MessengerGeek Forum Retrospective - 2017

Hello people.

I have been lurking around this forum for quite a while, and after a while, I noticed that the forum quality has been… dwindling down. And after a while, it went into complete chaos. I know there’s a post titled “Im gonna be honest with you” basically covering this, but I have noticed this problem even before then. In fact, if I wasn’t so shy to create an account I would have posted about this. Alongside this, I have some new things to add to the table, so I’m not completely regurgitating the same info. Plus, the OP basically went on a rage fueled rant on that thread about the problems on this forum, so I’d like to be transparent about this situation and offer some advice to those affected and are the causes of the chaos.

OK, here we go.

Things I’d Like to Talk About:

  • People who are impatient for “iMPORTANT!!!1111!!” Escargot features

Ever since Escargot was brought to the forum, there have been a cluster of people who were constantly nagging for mainly WLM support, webcam features, etc. These are not limited to youngsters, which makes it more annoying. Ever since my time on this forum (during the Escargot era, I like to call it), I have stumbled across these posts a few times, and I facepalmed whenever I did (and I still do). Before I created this account, I had started a project to replace the now dead MSN webcam server, but I had postponed that for other projects and to not stress myself (have you looked at the documentation for the packets used for the webcam streams, it’s kind of confusing). After all, I actually wanted to contribute to Escargot’s development, which made me consider creating an account, but again, shyness. But back on track, a user notorious for these types of posts and many more, Leo_Historias, is one of the worst cases I’ve ever stumbled upon (more on him later). Case in point, people who fall into this category need to learn that “patience is a virtue.”

  • Kids aren’t the problem

After seeing a few threads and posts ragging on them, I would personally like to say, kids aren’t the problem. In fact, JK has said numerous times that people of all ages are allowed on this forum, and of course, MSN Messenger. Yes, I know, kids tend to be annoying and ruin things, I should know. But not ALL kids are like this. There are kids (mostly teens) out there who can handle mature conversations and do “adult” things like program (not like Scratch and other kiddy programming languages), animate, draw, and video edit. Sure, they are few and far between, but if those kinds of children exist, why act like all kids will ruin your lives? I mostly feel like it is some sort of bias because I know they can know better.

  • Is this an MSN-only forum?

I’d like to address something that I have noticed from a person who tries to shut up people who want to try to branch out Escargot to support other IMs or at least want to introduce others to other IMs (I do not want to name them in the name of civil discussion and to not pass him off as a suspect). To this I will say, this is not necessarily a problem. You know what, let’s play devil’s advocate. If the forum were to go completely off-topic and discuss about other IMs, I can see where you’re coming from. I’ll also assume that you want to prevent the forum from becoming off-topic to the point where it is unmanagable. OK, but as it stands, the forum hasn’t gone completely off-topic for a while now. I do not know JK’s stance on what counts as on-topic discussion, but if you look on the about page of this forum (http://wink.messengergeek.com/about), it reads “Discussion and support for Messenger Reviver and other software.” So from there you can make the conclusion that as long as the topics discussed here are not completely off the rails, it’s OK to post about other software, which includes other IMs.

  • Leo_Historias

Yup. We saved the best one for last. I had some more problems that I would list, but were either too tiny or were already handled. Now, Leo_Historias is basically the embodiment of UNBEARABLE. When he joined (or at least when I saw his posts for the first time), he was constantly asking for WLM 8.1 support to be implemented on Escargot (along with some other bad eggs), and people were trying to get him to quiet up and be patient, and when WLM 8.1 support was implemented, he somehow couldn’t get it to work and simply said that it sucked because of his singular issue. Honestly, the kid annoys me to my wit’s end and I wish he would at least get a value pack of Patience™. What also makes me grinds my gears about him are his non-stop useless posts (e.g., WLM 2009-related posts, posts saying that he will make a server for Comic Chat or create “WLM 2017”, which are nothing but empty words, suggestions that he pitches in but are ultimately not really useful, etc., etc.). But what makes me understand his behavior is the fact that he is 10 years old (from what I have heard). Now that doesn’t mean his behavior is justified, but I can at least sympathize with the guy and not go full commando on him (not that I would anyway regardless of who is the culprit).

So remember the OP of the “Im gonna be honest with you” thread? Well, he basically threw an F-bomb behind the kid’s back. (Well, after typing out this lengthy post, he starting insulting him (“Go back to playing Minecraft”, “Burn in hell”, bla bla bla) and even sent him links to Meatspin (don’t go there for the love of all things good) and XVideos purely just to give him a big middle finger. Really classy, dude. Really classy. -_-) No matter who it is, you’re just trash talking him now. It’s one thing to sternly tell someone to stop with dumb nonsense posts or they’ll be hit with an appropriate punishment, but trash talking won’t help anything. Should be obvious from there.

