IMPORTANT - staff change and move to a Fanrestore.com domain

[Feallan]

If you want to hear also the other part, go here: https://fanrestore.com/showthread.php?tid=4614

I will reply here, since your site is not functional:

You changed often things without saying nothing - at least to me.
Namely:
    removed calendar
    removed statistics
    added a lot of plugins

All of those things happened years ago and to be honest with you, I don't remember much about that. I don't think I ever added "a lot of plugins", unless you think updating old ones counts as that. As for the calendar, the functionality is quite useless, but I don't remember explicitly removing it, maybe it happened in one of the forum updates (nobody noticed, I searched through the forum).

True. He just omitted that I posted at the same time polls related to each change, to hear what the users think about, and eventually revert back to previous state.
Results were:

Poll: Do you like the new layout?
Yes, it's cleaner, keep it! 92.31%
No, gimme back the old one... 7.69%
...
Poll: Do you like the new themes?
Yes 80.00%
No 20.00%

You can't just "revert to a previous state", without having full backups, and on a live forum with posts made in the meantime, it would be very difficult to revert all changes you've made (and there is a TON of those in the log). Also, I don't believe results of this poll are relevant, for one only 40 users voted (out of around 400 who were active in the past two weeks), and two, if you really cared about opinions of the users, you would have made the poll BEFORE you made the changes, not after. Since the results are in your favor, now you can claim you would have reverted the changes if they were reversed, but we will never know if that would be the case.

True, partially - unless you think 12 hours is the same as 24 hours.
I followed his orders when he wrote it was irresponsible to make some changes live.
But I got a problem where I can not access the website for the latest 5/6 hours. My fault.
Still, what's the point of having two admins where one (that is also superadmin) see that and does nothing?

Do you really complain that I did not fix your mess, after you gave me the ultimatum to resign as admin? Are you serious?

Sorta true.
I asked him to send me the site backup because I wanted to move the whole forum to a new server.

Yes, and I ignored your polite request (made after asking me to resign, to be clear), because the forum is the only reason I pay for the hosting, I don't need it for anything else. Moving it before canceling the service (possible only in July) would be very disrespectful for my contributions to the forum. You asked me to just surrender everything because I didn't agree with you, I wonder what you would have done, if our roles were reversed.

This is your opinion, opposite to mine.
I did not fade away, I was only working onto another project, related to fanres community.
And of course he has omitted that, if he would not answer, we would go public asking who should be the main admin.
But instead of this, he preferred to buy a new domain the day later and start the division.

That is because after the argument we've had, I wouldn't trust you not to abuse the superadmin position (which you would have gotten, if you won the "election") and just copy the forum to somewhere else afterwards. There is really no going back from such conflict.

Again, this is your own opinion. It happened that all the time you made a change (I mean, the time you asked my opinion) I did agree.
First time I wanted to change something that you did not like (but the users did) you simply started your secret plan.
So you tell me that I'm free to change to my liking, but you did the same. Good move to start...

I'm very sad it has come to this, but it was either what we've done, or just give everything to you. I thought about just resigning after our argument, since I had no illusions that we would ever reconcile for real, but later I learned that I'm not alone in my view of the situation, so here we are.

Well, the janitor made his job pretty well for the first years; then, lately, a lot of things were not made in the right way.
So, I did not like your attitude - you are the saviour of the forum, I am the bad dictator...
If you were so good, why the following happened?
    you did not make a database backup since August 2020
    you did not upgrade the forum since two months, when some security issues arised - and probably lead to some leaks
    you did not make any administration since August 2021, when you edited a new user 17 times - for mysterious reasons
    and the worst of all, to me
    you created "ad personam" group, "can't delete own post", and put ONE user in

Database backups happen automatically on my hosting panel every 24 hours, and I frequently download them to my local machine just in case

The security issue from latest MyBB applies when attacker has admin permissions, so low priority, if that happens forum is in great danger regarless

What administration should I have done? I'm against changes for the sake of change. As for the user edit, that's a test user and I believe I was checking forum permissions after software update

This last one is interesting. That user kept deleting his posts, which ware later quoted by others regardless, so it only screwed up conversations. Me and PDB talked about this on our admin subforum, but you didn't post about this at all. If this is so bad to you, why didn't you just say "don't to this guys" then?

