Farewell, Level1Techs

Level1Techs INBOX.deb
1

@wendell

Hey man, my name’s Chris. We spoke briefly a while back but never got to work together, unfortunately.

Several months ago, I bailed on this place without saying goodbye. I had some “grievances” that I jotted down and fleshed out into a long winded, verbose, pretty angsty document. I have since deleted that document as I am not really angry but more melancholy.

After this post is up, I expect several responses of “Gee, gosh, goodness there guy, why are you taking an Internet forum so seriously?” That’s a great question, so let me provide some context:

I think I originally joined this forum as AdminDev in 2017. It was around that time. I know that because I was still on my journey through systems administration. This place was solely responsible for lighting the fire under my ass every, single, DAY. I was inspired, excited, motivated, and every other $POSITIVE_EMOTION you could think of to master this crazy new world I was learning about: ZFS, Linux, DevOps, Infrastructure as a Service, all the buzzwords that make the digital world go 'round. Since then, due to your exciting content and enthusiastic community, I have more than quadrupled my annual income. So, thanks.

Fast forward about three years, the unhinged moderation team has crossed a line I think deserves some attention. At this point I’ll put a Tl;Dr

Tl;Dr – The Moderation team pushed away a solid community base that led to loss in patreon funds.

Over time, a handful of users and one pathetic piece of shit Communist started taking egregious offense to the tiniest of banter. What was normal lounge behavior was now flagged and tagged as offensive. Thus, the lounge was closed. A “private lounge” was spun up via Direct Messaging channel. It was around this time I started a podcast and created a forum to discuss episodes and technology. A large (in my opinion) base of the users came over and started an unintended rival community (exaggeration of course, your userbase dwarfed mine). However, we were free to discuss technology, shitposts, and video games without being derailed or flagged by the unhinged free software community.

About a year after that my best friend of 20 years killed himself. I sort of lost who I was after and dissolved the forum. Only a few people know about that, but there it is. @Adubs took the reins and decided to spin up a forum to talk technology, shitposts, 3D printing, firearms, basically things that were banned from discussion at this place. Run in after run in with the poor moderation team prompted my permanent (semi-permanent???) exile. A few more followed.

As I understand, @Adubs received around $400 in contributions for infrastructure. My funds are recurring, I can’t speak for anyone else. With roughly $730 short of your Patreon goal, I imagine $400 would have been a nice contribution. I know when I see a creator I am passionate about is close to their mark, I’m inclined to give a little more. Other people’s mileage may vary, of course.

For whatever reason, the mods on this forum find themselves divine and Godlike with their infinite web forum powers. I understand that a few leaders and mods that were ACTIVE were purged because hurt feelings were had? This seems to be a common theme, as the furry, trans, and mentally ill members seem to receive carte blanche (with some exceptions). They seem to interpret the rules as they see fit, making exceptions for whomever they like in that week or month. Peak examples being TheKitchenSink getting (finally) purged after upsetting The Golden Thot and Marten getting off on death threats. I don’t even know what to make of this:

image
image1367×503 117 KB

I understand he’s just a drunk loser, but if we were to dismiss the threats of every drunken loser on this planet, I think a lot of people would be getting hurt.

If I recall, he threatened to bash my head in with a baseball bat. Yet I was the one punished and told to “cool off”.

The shit tier moderation of this forum is hands down what lost you out on potentially $400 smackaroos and what caused the splints, exiles, and “forks”.

This is my last contribution on this forum. In fact, I requested my account get deleted after the most recent blow up. I was told “You’ll be back” – I guess they are right, I am back. Only after I was able to cool my head and get my life back on track. The abovementioned tragedy notwithstanding, I did miss this place for a little while. But the weirdos and token Communist and God awful moderation team left me to pursue other interests.

With that, I bid you farewell. I hope the VFIO stuff keeps taking off and you continue building a solid technical channel and support via this forum. But I hope you assess the damage that has been done by the current moderation staff and trim it down or rebuild from scratch.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

26 Likes
2

You can’t leave yet. You still owe me reparations.

