2021-05-19 17:21:13

Hosts of audiogames.net,

We hope this message finds you and your families well during these unprecedented times.

This letter is being written with help from and on behalf of the current audiogames.net administrative staff. Although we have done our best to keep this missive as concise as possible, there is a great deal to cover, and we need your input as soon as possible.

First and foremost, the email notification systems are down, making it impossible for users and administrators to get email alerts.

Second, there has been a considerable uptick in site errors as of late.
For instance, visitors have begun to face issues loading pages:
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3979 … -going-on/

Additionally, the "Latest News" section on the main page has been completely wiped
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3994 … s-section/
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3992 … up-for-me/

Here are examples of more miscellaneous issues, such as  404 and 403 HTTP responses when loading certain topics
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/4002 … te-errors/
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/39921/403-forbidden/

The MySQL max_user_connections error is especially concerning from a few angles. Either connections aren't properly being closed (unlikely), bots have been relentlessly hitting the server (The CDN should be protecting that in theory), or someone has attempted to launch a concerted attack to see how it would respond. Even if the latter doesn't turn out to be the case, we consider it an exploitable attack vector, and would not be surprised if other lurkers have come to the same conclusion, some possibly with nefarious intent.
On a similar note, admins are also entirely unable to access the IP stats interface due to a similar MySQL error, which has been a persistent problem for years. This glitch inhibits our ability to locate users with alternative accounts attempting to skirt their way around bans. Further, we have discovered that banned users can post as guests to the restricted topic, possibly due to the fact that the default user group is the restricted group.

Now, let's move on to a slightly less technical issue.
When users are punished, or when they experience site issues, they are encouraged to reach out to "[email protected]" as per forum software. However, no active staff member has access to this address. We must instead resort to reports, PMs and personal handles in order to establish contact, It is impossible to guess just how many messages from the last couple of years have disappeared down this proverbial black hole.

At various points over the last while, many of us - staff and users alike - have commented that this place is falling apart. There have been stretches of downtime where we couldn't help but step back and wonder just what would happen if the site never came back.
Judging by topics echoing these sentiments, this was not a unique perspective.
As a result, one of the team members ended up rolling their own offsite backup solution, crawling every page and topic and outputting to HTML as well as an SQL database. Funnily enough, another poster had the same idea:
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3970 … the-forum/
As a team, however, we soon realized that this attempted solution would not suffice. Amidst a mounting number of errors and concerns, a team member turned to the game database and wrote a downloader for that as well:
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/3992 … ownloader/
This is about as inefficient as it gets. The backup frequency has been spaced out, but each of these still ends up counterproductively hitting the server for hours, potentially leading to the MySQL connection limit error and further complicating the process for everyone.

Apart from the technical issues, however, is a legal one. Put simply, this community has been openly inconsistent with regard to copyrighted assets. It has historically been okay to promote fine titles that use and/or reference copyrighted assets without clear intentions of harm (take Jim Kitchen's games, for instance) yet stealing sounds from an indie developer is very much considered heinous and wrong. In an effort to deal with this problem, we set about clarifying the rules and trying to put in place a copyright policy that was more in keeping with standards upheld elsewhere on the internet. Our wish here is to maintain standards which make sense and which do not unduly punish community members, however as our footprint grows, we must be aware, now as never before, that our actions are more apt to be noticed and thus more apt to elicit negative consequences. Therefore, we are asking for your help in establishing and deciding upon a protocol which is legally stable and which represents your intended vision for the community.

In essence, a lot of us are deeply concerned about the longevity of this wonderful community, and are intent on preserving it for as long as possible.
With all due respect for you and your work in establishing this website and its attendant community, however, the current administration is in agreement that we have no interest in remaining passive while problems persist. It is unrealistic to expect us to maintain this community, given the various problems that we are powerless to correct. In a topic from 2019, Sander had expressed a willingness to consider letting others help work on the site. As such, we would like to revisit this topic, as there are three (3) members of the current staff team with the requisite experience to maintain the community if given the access to do so. Carter, for instance, is primarily a software developer, but has done backend development and can write PHP at scale. He has also contributed code to a number of games and open-source projects. Jack actively maintains the audiogames archive, found here:
https://www.agarchive.net
We are more than willing to discuss our qualifications in more detail, with links, code, and whatever else might prove necessary.

