website.)

It should be easy, but I think it's optimistic to assume SA's case is easy. I'm not an IT professional, not even close, but I recall Null ripping his hair out during an upgrade because some databases were contaminating each other somehow.

So, my point is that if the tightest ship I've ever seen can have these sorts of problems invisibly to the users, it seems very possible that SA's 'user database' wouldn't make sense to any other piece of software in the world. If it would require bespoke software for the project, XenForo's rumored 20k quote starts making a lot of sense.

Near as I can tell, the XF guys are the only non-SA people to ever get a look under the hood. If they say it's a five digit job, I'm inclined to believe them.

 

[Super Collie]

It should be easy, but I think it's optimistic to assume SA's case is easy. I'm not an IT professional, not even close, but I recall Null ripping his hair out during an upgrade because some databases were contaminating each other somehow.

So, my point is that if the tightest ship I've ever seen can have these sorts of problems invisibly to the users, it seems very possible that SA's 'user database' wouldn't make sense to any other piece of software in the world. If it would require bespoke software for the project, XenForo's rumored 20k quote starts making a lot of sense.

Near as I can tell, the XF guys are the only non-SA people to ever get a look under the hood. If they say it's a five digit job, I'm inclined to believe them.

Oh I totally believe SA's databases are blown the fuck apart. Not a doubt in my mind. vBulletin has the conversion tools (XenForo might have their own too, I am not sure) and it might take a little bit of work but ultimately the process could be simplified by selectively importing rows from the vB database into the hypothetical XF one by means of a modified or custom script. I'm talking bare bones things like username, registration email, the password hash, avatar/title, registration date, and that's it. Anything else is completely unnecessary.

Maybe after doing that at a later time (i.e. never) Lowtax could double back and add something on all legacy users' profiles like "click here to see this user's content on the archived forums" or whatever. Just getting the base user content imported and running shouldn't be that bad, at least from my own personal experiences of having done this myself, but yeah trying to maintain a link between posts and content on the archived forums right out of the gate would be totally fucking dumb and I don't think something like that would ever actually work anyways.

 

[Anime is Blood]

It should be easy, but I think it's optimistic to assume SA's case is easy. I'm not an IT professional, not even close, but I recall Null ripping his hair out during an upgrade because some databases were contaminating each other somehow.

So, my point is that if the tightest ship I've ever seen can have these sorts of problems invisibly to the users, it seems very possible that SA's 'user database' wouldn't make sense to any other piece of software in the world. If it would require bespoke software for the project, XenForo's rumored 20k quote starts making a lot of sense.

Near as I can tell, the XF guys are the only non-SA people to ever get a look under the hood. If they say it's a five digit job, I'm inclined to believe them.

I feel like SA could pay for the upgrade easily if it wasn't priority #45 for expenses behind Pitbulls, A million kids, Hearthstone and wine.

 

[Ruin]

SA will never be upgraded and goons will continue to be willing paypigs for Lowtax's white trash ambitions.

 

[Anime is Blood]

Well, yeah. He didn't spent the seven figures he's gotten from SA on upgrading it and now it's at the point where it barely sustains his lifestyle.

The only hope for an upgrade was the Xenforo 2.0 donation drive a year or two ago and the only way that would have worked is if goons threw enough money into the Lowtax moneypit that he hit a manic period and was willing to spend the 5 hours a week talking to the people who would do the real work, before he needed the money for himself. We all know that didn't happen.

Each new cry for cash gets less and less response as the site dies more and more. I think people might also be realizing they are just giving a hick welfare so he doesn't have to get a fucking job and are getting nothing in return. If I wanted to support a white trash family with a bunch of pitbulls I'd call up some of my cousins.

 

[Holocaust Mansplainer]

I feel like SA could pay for the upgrade easily if it wasn't priority #45 for expenses behind Pitbulls, A million kids, Hearthstone and wine.

