I'm gonna kill you both.

In the most cute amd bloody way possible.

Quote from Camila

I'm gonna kill you both.

In the most cute amd bloody way possible.

Hey, Naimad asked about restoring a group he made (and deleted). It's The Resistance. I can't seem to restore it since it was a group, not a thread. Anybody able to help?

just in case Mike asks to come back at any point in the future:

Quote from Nish

You need the understand the last few days have been incredibly free, time-wise. I'm moving to Colombo tomorrow for a well-earned, short lived holiday. So the last couple of days have been just relaxation, movies, books and internet. So I had time for this.

He came to me for help a few days ago. Pestered me. I spoke to him. Corrected some of his grammar for him but not a lot. I then realised he was actually a pretty sneaky guy with sneaky intent. He wanted to become a moderator and thought leeching off me would help. He then hinted that he would 'betray' me by telling people that I put him up to doing stupid things (?!) so I'd better keep helping him. He also wanted me to help him break up Cami and her boyfriend.

So naturally, given my natural response to threats, veiled or not, I decided to take care of him, my way. The Nish way.

I embraced him as a friend and I've been feeding him lines now and again. I wrote all the poems he wrote. What would a retarded poet sound like? Now I know. I fed him some of the burns and comebacks against Smile, Arch-Angel and Azure. Mostly I was helping him articulate his feelings for Cami because they were hilarious and because he was bugging me so much I decided to do it.

But he went and did things behind my back. The Nish Appreciation Thread, wtf. I told him NOT to do shit like that. Apparently he was also PMing people about me and how great I was and wt good friends he and I were becoming. So I decided the fun must stop and pulled the trigger.

I told him that Jeff was in love with Cami and would hack into his computer at any point and start sending messages to the FBI that he was an eco-terrorist (!?). Mike then said he wanted to be gone forever. He didn't want to come back to Stickpage. I said there was only one way to do it.

The only way to stop Jeff would be to ask for a permaban when Jeff wasn't around and then quit Stickpage forever. That way another Mod would permaban him and "not steal your memory banks for future incriminations in cybercrimes." Adios mike.

Let's make sure this one stays permanent.

I'm getting really sick of the unhelpful sarcastic replies in the HELP section. Did we not used to have a rule that basically said don't post if you're not going to help? If we didn't I feel like we should introduce that, since that section can be a joke some times. I can pick pretty much any thread as a random example and at least find 1 or 2 completely unhelpful replies.

EDIT: Yeah, Camila has a post at the top that states you have to actually help. Why isn't this being enforced? I feel like this should be cracked down on because it's just ridiculous now.

Oh, I didn't know that there was a rule like that lol
to be fair, if what you're talking about is that thread about the internet connection thing, I can't think of anything else that could have been said about it that you didn't say yourself

That's part of it, but I'm not kidding when I say most threads have dumb replies. I also don't agree that just because the question was answered sufficiently it's okay to shitpost. That's what the general forum is for, the help section should be kept helpful.

hey that's my rule, what did I miss? I enforce it when I see it happen but I haven't been keeping a very close eye on the section recently. I'll get back on that.

edit: jeez that internet problems thread is a cesspool

My bad, I stoped checking that section... I don't visit it as often as I used to. I'll get back to it.

Edit: btw I remembered that someome mentioned that newcommers used to get a PM with a nice welcome written on it and a few links like the forum guide and rules. Can we make this happen?, I think is a really good idea.

I'm actually shocked at mike. Never expected that.

Quote from Camila

My bad, I stoped checking that section... I don't visit it as often as I used to. I'll get back to it.

Edit: btw I remembered that someome mentioned that newcommers used to get a PM with a nice welcome written on it and a few links like the forum guide and rules. Can we make this happen?, I think is a really good idea.

With every newcomer?

It would likely be animated.

@Exile
Think Nish can send the PMs? I legit wanna see what went down with Mike and everything. It's like a bad soap opera.

I spent some time thinking about what happened and I'm going to suggest something that I'm not sure everyone will react greatly to, but the reason I'm proposing it is to highlight a problem and get your opinions. I am not suggesting any immediate action be taken until we have properly discussed this, and I'm going to ask that mods please keep this private to the bat cave until we've fully discussed the subject, as I'd rather not have fights start again outside here. I don't think there's a need to discuss this publicly quite yet.

First, I have no issue with Mike being banned, regardless of HOW he was banned which I will touch on later. I want to explain that while I condemn his treatment and am very disappointed in the community and some mods for how they handled themselves especially at the beginning, Mike became a legitimate problem and I think this was the inevitable conclusion. He's already established himself as a liar; he's also emotionally unstable and towards the end chose a path of harassment to pursue his own interests. I have no desire to give someone the benefit of the doubt who accuses me and most of the mods of being "ableist" because we don't give him opportunities that are rare even for people without mental disabilities, then conspires to force himself into such a position. Despite the circumstance surrounding it, that's still the path he chose and it led him to his own fate. If he was interested in being a normal functioning member he would have heeded our advice early on, but instead he continued to message people, make loads of spammy threads, then jump back into the chat thread to cause trouble like I asked him not to.

