Post by derbythis on Apr 20, 2012 11:21:57 GMT -5
First off sorry for the length of this before I begin.
I have a few questions for wecrash I would like a truthful response to. I don't want to hear what they think I want to hear. I want to hear the truth. Nothing more and nothing less. I would post this over there but it would be deleted within 30 minutes and the banning stick would probably claim it's first victim.
If they are truly concerned with the drivers and bringing the derby community together why do they have 2 competing forums themselves?
Opinion: They are fighting amongst themselves and have no clue which direction they are going.
Why did Tory set up A Derby Icons Proboards Forum and immediately make a ton of changes to it?
Opinion: In the contract was a non compete clause. After Tory received his payment and the site was moved Tory realized it was not good. He immediately created the Derby Icons forum as he could not use the wecrash name or keep proboards wecrash running. When he set it up he basically built the wecrash forum for derby icons events only with tips and tricks and classifieds. Immediately Sam and Wade invoked the contract and that is why it is down to just event threads. I think the hope was the derby community would follow him at least in some part to the derby icons forum.
Why did they bring proboards back?
Opinion: The new wecrash forum was garbage from day one. It looked nice but was not functional. Derby Icons runs large national events and needs to appeal to a national audience. The threads for Spring Explosion, Metal Mayhem, etc. where not what they used to be when we were on suddenlaunch. Instead of pages of replies and multiple threads we had one thread with 2 pages. I do not believe it was ever about the driver's. I think they seen that there were better solutions for a derby forum out there and they need the control as how else can they have their shows at the top of the list and make sure they are taken care of over everybody else. The only option was to reinstate the proboards forum in the hopes everyone would just forgive and forget and jump back on board as sheep behind their shepard(Tory). Also I think there were promises made of how much traffic was generated to wecrash. Sam and Wade don't need or in my opinion want a forum. What they wanted was the wecrash name as those who are not the most computer literate go to wecrash.com to link to the forum instead of going there directly. If they can generate traffic they can receive money from ads as well as try and get people to the UD derbystore. Even if they don't make a sale at that point it then shows people it is there if they decide to purchase something in the future.
What happened to all of the suddenlaunch information?
Fact not opinion: I will layout what happened as I have all of the history on this one. I will lay out my messages, paraphrase the messages I don't have and explain some more at the end.
Message to Scott Gropp when asked about my efforts after a post I had made.
I think I need to explain a little better what my goal is. Suddenlaunch which hosts the old site is very problematic and in fact right now it took 10 minutes to get on it. The issue is it is a free service with no guarantee of service meaning it can go down at anytime with no repercussions. I am not interested in getting the suddenlaunch site but just the information so I can put it on my site which has a guarantee of service and uptime. The way I am doing this is with a Perl programming script that basically uses my credentials and visits every item on the site compiling a sql file of all the information I can import into a phpBB Board. I have permission to everything but state rep and moderator only sections. The unfortunate part of this is no single user can view another user's private messages. Because of this I cannot get the private messages. I am not bidding or paying for anything but just pulling the information with a script. If you want to pursue purchase of the old site or try to get Tory to give you admin over the site I have no problem with it. I just don't want to lose all of the information again if Suddenlaunch crashes again
Message to Tory
I am sure you have been asked and if I am out of line just let me know but would it be possible to get the admin login for the old suddenlaunch site. The reason I am asking is as you know that site is very flaky and goes up and down constantly. I have a way to pull all of the old information off of that site but the issue is the number of items that are on there as well as the number of users is too big. The issue I am having is there is just so much there that it is taking so long to run. What I would like to do is be able to go in and remove a bunch of the users that appear to be dummy accounts as well as many of the junk posts such as is this car any good so the more valuable information can be pulled off easier. The issue I am having is the site will be up for about 24 hours and then crash again and it is taking longer than that to go through everything. The goal is to put this into a forum on my website so it is available to the drivers and is on a reliable platform. I understand this may be a conflict with your ventures with Ultimate Derby and if it is and that is your decision I am fine with it.