15 Likes
3

Back from the abyss to support a homie.

good lord
image

4 Likes
4

I’m in full agreement with Chris. This place used to be awesome. The changes have been a huge negative for me and has pushed a large portion of the “old” userbase away. The whole agenda-pushing, thin-skinned wokeness is gross and not a way to build a community.

8 Likes
5

Wait, there are spinoff-forums?

2 Likes
6

Nope.

2 Likes
7

I too have found it hard to keep coming back. What was once a place where I made jokes with friends and learned has mainly turned into endless helpdesk posts. I do try to help people where I think I know how to help, but often those posts are drowned by others who have a different method. It just turns into too many cooks in the kitchen.

Hard to want to stick around for that.

I think after helping the new user wilber, I am done here. This place is just work for me now.

I have no ill will for anyone here, best of luck to you all.

13 Likes
8

Miss y’all.

4 Likes
9

Sup hoss.

10

I Tapered off of here hard when things started devolving as well, its been a while, but I felt compelled to return to say something, even if I am a nobody

2 Likes
11

Is there any evidence that the off-topic section contributes positively to the rest of the website and channel? Because otherwise it’s simply going to emphasize the cracks in the community, regardless of whatever bubbles people manage to experience for some amount of time, and then accept as the norm.

The only thing this community truly has in common is a technology culture, and any discussion outside of that is going to decrease the homogeneity of the community, and require careful management and communication skills.

I’ve been active on this forum for a long long time now (all of that time spent avoiding The Lounge like a the plague), and this is one of many threads I’ve seen saying something along the lines of: "this place used to be great but then happened and now its going downhill>

3 Likes
12

seems to be working very well for my community, and I dont really have to even manage them.

6 Likes
13

Does your community have the visibility and reach that L1T/TS does? Because otherwise they are incomparable. I run a Matrix server for a group of friends and everything goes smoothly there without management.

14

I dont know if you just dont recognize the names you’re seeing here or what.

I’m not going to try and compare my community to this place or anywhere else, because there is no comparison.

I have a fundamentally different idea about how to approach the situation at hand, which is why its a different place.

4 Likes
15

Get back in the pigeon coop, Toby.

You are fixating on The Lounge which wasn’t the point of my post, it was one example. There were other examples – A problematic and toxic member spreading chaos for over two years (in “on topic sections”) only getting banned when they piss off the Euroland cheerleader. A member drunkenly threatening to murder me and spamming my inbox with DMs getting off Scott Free.

It seems you do your fair share of off topic discussion, though.

image

image
image1088×1101 311 KB

image
image1334×1210 374 KB

But to answer your question:

I’m going to suck my own dick yet again but, yes, I am shit posting in this thread and that’s it – I’ve contributed countless Wiki threads, discussions, and “on topic” solutions for almost three years. I am fucking off to better horizons.

Glad you are benefiting from this place, but several others are not. I wanted to inform Wendell et al. that their moderation staff caused me to no longer contribute financially to this organization (I gave Patreon, purchased countless clothing/items from the store, etc.) as well as others leading to @Adubs wallet getting a little fatter.

8 Likes
16

communication is what builds relationships. the community slowly dissolves when there can be no open communication without strict compliance. No one is making me come to this site so I don’t feel particularly strong about it either way but ultimately my level of participation has declined due to (IMO arbitrary) over-enforcement of ideas.

I understand that not scaring off new users is a priority but then we run into the “Code of Conduct” type problem where it’s a bit of an ideological club instead of a community of contributors, so i think the least bad option is just unrestricted communication. It’s not going to become 4chan; people don’t sign up here unless they are interested in tech. The ship hasn’t sunk yet, just reel it way back on where the line has been drawn.

6 Likes
17

To that end, I owe thanks to L1 for the good times we did have, and the friends I made along the way. We could have never come together as a community to start our own platform if this place had not brought us together at least.

I think this is a good note to end on.

later bois

10 Likes
18

Miss you already babycakes

1 Like
19

:heart:

1 Like
20

I’m the help-desk dude that was mentioned previously in this thread. I don’t know much about the staff part of this forum at all, my main gripe with this site is that it’s painful to navigate. I’m used to the traditional forum layout.