WTF is it with SB.com?

[Steve]

Kier's been an absentee landlord from early on. Sometimes I suspect he only keeps SB around to use as a testbed for vBB stuff.

[Darth Wong]

Kier's been an absentee landlord from early on. Sometimes I suspect he only keeps SB around to use as a testbed for vBB stuff.

Ah, the "owner doesn't give a shit" explanation makes perfect sense. It explains why a technically savvy person could run such a technically unreliable site. It also explains the utter lack of professionalism in the board's administration.

[Shinova]

Kier's been an absentee landlord from early on. Sometimes I suspect he only keeps SB around to use as a testbed for vBB stuff.

No one actually administers the board anymore I think. Tron? Yeah. So you just have a bunch of moderators with no administration.

[Xon]

Why would a vBulletin software developer have such problems maintaining a reliable server? You'd think such a person would be unusually capable of handling such a task. And computers don't exactly cost a fortune nowadays; you can get a really fast machine for under a grand.

The server hasnt been upgraded for a long time, probably close to +6-8 years is my guess. Added that the forum uses the bleeding edge of vBulletin, you end up with unoptimized shit running on really shit hardware.

That and Kier doesnt appear to give a shit about the site.

[Steve]

It was last updated in 2004 IIRC. I remember because SB went down just after I got back from ICON '04 and there was some trouble with the hard drive for the server and everyone thought it was down thanks to Shakkara.

[Darth Wong]

Wow. Does anyone remember what a typical computer was like in 2004?

[Steve]

I might be wrong. And I know the software was updated at least once, in late '06 (which the admin staff used as a convenient excuse to undo my admin forum access - I figured at one time that it was in part because they were unbanning a couple permbanned trolls and I was giving them hell for it.).

[Murazor]

The last time when the server went down a "no access allowed" message showed up, but this time it seems that the server has been removed entirely from the Internet. It is possible that there is some kind of maintenance going on (my knowledge of computer hardware is... err limited?), but I find it just as likely that this could be the sign of the apparently decrepit thing finally dying.

Frankly, this reminds me of the inglorious collapse of one of the larger RPG forums in Spanish last year, absentee owner and all. Just that this time I didn't have the time to go through the archive, saving interesting threads. Too bad.

[Edward Yee]

I'm not at all familiar with SB's technical details, but it would be a shame if the thing dies insofar as I kept going to the fiction section, since I've been following "Finishing the Fight" for quite some time.

[Xon]

Wow. Does anyone remember what a typical computer was like in 2004?

Budget server hardware from 2004 is really really scraping the bottem of the barrel compared to general computer hardware during 2004.

[Vympel]

So there's a chance the whole thing and all the posts thereon will be gone? Fuck. The board had gotten way less useful ever since the search function basically broke, so they took it off recently and replaced it with this useless damn google powered thing, that can't find shit.

[ray245]

Their creative writing stories is some what decent actually...it is sad to see all those post gone.

However, politics wise, I am shocked how many republicans there is on that side, and most of the liberals simply gave up debating with some idiots there.

I think it might be possible for many of the SB.com members to come over to SD.net, given that most members from SB.com do visit this site.

[Xon]

So there's a chance the whole thing and all the posts thereon will be gone? Fuck. The board had gotten way less useful ever since the search function basically broke, so they took it off recently and replaced it with this useless damn google powered thing, that can't find shit.

It is unlikely that the hardware is broken or the data deleted, but if anything has gone wrong which requires someone with administrator/root access to fix, it could take a while if it happens at all.

[RogueIce]

Wow. Does anyone remember what a typical computer was like in 2004?

*looks at his desktop from 2003, which hasn't had a hardware upgrade since*

I do.

[benihana]

No, that was a different thread and that was to put EmpSolo in his place instead of letting him continue his "I have hero morality" self aggrandisement. The second post in that thread had nothing to do with religion and was, in fact, in agreement with Solo (as was the first post) about stalinist atrocities against Squishy's apologetics.

