First off, I got permission from seds to make this thread so there ya go. Secondly, I used to be a giant socially impossible nerd who cared too much about the internet just like many of us here and I have been able to improve myself a lot in two years. I'm going to assume that is also the case with anybody I say negative things about here. This drama is ancient, and nobody should be getting worked up about it. I'm only posting it because it's a cool, and sometimes funny, story, and because most people never really got a chance to know what was going on behind the scenes.
ANYWAY, this is a story about a little site called MTGSalvation.com and all of the crazy stuff that went on in the mod lounge. I'm going to cover September 2004 to December 2005 when I became admin, as that's when all the most interesting stuff happened. If you have any requests for stories that I didn't mention or stuff that happened while I was admin, make a request and address it to Unca' Gobberboy as I will not respond to any other name in this thread so there.
September 2004
There was a little bit of a scare at MTGNews and people thought that rancored_elf might leave due to the nutso admin Subterranean_Spirit. People were unsure whether the site would survive without him (answer: kinda, but not really), and so a few havens to congregate at just in case were made. MTGSalvation was made by founder Xenphire, then known as The Numenn, Kuberr. It was a crappy little phpBB board with white-font-on-black-background hosted on Woodwolf's (we'll get to him later) Magic humor site Urza's Bathroom. A few people such as myself joined and posted for like three days until the crisis cleared and we all went back to MTGNews.
January 1, 2005
There was a big scare at MTGNews and rancored_elf did leave due to the nutso admin Subterranean_Spirit. Xenphire saw his opportunity and led a spamming campaign to pepper advertisements for MTGSalvation anywhere and everywhere possible on MTGNews. This did the trick, and MTGSalvation became the post-News hangout. The first few days were incredibly hectic.
I was made a mod of the incredibly prestigious Forum Games forum due to the fact that 1) I modded 3CB, 2) I had joined in September, 3) I was gay and so was Xenphire and he figured us gays oughta stick together (this one was more implied). This was the first time I got a chance to peek at the Mod Lounge, and it was going nuts. All the moderators were new and only a few had any experience. Everyone was talking about what was best for the site and plans and what to do and everything. Feyd_Ruin joined up and began making a bunch of fixes to the site. After a day or two, rancored_elf joined up and made MTGS pretty much the official heir to the News throne. Soon after, Hannes made the offer to host the site (Urza's Bathroom couldn't possibly handle all the traffic) and we accepted. With Hannes came the mtgsalvation.com domain and a vB license thank GOD.
Everything was going great, and the whole site, especially the mod lounge, was running high on internet adrenaline. The admins were Wolfwood, Xenphire, and Sakabatou, a friend of Xenphire's I think. It was not long before things would start to get super entertaining!!
Turnover (Jan-Feb 2005)
MTGS was formed and populated in the wake of an overbearing administration at MTGNews and decided to be pretty much the opposite: a complete democracy. We were going to be a site "of the community, for the community" and make sure that we never did anything without considerable input from pretty much everybody. This is pretty much where all the problems started, since it's almost impossible to run a website like this. Not only that, but it gave all the mods a sense of entitlement towards how the site would run, and everybody started to picture themselves as crusaders for the community, watching out for overbearing administration and pretty much whining a lot. Every decision was second- (and third- and fourth-) guessed. This made things very difficult for the admins, especially Sakabatou, who liked being able to do his own thing.
A few mods (mostly led by ButteBlues and Qwerty, if I remember) decided to start unannounced, several-hour long meetings in AIM chatrooms. At these, they would discuss what they thought was wrong with the site and how to fix it.
Now I might have the following bits mixed up chronologically, but they all happened:
Sakabatou held a contest to make the new MTGS banner at the top of the page. The initial idea was to put the winner up to mod vote, but then suddenly, after the mod vote was half done, Sakabatou started a user vote. The mod lounge got angry. There were lots of arguments and the term "the community" was used approximately a million times. Extremestan won the user vote, but the mods wanted a different one (it was the one that just said "MTGSalvation" with a halo over one of the letters) and eventually that one was used. This pissed Sakabatou off pretty heavily, and he started talking to Xenphire over AIM about how he wanted to get rid of all the staff and start over.
