NOTICE So long, and thanks for all the fish

Unless every single sentence is addressed by kev i really see no reason to continue on assembler.

Most users worth noting have moved on to other sites. The knowledge has moved. The community has moved. Why be a part of a site when its owner is so disillusioned that he doesnt even respect the community he helped build.
Those were some bold assumptions buddy.

 

I think he was depressed and disenchanted more than anything when he wrote that. Don't put too much weight on what people say when they are in distress.

 

I might be less active, but I'm sure I'll keep stopping by.

Don't forget to reply in the mod application discussion if you still want to be considered! A mod can edit your application to state that... me if you're quick lol

 

This comes as no surprise but is still as disappointing as ever. This is definitely the end of an era for me. This site seems to be becoming a shadow of what I remember it being a little under 5 years ago, let alone what you all experienced prior to me coming on. Unless some SERIOUS changes are made then I don't see much in the way of forward progress. It had to come to a head I guess. If not now, when?

EDIT: Now we lose yet another. Becoming a mod doesn't sound all too keen at this point.

 

It's sad, sure... but most of us will still be around. Just without the stress of running the site. It's gonna feel weird... but nice! Like not having the kids running riot

If Kev keeps on top of things, there's no reason why things can't improve. He needs to not disappear until there's a team in place who can deal with everything, though. If he feels it's too much for him... that'll be a real shame, as it's a good place.

 

Crazy how fast things can happen but if I was in your position I would do the same.

Five mods in total have stepped down,how many are left?

 

Six, actually. Hex quit in Karsten's thread. Jackhead and Johnny are left.

You'll be able to follow the staff list on the members page here.

 

Damn,only 2 mods remain,that's not enough for this site,it's not looking good here.

 

I cannot imagine that many people would want to step forward to fill the roles after seeing Kev's attitude and disrespect towards the staff that have gave such a great deal of their time to this community.

 

Sorry to hear you are leaving. Thank you for all your hard work! Take care and enjoy the rest of your 2018!

 

I picked a hell of a time to join ._. I was just logging in to check if I had any new PM’s and then all these resignations popped up.

I have no idea about any of the back story to all this, but it’s important to take care of yourself first. So good luck retro. I said this on the thread that @HEX1GON made, but this goes for all of you. Thanks for helping make the site we have today possible. There is still a ton of great information on here that might have otherwise been lost, and thanks for trying to manage it the best you could.

Also, @retro thanks for being the first person to reply to my welcome thread. You’re awesome

 

Daaaaaaamn.

 

Thanks to all for the kind messages. It's been a rollercoaster of emotions, but I've enjoyed conversing with you all and can finally go back to just doing that. As I said above, it'll be like when the kids leave for college - strange, but peaceful!

Apparently, I didn't make myself clear enough. The other mods got replies to their threads (including those who resigned quietly in the mod forum, after they were demoted ). I got a PM from Kev saying he would appreciate it if I would stop posting mod forum content in the regular forums.

To avoid confusion:

I QUIT.

Kevin, @ASSEMbler, @ASSEMblergames_Admin, whoever you feel like being today - please accept my resignation and demote me. Thanks!

 

In recent years, watching the prices of certain Saturn games skyrocket online has killed any remaining enthusiasm I had to complete my physical collection. My younger self would never accept this, but I'm content to stick with filling the few leftover blanks in my wish list through emulation or running ISO files on real hardware using the many options now available to us. With real life priorities worse than ever, I've even taken to selling off some of my rarer titles, though I must point out that I've never sold anything for close to what can be found on eBay today. Deep Fear and Panzer Dragoon Saga are two such examples I feel are currently being inflated for reasons I'll never understand, and I've actually got a theory that a small number of copies are trading hands between members of a small circle to influence the market's demand. Taking this further, I was forced to part with my pristine Deep Fear a while back, but not before making a discrete "watermark" of sorts that I've seen appearing over and over in auction pictures, with the buy-it-now figure inching up every time. Without revealing too much, I've seen this one copy jump across Europe, fluctuating between £100 and right up to £350 over the last three year. When did this hobby become a joke? Thanks, but I take my pleasure from the game itself - not the box or instruction manual being in mint condition!

 

Collecting anything as a hobby gets spoiled when people come in and invest in the niche as a business for gain. At least with retro videogames, there's emulation that allow us to enjoy the games anyways.

