The winds, they are a changin'.

Lanzman and I have been communicating for the past several days and he's agreed to take over as WF.net's fourth owner. We both agreed that it would be better to just hand over the center seat rather than maintain some sort of shadow partner.

We both wanted to let those of you on staff have a heads up before anything is finalized to allow you to have your say in the matter. I'll let Lanz say his piece from here.

Thanks, Elwood.

The moment you've all secretly known was coming is now here. The teal-colored reign of terror has come to pass.

Elwood has filled me in on the technical details of how this is going to work as far as licensing and webhosting and whatnot. Short version, I'll be buying a vbulletin license. The webhost is going to stay the same, tho Elwood tells me there's some downtime associated with swapping the account. We both thought this might also be a good time to upgrade the board to the latest version of the software. O2C, Kyle, I am counting on both of you. I hope you'll remain as tech guys.

Everyone else, I am not looking to fire anyone or shuffle mods or anything. I think the team Elwood put together works pretty well. Of course, anyone who wants to opt out can do so with no prejudice.

There is one big change to the board, tho. Due to the circumstances of my employment, I can NOT own a site that hosts porn. The White Room will be going away. I foresee some complaints about that, but really . . . if you can't find porn on the internet, you probably shouldn't be allowed near a computer anyway.

The rules we're all used to operating under here are not changing. I like the minimal ruleset and think it works well. I will be taking over as head admin, but Elwood is invited (encouraged) to stay on staff as an admin. Tamar, your spot is not affected . . . you're still deputy HMFIC.

In any case, the old order changeth, but not too much. Just a different name on the masthead.

Express yourselves, people.

I predict people calling for your head by sundown. I don't have White Room access anyway since I didn't really want porn on a board that I visit from work so that makes no difference to me.

Well, shit Elwood, sorry to hear about your circumstances. I'm sure Lanz will be a benevolent dictator.

Count me in. I've never done a software upgrade, so O2C had better stick around if he knows what's good for him. Do you know when the downtime is likely? We'll need to put together a list of things we're going to need to transfer over and manually change (like any custom hacks, etc.).

Is having the Gallery around going to be an issue for you regarding the employment situation? I mean, from a technical standpoint, the thing slams the DB like a frat boy slams 40s, but are there any non-technical concerns there?

We might also want to take a look at reworking the templates and such so that a change we make to one transfers across all of them, rather than transferring across most of them. But this is all details.

Anyway, good luck to the both of you!

As Elwood explained it to me, the gallery is toast when we make the move from him to me due to how the webhost does their thing. I mean, we'll still have a gallery, just everything that's in it right now will be gone.

I'm sorry to hear the Sheriff's fortunes have taken a bad turn (though I trust this will be very short-lived) and that his reign is coming to an end. Elwood, I thank you and I salute you for keeping this place going for so long. Whether you take an admin spot or not, I hope you're planning on sticking around! It wouldn't be Wordforge without you...

As for Lanz? I, for one, welcome our new teal-cloaked overlords. I think the board is being left in very good hands and I think most people will agree with me. Of course...

Getting rid of the White Room?!? From my cold, dead (left) hand!!! Seriously, I don't think this will be much of a problem.

Is it possible to get lots of notice of when the changeover is going to happen for everyone then? The sudden loss of everything in the gallery has been a pain in the arse when it has happened in the past so giving people plenty of opportunity to back up their folders could be good.

Colour me cynical, but I can see certain people getting very upset about the White Room - or, at least, pretending they are.
Oh, and cue another round of 'WF is dying' drama.

Sorry to hear the news, Elwood, but having experienced the teal-coloured reign of terror since my days as junior mod of the Blue Room, I'm sure things will be fine.

We're way ahead of you.

Step One: Let y'all know.
Step Two: Let everyone else know.
Step Three: The actual changeover of ownership.
Step Four: Server move.

This must be completed by Sunday, November 30th, 'cause that's when our host will discontinue my server space. If Lanzman agrees, and no one objects, I say we tentatively set going to Step Two on Thursday (20th) with the aim of moving to Step Three no later than Monday (24th).

That should give everybody plenty of time to do what they need to do, and it should make for a spicy weekend.

I'll leave Step Four up to Lanz, O2C, and Kyle.

I want to echo to all of you what I told Lanzman in person. I will stay to aid in the transition in any way possible and thereafter for a) as long as I care to serve or b) Lanzman no longer desires my services.

My desire to remain on the staff, especially during the transition, is to show that this was totally voluntary on my part and to personally and publically back Lanzman.

But, there are a couple things I requested. One, Lanzman has been gracious enough to let me keep my @wordforge.net e-mail address for the duration. Two, the right of first refusal should he decide to part with ownership at any time in the future. So, who knows?

Edit: I know most of you don't care about it one way or the other, but I will be retaining "ownership" for whatever it's worth, of the irc chat system. So, I'll still be HMFIC somewhere!

Aw damn Elwood, sorry to hear the news. Hopefully, as is often the case, it will turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Thanks for all you've done while at the helm, don't tell anyone I said so but you done good. Well with one exception, you never delivered on the promise you made before taking over; Packard remains unbanned.

Lanzman is a fine choice to assume the reins, an all around good guy despite that whole teal thing he has going on. I'm certain he will be welcomed in his new role.

As for the White Room, I'm not a member, could someone in the know tell me the amount of traffic the forum receives? Or how many members are subscribed? Else I'm not sure what the reaction will be to its absence.