Meanwhile, Xenphire had similar problems. He had started "The Room With the Moose" which was a place where suspended users would see it as the only forum. He was also giving special insulting custom titles to users he didn't like. Mods got mad that Xenphire was treating users with "disrespect."
Then, Xenphire appointed a new mod who nobody had heard of as a Global, Alex (now Alex+). The mod lounge felt a little cheated that a Global spot was given to someone nobody had heard of. It didn't help that he was really horrible at modding.
The mod AIM chatroom squad decided that something had to be done about all these horrible things (among others)! They had the grand idea of "confronting" Xenphire about things. They invited him to the chatroom and grilled him for a few hours, trying to get him to agree to change stuff. Xenphire was put off by all this, and MAY OR MAY NOT have talked about what Sakabatou MAY OR MAY NOT have said to him about getting rid of all the staff and starting over. That definitely wasn't popular with the mods.
So then the mods went over and "confronted" Sakabatou about getting rid of all the mods. Sakabatou got pissed at Xenphire for talking about his plan behind his back and got REALLY pissed that the mods had the "audacity" to talk to him, an admin who surely should not be subject to such horrible scrutiny. Sakabatou said that Xenphire had lied about what he'd said and that it was a very insulting and horrible thing to do.
The mod AIM chatroom squad decided that this was morally horrible and something had to be done! So, in our very cavalier shining-democracy mindset, the mod AIM chatroom squad shared what they had found out and convinced the rest of us to have elections for admins.
Sakabatou and Wolfwood were shoo-ins, but Xenphire didn't get a single nomination. Pissed about it, he posted in the voting thread saying something along the lines of "You will only be voting for two positions. I am in charge of this site and you will keep me on as admin and there is not going to be a vote about my position and I am sick and tired of being questioned all the time and people are lying about me and I am pissed off." which got everybody else to respond with something along the lines of "nope, sorry." So we went through with the elections. Wolfwood was in by a large margin, as was Sakabatou. Belgareth was the new third admin (I came in fourth :3).
Before the admin changes could be made, Xenphire got really pissed and demodded most of the staff, including Sakabatou and Wolfwood, and made an angry post in the mod lounge saying he was starting the site over again and **** you all. Hannes stepped in and de-admined Xenphire and remodded everybody. Xenphire then tried to pass it off as a joke, but it obviously wasn't. Xenphire, who had founded the site, was no longer in power. He was kept on as a moderator with no forum (I have no idea why) but went on to cause more drama and was eventually banned. Later he made some more accounts and those got banned.
Shortly thereafter, Sakabatou decided that Wolfwood and Belgareth were "teaming up against him" and left angry. I looked back through the Admin Lounge archives when I was an admin, and that wasn't really the case, but Sakabatou was never really the calmest guy anyway. The only admins were Wolfwood and Belgareth, then.
The Belgareth Era (Feb-Dec 2005)
The site had calmed down a lot by this point, and the "MTGNews Discussion" forum had been laid to rest. Similarly, the mod lounge had calmed down a lot. It was around this time that I was made a Global, and kept in close contact with Belgareth, talking about site policy and what to do in certain situations. I was also in close contact with Qwerty, Belgareth's right-hand-man-of-sorts.
Nothing too monumental was going on, but several months into Belgareth's being admin it became clear that Wolfwood wasn't really around anymore. He never posted and certainly never did any administration. It turned out later that he had left the site to get married. I'm glad for him, although I always found it confusing why Bel seemed to pretend that he was still around and that they were discussing decisions with eachother. When I got access to the Admin Lounge archives, I didn't find much discussion at all from when Bel was admin.