While we recognize that you have busy lives and little time - per your own admission - to maintain the website, we are united in our stance on these matters. As a team, there is only so much that we can expect to do without the proper authorization, and we have been diligently doing the best job we can under the circumstances. We are asking you to respond to us at your earliest convenience. In the interest of transparency, we wish to inform you that a copy of this letter will be posted in a thread to the audiogames.net forum, so that the user base knows we are continuing to strive toward better maintenance and clearer standards. In addition, while it is not our intention to badger you or to display excessive force, it is important that you realize that we will not wait forever for a response. Should you choose not to respond to our request within a reasonable time, we are prepared to abandon our positions on the staff team, and to cease maintenance of the forum and site entirely. It is our sincere hope that such an event does not come to pass, but we are unanimous in our resolve to take this step should all other options prove fruitless. We would truly appreciate a chance to work with you to ensure that this community continues to thrive, as it has become a strong and ever-growing collection of individuals from across the globe who are all interested in the pastime of audiogames. We have great respect for the work you have done, and it is this respect which motivated us to reach out to you, to see if we could alleviate the pressure this website may be placing upon you. I believe that all of us have the same ultimate goal in mind, and we fervently hope to realize that goal by working cooperatively to solve the list of problems cited above. We thank you for your time and attention.

The audiogames.net administrative team

2021-05-19 22:50:34

Folks:

After some deliberation, this topic is being opened. Anyone with a valuable contribution is free to post as they please. In fact it might be helpful to lay out any further site errors you may run into so as to centralize some information and gather metrics on what is and isn't reproduceable.

Though we always strive for a platform accepting of all opinions, please understand that this is a monumental time in forum history, and as such we will be holding posts in this topic to a higher standard than usual. All replies are expected to remain cogent, well thought out and on-topic, and we reserve the right to delete those that don't uphold this heighten standard.

2021-05-19 23:13:26

Here's another one that hasn't been fixed for some time. If you search for certain terms, you'll get an error saying "Insane query. Aborting." This can always be reproduced with certain terms, such as "Windows XP."

Oh no! Somebody released the h key! Everybody run and hide!

2021-05-20 00:08:18

That might actually be a constraint rather than a bug, what with those kinds of queries generating tens of thousands of hits. It's also fair to note that when searching for multiple words, it will look for those multiple words used in context, but will also fetch posts that simply have those words, irrespective of the order.

2021-05-20 00:51:23

If they do reply or the staff is given permission to edit the website or the code or what ever. DOn't forget the emails, and if possible make a notification systom so you no when you get a PM sent. That you can turn off and on in your profile settings, thanks.

Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvelous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man."
― Frederic Chopin.

2021-05-20 02:30:40

@titan_of_war: You know what, totally forgot about broken email notifications in the letter. Going to go add that in.

2021-05-20 09:01:08

Hello.
My idea is related to deleting topics. And before anyone starts flipping out, no I'm not saying go enable topic deletion.
However, it would be nice if we could have topic deletion, but with some limitations.
The first one could be that each user has a set number of topics they can delete in a given period of time.
The second idea is that a topic can't be deleted if it has a certain number of posts.
With this, there would need to be a log system that mods can access if another user reports it and the poster deletes it

If you wish to contact me privately, you can do so in the following ways.
Telegram, Rich_Beardsley. Discord, RichBeardsley. Facebook, Rich W. Beardsley
Twitter, RichBeardsley. Email, [email protected]. Both iMessages and emails are welcome.
Battle tag, Rich#12744. You can also add me through my email address.

2021-05-20 09:48:31

Broken email notifications are actually fixable by us through something like Mailgun, with the one caveat that you wouldn't be able to receive messages from the "audiogames.net" domain.

Optimally the hosts are able to (let us?) help us get the internal server back up and running, or minimally provide us with the means to ensure that we can send from this domain without the constant spam battle.

