pouët.net

The rudest, most idiotic, most primitive thing you can do around here that just blows my mind is suddenly start speaking/writing in your native (not english) language imho.

I'm with NR4 on this with regard to the BBS. I'm relatively integrated into a couple of different platform-specific scenes and virtually no-one from either of those communities posts on this BBS, including people who are really active sceners.

From an outsiders' perspective, this BBS pretty much looks like a core group of friends posting to one another, surrounded by a smattering of lone wolves including some with predictably esoteric views. Fwiw it doesn't seem particularly toxic to me as an observer, certainly when compared to virtually all of the rest of the internet, but this whole thread feels about much more than that anyway.

Rude at best and ban evasion at worst. Last time I saw something here that wasn't in English, it was xenophobic memes.

Effective moderation requires that mods understand what is being said. If you can read coding tutorials, you can write at the very least non-perfect but understandable English.

Fwiw, in prod comments occasional non-English is fine in my opinion due to the nature of inside jokes and whatnot, but quite often it indeed it's just a vehicle of insulting others (as if people didn't have google translate).

But that's a digression. This thread has become a discussion on how to go from here with multitude of viewpoints (which is a discussion that should be had if Pouet is to go on), but obviously it's not a democratic decision since the site belongs to Analogue. I wonder if someone could reach out to him to involve him in the process.

What Preacher said, I think we're getting ahead of ourselves. A lot of people are posting opinions and suggestions based on assumptions which often (and probably unintentionally) feel rather pedantic or misguided to those who know more (but also not everything). There's a reason Gargaj is announcing his departure so far up front and I don't think it is so that the rest of us can whip up some alternative plan in a matter of days. Please take some time to consider what you would be willing to do, don't make emotional decisions or announcements, in due time decisions regarding Pouet's future will be made and if the team needs help we (they?) know where to post to reach you all. Or not, if Analogue decides 25 years was enough, which would be his perogative indeed.

Feels like people should take care of themselves and their family a little more than about the future of pouet… 

Everyone coming here to discuss whatever the eff they think about why and how to "fix the scene" instead of wishing gargaj farewell is like the biggest irony ever and it seems to completely go woosh over your heads… 

The exact opposite of all of this, otherwise 100% correct.

People come and go and come back as well. Time will show.

With no disrespect to Gargaj, I personally don't like Pouet anyway.

- Its UX is retarded and its library of productions only limited to EXEs primarily.

- If somebody would like to see a full info file of his/her individual or group achievements DEMOZOO offers much more accurate view and its minimalism is less flaky than Pouet's and without all these pseudo curated comments and opinions.

- Pouet's core community tools promote what everywhere else people already hate and avoid... Poorly implemented gamification, Unhealthy commenting and trolling in all places here. With the last one, this is where Gargaj is totally right.

If one doesn't takes it seriously.. it may be occasionally fun, even informative by surprise, but in the long run not much usable to grab real knowledge, new connections, nor to find new content easily. It just nails the history and with new moderator or not... it will be the same nonsense as it used to be.

I'd be worried if parties were gone, but with or without Pouet - as long as people want to make demos and show them to the community - demoscene will prevail.

That all means no disrespect to you Gargaj, you are appreciated one man army on many fronts and regardless of Pouet.

I hope to see more your demos and other digital products coming up next year.

Hey, I'm special :)

I'm not sure I fully understand the reason behind this decision, but from what I read, it seems that some people hold Gargaj responsible for the behaviour of other people, and that he's had too much. Ok, let me wear my captain obvious suit for a moment:
Fact #1: We'll always have reasons to argue.
Take any human group, even with very close links (like a family), some topics will tear the group apart (politics, religion, COVID shots, etc.). Even for purely demo-related conversations, you will always find sensitive topics (AI, Unreal/Unity, precalc, etc.).
Fact #2: We're all different dealing with controversy.
Some have the ability to remain calm and structured in their thoughts, some write in a hurry/fury and regret later, some are perfectly fine with heated conversations, some feel down when attacked, and some behave like assholes.
The thing is, why would it be up to the moderators to solve this unsolvable equation? Some people are assholes? Not Gargaj's fault. Someone should definitely make sure that nothing illegal comes to pouet to protect all of us from a shutdown by authorities, but for everything else, it's not the moderators' fault! Sure, we could close BBS and ban  any discussion outside of prods (though some toxicity can be seen in prods comments too), or we can accept that humanity is what it is, and that harsh discussions will always happen.
You may want to thumb down all my prods and insult me in the BBS because I stepped on your feet at a party, well that would not be pleasant for me, but I guess I would just ignore you, but I would never blame Gargaj for that. I guess the takeaway from this too long message is: Bullying Gargaj because someone bullied you or your beliefs in a message is super weird.  He's not our mother. On a final note, thanks Gargaj for dedicating so much time and skills that I don't have so that I, amongst a whole community, can complain (and sometimes post and comment demos).