Around then Wolfwood was de-admined, and it was clear that not only was Belgareth the only admin, but he had been since something like the end of February. While the "the community" democracy cavalier vigor had died down a lot from when the site was formed, it was still there, and people were bugging Bel about when we were going to have new admins, preferably by vote.
Eventually, around August I think, Feyd_Ruin and I made a thread expressing that we would like to be admins. Obviously, asking to be an admin/mod is a huge no-no among internet administration, but in this case we were tired of waiting for the slots to be filled and figured that if we nominated ourselves it might speed things up. Nope. More delays. When asked about it, Bel would generally suggest that he was waiting on something from Hannes so that we could be admins. But it was just a few days away, wait a little longer!
Near the end of November, no new admins had been chosen. Then, Crazed_Mike and ButteBlues decided they were tired of it, and posted several threads saying some nasty stuff about Belgareth and Raia.
Raia was mod of the Artwork forum, and she and Belgareth had an online romance going. Bel ended up moving to Canada to be with her, I think. Anyway, Crazed_Mike said that Raia had been hired on as a mod only because of her connection to Bel (because letting your girlfriend be a mod is clearly unacceptable ). It turned out that Bel had hired Raia as a mod before their romance started, but the whole debacle ended with Crazed_Mike and ButteBlues being demodded (Mike was banned too I think), and Belgareth going nuts. Like I said, I chatted with him a lot on AIM, and he started getting the air of a paranoid man. Suddenly there were conspiracies of people out to get him.
He was apparently talking to Hannes like this too, as Hannes posted a chatlog between them that went something like
Belgareth: Oh man you have got to stop this this is unacceptable these people are out there to TARNISH MY GOOD REPUTATION and you have got to do something and this is unacceptable and I have to go out there and defend myself!
Hannes: well what do you want me to do? it seems like you're taking this really personally. maybe you should relax
Belgareth: Oh is that how it's going to be huh? Well maybe I should just be deadmined since I'm CLEARLY doing such a horrible job. Is that what you want, huh? To deadmin me?
Hannes: *sigh*
Hannes: If that's what you want, then yes, I am going to deadmin you.
Belgareth: UGH I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ARE DOING THIS THIS IS PERSECUTION
Feyd wasn't all that interested in being an Admin by this point, so I was quickly chosen as the replacement admin, unaware that I was a "replacement" rather than an "addition." Belgareth was deadmined shortly thereafter and immediately started AIMing me to tell me about all of Hannes' evils, accusing him of stealing money from the site, saying that it was only because of Hannes that I waited so long to be admin, saying that I had to join him in his glorious fight against the horrible Hannes who had hijacked the site. DON'T BE HIS PUPPET GOBLINBOY I CHOSE YOU FOR THIS SO YOU COULD HELP ME USURP HANNES.
I didn't buy it and then Belgareth changed his mind and I was the worst admin ever and he would go on to cause a lot of drama while I was admin. Meanwhile, I had to finish the forum awards where Bel had left them. Ugh, I don't even like the forum awards.
*claps* More more... I know there is much more after.....
You gotta request it. I couldn't think of any super-interesting stories from when I was admin.
Although I guess there was the time that Xenphire got a bunch of people together who planned to hack MTGS and "steal it back." That was pretty entertaining and pathetic.
You gotta request it. I couldn't think of any super-interesting stories from when I was admin.
Although I guess there was the time that Xenphire got a bunch of people together who planned to hack MTGS and "steal it back." That was pretty entertaining and pathetic.
Your storys bring back funny memories... and brinsg back all the chats I had with some online and the plans that everyone so called made on them...
You gotta request it. I couldn't think of any super-interesting stories from when I was admin.
Although I guess there was the time that Xenphire got a bunch of people together who planned to hack MTGS and "steal it back." That was pretty entertaining and pathetic.
Yes, that it was.
I remember most of this, now that you jogged it.
R_E was made admin right after you were...right?
The drama doesn't really get as interesting from where you ended but I still forget chronology.
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News and spoiler contributor for GatheringMagic.com
Unca' Gobberboy missed the entire incident with the called.
