What's Going on Here?

[bicostp]

It happened after my account hijack, I think it had been a week or so. It took me a while to notice, since I took a several month long vacation of sorts from the forums.

Sounds like it's entirely possible that whoever hijacked your account did it.

[palmertech]

It happened after my account hijack, I think it had been a week or so. It took me a while to notice, since I took a several month long vacation of sorts from the forums.

Sounds like it's entirely possible that whoever hijacked your account did it.

Possible, but keep in mind I regained control of my account, and had changed the password to ensure they could not get on. I do not remember pecifically looked at my sig, but considering I made a number of posts before leaving for a while, I doubt I would have missed the change. And though this is anecdotal, and I do not personally remember, a few people have told me that I changed my sig to say something along the lines of "Someone got on my account, see this thread (link)". Seems to mesh, and if that was the case, then the change would have taken place after my sig change.

Hey Palmer - I've been doing some digging in the forums in an effort to find out why your signature had been changed at one point. Was it perhaps in retaliation for this whole fiasco? Or is that not the right time frame?

-Brian

Hope Brian does not mind me posting his PM, it seemed like it would not be a big deal, considering it is on topic. May as well deal with it here. That is just about the right time frame, but something to keep in mind: There was more to that thread (including a battle of wits between me and HDC as to the proper definition of a spammer, you can see how it just hangs there), and there was a separate thread as well, not to mention even more in the Chrono Trigger thread. The issue is, this whole mess started at around the same time as the server switch, and as you may remember, about 2 weeks of posts were lost during the switch. As a result, quite a bit of the information regarding the "fiasco" as it were, was destroyed. I would be willing to wager that it was in response to that, though.

Two notes:

1. It may not be clear from what was left, but the long and short of that mess was that I tried to pull a stupid april fools joke, and before I was able to say "Ha, April Fools!", somebody (In IRL, not the netz) got on my account and sent a bunch of incoherently worded flame PMs to about 10 people that were high posters, calling them fags, losers, etc. They all got the exact same message, actually.

2. I find it humorous how I was just as bad as a lot of new people around here right now. If you ever wondered where I got my dislike for HDC, you can trace it all the way back to that incident.

Thanks for the help, moderators!

[bacteria]

I remember the conflict between you and HDC!

[palmertech]

I remember the conflict between you and HDC!

Nah, that one was much, much later. (Unless you really do...)

This one took place in 2008!

[Life of Brian]

...not to mention even more in the Chrono Trigger thread. The issue is, this whole mess started at around the same time as the server switch, and as you may remember, about 2 weeks of posts were lost during the switch. As a result, quite a bit of the information regarding the "fiasco" as it were, was destroyed. I would be willing to wager that it was in response to that, though.

Two notes:

1. It may not be clear from what was left, but the long and short of that mess was that I tried to pull a stupid april fools joke, and before I was able to say "Ha, April Fools!", somebody (In IRL, not the netz) got on my account and sent a bunch of incoherently worded flame PMs to about 10 people that were high posters, calling them fags, losers, etc. They all got the exact same message, actually.

2. I find it humorous how I was just as bad as a lot of new people around here right now. If you ever wondered where I got my dislike for HDC, you can trace it all the way back to that incident.

Here is the Chrono Trigger thread he's referring to.

So you are saying it is quite possible that your signature was changed after you made an April Fool's joke and shortly thereafter someone hijacked your account, making you appear to be an enormous troll and spammer? I'm not saying that you are a troll or spammer, just that the incredibly bad timing of the account hijacking made you look pretty awful.

[palmertech]

...not to mention even more in the Chrono Trigger thread. The issue is, this whole mess started at around the same time as the server switch, and as you may remember, about 2 weeks of posts were lost during the switch. As a result, quite a bit of the information regarding the "fiasco" as it were, was destroyed. I would be willing to wager that it was in response to that, though.

Two notes:

1. It may not be clear from what was left, but the long and short of that mess was that I tried to pull a stupid april fools joke, and before I was able to say "Ha, April Fools!", somebody (In IRL, not the netz) got on my account and sent a bunch of incoherently worded flame PMs to about 10 people that were high posters, calling them fags, losers, etc. They all got the exact same message, actually.

2. I find it humorous how I was just as bad as a lot of new people around here right now. If you ever wondered where I got my dislike for HDC, you can trace it all the way back to that incident.