Frankly, what I wanted to do was to improve the forum, as I always did; create an expanded community, with various subforums like (for example)

    guides.fanres.com
    blog.fanres.com
    articles.fanres.com

These are unrealistic plans in my opinion, but you are free to use you domain however you want of course.

And also have finally the possibility to use the @fanres.com email, that I got no access since more than 6 years.

Which you never complained about. I would have given you any accounts you wanted.

Also, the fact that Alexa ranking plummeted from around #300,000 of 2016 to #3,200,000 may be due to non-US hosting (or maybe not, but would be impossible to say until the server move)

Or may be due to internet changing and internet forums slowly becoming more and more niche. In my opinion, caring about Alexa rank shows that your priorities regarding the forum are not quite right.

You see, the difference is, I would have followed what the users eventually decided - if they thought you must be the main admin, I would simply leave the whole forum task to you, even when residing onto my server. But you decided to split. Afraid of the possible debacle?

Actually, I wanted to just say "screw it" and leave the forum to you, but after I learned there are more people dissatisfied with your changes, I agreed to be an admin on Fanrestore.com. Why did you insist so much on moving the forum from a server nobody ever complained about to yours, we will never know.

If you like what I have in mind, and to be administered by a totalitarian dictator like me, who spend several hours a day here, created the whole forum, brought members, released dozen projects, posted innovative ideas, always ready to help, greets any single newbies, just stay here.

All of these, except for creating the forum, are applied to the rest of the staff, which is why we didn't want to agree to just surrender the forum to you. It has grew far beyond what you would have achieved on your own, and it was not right from you to demand total control (which you did and you can joke about that all you want. You rejected even appointing someone else than me as admin).

If you decide to reply to my post, I don't know if I will answer, but probably not. To be honest we can prolong this drama for weeks if we want to, but even at this point I already see that you tried very hard to dig up any kind of dirt you may have on me to use in this argument, I don't want to waste my time on that. I feel I've made my points clear already, and only replied here because you bent the facts so hard in your favor, you came pretty close to flat out lying.

[HippieDalek]

I'm sorry to hear that things have fallen apart between you guys. I don't really have much to say but I wanted to thank @Feallan, @PDB, @DoomBot, and @spoRv for being so open and honest about everything. You have all worked hard to create and maintain this community. I'll be keeping an eye on both sites and see how things develop. I hope you guys are able to agree to disagree and that things won't get too toxic.

[monks19]

I'm really sorry this had to happen.

by the way, the previous forum, doesn't accept anymore my username/password.
It says:
Authorization code mismatch. Are you accessing this function correctly? Please go back and try again.

May you need to clear your cache and/or fanres cookie; do that and try again.

The same for me sadly (after clearing all). The website is unuseable and the same error happen after logging in. Also, I'm sorry to hear about this just now. Like someone else said earlier, I really don't want to be split between two forums, but also, I really don't want the home of this community to fell appart and lose founding members in the process. I really hope that you guys can find a middle ground and work this out. No one, I'm sure, want to lose any of you.

[spoRv]

You know what? You are right.

I'm an old fart, and now I ask myself why I spent so many hours each day on the last seven years on a forum that was not mine anymore since almost the beginning, when I was forced to share the administration with a user that never released anything, and I was there only as a courtesy to being the one that created it, without having the minimum control; it's also funny that only today I discovered that there was another admin that I was never aware of.

So, what should I do? Split the community? It was never my intention, so for the sake of its good, I surrender; you won; take care of the community.

I don't know what to do now regarding the whole restoration world - probably it's time to leave the online world and rediscover the offline one, like a friend did few months ago - or start to spend the countless hours I spent restoring movies watching them instead.

It was good, but it's over now. To anyone: take care, have fun!

[monks19]

Sorry @spoRv. I really didn't meant to infuriate you. You're one of the core members of this community (you've been for years way before the forum existed). No one here want to lose you as you did contribute greatly to it with your projects and everything you've done so far for keeping the website running. Despite the fact that I really don't want the community to be split, I'll stick by you and your project as you did greatly help me (and others) many times in the past and I know how helpful you always have been.

If it's innevitable so be it, may te separation happen. But still, I really wish that you guys could find a middle ground to resolve this dramatic issue. In any case, I'll stick by you all and hope for the best for a better future for the community.

[ac3]

Actually one change was for the better he wanted to go private tracker route I think or something similar.

It would save everyone a lot of ass kissing to get an audio track when u can get 4k movies online far easier

Would also save everyone a lot of time syncing audio tracks for movies that have been done already by someone else...