As always I'm happy to help make Wordforge work, whether as a member or as a member who occasionally sorts threads and answers questions.

Lanzman, I won't lie to you, you've got some big shoes to fill, a big hat too and some tiny, tiny gloves to squeeze into.

Elwood, I love you more than words can say and, no slight to Lanzman intended, am very sad to see the need for you to step down. I certainly understand financial issues myself. I am going to miss you being in charge.

Lanzman.....congratulations...you had a taste of this before, but it's different being owner. You will find it both very fulfilling at times and very thankless at others.

I would call red alert and brace for impact on the White Room issue. I forsee a big "Meh" from the majority and a massive attempt at shitstorm from the forum fans, the trolls, the bored and people who want to test the new owner. However, as long as you are honest and explain why and simply ignore the BS they try to get around you, it will simply die down to a few who will never let it go no matter what. Kind of like Zombie and the thread locking in the Help Desk. I think it will be a relatively short problem overall and really a minor one in the grand scheme of things.

I am, of course, happy to stay on as long as you need/want my assistance.

Congratulations again and I look forward to working with you as this goes forward.

I may or may not make the announcement tonight. I'm emotionally and physically exhausted. I've spent six hours today just driving. I spent another four hours, hat in hand, talking to various Chiefs and Captains and giving them letters of recommendation. All on about two good hours of sleep and five hours of tossing and turning nervousness.

If not today, tomorrow.

Your health comes first, Elwood. Worry about this stuff is a distant second.

Without the White Room what's the policy on porn? Spoiler tagged in the Red Room? Not allowed at all? Something else?

I would say links are okay, but no images at all, not even behind spoilers - the image still loads with spoiler tags, it just doesn't display. I'd expect the rule on this to be the same as it is now, except there's no White Room for the explicit stuff. So things like the avatars Face and Shep use are still okay. We just can't have full frontal.

What say you?

The ONE time I actually bother to do things IRL in the evening for a week instead of checking up on the latest drama, and this happens.

*sigh*

All right, Elwood, Lanz, Kyle. I need technical info. What's the hosting situation, what's the vB situation? If we are going to have downtime, we should definitely do the software upgrade.

Is the WR to be deleted or simply locked away inaccessible (and it can be so that not even the admins can see it)?

Hosting will stay where it is, but be transferred to my ownership instead of Elwood's. I'm not going searching for a new webhost when the one we've been using seems to be pretty decent.

I have purchased a vBulletin license and downloaded the newest version of the software. I can forward that on to you guys for when we do the switch-over. And I just today got an email with a new patch for it, so I will be downloading that when I get home.

The White Room needs to be deleted when I take over, not just hidden. Sorry, that's an unavoidable by-product of my peculiar circumstances.

Elwood and I are planning to be either on the phone or in chat when we do the actual account turnover. Needless to say, I am counting heavily on your and Kyle's expertise to make this happen successfully.

Will they be doing the data transfer or will we? Or will they just change the billing on the current account?

No problem.

If that's the case, we have a problem. There's more than a few instances of spoilered nudity outside the white room, and there's no way to track them all down short of going post by post through every picture. Deleting the gallery will help some, but won't take care of it all.

Also I have a suggestion to mitigate the . I propose a compromise: ask people to find and delete any spoilered nudity they've posted outside the WR (hopefully this will give better results than looking for it ourselves). Give warning, and then delete the gallery and purge attachments from the WR. After that, turn off attachments and images in the WR. That way it's only links and text, and nothing local remains. I'm sure some enterprising WFer will provide web space folks can link to.

If we have to clamp down on discussions of a sexual nature as well, I think we're going to lose membership in a big, big way, mostly from folks upset on general principle. And I can't say as I'd blame them.

And then there's :dildo: and :cunni:, among others.

Roger.

Discussions and porn-smilies are not affected by this. I just can't have anything as blatant as the White Room is all.

I'm not terribly worried about any spoilered nudity outside of the White Room. The staff has been on top of that issue fairly well all along.

When Elwood and I were speaking, he made it out that we (meaning you ) would be doing the data transfer. I'm sure when he sees this he can clarify.

And on the compromise?

Lemme think on that one some. Sounds okay on first blush, but . . .

And wouldn't it be easier to just delete the WR, then make a new one, rather than try to go thru and remove all the images and attachments?

The White Room is pointless if all it's going to be is links to porn sites...it's called Google and it is perfectly functional in that capacity.

If it's going, I think it should just go. Sex discussion is fine in the RR and a dead forum full of porn links sounds about as sad as you can get.

No. The gallery images have to be deleted separately anyway. I can turn off off-site images (they turn into links) and attachments (they disappear but still reside on the server, ergo, they have to be purged - this is the case whether the forum is deleted or not) with two radio button changes in the AdminCP.

And, it's plastered everywhere.

Lanz, any further thought on my proposal?

Awww...I love a wedding!

EDIT: okay, I'm really tired. time for sleep.

Well, like I said, I'm not really worried about spoilered nudie pix. I will put the word out that the Gallery is about to go poofie, tho, so folks can save anything they want.

Honestly, I think the White Room just needs to go away - keep it around, and there'll always be some goon posting nude pictures there. I mean, fuck, we have a hard enough time getting through to people that it's not kosher outside the White Room now.

By the way, we might want to do the MySQL upgrade while we're at it.