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Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

A place to talk about our community
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Miniike
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Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by Miniike »

Before this rant, let me make one thing perfectly clear: this is not a discussion with me; it’s a message from me. After this is posted, I won’t reply to anything that is posted on this thread because, as you might have figured out from my inactivity, I am leaving One More Block. And it’s not because the “cool kids” have hypnotized me or I’m still butthurt over some people I liked getting banned. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and what I’m posting here is a briefer version of what TheLastLink and Papaya have been posting on Voxelus when they’re being serious. It took me forever to get it into my head, even though it’s pretty much common sense. I’m hoping that maybe you guys can take it better hearing it from me, because I see no other way this community can survive.

Now, most of you will also probably have a problem with the stuff going on at Voxelus. It still is pretty much mostly the most amazing trash ever, but it’s not like Pigflags (or even the “serious” discussions we have on this site) have any more intelligence.

You may have seen I have posted stuff about me “not caring”. I suppose I should clarify that. I care about this community, most of its users and even Atmosphir as a game. I don’t care about One More Block. Why this is brings me to my first point: One More Block has failed the purpose it was originally intended for (community preservation) and is incredibly ill-suited to its newfound purpose (Atmosphir revival). Its closed-off atmosphere, lack of publicity, loss of important users and bad moderation have all made it so that anyone who looks at the site will instantly think it’s a Minecraft forum for 12-year-olds. If we’re attempting to revive a game here, the site must be tailor made for it. Just having a forum doesn’t cut it. If we didn’t have the Atmosphir revival thing going on, my advice would be to abandon One More Block completely and make a Steam group, but Atmosphir preservation makes it a bit trickier.

Ultimately, I think a website (probably not a forum) devoted EXCLUSIVLY to Atmosphir development would get more attention. It would also help if we could get more people working on Atmosphir in the first place. We have some skilled programmers here, so I’m not sure what the issue is.

For the community, there is an obvious, OBVIOUS answer that the “cool kids” you think of as trolls have already been throwing around and I have briefly mentioned: a Steam group.
I can’t really elaborate on this, since it’s already been well said by TLL and Papaya. In short, Steam has good forum software, it would be easier to maintain servers around specific games and organize events, and pretty much everyone on here has Steam. Even if the group forum itself dies, I doubt any of us are going to “quit” Steam, which means we can go around doing our thing and still have a way to keep in touch.

And, of course, we need fewer, more active, more experienced mods. You guys have combatted accusations of bad modding long enough. Any outsider would look at the mods track record and cringe. Tta and Chayz were banned for doing what the rest of us were already doing: being ridiculous. If someone got butthurt over it, they would link them to that amazing “kill yourself” image. Somehow, linking to a meme counts as being “very offensive to quite a few members”. This isn’t devotion to some guy I liked, it’s just calling out stupidity when I see it. Coupled with the fact that Tta offered to manually leave is worthy of more than one facedesk. Wowfunhappy, the administrator, is barley active and not able to do his duties well.

Honestly you guys, I still like most of you. But even the smartest of you might as well still be 12 years old, because not only are you painfully easy to offend and troll, the atmosphere of this community is random and spam-inducing. Just because someone points out negative truths and wrecks your playful world of merriment doesn’t mean they are trolls.

Atmosphir, though I joined it late (when Statosphir went public) shaped the way I look at the internet. I made friendships that have lasted, learned many of the basics of how to use a forum, and even befitted from a disaster or two. If you could somehow retrieve my old posts from an archive, I doubt you would have seen much visible growth, but it happened.

But we’ve (mostly) grown up. Our lives are becoming busier on a personal level. The main concern right not should be to keep in touch, not cling to a forum on its way out faster than the US.

If you take this no different than you did from the “cool kids”, then I can’t help you. Stop living in denial, or even better pretending denial (and the internet) is the only place you can live.
If I made a factual error in this rant, or you just want to bask in my wake, contact me through Steam or Voxelus.