Message From Tory
Tory Schutte
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member is offline
Joined: Aug 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 379
Karma: 99,996
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Re: Old Suddenlaunch site
« Message sent Today at 4:20pm » [Reply]
I have a few questions for wecrash I would like a truthful response to. I don't want to hear what they think I want to hear. I want to hear the truth. Nothing more and nothing less. I would post this over there but it would be deleted within 30 minutes and the banning stick would probably claim it's first victim.
If they are truly concerned with the drivers and bringing the derby community together why do they have 2 competing forums themselves?
Opinion: They are fighting amongst themselves and have no clue which direction they are going.
Why did Tory set up A Derby Icons Proboards Forum and immediately make a ton of changes to it?
Opinion: In the contract was a non compete clause. After Tory received his payment and the site was moved Tory realized it was not good. He immediately created the Derby Icons forum as he could not use the wecrash name or keep proboards wecrash running. When he set it up he basically built the wecrash forum for derby icons events only with tips and tricks and classifieds. Immediately Sam and Wade invoked the contract and that is why it is down to just event threads. I think the hope was the derby community would follow him at least in some part to the derby icons forum.
Why did they bring proboards back?
Opinion: The new wecrash forum was garbage from day one. It looked nice but was not functional. Derby Icons runs large national events and needs to appeal to a national audience. The threads for Spring Explosion, Metal Mayhem, etc. where not what they used to be when we were on suddenlaunch. Instead of pages of replies and multiple threads we had one thread with 2 pages. I do not believe it was ever about the driver's. I think they seen that there were better solutions for a derby forum out there and they need the control as how else can they have their shows at the top of the list and make sure they are taken care of over everybody else. The only option was to reinstate the proboards forum in the hopes everyone would just forgive and forget and jump back on board as sheep behind their shepard(Tory). Also I think there were promises made of how much traffic was generated to wecrash. Sam and Wade don't need or in my opinion want a forum. What they wanted was the wecrash name as those who are not the most computer literate go to wecrash.com to link to the forum instead of going there directly. If they can generate traffic they can receive money from ads as well as try and get people to the UD derbystore. Even if they don't make a sale at that point it then shows people it is there if they decide to purchase something in the future.
What happened to all of the suddenlaunch information?
Fact not opinion: I will layout what happened as I have all of the history on this one. I will lay out my messages, paraphrase the messages I don't have and explain some more at the end.
Message to Scott Gropp when asked about my efforts after a post I had made.
I think I need to explain a little better what my goal is. Suddenlaunch which hosts the old site is very problematic and in fact right now it took 10 minutes to get on it. The issue is it is a free service with no guarantee of service meaning it can go down at anytime with no repercussions. I am not interested in getting the suddenlaunch site but just the information so I can put it on my site which has a guarantee of service and uptime. The way I am doing this is with a Perl programming script that basically uses my credentials and visits every item on the site compiling a sql file of all the information I can import into a phpBB Board. I have permission to everything but state rep and moderator only sections. The unfortunate part of this is no single user can view another user's private messages. Because of this I cannot get the private messages. I am not bidding or paying for anything but just pulling the information with a script. If you want to pursue purchase of the old site or try to get Tory to give you admin over the site I have no problem with it. I just don't want to lose all of the information again if Suddenlaunch crashes again
Message to Tory
I am sure you have been asked and if I am out of line just let me know but would it be possible to get the admin login for the old suddenlaunch site. The reason I am asking is as you know that site is very flaky and goes up and down constantly. I have a way to pull all of the old information off of that site but the issue is the number of items that are on there as well as the number of users is too big. The issue I am having is there is just so much there that it is taking so long to run. What I would like to do is be able to go in and remove a bunch of the users that appear to be dummy accounts as well as many of the junk posts such as is this car any good so the more valuable information can be pulled off easier. The issue I am having is the site will be up for about 24 hours and then crash again and it is taking longer than that to go through everything. The goal is to put this into a forum on my website so it is available to the drivers and is on a reliable platform. I understand this may be a conflict with your ventures with Ultimate Derby and if it is and that is your decision I am fine with it.