Second, the elephant in the room is that the events that just transpired with Nish are disturbing at best. This is going to be a tough pill to swallow for some but what he did was not acceptable, and as much as you're probably glad Mike is gone, it's a direct result of some extreme bullying, something that we've seen before in Nish, Mike has already complained about, and most importantly is against our rules. We're basically sending the message that it's okay to be a shitty person to others (even if that person might deserve it), and that we'll help you by looking the other way (or worse, potentially conspiring with them and enabling the behavior by doing exactly as he instructs). I am not okay with this. Socially engineering someone who's obviously gullible and suggestible is not only low hanging fruit, it looks incredibly pathetic. Nish has always been a bully. He's obnoxious and self-obsessed, always pretending to come out on top compared to others and eating it up when people brown nose him, and while I did think what he did was funny at first, I went over it quite a bit and now I'm of the opinion that this is just enabling his shitty behavior and further underlining how toxic this community is, despite how much you pretend that it's not. If Nish hadn't manipulated Mike, he might not have made those decisions. Instead of actually trying to help him and being a decent person, Nish turned into lord douchebag and not only twisted his arm, but ours as well. I am not comfortable ignoring this, and I believe that if we're going to ban Mike because he's a detriment to this community, Nish needs to go with him for the same reason.

Finally, I'm sick of people looking at SP and calling it a shithole because of who the most active and vocal members are. Yes, the voice of the few does not speak for the many, but that voice is loud and the many do nothing to silence it. I don't understand how anyone can deny it. There's allowing free expression and letting members defend themselves, and then there's enabling the biggest assholes of this community by looking the other way to avoid conflict, and I think we're currently leaning more towards the latter. I started being more lax on the harassment and flaming rules because I could see how we were potentially using that to baby the newer members and play thought police, and I accept that if we're not careful that is what will happen, but currently I regret coming back this far since this place some times feels a lot like it did back in 2007 when I first joined, where I wasn't interested in participating because everyone was a shithead trying to look alpha. Nish isn't the only person being an absolute dickbag consistently to other people, I can easily list a handful of people that also fit this bill and enable this god awful culture of harassment on the forums. I feel that these people should be put on a shortlist and watched for harassment. Officially, we want SP to be approachable and welcoming, which it is far from currently. The forums are in such a state that new active members have slowed to a trickle and those that make it through spend 0 time being a part of the general community and only post in RHG or other creative sections. This is the opposite at Dojo, a community I helped build from the beginning as welcoming and weeded out the douchier members as they came in rather than giving them a place to breed. Now compare the two, Dojo is on a heavy upward trend with activity and members while SP is dwindling at best and slipping back into old habits at worst. How can we ever progress as a community beyond this forum if the community unwilling to make it appealing to those that can make it happen and unwilling to change? I'm about to launch into SP as my next project working here and we're still deciding what the plan is, but I honestly don't see a lot of reason to keep the forums around as they are. Aside from the long history this place has, it's currently falling apart as a cohesive community and it may make more sense to dismantle it and relaunch than to try to pick up the remains. I for one do not really want to spend time and effort building things for a community that treats being mean to your peers as a right of passage, and I can guarantee that if things don't change around here the decision to start over would be an easy one.

Please keep in mind that I am not speaking of these things as if they are guaranteed to happen the way I described, just that these are very REAL possibilities. I don't mean to threaten anyone in this post, I simply wish to bring awareness to this and discuss this as a team so we can move forward. I love this community probably more than anyone since I'm now well into my professional career and some how I'm still here as part of my actual job, but I'm not going to pretend it's perfect and neither should anyone here. We should identify our faults and fix them instead of trying to justify shitty behavior.

I agree. Tho what will we do to improove this situation? we already saw that some members have no shame into bully another guy and worst of all they think is a completly normal thing. I'm up for the change, but if we're gonna make something like this happen we need to have a well planned way to do it.

Quote from Jeff

If Nish hadn't manipulated Mike, he might not have made those decisions. Instead of actually trying to help him and being a decent person, Nish turned into lord douchebag and not only twisted his arm, but ours as well.

I agree that his tactics were shady at best but I think the "instead of actually trying to help him" comment is coming a couple of months too late. I don't expect anyone to put any effort into helping him after what he's done, not that it excuses his behavior, but it definitely doesn't make it any worse. Nish was one of the first people to try and reach out to him in the first place.


As for the rest of your post, I think most of this negativity you're talking about stems from conversations largely involving Nish, Jutsu, Captain Cook and sss. Those four stand out to me as the biggest trouble-makers in terms of instigating people for their own amusement. Except Jutsu and Nish tend to be the two who make an effort to get along with new users, and they are very active in terms of normal discussion and even debates to the point where I don't see them as problems in general. Captain Cook and sss just generally don't take this place seriously and they both receive their fair share of punishment when they take things too far. If you want to give those two special attention I'm fine with it but I seriously disagree with that "thought-police" style of moderation you mentioned and I'll butt up against it if I see it happen, as I'm sure you would too.

Beyond that I don't see any users consistently involved in controversial situations to the point where they stand out to me. I don't think there's anything systemic going on other than the fact that Mike brought out the worst in a lot of us and we've been forced to focus on it the last couple of weeks. I especially don't see anything severe enough to require considering "starting over", what does that even mean?