The rest is pretty accurate although maybe spiced up a little.
The Called used to (maybe still does??) have an obsession with the word "nipple" and there was a lot of confusion in terms of what was allowable and what wasn't, obscenity-wise. This was doubly difficult since the Called has always had a lot of mods in it. Sakabatou, who was no longer staff but still stuck around for the Called, got really angry. So did Xenphire, who liked to stick around and create drama although he had nothing to do with the Called. Also Cyan, who was in the Called as well. A subforum was actually created so that they could discuss the problem in private, and there was a lot of silly name-calling and accusations (mostly from Xen). Xen ended up banned for the first (second?) time, and if I remember, the Called got their nipple back.
Although I guess there was the time that Xenphire got a bunch of people together who planned to hack MTGS and "steal it back." That was pretty entertaining and pathetic.
Yeah, uh, it was really really sad, actually. I can post some chatlogs about it if anyone is interested.
Overall, I knew most of those stories but the way they were told was still good. To call Belgareth just paranoid is also a tad of an understatement, some of things that I got warnings for when speaking against him would cause outrage today. Also, Raia was moderator in Block Constructed, if I remember correctly, but it is a moot point.
The Called used to (maybe still does??) have an obsession with the word "nipple" and there was a lot of confusion in terms of what was allowable and what wasn't, obscenity-wise. This was doubly difficult since the Called has always had a lot of mods in it. Sakabatou, who was no longer staff but still stuck around for the Called, got really angry. So did Xenphire, who liked to stick around and create drama although he had nothing to do with the Called. Also Cyan, who was in the Called as well. A subforum was actually created so that they could discuss the problem in private, and there was a lot of silly name-calling and accusations (mostly from Xen). Xen ended up banned for the first (second?) time, and if I remember, the Called got their nipple back.
This happened October '05.
Could you post a short summary of R_E's confusion at a different word for genitalia?
Brilliant, GB. I remember most of that, though I only learned much of the backstage stuff when I became a mod (sadly enough, it was one of the first things I did, dug in the mod cave for the truth behind the drama of yore).
Could you post a short summary of R_E's confusion at a different word for genitalia?
When you (kingcobweb) first got your current custom title, R_E didn't like it and thought it was obscene, but was unaware what one of the words meant. This is the story.
By George, i remember this all.
Tho for most of it i was a lurker, and didnt really start posting until the beginning of the Belgareth Era, it was still quite the laugh.
*sigh*
We need another insanely paranoid Administrator.
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[19:59] greymon90210: Hey StormBlind how tall are you? "I'm six money *****, don't forget it"
"The Critics always said that we'd only have a black president when pigs flu"...
Just wanted to say I'm glad that this post was made, as it's good to have the history of the site actually written down somewhere. Additionally, it was very informative! Thanks.
*applause* Gobo, I thank you for making this thread.
As my join date indicates, I have been a part of the MTGS community since shortly after the end of this history (amusingly enough, I didn't really lurk at all before joining). Because of this, I have only seeing fleeting glimpses of stories and the history from what happened before I joined. So, it's great to finally know, in more detail, what the first year (or ~15 months if you count before Jan 2005) of the site looked like, and actually get the full story.
It was a lot more interesting when it was going on.
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Sing lustily and with good courage.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
It was a lot more interesting when it was going on.
Pretty much.
I was there for all of it: now that I think back, I wish I'd had popcorn.
A slight correction on Crazed Mike:
While he did agree with me regarding Bel's intolerable practices of not appointing any new administrators after SIX months of WW clearly being absent from forum affairs, what went on between them was quite a bit personal. Mike and his girlfriend, "lil akroma" both posted on this site. At the time, they were spending the summer about 600 miles away from home at Mike's grandmother's house. Mike, in confidence (having been Bel's friend since he became a mod when sneaky retired, at my recommendation), told Bel that once they got back to their hometown, he was considering breaking up with lil akroma. Belgareth in his wonderfully hypocritical fashion (after promising to keep this private), goes and tells lil akroma. The end result? lil akroma and Crazed Mike got to spend 3 really awkward months stuck 600 miles away from home because Belgareth wanted to be the Knight in Shining ArmorTM. Quite naturally, this factored into Hannes' decision to replace Belgareth, as screwin' around with users' and staffs' personal lives is very inappropriate for an Administrator.
