Lookin' good!

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blackcauldron85
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by blackcauldron85 »

I second that!! So many of us are so grateful for your research, posts, and passion for Disney, and sharing that with us!
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Sotiris
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by Sotiris »

^Right back at you, Amy! :wink: Image
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blackcauldron85
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by blackcauldron85 »

:thumb: :bow: <3
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Rumpelstiltskin
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by Rumpelstiltskin »

I don't know if this post belongs here, but since we are talking about discussion boards and what's positive about this place, there's something bugging me about what we see on the net today. Especially places like reddit. Everything is better than that horrible Reddit, which I hate with a passion. How did they become so big? Apparently the creators cheated somehow (can't find the article right here and now).

Most of all I hate it because of the downvote function, which is abused for all it's worth. It is originally meant to take care of trolls and haters, but instead anonymous users is abusing it just in spite, for unknown reasons, to get rid of competition or whatever. To be honest, I don't feel the need for neither a upvote or a downvote function, but the downvote is by far the worst. It also prevents new posts from ending up on the "hot" page and is restricted to the "new posts" page instead. Dividing it all into "new" and "hot" is another stupid idea I can't stand.

Almost as bad as the downvoting is the moderators playing god. I was permanently blocked from one of its forums less then an hour after I visited it for the first time because of a lying moderator who didn't even have the spine to tell me it was him instead of "a colleague". I know that even trolls and haters pretend to be innocent when blocked. "Why, I didn't do anything wrong", they say, even if they very well know what they did. But sometimes people really are innocent and the moderators are the ones who did something wrong. What I did was putting a lot of effort into a post, then seeing it get downvoted for no reason, and when another user, who even was a moderator, makes a stupid comment, I tell him or her that "I think I'll rather delete the whole thing", which I did. Then I got blocked. The reason? "Trolling, vote manipulation, delete & retreat." Me, who always take pride in being honest and follow the rules. I asked why, and was blocked from not being able to send private messages to moderators. A coward.

Another problem is that moderators who rules more than one board can ban someone from all its other boards, just because they can. Or for some other weird reason. I posted in one forum, and when I posted in another, I got blocked from the first one. Not because what I wrote, because it was a robot that sent me the message in the same instant I posted it. It was because of the forum. I posted a question about the president. A place called "The Donald" was the biggest forum, so I posted it there without bothering to read any of the already existing comments. Just as I would have posted it in a forum dedicated to Obama if he was still president, or Bush, or Clinton, and so on. But since Trump is president I was blocked, because many users in that forum apparently supported neo Nazis and was known to harass other users in other forums, something I have never done. So they needed to protect themselves against someone like me.

This wouldn't have been a problem if there were proper alternatives. But reddit is now so big that it's sadly the number one place you need to go to if you want to take part in some online discussion about some topic.

Last year I also found community.comicbookresources.com/forumdisplay, which was just the kind of place I was looking for. But I was new, and unfortunately ended up disagreeing with a couple of the veterans over something insignificant they made a big deal out of. The problem with that place is that you get rewarded the longer you have been a member. So you can become a moderator based on seniority, not competence or personal skills. Or get special treatment. After ignoring personal attacks for some time (one of them claimed to be a psychiatric nurse and started giving me insulting diagnosis), I did the mistake of letting myself getting provoked and snapped back, giving them a taste of their own medicine. Permanently blocked because someone decided to pull a fight with me, which I tried not to get involved with as long as I could. They of course were not blocked (checked on a computer at the library because I can't even visit the place due to the ban of IP-addresses). Sending emails to the moderators was useless as I got no replies back.

imdb was perfect the way it was, but had two problems; trolls and moderators who were absent or didn't do their job. Imdb, and this place, is what a discussion board in my opinion is supposed to look like. Not the mess we see on facebook, or twitter and other social media, and not on reddit.

(Disqus is not bad either, but is mostly used in the comments sections under articles all over the net, and is not really part of a discussion board the way I see it.)

So I appreciate old school boards like this as long as they exist. Where people know how to use a polite tone, don't harass each other, are allowed to disagree, no annoying voting systems, a design that is clean and easy to navigate in, and no moderators abusing their power. Having seen some old news reports about the internet on Youtube, that's what many believed internet would turn into when it was still new regarding boards and such; a place where likeminded people could find each other, share news and talk about topics that interested them. And that's how it was too, in the beginning. But once something becomes "common property" and everybody starts using it, it becomes the old wild west. Which is why I hope those boards that still works the way they were intended to will still be around for some time yet.
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Disney's Divinity
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by Disney's Divinity »

I have no part in forums/sites like reddit, but that place is clearly infested with bots. Downvoting sounds like a neat way to control a narrative, downvoting en masse particular posts to make that opinion seem to be the minority to give power to a fringe.
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Listening to most often lately:
Ariana Grande ~ "we can't be friends (wait for your love)"
Ariana Grande ~ "imperfect for you"
Kacey Musgraves ~ "The Architect"
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disneyprincess11
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by disneyprincess11 »

Sooooooo, what happened yesterday
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Disney's Divinity
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by Disney's Divinity »

The forum lives! :pink: I didn't quite realize how attached I am to the place until I thought it might be gone! :(
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Listening to most often lately:
Ariana Grande ~ "we can't be friends (wait for your love)"
Ariana Grande ~ "imperfect for you"
Kacey Musgraves ~ "The Architect"
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Sotiris
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by Sotiris »

Our little forum that could is back online! Sorry for the outage, people. We had a problem with our host. Thankfully, Luke was able to contact them and have the issue resolved.
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Jules
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by Jules »

HALLELUJAH!!! :mickana:

I thought it was gone for good!
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UmbrellaFish
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by UmbrellaFish »

Glad it’s back! :D
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D82
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by D82 »

