How do we fix AO?

[Dend78]

here is what i see as the problem here, i have deleted several lengthy posts due to the fact that i dont want to take the heat from everyone else cause thats not what im here for, i dont want to go back and forth tounge lashing someone, and trying to pick what a person says apart. it seems as though everyone is trolling around looking for a good reason to start a fight. for instance with all of the patent issues with SP, PTP, BE and anyone else you can think of, feel free to post your opinion about it, the next person in line dont step up and say what so and so above me said is all wrong because of this this this. state how you feel about it so it may not be the same as the person above you said its your opinoin be in professional or not. as far as mods go ive been here for a good piece and i have yet to even have a mod PM me. im not the most active person on the board but there is no need to be, because a lot of what i see is someone cutting someone else. about the friendliest place on the board is the classifieds, which for good reason no one is complaining about someone else. so the mods can be a lil opressive from time to time without a check, thats the way it works. they were appointed the mod position for a reason let em do their thing cause regardless it doesnt matter who it is someone is gonna have an issue with what they do. obviously those who totally abuse their power should be dealt with accordingly and removed of their position. again this is just how i see this stuff, im not pointing at anyone person i think we all need to work on this stuff along with other things but i think we get this stuff straight life will be a lot better here for us all

[Big'n slo]

hey
wazzup Q

[PyRo]

I agree AO did go through a rough time with poor moderation. I don't agree that's what killed it though, that's what finished it off. I can't think of the name off the top of my head but a certain British moderator saw to that.
The "old timers" basically got older. We have jobs, bills, families, stopped playing paintball, etc. We stopped coming to the forums and posting as frequently and the atmosphere of AO being as close to a group of friends as you could get over an internet forum kind of died out as a result. I hate to say it but the old AO is gone for good.

Their are always the thorums.

[kosmo]

Bioloaf-man is right. All the cool peoples left long ago. The rest of you should die in a fire.

[Target Practice]

hay guys wats goin on in dis here thread

[PyRo]

hay guys wats goin on in dis here thread

Restarting pie so I can kill it again

[wes]

hay guys wats goin on in dis here thread

hi2u2

[CrazyLad_v2]

I'm here. It's fixed.

[Fred]

How to fix AO:

Build a time machine.

Go back in time to around about 2002.

Repeat.

[Lohman446]

Retrospectively, both situations have also occurred when AO members were involved in a group outside of AO; in the prior case, it would be the Thorums and AO IRC; presently, it's PBL. Those outside venues allow the banned to voice one side of a story to gain sympathy and make the mods look like the bad guys. Un/fortunately for us, the mods here tend to elevate themselves out of the muck and avoid saying anything, which makes the information available only what comes from the "victim." I'm not advocating people to not associate outside of AO, of course, but it leads to cliques and such, upon which the lines have been drawn with regard to these events.

I agree this one, and in both cases. A minor problem (a few day ban is a very minor problem) is elevated by cries of justice and fairness. Both these situations should have been left alone on AO. Have your sympathy party on the other site, let things quiet down on AO, and come back after your ban if you want to. If you must discuss issues with a moderator(s) do it privately so as not to make it into a competition. Phrase requests carefully, and as requests, and do so privately. Face it, people (not just moderators) do not like to lose face, and if you make it a public situation (on a private board, where there are no "appeals") it is highly unlikely you will win.

For instance - if person A says this did not happen and person B says it did whoever we believe will greatly likely make our opinion of the outcome very different.

[MagMan5446]

I think people have ran out of things to talk about besides things that later amount to arguments of "justice and fairness". Or something. I'm not sure, things change I think and I think it's not worth trying to save something that won't be saved. All that anybody can do is talk about trying to save it because thats all there is to do with forums I think. Just talk and when people who made the place different are replaced by others, you have a different community. I no longer post here and I've never really started posting anywhere else either.

I'm also not the same person I was when I started. So theres my two cents.

[dre1919]

I used to spend a TON of time on AO, and it used to be my one stop shop for forums (as well as my first real foray into the forums world way back in 2002). However, over time I stopped coming by here (and there's several reasons why).

1. Sigs were taken away, which I understand was a move made to increase the speed of those using dial-up (at the time) as well as cracking down on people who used them as a means to post ignorant things or waste space (i.e. bandwidth). But, to artists like myself, I saw it as a limit of freedom and expression and a shift to a more "controlled" environment. Sure, AO always had good moderation to swoop in and fix things, but this to me was a move that changed a lot about what it was to be an individual on these forums. When you're here, talking in cyberspace, you really only have two things...your opinions, intellect and personality and how they translate through type and what you choose to display in your sig area. It says a lot about you, and I just moved on to other forums where I could make art for myself and others and not get it taken away. May seem trivial to most, not to me.

2. AGD, and paintball really, have taken a major amount of steps back IMHO. First, AGD began to scale down and change ownership, then become more like an underground company than what it used to be. This severely affected AO I think, as few people were shooting Mags and organizing (or showing up) for AO Meets. I went to an AO MO meet and there were like five people there. Plus, I really feel paintball has almost "jumped the shark" in that it's highest popularity, and best level playing field, was in the late 90's, early 00's. Today, there are too many cheap knock off guns (few make guns with AGD's quality...they want you to trade your gun in every year for the new model, not shoot the same gun for ten years!) Plus, the whole SP lawsuit really ruined paintball as a whole. So many companies folded, and it forever changed the landscape of the sport. These things led a lot of the older folks away from paintball, and ultimately away from AO, because they just weren't thinking or playing paintball all the time like they used to.

Hell, I used to think paintball 24/7 and play it as often as I could. Now? I go a few times a year. I can't afford it as much as when I was a college student, and the landscape of paintball has become so barren that there doesn't seem to be that much to talk about these days. Then you throw in the mods being more strict about what can and can't be talked about here as off topic, and this place is just done.

What do we do to fix it? Well, for one, lighten up on the moderation and let people get their sigs back. Two, I would suggest a layout makeover. What's this place looked the same for...six years? Third, try increasing the feeling of a "family" or "exclusive club" by really promoting it as such. I'm trying to put together a clothing line with a basis in paintball and other things like tattoo and motorcycle attitude. Why not do the same with AO? Give it a line of merchandise or shirts (I fully volunteer to put some designs in and make and sell the stuff) so people build an esprit de corps. This place used to feel like you belonged to something...now, it's just some forum board.

Maybe even create a "dedicated users" group that pays a small fee and with that they get a nice t-shirt, some stickers, and some other things that give them perks. I mean, anything that makes them feel like they are logging into an online club or cyber family of like minded people. That's what AO used to be. I have never seen another forum that organized meets and get togethers in the real world like AO used to be good at. This feeling should be cultivated and broadened.

I would love to help bring AO back, and would totally volunteer my time to help make that happen.

-dre

[Miscue]

Hey ya'll... I'll chime in here.

I believe that the loss of the irc.automags.org chatroom is one of the controllable things that hurt activity on AO. The chatroom was the great social piece of AO.

The forum helped us trade information and learn about the products - and made us all smarter about paintball. But the chatroom is what helped us learn about each other.

Friendship is what made AO great. Friendship was the glue that kept us all coming back - even if there was nothing new to talk about. That is the only reason why I check in from time to time. Paintball doesn't bring me back to AO.

[Miscue]

I reread what I originally wrote in this thread... a few years ago. Someone should have smacked me for dumbness.

[manike]

I reread what I originally wrote in this thread... a few years ago. Someone should have smacked me for dumbness.

Sure thing, next time I'm in Vegas.

How you doing?