A slight correction:
At the time, I was a really pretentious dick and was being retarded and decided to be cavalier about nipples. These days I've flip-flopped.
First off, I got permission from seds to make this thread so there ya go. Secondly, I used to be a giant socially impossible nerd who cared too much about the internet just like many of us here and I have been able to improve myself a lot in two years. I'm going to assume that is also the case with anybody I say negative things about here. This drama is ancient, and nobody should be getting worked up about it. I'm only posting it because it's a cool, and sometimes funny, story, and because most people never really got a chance to know what was going on behind the scenes.
:munch::munch::munch::munch::munch: :munch::munch::munch::munch::munch:
ANYWAY, this is a story about a little site called MTGSalvation.com and all of the crazy stuff that went on in the mod lounge. I'm going to cover September 2004 to December 2005 when I became admin, as that's when all the most interesting stuff happened. If you have any requests for stories that I didn't mention or stuff that happened while I was admin, make a request and address it to Unca' Gobberboy as I will not respond to any other name in this thread so there.
September 2004
There was a little bit of a scare at MTGNews and people thought that rancored_elf might leave due to the nutso admin Subterranean_Spirit. People were unsure whether the site would survive without him (answer: kinda, but not really), and so a few havens to congregate at just in case were made. MTGSalvation was made by founder Xenphire, then known as The Numenn, Kuberr. It was a crappy little phpBB board with white-font-on-black-background hosted on Woodwolf's (we'll get to him later) Magic humor site Urza's Bathroom. A few people such as myself joined and posted for like three days until the crisis cleared and we all went back to MTGNews.
January 1, 2005
There was a big scare at MTGNews and rancored_elf did leave due to the nutso admin Subterranean_Spirit. Xenphire saw his opportunity and led a spamming campaign to pepper advertisements for MTGSalvation anywhere and everywhere possible on MTGNews. This did the trick, and MTGSalvation became the post-News hangout. The first few days were incredibly hectic.
I was made a mod of the incredibly prestigious Forum Games forum due to the fact that 1) I modded 3CB, 2) I had joined in September, 3) I was gay and so was Xenphire and he figured us gays oughta stick together (this one was more implied). This was the first time I got a chance to peek at the Mod Lounge, and it was going nuts. All the moderators were new and only a few had any experience. Everyone was talking about what was best for the site and plans and what to do and everything. Feyd_Ruin joined up and began making a bunch of fixes to the site. After a day or two, rancored_elf joined up and made MTGS pretty much the official heir to the News throne. Soon after, Hannes made the offer to host the site (Urza's Bathroom couldn't possibly handle all the traffic) and we accepted. With Hannes came the mtgsalvation.com domain and a vB license thank GOD.
Everything was going great, and the whole site, especially the mod lounge, was running high on internet adrenaline. The admins were Wolfwood, Xenphire, and Sakabatou, a friend of Xenphire's I think. It was not long before things would start to get super entertaining!!
Turnover (Jan-Feb 2005)
MTGS was formed and populated in the wake of an overbearing administration at MTGNews and decided to be pretty much the opposite: a complete democracy. We were going to be a site "of the community, for the community" and make sure that we never did anything without considerable input from pretty much everybody. This is pretty much where all the problems started, since it's almost impossible to run a website like this. Not only that, but it gave all the mods a sense of entitlement towards how the site would run, and everybody started to picture themselves as crusaders for the community, watching out for overbearing administration and pretty much whining a lot. Every decision was second- (and third- and fourth-) guessed. This made things very difficult for the admins, especially Sakabatou, who liked being able to do his own thing.
