I do think this is for the best, honestly. It'll be quite interesting to see what others can come up with, if anything. I prefer message boards still, but they're not really a thing of today. This is a good move, honestly.

One more go of this this in honor of you axing the site like a monster?

Lmao, I'm a kitty!

Meow ♡

I like kittens!

¤LðŗРУŋįd@¤

He didn't read through those.

Some of those were borderline weird af.

GameTalk is done now so need to comment this is a good send-off for WO and Xhin... but both of them could have been, but past. :-P (No offense)

¤LðŗРУŋįd@¤

please make me a mod before it gets axed. i won’t do anything, i’ve just been scheming for it for years, and it’s my last chance

I will not make the mistake of treating the pointless and disappointing cessation of (already undetectable) official efforts to maintain this community with any sort of ceremony, especially seeing how it's already being treated in this thread. I will not embarrass all of us with retrospection on how much we should have expected this before the transfer even happened. If it is any consolation (and it is to me): GameTalk was not special. The moralistic dramas and increasingly-heated technological small-talk and political sneering play out ad nauseam on a minute-by-minute basis in an arbitrary amount of communities. Even among the random other communities that I now participate in, no less than three have made me an administrator, and with just as vague reasoning and just as little consent as I was made administrator here, so GameTalk is not even special in that respect. GameTalk was just a place, and the fact that it is the place where I met most of the people that I love with a love so deep and pure that I feel it will abide long after I am gone is, ultimately, completely unrelated to the idiosyncratic failures of design and operation that characterize this site's presence. Though I have tried to bend my moderate skill at post-modern justifications to the task of determining even a subjective truth of how the structures of this place led to the uncovering of so much joy, I have to admit that I cannot do this. I have to admit, with a fear of the wider implications lurking behind me like a black thunderhead rolling in from the horizon, that it was always just us, with our petty weakness and trauma and need and ignorance that did any amount of work in humanizing and endearing us to each other, and that it was no mistake of the decisions made through the abstract violence of whoever controlled the site at the time. While this might seem to lay the foundation for objectively judging this move to open-source to be good, the truth is that it is just another decision. As always: what we make of it is up to us, regardless of the intent of the "owners".

Time to drink myself in to a coma.

Allow me, as a person who helped WO bring order here to point out it lives on in the discord and if anyone wishes to carry it on when Xhin and WO uploads it, they can.

¤LðŗРУŋįd@¤

WIsh I had the money tot ake it.

You will always have discord.

¤LðŗРУŋįd@¤

Sleep well sweet prince.

This is not a good decade for authority. We've moved into an era where promises and steadfast principles are revealed for the shallow attempts to hide insecurity and self-doubt that they are. I took on this community and ran it as long as I did because I wanted the respect and admiration that came with it, because that was lacking in my own life so severely that trying to salvage a thoroughly fractured and mismanaged community for over a decade was worth it. I also definitely enjoyed the programming/systems work, but I think I would have jumped ship way sooner if that's the reason I was in it for the long haul.

In the end, I'm just a person, and I never enjoyed mediating and delegating, so I never was very good at it. Anyone that's going to run a community needs to actually enjoy the work involved in it, and if they don't, they need to leave it gracefully rather than let their own insecurities make them do something they hate doing. I'm much more of a vision/systems guy (because I enjoy it), so that's where I'm focusing my efforts. If that goes somewhere, great, but I no longer need something of mine to be active or successful in order to feel good about myself. I commend WO for taking the graceful route.

I'll probably have more thoughts at some point. Or not.

So are we demoting denida, giving me his job, and letting me ban him for the lulz or not? That's how I want my story here to end.

On a more serious note. This makes me remember original GT just a bit. I was only there a few years yet it and the people on it are still impacting me and my life. That shows this community despite it's ups and downs is atleast something special. I wish the original lasted just a bit longer, that I stuck with the community more after it went down, and perhaps branched out to know everyone sooner. I've never really felt apart of any of the remakes and kind of wish I'd done just that little bit more or maybe been banned less on the OG just to be apart of things that little bit more. I miss being like 14 on pointless.