Unless its the French presidency competition thread.

Because someone needs to mop up the shit since most people don't enjoy wading knee-deep in feces.

Thanks for all the fish

Yeah, I don't like to wade into shit either. The thing is: We expect moderators to decide what is shit and what is free speech, and we hold them responsible if we're not happy with their estimation of what should be suppressed and what can remain, or if they don't react quick enough. Knowing it's a huge burden for dedicated an unpaid moderators, maybe we can share the pain and tolerate some shit, or at least try to ignore it, or at least stop blaming moderators.

What Gargaj did was and is a outstanding job taken for the normalest thing ever. As an Server Admin with the "Joy" of Maintaining a BBS back than, i can tell you - it´s not. It´s work, patience, balancing and still keep things running.

What could be done ?

One thing. Is it possible to made a dump of the whole pouet net as static html documents. (For a long term preservation ?)

2nd. On a longer Term... What if the pouet.net development will stop ? That´s a question and probably something that might and will on a certain point happen to us. Newer PHP Versions, uprising incompatibilities etc. Would be the usage of a Web Software that is available for many people bring us more security, because the danger that this software rely only on few people and developers is clear ? Could this all exported to a solution like wordpress or a Bulletin Forum Suite like VBulletin, Wotlab Burning Board etc.

No matter what will happen, the situation is not easy. Myself was always confident, that its important to drive a FULL ! independent Web Environment.I keep it this way since ages to preserve the own work and to stay independent as far as any possible.

But this place is a place of many, driven by less and which became a burden to continue.
As much as i love the pouet system (not the comments sometimes) i think if this place will need a successor system, it should not be again a selfcoded solution for the sake of being more independent and not relying on few people. It´s a burden, it´s a lot and we all getting older, having also other interests. So when it comes to community solutions, i prefer things that are widely available, supported by many developers. (as like with Wordpress) as a self coded solution.

Just my 5 cents and again.. Respect to Gargaj for keeping this place so many many years in shape and functional. Everything has its time so this place here too.

Just wanted to simply say, thank you Gargaj and most importantly I hope you are well. I hope you feel re-energized soon and hopefully find joy in the scene again in some way.

Huge thank you to Gargaj for all the hard work over the years!

When people start quoting Rorschach,

it's serious.
To make matters worse, Rorschach made another important point,


I suppose we all have some homework to do.
I'll head back to the background to hide in.

"Thank you to Gargaj for doing this important thankless job. Why don't we try just not doing that job? I'm sure we can tolerate it... it's not as if that job was, like, important or anything."

Technically, you can create a sandbox on the server in which the old (required) version of PHP/MySQL will be installed, and which will never be updated. So, theoretically, Pouet can work successfully for many more years without updating the code.



IMHO, that would be pretty shitty. For Pouet's functionality requires customization, plugin creation anyway. And anyway, you'll have to worry about supporting compatibility for these plugins with the latest version of the CMS.

Besides, popular CMS are also going into oblivion and are no longer supported by the creator.

Whatever we do, right now the priority should be not to further demotivate Gargaj, but see how we can assist. If a transition is to be done, it surely won't fully happen until the end of the year, and you'd need a lot of support from him to understand the codebase an all.

Also, some people might not realize in what shit we'll be in should gargaj also drop his work on scene.org.

I like Pouet a lot and I also like Gargaj a lot!

Gargaj, I recognize that at this point you fucking hate us all, just know that it's not mutual <3

I think it's wise of you to pull back (the consequences be damned! hobbies shouldn't cause burnout!). Overdue, if anything. Hope you recover well.

One interesting idea to consider might be to limit BBS messages (and oneliners?) to one or two per user in a day. There are webforums which use this kind of limitations on a permanent basis.

If I may, and I'm willing to file PRs.

There should be another user level "obnoxious" or whatever you wanna call it, that would pretty much shadow ban said users. They can post and all, but regular users and the general public don't see these.

And maybe add a report button or page to bring visibility of bad behaviors to the moderators, which can be from users posting shit or from abusive reports.

As for a CoC, https://m.pouet.net/faq.php#faq49 is pretty clear 🤷

ps implemented that user level years ago called 'pr0nstahr' (see rez his profile page), but wasnt a success