dxmnkd316
Lucia Apologist
Totally agree. Dedicated mods were great so you knew you were at least heard.
That said, community-based moderation would be best. But use a lighthanded approach I would think. Jup was very good at generally letting the children wear themselves out before issuing several warnings and eventually banning. I only remember a few people getting hard-banned for on-board antics.
I think GPL did a good job running their board, with a few exceptions. Professional trolls over there kind of ruined it. The politics piece was hard. Generally everything was supposed to be apolitical, but like you said, lol at ever returning to that world. Plus it's not what I think this community wants. Generally, keep it civil (in the loosest sense of the word), don't do anything illegal, don't spam, etc.
The part where I think I would disagree with maybe a couple people is what to do with people like Jeb. My personal preference is to let each person decide if they want to see a poster. Ignore is a great feature and just because someone dislikes policy positions or the abrasiveness of east-coast loudmouths that offend our midwest sensibilities ( ; D ) aren't really grounds for banning. What makes this place great is that the lazy trolls are basically batted around for the amusement of everyone else. Lazily banning someone like that kind of defeats the purpose of having a board. When someone goes off the rails and posts truly vulgar crap like Flaggy used to post would almost universally result in banning.
Of course, on paper this is easy to say and evolves on day 2. I firmly believe there's a happy balance to be struck and in small communities, democracy is generally the best approach.
That said, I've been looking into hosts and a couple have stood out:
1. DreamHost
2. Bluehost
These seem like options as well, but would need to look into them more:
3. Hostmonster
4. Pretty much any of the top-rated hosts at https://whdb.com/web-hosting/shared/ or https://whdb.com/web-hosting/vps/
The top two are fairly cheap, both offer everything we would need for a basic phpbb board, both have free ssl certs, and I think the bandwidth and storage plans meet our needs. I don't think we'd grow to the size where we'd need a VPS, but even then, a VPS is fairly cheap to start. The only question I have is how much RAM it would take. 1 GB seems awfully low to start. Bluehost offers one-click phpbb install, which is attractive. Though, DreamHost also has specific guides to setting up the database and site.
I suppose board software would be up for discussion. phpbb seems pretty slick, it's free, and low overhead. The community support seems to be as good as vBulletin. I like the lower overhead interface that phpbb uses. VB seems like it's just too process-heavy (probably to reduce overall bandwidth, but don't really care). phpbb also seems extremely straightforward to install, setup, and manage. The extensions seem easy to implement and it appears to be fairly agnostic between DB, server, etc.
That said, community-based moderation would be best. But use a lighthanded approach I would think. Jup was very good at generally letting the children wear themselves out before issuing several warnings and eventually banning. I only remember a few people getting hard-banned for on-board antics.
I think GPL did a good job running their board, with a few exceptions. Professional trolls over there kind of ruined it. The politics piece was hard. Generally everything was supposed to be apolitical, but like you said, lol at ever returning to that world. Plus it's not what I think this community wants. Generally, keep it civil (in the loosest sense of the word), don't do anything illegal, don't spam, etc.
The part where I think I would disagree with maybe a couple people is what to do with people like Jeb. My personal preference is to let each person decide if they want to see a poster. Ignore is a great feature and just because someone dislikes policy positions or the abrasiveness of east-coast loudmouths that offend our midwest sensibilities ( ; D ) aren't really grounds for banning. What makes this place great is that the lazy trolls are basically batted around for the amusement of everyone else. Lazily banning someone like that kind of defeats the purpose of having a board. When someone goes off the rails and posts truly vulgar crap like Flaggy used to post would almost universally result in banning.
Of course, on paper this is easy to say and evolves on day 2. I firmly believe there's a happy balance to be struck and in small communities, democracy is generally the best approach.
That said, I've been looking into hosts and a couple have stood out:
1. DreamHost
2. Bluehost
These seem like options as well, but would need to look into them more:
3. Hostmonster
4. Pretty much any of the top-rated hosts at https://whdb.com/web-hosting/shared/ or https://whdb.com/web-hosting/vps/
The top two are fairly cheap, both offer everything we would need for a basic phpbb board, both have free ssl certs, and I think the bandwidth and storage plans meet our needs. I don't think we'd grow to the size where we'd need a VPS, but even then, a VPS is fairly cheap to start. The only question I have is how much RAM it would take. 1 GB seems awfully low to start. Bluehost offers one-click phpbb install, which is attractive. Though, DreamHost also has specific guides to setting up the database and site.
I suppose board software would be up for discussion. phpbb seems pretty slick, it's free, and low overhead. The community support seems to be as good as vBulletin. I like the lower overhead interface that phpbb uses. VB seems like it's just too process-heavy (probably to reduce overall bandwidth, but don't really care). phpbb also seems extremely straightforward to install, setup, and manage. The extensions seem easy to implement and it appears to be fairly agnostic between DB, server, etc.