A few mods (mostly led by ButteBlues and Qwerty, if I remember) decided to start unannounced, several-hour long meetings in AIM chatrooms. At these, they would discuss what they thought was wrong with the site and how to fix it.
Now I might have the following bits mixed up chronologically, but they all happened:
Sakabatou held a contest to make the new MTGS banner at the top of the page. The initial idea was to put the winner up to mod vote, but then suddenly, after the mod vote was half done, Sakabatou started a user vote. The mod lounge got angry. There were lots of arguments and the term "the community" was used approximately a million times. Extremestan won the user vote, but the mods wanted a different one (it was the one that just said "MTGSalvation" with a halo over one of the letters) and eventually that one was used. This pissed Sakabatou off pretty heavily, and he started talking to Xenphire over AIM about how he wanted to get rid of all the staff and start over.
Meanwhile, Xenphire had similar problems. He had started "The Room With the Moose" which was a place where suspended users would see it as the only forum. He was also giving special insulting custom titles to users he didn't like. Mods got mad that Xenphire was treating users with "disrespect."
Then, Xenphire appointed a new mod who nobody had heard of as a Global, Alex (now Alex+). The mod lounge felt a little cheated that a Global spot was given to someone nobody had heard of. It didn't help that he was really horrible at modding.
The mod AIM chatroom squad decided that something had to be done about all these horrible things (among others)! They had the grand idea of "confronting" Xenphire about things. They invited him to the chatroom and grilled him for a few hours, trying to get him to agree to change stuff. Xenphire was put off by all this, and MAY OR MAY NOT have talked about what Sakabatou MAY OR MAY NOT have said to him about getting rid of all the staff and starting over. That definitely wasn't popular with the mods.
So then the mods went over and "confronted" Sakabatou about getting rid of all the mods. Sakabatou got pissed at Xenphire for talking about his plan behind his back and got REALLY pissed that the mods had the "audacity" to talk to him, an admin who surely should not be subject to such horrible scrutiny. Sakabatou said that Xenphire had lied about what he'd said and that it was a very insulting and horrible thing to do.
The mod AIM chatroom squad decided that this was morally horrible and something had to be done! So, in our very cavalier shining-democracy mindset, the mod AIM chatroom squad shared what they had found out and convinced the rest of us to have elections for admins.
Sakabatou and Wolfwood were shoo-ins, but Xenphire didn't get a single nomination. Pissed about it, he posted in the voting thread saying something along the lines of "You will only be voting for two positions. I am in charge of this site and you will keep me on as admin and there is not going to be a vote about my position and I am sick and tired of being questioned all the time and people are lying about me and I am pissed off." which got everybody else to respond with something along the lines of "nope, sorry." So we went through with the elections. Wolfwood was in by a large margin, as was Sakabatou. Belgareth was the new third admin (I came in fourth :3).
Before the admin changes could be made, Xenphire got really pissed and demodded most of the staff, including Sakabatou and Wolfwood, and made an angry post in the mod lounge saying he was starting the site over again and **** you all. Hannes stepped in and de-admined Xenphire and remodded everybody. Xenphire then tried to pass it off as a joke, but it obviously wasn't. Xenphire, who had founded the site, was no longer in power. He was kept on as a moderator with no forum (I have no idea why) but went on to cause more drama and was eventually banned. Later he made some more accounts and those got banned.
Shortly thereafter, Sakabatou decided that Wolfwood and Belgareth were "teaming up against him" and left angry. I looked back through the Admin Lounge archives when I was an admin, and that wasn't really the case, but Sakabatou was never really the calmest guy anyway. The only admins were Wolfwood and Belgareth, then.
The Belgareth Era (Feb-Dec 2005)
The site had calmed down a lot by this point, and the "MTGNews Discussion" forum had been laid to rest. Similarly, the mod lounge had calmed down a lot. It was around this time that I was made a Global, and kept in close contact with Belgareth, talking about site policy and what to do in certain situations. I was also in close contact with Qwerty, Belgareth's right-hand-man-of-sorts.