Well enough nostalgia and regret from me. Felt I should make one post that's not me trying to do weird shit given it's the end. Lets burn it to the ground.

Not demoted, fired when I am no longer needed. (soon.)

¤LðŗРУŋįd@¤

Well… this has probably been inevitable and it feels weird to see GT fade away after being part of it on and off since 2003. The internet landscape is always changing and gaming forums just aren’t as popular anymore. Social media and chat servers are probably to blame for that but nothing lasts forever. We’ve definitely lost fellow GameTalker’s to life situations and even death. We will see each other around on Discord and Xbox/PlayStation/Switch so this isn’t goodbye…….. just a change in how things are going to be.

Why did this have to happen? Why is everyone so obsessed with replacing everything remotely worthwhile with shiny new trash and cutting themselves off so completely from their pasts? Why is everyone so obsessed with goi ng out of their way to kill the past and replacing it with shiny new trash?

This is completely fair. I've been lurking on and off for the past few months and noticed very little activity here. I think this is for the best as far as cost and time is concerned.

I know I haven't been really active here in the forums (as far as post count is concerned) but it's been a pleasure seeing familiar faces around here. I am in the discord, and the best way to reach me there is to @ me so I can see it (as I mute most discord servers I am apart of due to notifications annoying me at times).

It's sad to see the site go, but all things have to come to an end at some point.

- See you in Space Cowboy.

I agree social media is trash. I however will always support new chat apps/servers. It's way more real time than using a forum. I also love forums too, but the Internet has changed. It's no longer 2003.



+1 to this. If anybody wants to make their own GT or their own pet project, here you go. I am one of those people who may give it a shot, but am not expecting big activity. I'd love to see more than just GY spin-offs made with this. I have seen political forums on a forum software called Discourse, maybe somebody could do that. Maybe someone wants to run an anime/manga or nerd culture forum. Do dat if ya want.

I can see somebody just making it a place for themselves, and their friends/family too.



Agreed. It's for the best. The Internet has changed a lot since GT originally started.

Why did this have to happen? Why is everyone so obsessed with replacing everything remotely worthwhile with shiny new trash and cutting themselves off so completely from their pasts? Why is everyone so obsessed with goi ng out of their way to kill the past and replacing it with shiny new trash?

If I may share my input. You're right it didn't have to happen. Like nothing forced this. However this place is essentially dead and everyone myself included who said "when the drama is gone i'll give it a chance." pretty much decided not to and already communicates through other means primarily anyway. The community has shown it can stand without the site as an anchor making it kind of no longer needed. No ones replacing it with anything new or even wants to as far as I can tell. Nor is anyone tossing away the experiences and time they've had with GT but rather we have adapted, grown, and forged a different way forward ourselves and if the site goes down as a consequence of the community not needing it anymore then so be it.

Furthermore your reply implies that you feel you need to cling to GT. Holding onto a corpse for dear life isn't all that healthy. I advise making a strong effort off site to interact with the community as it exists in many forms. I did it for years until last year and was fine.

This literally PROVES the site in the form it was in survived and thrived off bullshit drama. As soon as it's gone and prevented the sites dead. That's not the capacity I want to remember GT in and I will be excluding myself from any potential remakes also. If it's GT gone vs being a unrecognizable cesspool or completely dead and dying than I choose we do this and mercy kill it.

Many thanks to Mike Pooler, Daniel, Xhin, and Weird Occurance for running and maintaining what has been a wonderful part of my life for so long (well, wonderful up until recently, anyway -- no offense). GT has been a part of my life for 16 years, and though the last couple of those years have been rough for the site, in whole, it has been a wonderful experience.

Thank you!

Nobody will be getting a full copy of the database. At all. Period. Under any circumstances.

Any new projects will be starting fresh from an empty DB.

So there's actually literally nothing good coming of any of this. Why do it then? Whatever successor may come will just be a blank slate. This situation started bad and keeps getting worse. I need strong drink and a lobotomy.