~La Miniike
:pigflag: for fricking fricks sake why do i still care :pigflag:
:lock: 1. Wild Life 2. China Pig 3. The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica) 4. Sugar N' Spikes 5. Ant Man Bee :lock:
:bomb: you'll love it, it's a way of life :bomb:
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Phantomboy
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Post by Phantomboy »

Firstly, thank you for writing out your opinions Miniike. Regardless if you see this or not, I will add my own thoughts on the manner and perhaps other members of the community will too.

I don't want anything I say to be taken for more than it is, simply the thoughts and opinions of some random teenager. I am not speaking for the direction of any other members, nor will I be changing anything without discussing with the rest of the community. So please, take this as the collective thoughts of one person. As far as the "closed-publication" and "first impression goes" I would absolutely agree. It isn't a stretch to say that OneMoreBlock was likely created in part with Minecraft in mind, many aspects of the core design reflect that.

Furthermore, with moderation, I think we need a lot of improving. I won't make excuses for each of use. I will say that we should be clearer and more finite with what is considered "breaking" rules and when actions are taken they should be supported and displayed clearly in the thread that warrants. I don't want to remove any light from the fact that - if I am not the person for the job, which very well could be the case, then I shouldn't be doing the job and we should let someone else take over. I will let the community decide that.

In regards to the Voxelus pals, even if they were the ones who said that you should come post this - I am glad you doing what you feel is right. I think it would be silly to discredit an argument based on who said it rather than the points it is bringing up. I don't think I can stress that enough, if you are unhappy with something on the internet, why not step away from it? There is no problem with that at all!

As far as a Steam goes, I cannot say I am in favour or against it.. mostly because I don't often use Steam so the specifics of it are pretty foreign. I don't really know if communities on it return on Google searches, or can be linked to on other browsers. Those would be things to think about. I am not opposed to people going out there and making their own sites for us to interact on. That's wonderful and if anyone has or want to make a steam-type thing, be my guest! Let us know.

To sort of finish off here, I can see the messages your post is trying to hit home. I probably would having worded my approach a bit differently, but I still strongly respect you saying what is on your mind. I think it's better that you said it. I will miss seeing you around, pal, but I am happy that you decided to go when you felt it was your time. Good luck on your further ventures, Miniike!

I think this sort of vaguely, slightly, maybe displays my opinion.. It's that weird sort of thing where I don't know if I am happy enough with it to post. So, I guess I am posting it? Anyways, to everyone if you are unhappy with something - feel free to post it here, PM, do whatever - just let us know :)
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ElectroYoshi
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Post by ElectroYoshi »

Phantomboy wrote:if I am not the person for the job, which very well could be the case, then I shouldn't be doing the job and we should let someone else take over. I will let the community decide that.
Just to kind of respond to this, I just want you to know (and I think I speak for everyone here when I say this) that I really appreciate the effort you've put forth to moderating. You've made some impulsive decisions, but overall, I think that while there's definitely room for improvement (editing posts instead of just deleting them for example), I think you've done your job well.

Now speaking from a more general standpoint, I took a good, hard look at everything that was said in the first post before replying, and I agree with some of the points made and not so much with others. Probably the biggest thing I'd have to disagree with is the point about bad moderation. There's definitely room for improvement, since Wowfun insists he hasn't had time to his job lately (An understandable excuse given that he's in college, but an invalid one when he's online on other forums), and the moderators we do have can be impulsive. What I do not agree with is that the moderation as a whole is just generally sucky. It's got it's flaws, but the bans we've had here (tta, Chayz, TLL, etc.) weren't just because they were being ridiculous; it was more because they were running rampant with it. Letting people run rampant with dumb posts would not up this forum's appeal. If anything, most people think that constant ridiculous posts get annoying after awhile, so letting that sort of thing run wild on this site would kill it much faster than sluggish activity would. To summarize, the moderation on here does have its flaws, but you blow it WAY out of proportion.

