Some of you might have noticed the new link on the top right to what’s left of the A320 free forums. What’s all this about then?
The answer is in the email below. To close off on what happened to the freeforums, Xap wrote all members a letter that deserves a wider audience.
| Hello everybody,
I want to give you an explanation about what happened to the forums and why
they are offline.
As many of you already know, in my absence, moderator Dan went loco and
banned all other mods and a lot of other people from the forums. He then
also removed every single post on the entire board, everything is gone.
I did not have a backup of the forum, and thus most of the information it
contained was gone, but one member (zear) managed to make a backup of
whatever Dan didn't remove yet at that time. Harteex has put the backup
online at http://www.harteex.com/hosted/a320.freeforums.org/
Shortly after the incident I was offered to help out at this new board
which would pop up during the weekend. Of course this seemed very
suspicious to me, that people had everything in place to take over duties
at some other board. After the admin of the new site contacted me again,
urging me to get in touch, I started to see a coop, mutiny, all things bad
happen all at once. I lost it a bit, banned the poor chap from
a320.freeforums.org, and removed another post he made with another member's
account.
I did this after It got clear that it was impossible to get a backup of the
forums and I was pretty upset to say the least, in this mindset I made
certain decisions I now regret. In retrospect I made an ass of myself and I
treated people with good intentions with disrespect, I hereby want offer my
honest apologies to anyone affected, not in the least to omgmog, who got
most of it.
| When I started this freeforum board about 5 to 6 months ago, I never
imagined it would become such a success. I never hoped it would get the
attention of so many good, honest and hardworking people. You've all been
great and you've all done very well in making these couple of months a
great and fun time to be an A-320 owner, fan , even lover maybe. I have to say, at this point in time, the only things that remains for me
is the bitter taste of failure. I failed to keep all this hard work safe
from this idiot which was assigned a moderator function by me. So of course
in part I feel very responsible for what happened and I don't want to go on
with it. I decided to call it quits, shut down this freeforums site and ask
everybody to move on to some new pastures.
Certain people in the Dingoo scene have been hard at work in the last few
days to set up a new website at http://dingoonity.org/ I urge you to check
it out, you'll see it's worth it, not only does it have a board which has a
recognizable lay-out, it's also got a news section, a blog and a wiki. If
you just want to get started at the new board straight away, you can find
it here: http://boards.dingoonity.org/
I've been offered to help out there, but I refused, I don't feel It would
do any good to have me helping out there after letting so many of you down
here. I've signed up at the new board and may be posting there, but that's
it. The people who run the show there are more than capable, will keep
backups of all your hard work and you'll know them already from this place.
Thank you for the fun times.
Sorry for the worst times.
Please keep the Dingoo community alive.
it's up to all of you!
Xap |
Xap, IMHO, without the forums, the community would not be quite where it is today, so hold your head up high as you stroll off into the sunset. All the best to you!
Really sad story. I will miss this forum :(
ReplyDeleteThanks to Xlap, he made a great job. I think it's not o.k that he blames himself. He didn't made a mistake.
Xap, you did an awesome job and brought the Dingoo to real life! I doubt we´d be where we are now without the freeforum.
ReplyDeleteSo I thank you from my whole heart, we owe you a lot!
:)
As someone who had just started to contribute to freeforums with some of my hardware adventures I was shocked and saddened to see it go down.
ReplyDelete-but I'm also given heart by the new board, and hope that it serves as a beacon to all Dingoo Enthusiasts.
As far as perceptions and reactions go- I can't honestly tell you how _I_ would handle something like this, so "losing it" a little bit in the aftermath is an excusable thing in my view.
Big hug, dude.
Now let's all get some Dingoo on! :D
I think that it is perfectly okay if Xap blames himself. Not only did he fail to pay an almost negligible amount of money for a backup feature, he made the mistake of selecting his moderators based on arbitrary criteria like post counts and how long they had been members of the forum. Through his neglect, Xap created a situation in which the worst worst possible thing for the forums could happen. And guess what? It did.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteWhat a pompous douche you are. Did you pay any amount of many to contribute anything to the community? Did you make any decisions that affected the community in a positive way? It is easy to sit back and point out other peoples mistakes after they make them. I doubt you have gone your whole life without making a bad decision.
Also, that Dan guy deserves a nice ass kicking. I bet he is too big a pussy to reveal his true identity. Nerdy little bitch that he is.
^, many=money.
ReplyDelete@7:30 Anonymous
ReplyDeleteWhether or not I have contributed to the community is irrelevant, we aren't talking about me. Xap chose to administrate that forum, he chose to become an important part of the community. The problem is that he didn't put much effort into it, and as a result the whole thing blew up in his face.
@7:34
ReplyDeleteIt was irrelevant until you opened your mouth to criticize someone who did put in more time/effort/money than you. However much effort he put in, I'm willing to bet it is more than you. Like I said it is easy to point fingers. The problem is not that he didn't put in much effort, it is that some little internet tough guy decided to play a juvenile prank.
Why not spend your time putting the blame on the people who actually do the wrong things instead of blaming people who tried to do something nice.
this is plain silly, while Xap made a few mistakes, we all do. This is something that you don't think about until it happens. And the main point is that if you do nothing then indeed you cannot make mistakes.
ReplyDeleteI congrats Xap for the message he send out about this.
Respect.
Let's hope this sad story enables one good thing, a more centralised and stronger community instead of here and there a few forums and blogs.
On the same note I hope the people of http://dingoonity.org/ consider strongly to talk with Larry from http://dingoo-scene.blogspot.com/ to use his blog as the blog (and maybe be co-contributers) for their new site instead of doing another fork.
@7:47 Anonymous
ReplyDeleteYou have no idea how much effort I put into this community, but it is still irrelevant. I am not saying that I would have been better at the job than Xap. I am saying that it takes quite a lot of time and effort into building a community and making sure that things like that don't happen, and if you aren't willing to put some dedication in then you shouldn't be the one doing it and you are responsible when things go wrong. Xap should have left the job to someone more responsible.
We all don't know what really happend. I saw bigger forums die because friendship ended. Maybe it was planned to destroy this forum, maybe not. But you can't blame him for choosing the wrong people for the job. Do you own a glass ball to look into the future? I don't think so...
ReplyDeleteXap, Respect !
ReplyDelete@7:59
ReplyDeleteI give up. You are one of those people who can be just plain wrong but will never accept it. It doesn't matter what arguments anyone makes you think you know what you are talking about.
The point you are trying to make is "irrelevant" nobody else (qualified or not) did do the job. So congratulations on being a jerk and blaming the guy that helped build the community you are taking part in.
Thanks for all the work you've put into the forums Xap.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to suspect that one of your most active users would do this to you, and to all of us.
Do not let the things that went wrong bring you down, instead learn from them.
Hey Xap, your hard work to put the forums up in the first place is very much appreciated. You did a great job to make users come together and to make the forum a bigger place. But don't blame yourself over the loss. No good can come from bringing yourself down. Stand up, learn, and better things will come. Thank you once again, and we all wish you good luck! :)
ReplyDeleteDan's a dooche!
ReplyDeleteTo he fagot on here who kept saying xap was irresponsible, GB2 trolling elsewhere, and if you're not trolling just stfu you retard.
ReplyDeleteDude he didn't expect that shit to happen why would you pay for a backup if you hadn't expected it, an furthermore that dan fagot is the dude you should be blaming he's the motherfucker who deleted everything.
Have you no god damn logic?