Anyways, Leo is notorious for his grammar, which is not the best out there. People have even gone out of their way to make threads mocking his grammar. While he does seem to have some thick skin, overall that’s just plain rude and insulting. No matter how funny it is, you’re making yourself look like a jerk. That’s all I have to say.

Epilogue

Basically, the forum hasn’t completely taken a turn for the worst, but kind of unbearable and iffy. So here are my comments:

@Leo_Historias It’s for the best to learn that “patience is a virtue” and maybe not blindly say things that don’t have weight (like don’t blindly say that you’ll code a new version of WLM and not follow on it). If you don’t want to, sorry bud, but you can simply pack your bags and leave (or get IP-banned). You can still use MSN Messenger cuz’ it’s not entirely linked with the MessengerGeek forums, but from the amount of scrutiny you have been gaining, I don’t think anyone would want to talk with you, just saying.

@TReKiE I know you are one person and you can’t maintain a forum this big by yourself. So I’d say get yourself some moderators. I don’t care if they are members from this forum or random strangers. It’ll help you in the long run. If you don’t want to, I can respect that. I would personally say that moderators would help, so we could rid of major nuisances like Leo much more efficiently as a last resort if needed.

For the people who are mocking Leo (for himself and his grammar): Please stop. As I said before, it isn’t helping anyone and you’re just making yourself look like a jerk. If you don’t have any malicious intentions, I’d say put yourself in Leo’s shoes and think about how he would potentially feel. If this was another foreigner who wasn’t as big of a nuisance but still had very poor grammar, would you do the same things you do to Leo?

Welp, I’m prepared to get some scrutiny myself because “Leo sucks and you didn’t insult or mock him enought xd.” Just know that I won’t be very active much.

Bye~

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You have said this very well. Basically everything I wanted to say but didn’t.

I will confess; I have tried to calm people down about Leo at first but in the end gave up and joined the bad grammar/unreasonable demands train. In fact, the first 7 or so topics are all about Leo. This stuff has got to change.

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Oh, well thanks. I didn’t even know you were actually trying to mediate this. The forum right now is a mix of Leo-based posts, posts made by Leo, and an assortment of others.

Right now, I want to wish the best of the forum and hope that people will get their act together. But right now we will have to persevere through this hot mess.

~ OhHelloThereImTheGuy :slight_smile:

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You’re right when you say that this place needs moderators. Hopefully someone will be up to the job of doing it. This forum isn’t massive, but it is very active, so I don’t know how hard it would be to moderate this place. I feel that most of this forum is full of the same old posts asking the same old questions about Messenger. Hopefully we’ll see less of those in the future. If there were more interesting discussions on this forum, I would probably be participating here a lot more.

Edit: I actually just scrolled down to see what new posts there were and most of them were just mocking Leo. They are almost becoming more annoying than Leo himself.

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The repetitive questions and “When is __ coming out” posts can probably be resolved by stickies or a FAQ. Maybe instead of small categories maybe a few megathreads. Maybe the forum is due for some spring cleaning?

Man, I finally read it.

Great post, I agree in everything you said here!

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I have an idea: When you complete the registration process, you have to read some rules like “Please understand that this project will take time to complete and future versions of WLM will take some time until they’re released” and things like that, and then, to ensure the user DID read the rules, he/she would have to complete a sort of short trivia with questions like “Future versions will ______” (and he/she fills, for example, “take a long time to be released”) and/or multiple choice questions. That would be a way to prevent new user’s posts about "When WLM x.x???"
Also, if moderators are implemented, there could be this thing (i don’t know how to call it) that you’re reported 3 times, and banned

What do you think? :slight_smile: @TReKiE

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THIS. THIS THIS THIS. THIS A MILLION TIMES THIS.

We need AT LEAST couple moderators AND a easy-to-understand rules + guidelines list pinned to the forum or something. Include rules like ‘speak clearly’, ‘be patient’, ‘don’t spam’, ‘DON’T ASK WHEN NEW FEATURES ARE’, etc. Heck, even have a thread updated by the devs that show the progress of some of the upcoming features. (Or even better, have a public Trello board!)

And honestly? If it were up to me, I’d condense all the ‘HEY WANNA CHAT HERE’S MY MSN ADDRESS’ topics into one single topic in the forum directory that anyone can reply to. It’ll help deal with the influx of crud topics that have been appearing recently.

And I 100% agree with OP in saying that if you come across an annoying forum user, DON’T send them links to edgy crap. Seriously. That should be a given.

I really do think making an actual list of rules and maybe getting some moderators on would be the best choice for this forum. and i uh. i feel i would be a good choice if that’s okay with you

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Actually, there IS a thread about that. it’s pinned at the start of the page. but some people decide to ignore ignore it for some reason

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Thank you for placing this topic.
Since i joined Escargot, i saw many posts about wlm 8.x.
Now its released, people NOW brag for wlm 2009!
People, if you see this message…Stop begging for wlm!
I think @TReKiE should make a ‘begging’ sub forum
Sorry if i react too much, but im a bit angry of this.