Yes, you got it. I and others much prefer likely not to read or see GT drama that's 12+ years old.



Most sites also post a disclaimer saying they're not responsible for what a user posts unless it violates the rules etc. This is from my understanding anyway.

Sorry I cna't really agree with you on this I see nothing but a loss of value in a clean slate.



meaning the only thing fu nctionally preserved is whatever scant bits happened to make it on to one of those unrelitable web archives that maybe manage to get a fraction of a fraction of the data saved.

All that aside, functionally speaking, I wish I'd started over with a blank DB.
12 years of drama in this database led to 3 or more users in 6 months asking for scrubs after I took it over.... as well as needing to enact a policy awareness change regarding bumping a thread that had sensitive information in it.

This seems trash. I never understood asking for data scrubbed. You've legit been here 15 years. I don't need to pull posts from 8 years ago to get your name or contact info.

A trend? like locally or webwide? ALso it's some what reassurign that at least the three of us agree it's stupid.

I have significant emotional problems that have led to both me consistently posting here in ways that were not healthy and to me needing to remove that history both for my desire to do better in the future without that hanging over me and just from some pure anxiety.

I don't want to have removed a part of my past like that, but I would not want the legacy of who that person was to influence anyone else negatively, and I am determined to make new history as a better person.

I feel it is trash too. This is why people need to be careful what they put out on the Internet.



Most people aren't the same as they were 12+ years ago in real life or on the Internet. I would prefer to forget the dumb stuff I have shared online, but it's not always an option to get it data scrubbed. Weird is a bit too nice cause most sites will not do this.

I'd be interested in obtaining the Worldbuilding data for preservation or creating a forum elsewhere. What format would that come in? E.g., is it just a big text file? And for future reference, if it's some kind of funky database thing, what would kind of forum application would I use to actually put the information to use?

Hey elemtilas, the format is SQL - when this site becomes open-source you'll be able to create a modifiable clone of it somewhere and import the conworlds data. So essentially the forum software is this forum software. There will be detailed instructions for setting it up hopefully at the same time, but I'll also be around to help you set it up or customize it to your liking.

If you're trying to revive the conworlds community, I still have the emails of everyone on the old conworlds community - might help to bring some of them back around. Going through three domains and then a site merge probably didn't help to keep it together.

My offer extends to anyone else looking to set up a fork of this software for whatever reason as well - while there will be instructions for setting it up and eventually documentation on how to alter things, I'll also be around to help do either of those indefinitely. Weird Occurance might as well.

I'd also like to make plugins over time - basically bits of code that do various probably useful things to the software that are optionally installable. Probably manual at first (like, put this on this file, this on that file, etc) but I've also thought about making a plugin installer that would make things more automatic eventually.

Lastly you can get a link/banner/whatever on gtx0.com if you want it - that site will be a place that links to the software/documentation and anything created with the software if the creators want it to be.

I don't think I'll have anything ready by the time this site goes away, it'll probably be next week -- very busy IRL right now. The relevant information will be released on gtx0.com and a discord channel for the project.

How do I go about arranging to have readable copies of all the threads I’ve participated in?
Remember I have two userids; chiarizio, and eldin raigmore.
Is there a way to make whatever I get, searchable?
Do I need to buy an external or removable memory device?
Do I need to program my own search engine?

That's like one of the reasons I did not like phpBB3 for plugins/extensions. It was annoying to have to edit files for plugins, and also breaking things.



I'll speak to you next week sometime about stuff, by the way. I did not want to bother you this past week about it.

Heyo!


SQL. Would the database work with a phpBB thingy?


The list of emails would be grand. At least folks would know where their old forum posts ended up!



I'm not really interested in reviving it per se. My plan would be most likely to set up a forum (like CBB or ZBB) hosted with the LCS for continuity purposes in pertetuas. I would open it and if anyone wants to join or rejoin that would be great! But the primary purpose would be archival.