Also, personally, I think a Steam Group would be a REALLY crummy setup for hosting Atmosphir. I will concede that OMB doesn't have the best setup for suiting the game either, but an actual forum is just a much nicer setup to use for online games. Not only that, but OMB can be adapted to the change. That has already taken shape in some ways, what with the several boards we have that are specifically devoted to Atmosphir and the Editorial Staff and whatnot. You can always add separate pages for other Atmosphir related stuff, much like they did with Sebane's stats. Just today, this was discussed extensively on OneMoreSkype, and is something we're seriously considering. At least that's my impression of it.

That being said, I can agree that OMB hasn't been doing its job lately. It had a relatively small community right off the bat, even when it was at its peak in comparison. It was a lot more active around Christmas in 2012 then it was in the Spring of 2013 when school was wrapping up, and I did take notice of that, but I always just brushed it off, figuring things would pick back up in the summer, which they ultimately did. The same thing happened again this school year; It was a lot more active around Christmas, but now that the end of school is on the horizon, it's slowing down again. I still think activity is gonna pick up again in the summer like it did last year, but activity can't just roller-coaster like that and get by. It needs to be more consistent. Miniike is right: We're all older now, and we all live busier lives now, largely because of that. I for example am going into the 11th grade in just a few months, and I can already tell I'm gonna have more to juggle next year than I've had in my first two years of high school. Because of that, I'm probably gonna be more pressed for time, and as we all get older, we're all gonna run into that problem, and it's just gonna keep on snowballing from there. I think we can survive as a small, niche community, and I'd like us to stay that way (For the sake of connection between users), but right now, we're a bit too small and niche, so we have a need for at least a few more active users. Besides, with Atmosphir, Dave inspired a lot of people to go into game design... Might as well carry on the tradition, eh?

As for you, Miniike... Goodbye. I'm definitely gonna miss seeing you around here, but I know you're doing what you feel you need to do, and I wish you nothing but the best in your future endeavors.
I need a shot again, that sweet adrenaline.
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bionicnacho
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Post by bionicnacho »

ElectroYoshi wrote: Also, personally, I think a Steam Group would be a REALLY crummy setup for hosting Atmosphir. I will concede that OMB doesn't have the best setup for suiting the game either, but an actual forum is just a much nicer setup to use for online games. Not only that, but OMB can be adapted to the change. That has already taken shape in some ways, what with the several boards we have that are specifically devoted to Atmosphir and the Editorial Staff and whatnot. You can always add separate pages for other Atmosphir related stuff, much like they did with Sebane's stats. Just today, this was discussed extensively on OneMoreSkype, and is something we're seriously considering. At least that's my impression of it.
I don't think he was referring to using the Steam group for hosting Atmo, but rather a different way to keep in touch with the community members. And to some extent, I do agree that having a Steam group would help out to keep in touch. Since a lot of people here have Steam and this community is based around gaming, Steam would be nice to just say "Oh hey, I see you've been playing this game. What do you think? Would you recommend this?" or anything like that since all that stuff is already included in steam, provided you actually use steam to play games regularly. I personally have Steam open most of the time and I do play Steam games. With the group, events could be organized on games for the community to play in and it could actually be good for the community. I hadn't really looked into steam groups, but now that I have I think it could be a good idea. BUT, with that said, I think a steam group would be sort of like an add-on to the community instead of just a complete replacement of OMB.

I also think that this website could use some change in the way it's organized and that's something I might go ahead and talk to the mods about. The website's purpose has sort of faded and it needs to be defined again now. It's true: it's motives are kind of shifting from just keeping the community alive and playing causal games and getting on a minecraft server to actually hosting a revival of Atmosphir, with all that other stuff together. The site's organization no longer fits what we've become and it does need some change.

I've gone ahead and created a provisional Steam group that anybody can join if they want to. I don't care if you've been banned anywhere if you promise to be cool and not start spamming everything and being obnoxious. Add me on steam (bionicnacho) and I'll be sure to add you to the group. Right now I haven't really done anything to the group. It's just there, but in the future as we plan things out, we could organize events and all that stuff. If you don't use steam, then I'll be sure to post an according thread over here to alert in case of any events.