Thank you @OhHelloThereImTheGuy for the post, I very much appreciate you putting all the time and effort into writing that up. I feel you are completely correct on every point. Also thanks to everyone else who has provided input in the thread, it is extremely valuable to me and the entire community.

Just to quickly address,

[quote=“OhHelloThereImTheGuy, post:1, topic:2362”]
Is this an MSN-only forum?
[/quote]It is most certainly not an MSN-only forum. Although what you cite on the about page does need and will be updated, it is still correct in that all related topics are most certainly welcome here.

That said, I’ve taken some initial steps to start addressing some of these issues. Please read the announcement linked below and let me know your thoughts. Thanks again everyone.

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Thank. You. For. This.

I don’t like making public threads by myself, so thank you for having the guts to do this. I had been messaging @TReKiE for quite a while about community guidelines and stuff, and it’s good to see that stuff is being put into action now.

  • Moderators.
    After this, I am a little concerned that the forum will start having floods of posts requesting for them to become a moderator, such as;
    'I have been here since day 1 of the MSN revival thing, I think i should become a moderator because…'
    And although that person may be good enough to become a moderator, it will still be annoying to see come up on the front page of the forum, especially if there is more than one request all the time.I propose that we create a little sub-forum where a user can only post once, and that post will be their application. If it is accepted, congrats! If it is denied, you are either not qualified enough or your application needs re-doing. Either way, this would be a good system.

  • ’But surely that sub-forum will be spammed with requests, it would take ages to go through them all?'
    If we have some moderators from the get go, approving and denying requests, we would be able to sort through them at a quicker rate, as well as this, with the one-post-only rule, they can’t spam their application all the time, so that would help maintain that area as well. Also, it won’t be in the way of the main feed, and that is a good thing.

  • Abuse of other members on the forum, as well as rejection of ideas from other members on the forum.
    Alright, I have had personal experience with this one;
    In terms of humor and banter, mockery can be funny. But once it gets to the stage where it is quite clearly a form of bullying, and it becomes personal (such as age, race, location, etc) then it should become a bannable offence. [quote=“OhHelloThereImTheGuy, post:1, topic:2362”]
    Is this an MSN-only forum?
    [/quote]

I’m glad this was brought up, as I myself was abused for having the idea of making a discord server for the forum, (which is something that exists now and is thriving), and although I could see where they were coming from, I recieved racial abuse, and as I am from Africa, I found it highly offensive. Now that person that did it has since apologised, but it was a very bad case, and it is still something that happens on the forum today.

  • Open Source
    One final thing. Escargot itself as a project is open source, and you can help contribute towards it over on GitLab.
    And this is the main reason why this forum has pissed me off lately.
    I appreciate that developing and testing a program is no easy feat, however if you are going to restrict access to a program that other people want to help out with, and you are considering to SELL it instead of making it publicly available for free, then leave. A project like Escargot (And MSN Reviver) thrives off open source. The fact that the community can come together and create something this good is beautiful. However if you are developing a program for Escargot that is restricted in this way, I won’t be downloading it or using it. Recently, we had a developer here who restricted access to one singles out person. I can understand why you may pick certain testers and not have too many, however this person did so for literally no reason whatsoever (They suggested an idea similar to the program being created), and then they proceeded to abuse him and make fun of him on the forum. I won’t be mentioning names, but that is literally despicable, and I won’t be downloading programs from that person ever. Escargot needs ideas to keep it alive and worthwhile, the fact that we already have amazing programs, such as the URL checker thing, and the custom emoticon maker. That’s cool! (And I obviously wont forget Escargot Spaces, that’s pretty important to the community as well @MichaelPower )
    But I’m not paying for programs, and I won’t be downloading and supporting programs developed here that are not needed, don’t contribute towards Escargot, and/or the creator of the program has some bad ethics.

In conclusion I’m looking forward to the future of Escargot, and the forums here on Messengergeek.

The future is bright, don’t taint it now.

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Yeah, like 3 strikes, and your out!

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Oh shoot, I almost forgot to talk about that. Contact info being posted as their own thread rather than in the contact thread. It almost feels like legitimate spam at this point. :confounded:

THANK YOU!

I thank you from the very bottom of my heart for actually taking the steps needed to get this forum back into shape. And thank you for clarifying that this forum isn’t specfically about MSN talk. It’s nice knowing that me and others can take the time to discuss about other IMs (and developing servers for them, too).

Oh, I did read the linked update post, and you did a pretty good job taking the time to address the issues and the appropriate punishments (also thx for linking my post :3).

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Thanks for adressing this issue.
Can you make for the forum something that prevents to place porn links or shock websites?

Sorry that i have broken english, im a kid.

yeah i threw the fbombs and stuff, i just was really pissed at him.