I'm so glad the forum is back! :D Thank Luke on our behalf, Sotiris, and thank you too for working to solve the problem! At first, I thought it was my Internet connection, as coincidentally, it was very slow last Sunday. But I later noticed the forum was the only page that didn't load for me. Then I remembered you have the same name on Twitter, Sotiris, and I was relieved to find out there that it wasn't just me and that something was being done to fix it.
Disney's Divinity wrote:The forum lives! :pink: I didn't quite realize how attached I am to the place until I thought it might be gone! :(
Same here! You don't realize how much something means to you until you lose it (or are close to, like in this case).
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unprincess
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by unprincess »

OMG! Thank goodness! Ive been freaking out for about a week! :o I thought the site went down permanently, another victim of not being "social media" friendly. :roll:

This place is my go to for Disney info thanks to guys like Sotiris and others, I know there's some others here that help keep us up to date with links and stuff but I cant remember specific names now exactly(other than Sotiris b/c of how much he posts lol), so big thanks for all of you guys who make this place so great and keep it running. :up: :clap:
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Disney's Divinity
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by Disney's Divinity »

YAAAAAY!!!! We're back again! :D :pink: :pink: :pink: :pink: :pink: :pink:
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Listening to most often lately:
Ariana Grande ~ "we can't be friends (wait for your love)"
Ariana Grande ~ "imperfect for you"
Kacey Musgraves ~ "The Architect"
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blackcauldron85
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by blackcauldron85 »

Thanks for letting me know, DD!!

Just to have it handy, since we did not have contact info for everyone, a decade ago, an alternate forum was made at https://disneymania.forumotion.com/ for when DVDizzy is down. Please feel free to bookmark that in case.
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D82
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by D82 »

I glad the forum is back once more! :D I hope it doesn't go down again.

However, there's still the problem of the glitch. Some of us have been using the backup forum blackcauldron85 talked about these days while this one was down. Some people who had long wanted to be part of this forum heard about that place and also joined us, as well as others who are already members here but can't log in anymore because they changed their passwords or made some change to their accounts. I didn't know that could happen. I've known about the glitch for around half a year now, I think, but didn't know it was that bad. New members should be able to join. Same about the ones who lost access to their accounts. And it's a shame these people who have now joined us there can't continue with us here.

I know we've bothered Luke enough recently with these recent issues, but couldn't something be done to fix that problem? I don't know much about technology, so I don't know if it's even possible or if it would cost money. If that's the case, maybe we could all cooperate. I wouldn't mind contributing as long as the amount each one would have to give wasn't too big. What do you guys think about all this?
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blackcauldron85
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by blackcauldron85 »

I'm always happy to do what I can to help out our community. (Yeah, I can't spend too much $ either, but if it's a matter of fixing the glitches and we all can contribute something, then of course I think most of us would do what we could.) I'm still going to post on both sites- I don't want to abandon people on the other forum- there are great people on both! I don't know how much new membership the other site will get, but even today we have a new member there. I'm just happy to have people to talk Disney with, you know? The new user/old users with password issues definitely sour this place a bit, just because a lot of people don't have access here. I will defend this site and our community until my dying days (or until my memory becomes so bad I don't remember it!), but it tarnishes the site a bit. And it's not anyone's fault- it just is a part of what the site has become.

And! This totally may not be an appropriate spot to mention it, and it's not a jab at Luke AT ALL, because he's done AMAZING things with this site. Remember back in the day how there were a bunch of members who did DVD reviews, or Disney star interviews for the main site? Especially with different streaming services now, I think it'd be awesome if some of us could bring new content to the site. You know, those of us with Disney+ could review Disney+ movies and shows, and someone with HBO Max could review those, Apple TV, same. I know that back in the day when I did interviews for the site, I did not have a fancy TV or sound system or anything, so I didn't qualify to do DVD and Blu-ray reviews. I don't have a 4K TV, but we have a kind-of decent size flat-screen with a soundbar. I don't know if Luke is interested, but it makes me sad that the site surely isn't getting the traffic that it once did, and I bet a lot of us would be willing to help out and bring some reviews back to the site.

And, especially because a lot of us still buy physical media, and we buy films anyway, whether Disney or classic films, etc., I'm sure we could produce some great content. (I know that a few years ago when I was a late switcher to Blu-rays, I heavily used DVDizzy's reviews, in addition to Blu-ray.com's, to make informed choices about which films to buy/which DVDs to sell.) We could maybe help the site flourish a bit. And if $ is an issue- I know that there is a Patreon for the Century Project (see front page if you don't know what I am referring to). I was a Patreon until recently, when my dog had some high vet bills, but that could be an option if money is preventing the site from being what it could be...
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BK
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by BK »

Btw, is the main site in any danger of being disconnected?

Since it has no more updates (last post in May 2020).

The review pages for the animated movies are very helpful since most places don't list or go through them. And obviously most were on DVD.

I know even the reviews themselves are actually way out of date. I think the latest was in 2014?

But it's still accurate for the previous releases.
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Jules
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by Jules »

I don't know BK. It certainly seems like Luke has moved on to something else.

However, I imagine if he were to pull the plug on the site to avoid hosting fees we'd hear about it beforehand and will have ample time to archive both the main site and these forums for posterity ...

Right? :) :huh:
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Disney's Divinity
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by Disney's Divinity »

Yay, the forum is getting upgraded with more sections! :pink:
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Listening to most often lately:
Ariana Grande ~ "we can't be friends (wait for your love)"
Ariana Grande ~ "imperfect for you"
Kacey Musgraves ~ "The Architect"
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blackcauldron85
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Re: Lookin' good!

Post by blackcauldron85 »

Whoa, whoa, whoa!!!!!!!! Some changes have a'brewed!!! Have to get reacclimated! Lookin' good!
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