Message From Tory
Tory Schutte
Administrator
*****
member is offline
Joined: Aug 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 379
Karma: 99,996
[ Exalt | Smite ]
Re: Old Suddenlaunch site
« Message sent Today at 4:20pm » [Reply]
[Delete]
I am trying to get rid of that site all together. I can rarely get on there to even assign you as a mod. I am connected with Sam but I don't mind competition, keeps us on our toes to be the best because people have options.
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Tory Schutte
www.derbyicons.com
Message sent to Tory
I agree that it is problematic and also would like to see it go away from suddenlaunch. I feel however that there is A LOT of useful information on that site and would like to get the information off not for any gain but as a resource to drivers. If you get a chance it has been up for about the past 4 days at least intermittently. My user account over there is the same as here and is HHHRACING23X. If you get a chance to check it out and see if it will work and if you can make me a mod over everything I would appreciate it. I don't care about the state reps board or the mod board if you don't want to give me permission to that. I mainly need delete permission for users and boards.
No reply from Tory
PM to Tory
I have talked with Albert over at suddenlaunch and he said if you will give me something that states you have no problem with me being a mod over on the old site as well as something to the effect of you are not going to make the change, he will take care of it. I really appreciate your help in this matter. I don't want to be a pain but I do want to get this done before it crashes again.
Reply from Tory
WTF, where was Albert back in August when the site started having problems.
PM to Albert (Suddenlaunch)
I am not sure what is going on. I sent Tory another PM to see if he would give me access and all I received back is a WTF Where was Albert when the site crashed. It now appears he is deleting everything off of the site. There was a lot of information on there. Is there a way to restore it and make me the mod. He seemed very upset that it crashed and has removed everything except a link to the new forum that is now on proboards. I know there was a lot of people that still used the old site for reference purposes. The site was srt.suddenlaunch.com.
Reply from Albert (paraphrase)
The site can be restored but would require permission from Tory himself
PM To Albert
Did you restore the site. Everything is back up again with a last modified date of Feb 20, 2008 so everything since that date is gone. I understand it is Tory's board and all but I am unsure of why it now is back up at least partially if he deleted it. I don't want to cause any problems but I know the reason he is mad is because the site did crash. As you can tell it is probably one of your biggest forums. Due to this he is upset with suddenlaunch as he had to move to proboards and it left a bad taste in his mouth as he personally took the blame from a lot of people that it went down. I at one time also had a suddenlaunch board that never took off so I know how to go about having the board removed if that was the intent. I don't understand why if it is apparent he has chosen to leave but never pmed you or chose to use the delete forum option why I can't take over if it can be restored to the August time frame when it crashed. At the point it is now there is a lot of the more useful information missing. Again I am not trying to cause issues but it is apparent he has moved on while there is still a fairly large group who want to continue the effort. The issue with the other site you mentioned is it is a Minnesota group whereas this was a USA wide group.
PM From Albert (paraphrase)
In 2008 as you can tell if you visit the site now the server was having disk space issues. Tory requested Albert backup the site in case of a crash. Suddenlaunch has 2 servers so Albert made a live backup of the site to the other server. He then dual homed the website to both servers. What this means is if server 1 goes down then the website knows to go to server 2. Suddenlaunch requires that there be at least one board. Tory deleted all of the boards leaving just a link in the ad space to proboards. When suddenlaunch did it's checks and found there was no boards it deleted the primary file location. Because the server had been fixed Albert had turned of the synchronization between the 2 copies otherwise it would have been as if it had never been deleted. Again Albert said it could be restored to closer to June or July of last year but he had to have Tory's permission.
PM to Scott Gropp
Sorry in advance for this lengthy message.