Nothing too monumental was going on, but several months into Belgareth's being admin it became clear that Wolfwood wasn't really around anymore. He never posted and certainly never did any administration. It turned out later that he had left the site to get married. I'm glad for him, although I always found it confusing why Bel seemed to pretend that he was still around and that they were discussing decisions with eachother. When I got access to the Admin Lounge archives, I didn't find much discussion at all from when Bel was admin.
Around then Wolfwood was de-admined, and it was clear that not only was Belgareth the only admin, but he had been since something like the end of February. While the "the community" democracy cavalier vigor had died down a lot from when the site was formed, it was still there, and people were bugging Bel about when we were going to have new admins, preferably by vote.
Eventually, around August I think, Feyd_Ruin and I made a thread expressing that we would like to be admins. Obviously, asking to be an admin/mod is a huge no-no among internet administration, but in this case we were tired of waiting for the slots to be filled and figured that if we nominated ourselves it might speed things up. Nope. More delays. When asked about it, Bel would generally suggest that he was waiting on something from Hannes so that we could be admins. But it was just a few days away, wait a little longer!
Near the end of November, no new admins had been chosen. Then, Crazed_Mike and ButteBlues decided they were tired of it, and posted several threads saying some nasty stuff about Belgareth and Raia.
Raia was mod of the Artwork forum, and she and Belgareth had an online romance going. Bel ended up moving to Canada to be with her, I think. Anyway, Crazed_Mike said that Raia had been hired on as a mod only because of her connection to Bel (because letting your girlfriend be a mod is clearly unacceptable ). It turned out that Bel had hired Raia as a mod before their romance started, but the whole debacle ended with Crazed_Mike and ButteBlues being demodded (Mike was banned too I think), and Belgareth going nuts. Like I said, I chatted with him a lot on AIM, and he started getting the air of a paranoid man. Suddenly there were conspiracies of people out to get him.
He was apparently talking to Hannes like this too, as Hannes posted a chatlog between them that went something like
Belgareth: Oh man you have got to stop this this is unacceptable these people are out there to TARNISH MY GOOD REPUTATION and you have got to do something and this is unacceptable and I have to go out there and defend myself!
Hannes: well what do you want me to do? it seems like you're taking this really personally. maybe you should relax
Belgareth: Oh is that how it's going to be huh? Well maybe I should just be deadmined since I'm CLEARLY doing such a horrible job. Is that what you want, huh? To deadmin me?
Hannes: *sigh*
Hannes: If that's what you want, then yes, I am going to deadmin you.
Belgareth: UGH I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU ARE DOING THIS THIS IS PERSECUTION
Feyd wasn't all that interested in being an Admin by this point, so I was quickly chosen as the replacement admin, unaware that I was a "replacement" rather than an "addition." Belgareth was deadmined shortly thereafter and immediately started AIMing me to tell me about all of Hannes' evils, accusing him of stealing money from the site, saying that it was only because of Hannes that I waited so long to be admin, saying that I had to join him in his glorious fight against the horrible Hannes who had hijacked the site. DON'T BE HIS PUPPET GOBLINBOY I CHOSE YOU FOR THIS SO YOU COULD HELP ME USURP HANNES.
I didn't buy it and then Belgareth changed his mind and I was the worst admin ever and he would go on to cause a lot of drama while I was admin. Meanwhile, I had to finish the forum awards where Bel had left them. Ugh, I don't even like the forum awards.
The end
You gotta request it. I couldn't think of any super-interesting stories from when I was admin.
Although I guess there was the time that Xenphire got a bunch of people together who planned to hack MTGS and "steal it back." That was pretty entertaining and pathetic.
Your storys bring back funny memories... and brinsg back all the chats I had with some online and the plans that everyone so called made on them...
Yes, that it was.
I remember most of this, now that you jogged it.
R_E was made admin right after you were...right?
The drama doesn't really get as interesting from where you ended but I still forget chronology.