[Inq81]

Sorry to hear about the bad news I really enjoyed FANRES for years.

[X5gb]

Just wow, never expected any of this, won't take any sides, as I have to much respect for all of the admins, mods etc., love the community and help and contribute where I can (mainly behind the scenes with my personal projects/sources etc.). Just hope that this can all be sorted between yourselves at some point, the air at the moment still seems to acrid for any form of reconciliation in the short term.

[ac3]

Imo Don't see why the public stoning was needed.

[PDB]

Sorry for the slow response, I'm getting over being sick. Let me add my thoughts to this and why I ended up where I am.

I admire spoRv’s projects. Always have. His projects inspired me to start my own fan projects and that has become my hobby through some dark days.

To that end, I was very excited when he started fanres. The OT (where we originated) was a great site but it’s really a Star Wars site first. This was a chance to have a site for a more broad range of movies. Not only a place for projects but a place to share the common love of 35mm film, share technical advice, pass around laserdisc soundtracks and just share in a general love of cinema. I felt that spoRv’s project work would be a great keystone to build this site off of. So I was literally one of the first people to sign up to the site and the first person to become a mod. That’s when there was barely anyone here. I believed in this site so much I immediately wanted to be part of it.

Almost immediately there were a lot of problems. The site was crashing or going offline at least once a day, everyday. Things were broken and getting more broken as days went. So much I was contemplating jumping ship. Through some happy circumstance feallan jumped in to host the site and provided the much needed stability out of his own pocket. He basically saved the site. And that came none too soon because soon after spoRv would disappear for a few years from the site. Thus began a pattern were spoRv would up and leave the site for months or years at a time on account of personal issues. If you look at his post patterns you can see the large gaps. No one questioned him and no one was upset. We understood he needed time. In the meantime feallan promoted me back to mod along with doombot and jerry (who is no long with us). And we (now) three ran the site as best as possible for over six years. Done with no thanks and no compensation but because we believed in it.

I’m going to brush over the next part. But when spoRv became active again there were conflicts. Nothing bad but always feallan, doombot and I sticking to a make few changes approach and focus on stability while spoRv pushing for more...stuff, people, colors, whatever. Nothing big enough to cause a schism.

But the last conflict was different. SpoRv wanted to redesign the entire site and make major changes to the interface. He gave no reason as to why, just that it had to be done. Frankly, I thought a few of his ideas were good this time and would love to see them implemented while other ideas made little sense. We asked him to not change anything. Maybe ask the users what they want, tell them when things were happening, make one change at a time, beta test, etc. You know work together as a team But it all fell on deaf ears. It was both infuriating and maddening. SpoRv had some ultimate goal in mind and wanted to bend the site to that goal regardless of it breaking the site, exasperating members or ultimately not making sense. I still have no sense of why he did this or why it was so important.

At this point I was directly told after years of working on this site, being here everyday even when he wasn't, that I have no say in the issue. I was told my opinions don't matter and that he didn't even have to ask me to make changes, he could just do it. Since the site was his idea and the domain was his, he could do whatever he wanted. And so he committed the changes which yielded immediate problems. He then proceeded the break the site so much, he had to shut it down for a day to piece it back together. And even now, I type this on a broken response page made up of half light theme and half dark theme.

After this conflict he sought to remove feallan as an admin. I guess that was the one obstacle holding him back from all the changes he really wanted to make. So he laid it out in basically binary terms. Feallan or him. He walked that back a little but once you put that out there you can't take it back. So I had to choose, I didn't want to choose. It’s like choosing between mom and dad in the divorce but I was made to choose by what spoRv had started.

I went with feallan. Why? Because spoRv is a GREAT project maker but not a very good admin. Feallan is capable of listening, you can make a logical argument with him, he has hosted the site for years and he can fix problems with it. Past evidence points to none of these being in spoRv's skill set.

I don't need a crystal ball to see the future. SpoRv will get his version of the site back up and working, make as many changes as he wants, slowly breaking the site, then he will disappear for months and the hosting will lapse and the site will die.

I need a site that works, period. All I'm doing is making the the sane, logical choice given the situation I’ve been forced into.

No one is going to be forced to choose one site or the other. You are all adults and can make your own choices. At the end of the day, spoRv has a home here as a project maker. He is here now and not been banned or censored. If he wishes to post projects here, great, if not, I wish him the best.