 

From Xenon.7/Xenomega, a past staff member on this website:

"That site has been a big scam from the beginning. Kevin will bully people who don't share their goods, while he holds onto his (not that he ever had anything that interested me, so don't think this response is motivated by greed). More importantly, he's literally scammed people and buried it by abusing his position of power in this community. And most importantly, and this applies to everyone on the site: I remember in the time I was staff, I was given access to a backdoor for the website by Pikkon (who was a nice guy, I have no quarrel with him, and it wasn't his creation/idea, it was Kevin's), where they could sit there and view your private messages (PMs) and abuse a lot of other privacies you people likely didn't know they were. It's likely they'll deny it now, discredit me trying to say I'm just upset, but I can assure you it's not the case. My main account wasn't banned or anything of the sort, I have no reason to stop visiting assemblergames other than the fact that they had nothing that interested me, and I knew it was doing really sketchy shit behind closed doors.

Long story short: Assemblergames has been backdoored , viewing your private messages and abusing their user's privacy for a long time. I saw the control panel to do it myself when I was staff. And being staff didn't entitle you access to it, someone who knew about it would've had to share access with you, so not all staff would know about it. But I'm sure a lot of people won't believe it, and will keep donating money to Kevin every time he's 'sick' or something of that nature. To each their own."

 

Ah fuck. This is going downhill fast... You've been a champ tho, Retro. Lots of respect!

I haven't been monitoring this process, so I don't know all the details, and I hope I don't step on anyone's toes... But obviously a lot of bad decisions have been made, or rather none made at all, due to a pretty heavy cloud that's been hanging over Assembler for a while, and which is the heaviest at the top I assume. Being admin of a forum like this can easily become a depressing, growing snowball of chores. Sooner or later you gonna pop, unless you got a plan B, and C, and D for the many scenarios.

IMO I think maybe this site could use a serious clean-out. The main admin should have a couple sub admins that he can delegate responsabilities and power to if needed. There needs to be strict rules, but the strictest of all should be to Never walk alone. Pride is good, until you burst or shut the world out to breath a little without saying anything. The site should never be unattended. If the main admin catches a cold, has a serious family situation going on or whatever, give the wheel to one of the sub admins, if he's not able, give it to the other sub admin. And there should be fluent communication. In the most sudden turn of events, at least give necessary info to work with. Even though someone perhaps shouldn't be admin if he needs one week per month to "chill out", it's best to speak the truth than nothing at all and have everything come crashing down on you silently and not being able to get your head above water.

Or we could just torch Assembler and move over to Facebook entirely.

 

That's a staff member BEFORE Xenforo, when it was vBulletin.

https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/forum/general/chit-chat/321429-can-admin-read-all-pms

It's no secret that the site owner can access the database. Admins can log in as you on Xenforo without your password, too. That's not a "back door", it's a feature of the software. And all forums save posts AND private messages in plain text. So.. if someone has access to the database, they have access to your PMs.

No "private" message is truly private when a) you're sending it to another person and b) either one of you could have your login details compromised (or the site could be hacked) and the data viewed. Hence why you shouldn't leave any private information you wouldn't want getting out anywhere that could be compromised. Unfortunately, that means don't shop online, don't join websites that ask for your address / phone number / credit card details and so on. Your personal security is your own responsibility. You have to weigh up the risk vs. the purpose of putting those details out there, and whether you can delete them. This is why you, the users, should be asking Kev to let you edit your PMs. At the moment, you have to rely on both of you "leaving" the conversation (that's what Xenforo calls PMs).

I think the attraction of a forum vs. Facebook is that you're anonymous to some degree here. On Facebook, you're supposed to use your real information, which makes you much more traceable. It also makes your friends and family more traceable, which is a problem when psychos decide they want to hurt you.

 

Pros and cons, as with most things. I think a lot of people would act differently for the better if they were in the open.
And hearing that staff and members are being threatened by morons* just make me wanna take a hit of crack and twist some necks! But in 99.99% of cases they're socially underdeveloped and can be considered trash mail. I basically mark and delete everything that doesn't come from anything I'm waiting for, or from somewhere I'm active. Trash it on the second.

 

Yes, it's no secret admins have access to the database. And no shit it's in plain text. But there's laws in many countries, as mentioned in the link you had sent yourself, where purposefully looking through this information is not allowed unless for maintenance/etc or for a crime. There's a difference between having messages in a database/having the ability to read them, and actually installing a backdoor control panel to purposefully view people's PMs with the explicit purpose of doing so. Please refer to your own link, post #17. And once again, it wasn't just PMs that they were playing with. You missed the point. You also claim he was there for vbulletin, but then use xenforo as a defense, disregarding the fact that Xenforo is designed to allow this, and specifically doesn't call private messages private messages for a reason. The kinds of things they were doing were beyond how vbulletin was intended to be used, and is illegal in many countries flat out. And it doesn't take away from the fact that assembler flat out scammed people and used his power to drown out any noise. You can downplay the role that Kevin had played, but it was entirely malicious, and talking to Xenon, he specifically told me cases for which they had used the control panel, beyond just creeping peoples PMs to take people's betas they paid good money for, and none of it spelled out 'integrity'. Sugar coat it how you want.