pouët.net

Bulletin.

category: general [glöplog]
I would really hate to see pouet go. Pouet really has it's own charm, I still remember visiting it for the first time, downloading Chaos Theory and being astonished how it was fully downloaded immediately over my slow ISDN Internet.

It's not worth for people to burn out all their energy for it, though.

I hope with suggestions like sauli and neoman brought forward, it could be possible to moderate and administrate pouet in a sustainable way.

The oneliners could go, I wouldn't care at all, if the bbs would go it would be sad, but I think we should at very least keep the prod sites with the comments, they are the heart of pouet for me.

Gargaj: Thanks for everything you've done for the scene over all those years.
I hope you can find joy in the scene again, working on prods, visiting demopartys.

It seems you need a break, you have well deserved it.
again, everyone is treating this like this is some sort of gargaj-related thing, as if he was unwell. how about thinking about the communication culture in this place instead, which ranges from obnoxious to toxic again and again?
added on the 2024-09-23 21:55:46 by dipswitch dipswitch
Thanks for everything Gargaj.
added on the 2024-09-23 21:58:35 by wullon wullon
Another thing: I disagree with the notion that a more lax moderation policy results in more diversity. You definitely put people off by allowing harmful people to continue.

I think a more strict moderation policy would be beneficial for pouet.

There are a lot of people around here, who in my opinion crossed the line from "just weird" to "harmful" all too often.

If you have fun reading some weird conspiracies about the causes of AIDS or something, you can still read all those old threads, there is more than enough of that on pouet already.

It can help to define your policy explicitly and put it somewhere on the page, you can call it CoC or not, but I don't think that's strictly necessary.
Wait, so not only was Garg supporting pouet and scene.org tech, but he also had to moderate all the BBS bullshit? Geez.
Anyone would burn out, I'm amazed it took this long.
I thought all gloperators are handling that together occasionally.

Gargaj, big thanks for all your hard work, man!

I really want Pouet to stick around, maybe even with less BBS chaos, if it's being a PITA to support. It’s a unique and beloved corner of the internet. I’m so grateful that it exists and that I had the chance to read so many amazing ideas, getting inspired, and even talking to the assholes was mostly fun.
Thank you, Gargaj and team, for making Earth's internet much better place! <3
added on the 2024-09-23 22:03:46 by ton ton
Quote:
just to say ...

I love pouet. It is a unique website. For most people nowdays, internet is only just a handful of services - facebook, youtube etc. Pouet is a light website, loads fast, no ads, looks cute and it is "different".

I've learned a lot of things over the years from the BBS, also from comments on productions. To be honest I wouldn't' have bothered much with producing if there was no feedback medium. It's nice to be at the party of course, but even better to see people appreciate or critisize your work in all eternity.


This. Precisely.
added on the 2024-09-23 22:40:25 by fra fra
@dipswitch yes, I also think the communication culture has to improve here.
Probably also the moderation structures. (Maybe it could also help for this to have something like a rebuke cast into the software, that reminds you every time that you could be banned next time you misbehave.)

But, this thread is also about Gargaj stepping down as admin, so I think it is the right place to thank Gargaj for his work. And the things he has written in this thread also show his immense frustration with the scene right now.

With all the work Gargaj has put into the scene, it is reasonable to assume the scene is important to him (or was, at least). So I think it's fair to wish him to find joy in the scene again sometime, without implying there are no structural problems.
Thank you so much, Gargaj, for all your dedication.
I hope you will find joy in the demoscene again!
added on the 2024-09-23 22:54:10 by Anat Anat
@ninjakoala yes of course, gargaj deserves every kind of gratitude and respect there is, no question about that! but with all these "good advices" and musings, people forget what causes moderators to get desperate here - namely all the trolling and stupid clownery and pointless comments.
added on the 2024-09-23 23:09:28 by dipswitch dipswitch
I think you can define two categories of trolling and stupid clownery:

One is done by people who really can't stop spitting bullshit.
Those should be banned.

The other source is from generally reasonable people, who are however led to post bullshit by the general communication culture.

I think you can differentiate between the two with proper warnings by moderators, people have two options: either they improve their communication or they get banned.

I really don't understand why people like la_mettrie or adok aren't banned already.

I think getting rid of harmful people could lead to a general improvement of communication culture, but of course everyone has to contribute to that, it's not as simple as banning adok.

But I have to stop trying to give advice to mods, when I wouldn't sign up to be one myself.
Quote:
I really don't understand why people like la_mettrie or adok aren't banned already.

You are a very confused idiot.
added on the 2024-09-24 00:30:46 by bifat bifat
Thank you for all the great work and patience with pouet.
added on the 2024-09-24 03:00:05 by seρρjο seρρjο
Some notes.

When trying to make plans for the future Pouet management, we are missing the following details:

- What does Analogue think about this. Does he still have access to the site? At the server level? Who is the server admin? Does he care about our appeals? Who will appoint the administrator of Pouet?

- We believe that the moderation scheme of the site needs to be changed. But this requires a lot of modifications to the site engine. The current engine was made by Gargaj. I see that he still makes some updates on GitHub. But I assume that he will not support Pouet engine code any longer. Who will do this? And who will decide - who can be trusted with this?


It may happen that the guy who hosted Pouet on his server is not interested in all this, and after December 31 he will not do anything at all. Or he will turn off the site. Then we are just shaking the air in vain.
added on the 2024-09-24 04:26:06 by bitl bitl
Quote:
But I can see that the moderation is a lot tighter in the past 5 years than it used to be.