I had my crawler working on the old site but kept running into an issue when it would start to pull the topics. I could get the layout and the members but kept having issues when it would reach the topics. The issue I was having was the member number that was showing was not correct so there was still close to 91,000 members. The way the converter worked was it would grab all the members and then go through and create a password for each user to use on the new site. The issue was this process took about 12 hours to reach the point where it started on the actual topics of the board. I pmed Tory about the possibility of becoming a moderator or the admin of the old site so I could go through and get the membership down to the actual 15,000 or so actual members to help speed up the process as well as clean up a lot of the useless topics to also speed up the process. He replied back that he would like that site to go away but had no issues with me being a mod or having a little competition as it would help to force them to make sure their service was great. I waited a day and checked and still nothing so I pmed him again to see if he would go and make the changes. Another day went by with no reply. I then contacted Albert who is the owner of suddenlaunch and asked him if he could make the change as Tory had vacated that site and was about to vacate this site to go to something else. He said that wasn't a problem if I could get Tory's permission. I copied the pm I had received from Tory and he said everything looked good to him but asked that I try one more time to have Tory make the change. If Tory decided not to make the change Albert would do it as he had been moderating the site with all the junk that started popping up and no one monitoring it. I pmed Tory again as per Albert's request and received back "WTF, where was Albert back in August when the site started having problems". I went over to the old site to see if Tory happened to make the change or if I needed to have Albert do it and there was myself and Tory on the site. He was in the process of tearing down the old site and it was down to lawnmowers and the 2 protected boards. He then completed the removal of the site as it was in August. I contacted Albert to see if it could be restored from backup as there was a lot of information that had just been erased. I checked again a little later and now everything shows as it was in Feb 2008 when the site was having issues and Tory had him create a backup. I asked Albert if he had restored it and if that was as far forward as he could go. He explained to me that the site that is now showing was saved at that time as a secondary location for srt.suddenlaunch.com so when Tory deleted the entire first site the url now finds the secondary location site. He feels very bad about the way everything happened with the site basically crashing and Tory taking the brunt of the repercussions and feels like I do that it was a huge loss of information. He told me if I can get Tory to give me something releasing the site he can restore it maybe not perfect but at least much closer to what it was prior to the crash. This is where I need help. I know you have at least some relationship with Tory whereas I am just some guy in Utah he doesn't know from Adam. I also know you lost a lot with the deletion of the old site. If there is anyway you could contact Tory and get a pm or something I can show to Albert to get it restored I would appreciate it. My personal opinion is Tory and Sam started talking and the idea of pulling the information off that would go to a competing site got discussed. My understanding is when they move it is going to be a start from scratch again. This would be problematic if another site had all of that information versus nothing. I also think it was kind of a revenge towards suddenlaunch for not keeping it running but all it did was hurt the drivers and probably help suddenlaunch as according to Albert it was the largest forum on the site using the most amount of resources. I appreciate your help in this matter as I feel it was a disservice to the derby community to get rid of that site.
I guess my question is if all it takes is one PM from Tory to Albert why not set differences aside and get all of that information back. My opinion would be lets go back to suddenlanch and get everything back to what is should be. Clean up all of the information. Move it to a solid hosted platform using phpBB or Vbulletin and get back to the way it was. We can forget all of this mess and start fresh with information as one community instead of what we currently have. I don't think anyone can argue that nothing has been the same since suddenlaunch went down. As another point I offered to do this very thing in July of last year and was told something was already in the works. Had it happened we would probably not be in the same sinking ship we are in today.
My last and final question would be did Tory, Sam, and Wade tell the mods to delete any information that was contrary to their agenda? If so to what extent?
Opinion mingled with hearsay: I believe they used the mods to do their bidding. They needed to save face and that is why out in the open they were saying post away but in the moderator section or through pm were telling the mods to delete anything of this nature. Some mods took this to heart and did the bidding of the higher ups while others sat by the side and let the others take the heat from the users. When they moved back these mods were relinquished of their duties to save face again even though they only did what they were told to do. They were told it was in the best interest that they step down from the mod position. This was to make the higher ups look like they were against what the mods had done even though it was only doing exactly what they had been told to do.