I agree. 5 figures for this sort of database work on a forum that brings in as much money as SA isn't all that bad.

 

[Sissy Galvez]

One of the biggest problems is zen death robot is a lazy piece of shit. I also think he has no idea what he’s doing half the time.

Lowtax needs to save up and then hire someone competent to fix the forums and conduct an upgrade full time to get it over with.

 

[northstar747]

I always hated how the support robot would ban people

 

[Blagher]

What is low tax doing now anyways? After watching his newer streams it really becomes clear that he needs a second partner to play off of or it becomes really sad. Too bad schmorky is a freak and Jonathan is nowhere to be found.

Is there any story to that?

 

[Maggots on a Train]

I don't understand the point of locking up all the old threads when traffic is down 92% by Lowtax's own admission. Slap an ad on it and make it public, you idiot.

I'm amused that lowtax is on his way to becoming a web 1.0 failure as bad as JDR. But even JDR & co. knew when to sell a website, and also when to end a website. They even left up a public archive of the Otaku World site, including the pay-only content. Everybody laughed at JDR for being a layabout who used the Happy Puppy million to buy an "investment" property that turned out to be worthless, then being too incompetent to come up with any new hustle. And wasting money on anime nerd swag that cost a fortune in the 1990's US.

Lowtax will be JDR 20 years later, but I bet he won't have any of the gratitude, and will flounce one night and erase the servers. And JDR may be a troon, but at least didn't have substance abuse problems.

 

[Dogs can't look up]

God damn that nigger is still using vBulletin, and build 2.x.x? He must like torturing himself.

 

[Donovan the Man]

God damn that nigger is still using vBulletin, and build 2.x.x? He must like torturing himself.

Lowtax does none of the under the hood stuff he has an admin who does everything and holds the forums hostage every time Lowtax doesn't do what the admins want. Maybe lowtax has cucking fetish, except it's with his website.

 

[proteus4994]

Lowtax does none of the under the hood stuff he has an admin who does everything and holds the forums hostage every time Lowtax doesn't do what the admins want. Maybe lowtax has cucking fetish, except it's with his website.

TWO admins. That's what gets me. After radium constantly held the forums hostage, Lowtax went and hired ZDR who does the exact same thing. Fool me once, etc etc etc.

 

[Super Collie]

God damn that nigger is still using vBulletin, and build 2.x.x? He must like torturing himself.

He's forever stuck using vB 2.x because the sheer amount of custom work that's been done on the forums have rendered them totally incompatible with even just vB 3.x.

To put this into perspective vBulletin is on its fifth iteration presently, however the "forums only" version of the software ended with the 4.x series and vB became a forum with a community blogging & CMS system starting with 5.x. Still, he's way the hell back there in terms of versions. I'm not actually even sure if vBulletin themselves offer an upgrade tool to turn a 2.x website into a 4 or 5.x one, Something Awful has got to literally be a one of a kind case in 2018.

(My best guess is, theoretically, Lowtax would need to request some legacy tool to convert 2.x to 3.x and then use the current import/upgrade tools to turn that database into something compatible with 4/5.x. But this is just all :autism: sperging on my part.)

 

[superscript]

Wasn't Lowtax supposed to update the forums to custom software years ago?

 

[Super Collie]

Wasn't Lowtax supposed to update the forums to custom software years ago?

Yeah he took donations or something for an upgrade to XenForo (what the Farms uses), that's why some users have these additional round orange banners that have nonsensical phrases on them. But nothing ever came of that. I don't know the full details, but I am sure they were previously discussed in this thread.

 

[OldDayz]

Yeah he took donations or something for an upgrade to XenForo (what the Farms uses), that's why some users have these additional round orange banners that have nonsensical phrases on them. But nothing ever came of that. I don't know the full details, but I am sure they were previously discussed in this thread.

Before that, there was Project Titan or whatever it was that radium was cooking up. That, like everything else in the SA realm of improvement, died a quiet death.