While people have become more judgemental (which is not totally bad thing) I suspect people may have also started to receive more emotional pain from transgressions they perceive.

I started to think could this have some analogy with the discussion in the United States where it has been perceived that mental health of liberal youth is declining more rapidly than conservative youth. Some psychologists (liberal themselves) have doubted this may be linked to the rise of new morality among liberal youngsters.

So there may be some dangers related to shifts in morality even if some shifting is desirable.
thank you dipswitch:
Quote:
again, everyone is treating this like this is some sort of gargaj-related thing, as if he was unwell. how about thinking about the communication culture in this place instead, which ranges from obnoxious to toxic again and again?


and bifat for proving that
Quote:
You are a very confused idiot.
added on the 2024-09-24 07:29:37 by _docd _docd
It's only nowadays that the real achievement and value of Pouet becomes apparent: People are used to speak their minds here. As far as I remember, this has always been a rough place. (Among my favourites: The musician deserves to be shot, and not bad for a girl. :-)
You can cry some tears into your pillows, stay away from this place, only to come back later. You get used to that and become part of an unique culture, and you will notice that an astonishing level of decency is maintained with a minimum of sanctions - mistakes happen, of course.
If that's not a terrific achievement that totally stands out in 2024, I don't know what does. :-)
Pouet makes/made an attempt to keep the oddball people from the demoscene together, and is/was remarkably successful at that. You can try to moderate some stress away in exchange for other kinds of stress, and get an infertile, boring, segregated place like a million others on the web. Whoever picks it up, keep up Gargaj's good work.
added on the 2024-09-24 07:35:38 by bifat bifat
Quote:
What does Analogue think about this. Does he still have access to the site? At the server level? Who is the server admin? Does he care about our appeals? Who will appoint the administrator of Pouet?


Knowing Analogue since the creation of Pouet, I highly doubt he would not care about the future of Pouet.
added on the 2024-09-24 07:38:25 by fra fra
Whoever picks it up will just start a new thread like this in a couple of years if nothing is changed.
added on the 2024-09-24 07:40:08 by jobe jobe
Let’s not beat around the bush for too long.
Who would be willing to take on the job?

Would a consortium of sceners who have distinguished themselves in the past through their composure, diplomacy and confidence be conceivable?
(i disqualified myself often enough by being toxic...so no, not me)

Maybe the rest of us don't even need to know who is administrating here.

gargaj:
Would it be okay if such people would contact you, so that a personal discussion doesn't arise?

As I said, it would be a shame if Pouet died.

Then all memories would be gone, all condolences on deaths, all comments on releases and so on
added on the 2024-09-24 07:40:34 by _docd _docd
Quote:
You can cry some tears into your pillows, stay away from this place, only to come back later. You get used to that and become part of an unique culture, and you will notice that an astonishing level of decency is maintained with a minimum of sanctions - mistakes happen, of course.


good point.
added on the 2024-09-24 07:42:46 by _docd _docd
Quote:
You can cry some tears into your pillows, stay away from this place, only to come back later. You get used to that and become part of an unique culture, and you will notice that an astonishing level of decency is maintained with a minimum of sanctions - mistakes happen, of course.


Here's how I'd put it - you'll get rightfully frustrated time and time again and walk away. However, you have nowhere else to go because Pouet is the only central social hub of the scene, one you've developed a kind of Stockholm syndrome for. So you come back, put on a grin, and tell yourself that hey, at least we're not as bad as Twitter, and that's enough.
added on the 2024-09-24 07:51:46 by jobe jobe
Quote:
Whoever picks it up will just start a new thread like this in a couple of years if nothing is changed.


Well, people get bored of doing something after a while. This can happen even if everyone here is a saint.

However, moderators should be given the power to delete posts and topics in BBS and ban users. It also makes sense to think about a system of protection against repeated registrations of banned people.

Apparently, the only reliable way is an invite system. This, of course, will make the Pouet community more gated, but... By the way, invites could also be distributed in the beam-systems of demoparties. A gated community can be even more attractive :)
added on the 2024-09-24 08:21:55 by bitl bitl
is anyone actually here for anything else than the cool attention-trade mechanism with the thumbs? :) I always found the BBS full of bullshit tbh, but that's to be expected when discussing stuff online. Communication quality always drops in any kind of social network. Doesn't mean that most sceners aren't fine people. But the selling point of pouet is the direct (positive _and_ negative) feedback on your productions, no? At least for me. I wouldn't mind seeing BBS go to reduce moderation effort.
added on the 2024-09-24 09:24:16 by NR4 NR4
I hope it's a given that negative feedback on prods should be ok, when done in good faith. Toxic positivity is also toxic. It should also be ok to make counterpoints to feedback, again in good faith.

I'm not sure if gating the whole site behind invites would sit well with the mission of being an entry point to the scene. However, maybe some features could be privileged features. If the most important use case for the BBS is party announcements, then maybe you'd have to report yourself as an organizer to start such a thread?
added on the 2024-09-24 10:10:25 by jobe jobe
Quote:
is anyone actually here for anything else than the cool attention-trade mechanism with the thumbs?


I'm here for everything concerning the scene, to check out the latest releases and stay updated on parties and whatnots, to get some kind of overview what's happening, even to make some connections. To me, Pouet is pretty much the scene.

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