Please do not fill this with useless arguments as has happened with other threads. If you want to give good responses even negative in nature or bring up any other points I appreciate that. I just don't want this to turn into a my dad is tougher than yours argument as many of these have turned into. I for one will not step aside and go back to the extent I was on wecrash until things are out in the open.
I am trying to get rid of that site all together. I can rarely get on there to even assign you as a mod. I am connected with Sam but I don't mind competition, keeps us on our toes to be the best because people have options.
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Tory Schutte
www.derbyicons.com
Message sent to Tory
I agree that it is problematic and also would like to see it go away from suddenlaunch. I feel however that there is A LOT of useful information on that site and would like to get the information off not for any gain but as a resource to drivers. If you get a chance it has been up for about the past 4 days at least intermittently. My user account over there is the same as here and is HHHRACING23X. If you get a chance to check it out and see if it will work and if you can make me a mod over everything I would appreciate it. I don't care about the state reps board or the mod board if you don't want to give me permission to that. I mainly need delete permission for users and boards.
No reply from Tory
PM to Tory
I have talked with Albert over at suddenlaunch and he said if you will give me something that states you have no problem with me being a mod over on the old site as well as something to the effect of you are not going to make the change, he will take care of it. I really appreciate your help in this matter. I don't want to be a pain but I do want to get this done before it crashes again.
Reply from Tory
WTF, where was Albert back in August when the site started having problems.
PM to Albert (Suddenlaunch)
I am not sure what is going on. I sent Tory another PM to see if he would give me access and all I received back is a WTF Where was Albert when the site crashed. It now appears he is deleting everything off of the site. There was a lot of information on there. Is there a way to restore it and make me the mod. He seemed very upset that it crashed and has removed everything except a link to the new forum that is now on proboards. I know there was a lot of people that still used the old site for reference purposes. The site was srt.suddenlaunch.com.
Reply from Albert (paraphrase)
The site can be restored but would require permission from Tory himself
PM To Albert
Did you restore the site. Everything is back up again with a last modified date of Feb 20, 2008 so everything since that date is gone. I understand it is Tory's board and all but I am unsure of why it now is back up at least partially if he deleted it. I don't want to cause any problems but I know the reason he is mad is because the site did crash. As you can tell it is probably one of your biggest forums. Due to this he is upset with suddenlaunch as he had to move to proboards and it left a bad taste in his mouth as he personally took the blame from a lot of people that it went down. I at one time also had a suddenlaunch board that never took off so I know how to go about having the board removed if that was the intent. I don't understand why if it is apparent he has chosen to leave but never pmed you or chose to use the delete forum option why I can't take over if it can be restored to the August time frame when it crashed. At the point it is now there is a lot of the more useful information missing. Again I am not trying to cause issues but it is apparent he has moved on while there is still a fairly large group who want to continue the effort. The issue with the other site you mentioned is it is a Minnesota group whereas this was a USA wide group.
PM From Albert (paraphrase)
In 2008 as you can tell if you visit the site now the server was having disk space issues. Tory requested Albert backup the site in case of a crash. Suddenlaunch has 2 servers so Albert made a live backup of the site to the other server. He then dual homed the website to both servers. What this means is if server 1 goes down then the website knows to go to server 2. Suddenlaunch requires that there be at least one board. Tory deleted all of the boards leaving just a link in the ad space to proboards. When suddenlaunch did it's checks and found there was no boards it deleted the primary file location. Because the server had been fixed Albert had turned of the synchronization between the 2 copies otherwise it would have been as if it had never been deleted. Again Albert said it could be restored to closer to June or July of last year but he had to have Tory's permission.
PM to Scott Gropp
Sorry in advance for this lengthy message.