Here is the Chrono Trigger thread he's referring to.

So you are saying it is quite possible that your signature was changed after you made an April Fool's joke and shortly thereafter someone hijacked your account, making you appear to be an enormous troll and spammer? I'm not saying that you are a troll or spammer, just that the incredibly bad timing of the account hijacking made you look pretty awful.

Well... If someone was to hijack my account, April Fools day would be the day.

I see what you mean, though. I probably did look pretty bad. However, that would still not be an excuse to edit my sig in the manner it was, agreed? And if someone did, don't you think they owe it to the person to, if not apologize, at least admit it was them? I hope I have proven over the past year that I did not come here as a troll or spammer, so even if whoever edited my sig feels justified in their actions somehow, they should still concede to the fact that they did it.

So far, Sparkfist (And maybe Gannon, I cannot remember) are the only people that have not specifically said it was not them, and Sparkfist has read and summarily ignored the PM I sent him about this a while back. Come on, surely he can at least muster up the time it would take to say "Nope, not me, keep looking"?

Honestly, because of how sig edits are logged, there is no way to actually prove who it was, and someone could easily do it and claim to not have done so. But even if it never gets resolved, at least knowing that all the admins deny it would at least lend some sort of closure.

Thanks for being helpful, Brian.

[Life of Brian]

However, that would still not be an excuse to edit my sig in the manner it was, agreed?

Agreed. Regardless of how you (or someone in your name) behaved, changing your signature was not appropriate.

Pointing fingers is also not appropriate.

[ShockSlayer]

I think certain pointing fits the occasion.

SS

[palmertech]

However, that would still not be an excuse to edit my sig in the manner it was, agreed?

Agreed. Regardless of how you (or someone in your name) behaved, changing your signature was not appropriate.

Pointing fingers is also not appropriate.

Hey, I waited a year before pointing a "I think" finger at someone who would not deny it to me themselves.

That said:

[palmertech]

Well, all the admins who could have done it have finally specifically said it was not them. Does not matter if it was or not, as long as they all say they did not, the matter is as good as done.

Anyhow, consider this battle over. When you guys got FTP access, it actually fixed a LOT (90%) of the problems I had. You could boil down my TL;DR rant to something like:

"You guys have problems on the site, and you cannot, because only Ben can, and Ben does not give a crap".

Of those 3 problems, 2 are fixed, which is good enough.



Now, I am still not the kind of guy to preclude any sort of future conflict/argument, but I will happily set a truce of sorts in place.

[ShockSlayer]

[benheck]

I feel I should comment on this (sorry I was gone up north with NO INTERNET for 4 days)

I was perfectly happy with my old site, and it was cheap. I didn't even mind that much when it went down, I mean, who cares? But people on the forums kept asking for a faster server and lo and behold, I bought one.

Web ad revenues have gone WAY down in 2009, easily the most "obvious" effect of the economic downturn I have seen personally. At current this site basically pays for itself and that's about it. (profit has been declining since 2007)

If the web revenues fell off to certain point I'd probably downgrade the server, hopefully that doesn't happen. This isn't a reflection of my work, I'm as busy as ever, it's just that web advertising is down.

I have a saying "All good things eventually turn evil" and that may be true for this site. But we have a kickass serve (those ads pay for something, believe me), great name recognition, and a well-kept forum. The mods are strict for a reason, it's to keep things consistent and clean.

Finally, I do answer a lot of forum log-in type questions personally, but as for "send me directions to build a PSP" type stuff, if I answered every one of those I'd never get pay projects done.

-Ben

[Kazaryster]

Sorry But Holy Nutcakes Shockslayer i wish a had a place like that to work in maybe id actually have something done

[AfroLH]

You know, Bino Gas, one of the reasons people are going to Modretro is because we have chat there. And we have a Wiki as well. Lotta cool things there

[bicostp]

And we're working on restarting the Wiki here. Right now we're waiting on Ben to make sure the subdomain is all squared away. (That level of server configuration very rarely needs to be done, but when it does it needs to be done through cPanel.)

(Don't say "oh well you're just setting one up because modretro has one", because there's one there because we had one first and then it was forgotten about by the masses and left behind sort-of accidentally in the last server move but hey it was there. XD. )