PM notifications are close to if not at the top of the list of features we'd like to add if given the opportunity, I'd personally love to take this on.

Regarding topic deletions, this isn't priority though I'd be open to exploring a solution. Admins already have the ability to delete topics, so for right now I think it would be fair for the OP to click report and provide a reason why they think everyone's posts should be removed. If there is little conversation or another extenuating circumstance, we'll go ahead and ice it. The only internal forum changes would probably be to allow deletion of posts without any replies, as I think that would have far less potential for abuse. In the meantime, feel free to edit whatever you see fit.

Thanks for the suggestions.

2021-05-20 18:11:18

Well, it's one of those things that you say something that seems ok to you, you weren't intending to start drama, the next posts in the topic cause drama, and the poster wants to get rid of it before the situation can get too far out of hand. Therefore, there are some good uses for topic deletion as long as it's not abused

If you wish to contact me privately, you can do so in the following ways.
Telegram, Rich_Beardsley. Discord, RichBeardsley. Facebook, Rich W. Beardsley
Twitter, RichBeardsley. Email, [email protected]. Both iMessages and emails are welcome.
Battle tag, Rich#12744. You can also add me through my email address.

2021-05-20 18:36:40

maybe, a way to diferenchiate the good from the bad in this situation, is have the admins be the final say in deleeting topics, but have us as a kind of hey, maybe this would be a good idea

i am a system, i have headmates, and that is my life, and my discord is rings2006wilson#8609

2021-05-20 23:01:45

This is scarey, like this is like the last defense you no.
This line just sent me chills down my back, i dunno why though.
"Should you choose not to respond to our request within a reasonable time, we are prepared to abandon our positions on the staff team, and to cease maintenance of the forum and site entirely."
I really hope they respawned to this, but i have a question did you like, actually send like a paper letter or what.

Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvelous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man."
― Frederic Chopin.

2021-05-20 23:29:31

@11, Can you really blame them? I mean, the admins can only do so much, so the web masters, who don't forget are paying for this thing need to step up to the plate and do their jobs. And if extreme measures are what we need for that to happen, then at that point I guess you have to do it. Not that you want to, but they're desperate at this point

If you wish to contact me privately, you can do so in the following ways.
Telegram, Rich_Beardsley. Discord, RichBeardsley. Facebook, Rich W. Beardsley
Twitter, RichBeardsley. Email, [email protected]. Both iMessages and emails are welcome.
Battle tag, Rich#12744. You can also add me through my email address.

2021-05-20 23:32:44

Sorry for double post, but I sent a link to the Creative Heroes Facebook page to bring it to their attention, so let's see how it goes. The last post on that page was in June of last year when TLOU 2 first came out, so I'm not keeping my hopes high that I'll get a response

If you wish to contact me privately, you can do so in the following ways.
Telegram, Rich_Beardsley. Discord, RichBeardsley. Facebook, Rich W. Beardsley
Twitter, RichBeardsley. Email, [email protected]. Both iMessages and emails are welcome.
Battle tag, Rich#12744. You can also add me through my email address.

2021-05-20 23:56:35

Hello,
It's actually really sad that it had to come down to this. This is definitely a very significant and important website for audiogaming, so just like everybody else, I do hope we can finally get a response and things can be sorted out. Well written, and thanks for your effort, current Audiogames staff. All things considered, you're doing everything possible to minimize the impact. I'm just sad that in the end, if we don't get a response, a few stupid spammers managed to destroy something so valuable. Granted, this restricted users spam wasn't the only issue, but it was definitely a major one and the fact people can't even register now is certainly something unexpected and a sign things need to change.
Hopefully, the best possible outcome can be achieved.

2021-05-21 01:22:32 (edited by GrannyCheeseWheel 2021-05-21 01:24:03)

I think this is a necessary step. It's a waste of the staff's time and quite frankly, a slap in their faces as they've attempted to keep this sight going with no support from the web hosts. If this continues, there is simply no point in falling pray to the sunk cost fallacy that continuing to try to maintain this sight would be. Thus, resigning their positions would be the only solution. After all, it's not only the web hosts who have lives.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2021-05-21 02:00:12

Honestly, i really don't think their going to reply, so i hope everybuddy got a backup plan lol.
I mean where are we supposed to go after this?