As for you Miniike, I don't know if you'll see this (and I hope you do) and while I'm sad to see you go, I'm glad you brought these things up in an organized manner like you did. I hope to see you on that group.
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Post by ElectroYoshi »

bionicnacho wrote:I don't think he was referring to using the Steam group for hosting Atmo, but rather a different way to keep in touch with the community members. And to some extent, I do agree that having a Steam group would help out to keep in touch. Since a lot of people here have Steam and this community is based around gaming, Steam would be nice to just say "Oh hey, I see you've been playing this game. What do you think? Would you recommend this?" or anything like that since all that stuff is already included in steam, provided you actually use steam to play games regularly. I personally have Steam open most of the time and I do play Steam games. With the group, events could be organized on games for the community to play in and it could actually be good for the community. I hadn't really looked into steam groups, but now that I have I think it could be a good idea. BUT, with that said, I think a steam group would be sort of like an add-on to the community instead of just a complete replacement of OMB.
The reason I worded it like that is because Miniike was seconding stuff that the "Cool kids" (aka our banned users over at Voxelus) said about it, and when they said it, they treated it more like a straight-up replacement for OMB. Miniike kind of worded his point the same way (Unless I misunderstood him). I'm the same way. I agree, it'd make a good "add-on" for the community. That's essentially what OneMoreSkype is and what the Minecraft server was, so I see no reason we shouldn't do something similar on Steam.

The way I gauge it, we have two issues that need solving, one being the slow activity on here as of late, and the other being OneMoreBlock's setup, since its setup and purpose no longer match. More people need to know about the revival project, and the site needs to be changed to accommodate it.
I need a shot again, that sweet adrenaline.
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Wazi
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Post by Wazi »

bye
actually
not bye
hi
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Miniike
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Re: Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by Miniike »

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

guys seriously read this again i was so salty and over-dramatic

i can't be embarrassed if i'm laughing
:pigflag: for fricking fricks sake why do i still care :pigflag:
:lock: 1. Wild Life 2. China Pig 3. The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica) 4. Sugar N' Spikes 5. Ant Man Bee :lock:
:bomb: you'll love it, it's a way of life :bomb:
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SirWrek
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Re: Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by SirWrek »

The only thing saltier has plenty more sanctuary too.
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bionicnacho
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Re: Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by bionicnacho »

Whoa, I was reading this again believing that the date on the post said 2016 and then I scrolled and saw that I'd already replied
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Rattle
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Re: Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by Rattle »

SHIT i thought someone was actually leaving. oh well, i can always hope for tomorrow
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Rabbidfan236
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Re: Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by Rabbidfan236 »

tbh I never even realized you were gone
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Miniike
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Re: Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by Miniike »

Rabbidfan236 wrote:tbh I never even realized you were gone
wasn't i gone for like two weeks tops

in an era when i was basically interchangeable with SL and Electro
:pigflag: for fricking fricks sake why do i still care :pigflag:
:lock: 1. Wild Life 2. China Pig 3. The Blimp (Mousetrapreplica) 4. Sugar N' Spikes 5. Ant Man Bee :lock:
:bomb: you'll love it, it's a way of life :bomb:
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ThatOneFox
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Re: Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by ThatOneFox »

it only took the 3 members who represent 99% of the activity on here to leave and make their own forum to actually get stuff done.
:skull: :bungee: Keith Keiser has a better ass than you :bungee: :skull:
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Gtarmetro
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Re: Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by Gtarmetro »

I'm always gone. But like the common cold or bird poop on a car, I always return. (Maybe I'm like a time traveler or something and none of you all notice it at all)
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ThatOneFox
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Re: Some Honest Words, And Goodbye

Post by ThatOneFox »

If it all the same to you guys I'm gonna go ahead and lock this now.
:skull: :bungee: Keith Keiser has a better ass than you :bungee: :skull:
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