You were banned because he told you not to post in the thread again. I'm suprised he did it, but you were warned

[Rye]

Yeah, like I already said. Consensus achieved: Thanatos is a retard.

[Ender]

I used to enjoy SB until it finally degraded to the point where I spent more time explaining elementary school stuff in debates then I did explaining my actual position. When I have to explain why energy must be conserved and the inverse square law for the 100th time, it gets too much. I am not a teacher. I have no desire to be a teacher. I am not there to tell you what you should have learned from your teacher.

[An Ancient]

Well, it loaded for me at 2312 GMT, (although it was down 2-3 minutes earlier), and now is really slow loading a sub-forum. The last posts seem to be from yesterday around 0900-0915 board time.

[benihana]

Yeah, like I already said. Consensus achieved: Thanatos is a retard.

The only person agreeing with you is Alyeska. Whenever the two of you are in a thread together, someone ends up bringing up the Catholic church whether it has anything to do with the topic or not. Him to preach, and you to piss him off. You're not gonna knock him down a notch, he's way off in convert land. It just annoys everyone else in the thread

[Big Orange]

I never had any quarrel with Thanatos, but Future Merc is a fucking fullblown criminal sociopath, while there's some moderator there who's obsession for Law & Order supposedly being better than CSI that gets very, very tedious.

[Ubiquitous]

Their creative writing stories is some what decent actually...it is sad to see all those post gone.

However, politics wise, I am shocked how many republicans there is on that side, and most of the liberals simply gave up debating with some idiots there.

I think it might be possible for many of the SB.com members to come over to SD.net, given that most members from SB.com do visit this site.

The conservatives post at SB.com, and the liberals post at SD.net. At least, that's my simplistic viewpoint of the arrangement.

[Big Orange]

The conservatives post at SB.com, and the liberals post at SD.net. At least, that's my simplistic viewpoint of the arrangement.

Liberals and right-wingers exist on both sites, except a right-winger would be drastically outnumbered on SD.Net and likewise for a liberal on SB.com (but they can uselessly bark away).

[ray245]

Their creative writing stories is some what decent actually...it is sad to see all those post gone.

However, politics wise, I am shocked how many republicans there is on that side, and most of the liberals simply gave up debating with some idiots there.

I think it might be possible for many of the SB.com members to come over to SD.net, given that most members from SB.com do visit this site.

The conservatives post at SB.com, and the liberals post at SD.net. At least, that's my simplistic viewpoint of the arrangement.

Seriously, when I critized someone for even suggesting that Qubec should be bombed just because a comdey duo mocked Sarah Palin with a prank call, and he dare to just the justification that they are assholes, hence the state deserve to be nuked, and calling Obama as believable as Santa Claus.

I mean looking at the membership make-up, it seems to me a lot of people down there is quite irresponsible with their comments about social or even family issues.

[Rye]

The conservatives post at SB.com, and the liberals post at SD.net. At least, that's my simplistic viewpoint of the arrangement.

They can post at either, there's just enforced rules of evidence at one and enforced rules of politeness at the other. Consequentially you get your post as a matter of Darwinian selection.

[Darth Wong]

No doubt this "conservatives post at SB, liberals post at SD" idea sounds about right to people whose idea of "conservative" and "liberal" comes from an American perspective.

In reality, the biggest difference is that we don't really allow the whack-job loons on either side to post bullshit and get away with it. Right-wing Bible thumpers have to back up their shit, and left-wing 9/11 conspiracy theorist idiots have to meet the same requirement. Neither of them can, so they tend to either clam up or just start trolling, at which point they fun afoul of the rules.

On SB, you can basically spout ignorant uneducated bullshit with no justification whatsoever, and keep doing it forever with no consequences. And since the far right wing is vastly more popular in America, it spouts the majority of the uninformed bullshit there, especially since they tend to follow the "religion gets special treatment" policy. I've seen this on other boards, where 9/11 conspiracy theorists can be openly lambasted for not being able to back up their claims, but if you treat a religious person the same way then you're a "troll".