Bach is an astronomer, discovering the most marvelous stars. Beethoven challenges the universe. I only try to express the soul and the heart of man."
― Frederic Chopin.

2021-05-21 05:57:27

@16, Elten maybe?

If you wish to contact me privately, you can do so in the following ways.
Telegram, Rich_Beardsley. Discord, RichBeardsley. Facebook, Rich W. Beardsley
Twitter, RichBeardsley. Email, [email protected]. Both iMessages and emails are welcome.
Battle tag, Rich#12744. You can also add me through my email address.

2021-05-21 08:49:39 (edited by ignatriay 2021-05-21 08:53:15)

Can they be contacted via facebook or another social media platform to send them the letter? I mean, theoretically the more options / platforms we can contact them in, the likelier they'll see this and respond. Speaking of responding... By, reasonable time, what timeframe are we talking about, 6 weaks? 2 months? 72 or more hours? Really hoping for the best here though. In any case, we should prepare a backup and start looking for different options should the worse happen. Its not that i'm beeing pessimistic by any means; but we should prepare for multiple scenarios just in case.

sound designer for mental vision, and Eurofly3.
take a look at
My freesound pageWhere I post sounds I record. ps: if you use my sounds, remember to credit me smiley

2021-05-21 08:54:45

@17 where?

2021-05-21 11:06:38

@17, in it's current state? Hell no. I had a look at it and... nope. I understand the guy has to pay for server costs, but that pricing model is just plain weird.

2021-05-21 12:06:36

I dont think we'll get a response

2021-05-21 12:21:50

Folks, let's remember post 2. "I don't think we'll get a response", and other such things, are on topic, and they're cogent, but are they productive?
The thing that we, as a community, absolutely do not want or need to do here is to make anyone feel as if there's an angry mob waiting to scream at them if they get close. The staff team opened this thread with the understanding that productive discussion might be warranted. Pure naysaying is not productive. Please bear this in mind.

Check out my Manamon text walkthrough at the following link:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z8ls3rc3f4mkb … n.txt?dl=1

2021-05-21 14:04:35

I've read this topic:
https://forum.audiogames.net/topic/4076 … en-letter/
And to be honest, i think agreeing to OP's opinion about new forum, is better than fixing this site from all over.
Also the subject about webmasters, ETC.
I think you should accept his offer, and get start from skrach.

Yours kindly

2021-05-21 16:56:17

@17
Yeah... No, not Elton.
I don't like Elton much. The interface is kind of weird and it's slow moving around the thing.
As Jayde says, let's give this a while and see where it goes. If they reply they reply and if they don't they don't.
I don't think they'll respond, as it's been almost two years and many people have tried, but what if they do? What if in a few weeks we get an email or a post from whoever, and it says that they've just been working on some huge updates this whole time and have also been really busy with other things in life? What if something happened to them during the pandemic? We really don't know.

-----
Matthew's Horse Needs Your Support!
Discord: misterkrabs69

2021-05-21 16:59:18

moderation:

Thanks Jayde, sums up my thoughts exactly. I'd like to request that we leave the negative sentiments to a minimum and instead focus on the original point of this thread. There is a good reason it was left closed for a while, after all. To reiterate, please note all suggestions and concerns with the functioning of the site so staff and hosts have a central location to track them. All developments will in turn be posted here.

A more lenient discussion is being had in the other thread, so feel free to stop by with all the commentary, criticism, projection, supposition and hockey scores you can muster.

As I wrote over here, we stand firm in our commitment to abide by the terms set out in the letter. Meaning there will be no starting from scratch, or in any way shifting course until adequate time (we're thinking around a month) has elapsed.

A realistic timeline is roughly three months or so before you start to see any monumental changes. Hopefully it's less, but this isn't a small undertaking by any stretch of the imagination. There are many variables that must be accounted for, and we're going to tread carefully to ensure the best possible outcome for everyone. There will regardless be forward movement, eventually.

Thanks for the understanding