I had my crawler working on the old site but kept running into an issue when it would start to pull the topics. I could get the layout and the members but kept having issues when it would reach the topics. The issue I was having was the member number that was showing was not correct so there was still close to 91,000 members. The way the converter worked was it would grab all the members and then go through and create a password for each user to use on the new site. The issue was this process took about 12 hours to reach the point where it started on the actual topics of the board. I pmed Tory about the possibility of becoming a moderator or the admin of the old site so I could go through and get the membership down to the actual 15,000 or so actual members to help speed up the process as well as clean up a lot of the useless topics to also speed up the process. He replied back that he would like that site to go away but had no issues with me being a mod or having a little competition as it would help to force them to make sure their service was great. I waited a day and checked and still nothing so I pmed him again to see if he would go and make the changes. Another day went by with no reply. I then contacted Albert who is the owner of suddenlaunch and asked him if he could make the change as Tory had vacated that site and was about to vacate this site to go to something else. He said that wasn't a problem if I could get Tory's permission. I copied the pm I had received from Tory and he said everything looked good to him but asked that I try one more time to have Tory make the change. If Tory decided not to make the change Albert would do it as he had been moderating the site with all the junk that started popping up and no one monitoring it. I pmed Tory again as per Albert's request and received back "WTF, where was Albert back in August when the site started having problems". I went over to the old site to see if Tory happened to make the change or if I needed to have Albert do it and there was myself and Tory on the site. He was in the process of tearing down the old site and it was down to lawnmowers and the 2 protected boards. He then completed the removal of the site as it was in August. I contacted Albert to see if it could be restored from backup as there was a lot of information that had just been erased. I checked again a little later and now everything shows as it was in Feb 2008 when the site was having issues and Tory had him create a backup. I asked Albert if he had restored it and if that was as far forward as he could go. He explained to me that the site that is now showing was saved at that time as a secondary location for srt.suddenlaunch.com so when Tory deleted the entire first site the url now finds the secondary location site. He feels very bad about the way everything happened with the site basically crashing and Tory taking the brunt of the repercussions and feels like I do that it was a huge loss of information. He told me if I can get Tory to give me something releasing the site he can restore it maybe not perfect but at least much closer to what it was prior to the crash. This is where I need help. I know you have at least some relationship with Tory whereas I am just some guy in Utah he doesn't know from Adam. I also know you lost a lot with the deletion of the old site. If there is anyway you could contact Tory and get a pm or something I can show to Albert to get it restored I would appreciate it. My personal opinion is Tory and Sam started talking and the idea of pulling the information off that would go to a competing site got discussed. My understanding is when they move it is going to be a start from scratch again. This would be problematic if another site had all of that information versus nothing. I also think it was kind of a revenge towards suddenlaunch for not keeping it running but all it did was hurt the drivers and probably help suddenlaunch as according to Albert it was the largest forum on the site using the most amount of resources. I appreciate your help in this matter as I feel it was a disservice to the derby community to get rid of that site.
I guess my question is if all it takes is one PM from Tory to Albert why not set differences aside and get all of that information back. My opinion would be lets go back to suddenlanch and get everything back to what is should be. Clean up all of the information. Move it to a solid hosted platform using phpBB or Vbulletin and get back to the way it was. We can forget all of this mess and start fresh with information as one community instead of what we currently have. I don't think anyone can argue that nothing has been the same since suddenlaunch went down. As another point I offered to do this very thing in July of last year and was told something was already in the works. Had it happened we would probably not be in the same sinking ship we are in today.
My last and final question would be did Tory, Sam, and Wade tell the mods to delete any information that was contrary to their agenda? If so to what extent?
Opinion mingled with hearsay: I believe they used the mods to do their bidding. They needed to save face and that is why out in the open they were saying post away but in the moderator section or through pm were telling the mods to delete anything of this nature. Some mods took this to heart and did the bidding of the higher ups while others sat by the side and let the others take the heat from the users. When they moved back these mods were relinquished of their duties to save face again even though they only did what they were told to do. They were told it was in the best interest that they step down from the mod position. This was to make the higher ups look like they were against what the mods had done even though it was only doing exactly what they had been told to do.
Please do not fill this with useless arguments as has happened with other threads. If you want to give good responses even negative in nature or bring up any other points I appreciate that. I just don't want this to turn into a my dad is tougher than yours argument as many of these have turned into. I for one will not step aside and go back to the extent I was on wecrash until things are out in the open.