Twitter
I thought Raia was Belgareth's right-hand-man.
The rest is pretty accurate although maybe spiced up a little.
Right as soon as Bel was deadmined I made Feyd and R_E both half-admins, since neither were really interested in doing it long term.
The Called used to (maybe still does??) have an obsession with the word "nipple" and there was a lot of confusion in terms of what was allowable and what wasn't, obscenity-wise. This was doubly difficult since the Called has always had a lot of mods in it. Sakabatou, who was no longer staff but still stuck around for the Called, got really angry. So did Xenphire, who liked to stick around and create drama although he had nothing to do with the Called. Also Cyan, who was in the Called as well. A subforum was actually created so that they could discuss the problem in private, and there was a lot of silly name-calling and accusations (mostly from Xen). Xen ended up banned for the first (second?) time, and if I remember, the Called got their nipple back.
This happened October '05.
Yeah, uh, it was really really sad, actually. I can post some chatlogs about it if anyone is interested.
Overall, I knew most of those stories but the way they were told was still good. To call Belgareth just paranoid is also a tad of an understatement, some of things that I got warnings for when speaking against him would cause outrage today. Also, Raia was moderator in Block Constructed, if I remember correctly, but it is a moot point.
I may Unca' Gobberboy if I think of something.
Could you post a short summary of R_E's confusion at a different word for genitalia?
Do any of these people still post anymore?
Searching is tech.
deadmined is a hilarious word.
So what did hannes buy with all the money he stole?
Weed, obv
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When you (kingcobweb) first got your current custom title, R_E didn't like it and thought it was obscene, but was unaware what one of the words meant. This is the story.
Tho for most of it i was a lurker, and didnt really start posting until the beginning of the Belgareth Era, it was still quite the laugh.
*sigh*
We need another insanely paranoid Administrator.
Vote me for admin and I promiss to bring drama, love affairs, and random drive bys.... Once a week..
Why would you need two? Isn't one good enough?
Anyways, there was some other stuff involved in the Called incident (including a picture) but thats basically it.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=1807365&postcount=3
please, please, please
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As my join date indicates, I have been a part of the MTGS community since shortly after the end of this history (amusingly enough, I didn't really lurk at all before joining). Because of this, I have only seeing fleeting glimpses of stories and the history from what happened before I joined. So, it's great to finally know, in more detail, what the first year (or ~15 months if you count before Jan 2005) of the site looked like, and actually get the full story.
Thanks again Gobo. Great idea.
Winner of the Weekly Signature & Avatar Contest Weeks 51, 59, 78, & 118.
I don't care if I was framed for murder if I only got a warning I would let it go.
Be aware of singing as if you were half dead,
or half asleep:
but lift your voice with strength.
Be no more afraid of your voice now,
nor more ashamed of its being heard,
than when you sang the songs of Satan.
Pretty much.
I was there for all of it: now that I think back, I wish I'd had popcorn.
A slight correction on Crazed Mike:
While he did agree with me regarding Bel's intolerable practices of not appointing any new administrators after SIX months of WW clearly being absent from forum affairs, what went on between them was quite a bit personal. Mike and his girlfriend, "lil akroma" both posted on this site. At the time, they were spending the summer about 600 miles away from home at Mike's grandmother's house. Mike, in confidence (having been Bel's friend since he became a mod when sneaky retired, at my recommendation), told Bel that once they got back to their hometown, he was considering breaking up with lil akroma. Belgareth in his wonderfully hypocritical fashion (after promising to keep this private), goes and tells lil akroma. The end result? lil akroma and Crazed Mike got to spend 3 really awkward months stuck 600 miles away from home because Belgareth wanted to be the Knight in Shining ArmorTM. Quite naturally, this factored into Hannes' decision to replace Belgareth, as screwin' around with users' and staffs' personal lives is very inappropriate for an Administrator.
A slight correction:
At the time, I was a really pretentious dick and was being retarded and decided to be cavalier about nipples. These days I've flip-flopped.
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