The Big Move from Modified to Footbag.org (?)

Asmus · Post by **Asmus** » 14 Sep 2008 21:20

My username is different on each site how would that be handled?
I am not even sure if I use the same mail on both of them.

I was very sceptic when I first saw this thread but I am slowly being convinced.

I gotta run. Might post more questions later.

Asmus · Post by **Asmus** » 14 Sep 2008 21:30

I think there (when time is right) should be a vote about if:
- We should do this
- The Kicking Circle, Arts Leisure and "Discussion" should die
- Should it be possible to edit

Also the rules on this forum needs to be merged with the rules on .org.
I don't know how that should be done.
Maybe the moderators should work out a suggestion and we should vote about that aswell.

I like how .org has real member profiles (ex: http://footbag.org/members/profile/Asm ).
I think these should include your top 5 most active topics aswell.

FOOTBAG!

webmaster · Post by **webmaster** » 14 Sep 2008 21:34

Asmus Helms wrote:My username is different on each site how would that be handled?

Your username on Modified is just a nickname, it's not an indication of who you are. Your full name (in your case, Asmus Helms) is on your footbag.org profile and that will become your username on the forum (but only in Phase II, not right away).

But I mean, I'm not sure why people are so concerned with their username on Modified.

Nobody actually types these usernames; they're just displayed on your mini profile and in quotes (which actually makes it harder to see who it is people are quoting 'cause you have to know their username to recognize them when they're being quoted). I always change the name to the real name in the quote (as above, it says "Asmus Helms" instead of just "Asmus").

You don't actually have e-mail on Modified; you just have a PM inbox, which people can only get messages to you through if they actually go to Modified and find you and then PM you from there. They never type your username. They usually reply privately to messages they see in the forum, or they look you up in the member list. All that will still work exactly the same.

The only other place your username is used is when you sign in. Of course, this is just another thing to remember -- your Modified username/password and your footbag.org username/password. So the integration example I gave for Phase II would be to make it so you can just use one, instead of two.

And all those details will still need to be worked out; I'm just saying how I think it could be, but not saying it's all worked out down to the last detail.

I am not even sure if I use the same mail on both of them.

Do you mean, you're not sure if your registered e-mail address is the same on both of them? I'm not sure that matters. But I'm not sure what specifically you're concerned about.

Thanks.

Steve

Moxie · Post by **Moxie** » 14 Sep 2008 22:49

People do know each others' usernames. We see the username every time a person makes a post, and it is associated with the online personality of each user. I type usernames when sending PM's. I like having my self-chosen username, but it's not a make-or-break thing to me.

Modified sends a PM notification to a user's e-mail box so a user knows that they have a PM in their inbox on Modified. I love PM's. I don't understand why someone would think that using PM's is a bad thing. Allowing PM's doesn't make it so users cannot e-mail each other. PM's are in the same place as the forum, why wouldn't you want to make communication between footbag players easier? Also, if I see that a specific user is on and I want to let him know something asap, a PM is what I use because he gets it right away.

I know it sounds silly, but not having PM's is a big issue to me.

The whole switch sounds like it could be fine, or could be really annoying or frustrating, depending on the way it's handled. I am in support of taking the financial drain away from Modevia, since they had been so kind as to not charge us a penny the whole time.

I think it's important that the people who are unsure about the switch-over as well as those who are passionate about the switch-over are involved in it and making sure things get worked out in the following months.

LEGOMAN · Post by **LEGOMAN** » 14 Sep 2008 22:58

LEGOMAN will refuse to post if he can't keep his epic name

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 14 Sep 2008 23:29

Wow! I totally missed this thread until now!

We're fucking morons for taking so long to do this.

I proposed this when I first showed up at flipsider!

calemccoy · Post by **calemccoy** » 14 Sep 2008 23:41

simply put:

-i like editing. typos/updating first posts/changes of heart/add-ons
-i like PMs. fast/easy/effective/visible

keep those please.

Asmus · Post by **Asmus** » 15 Sep 2008 00:31

What I was refering to with my e-mail versus e-mail and username versus username is how you (Steve) will merge my two usernames together.

I have alot of stuff on both of them I don't wanna loose (modified user: my blog and all my other big threads. .org user: my videos, photos and my club). How will you put these two together? How will you make sure that the right profiles are put together? Will you have to merge each user of everybody that is on both footbag.org and modified.in manually?

ville · Post by **ville** » 15 Sep 2008 02:22

Asmus wrote:How will you put these two together? How will you make sure that the right profiles are put together? Will you have to merge each user of everybody that is on both footbag.org and modified.in manually?

I was thinking of this also and the best way I could think of was that in the beginning of Phase II users would be locked out of the forums until they merge their profiles. This would be done with a simple script that asks for your footbag.org username and password and your modified username and password and then merges them to one entity. It would be close to impossible to manually merge the profiles. This lockout would also encourage users with no footbag.org profile to create one (they're free anyway!).

Muffinman · Post by **Muffinman** » 15 Sep 2008 02:49

I am also for PMs and editing.
Something I'm not sure about is "anyone who wants to be a mod can be". In theory maybe it is fine, and maybe it works on .org, but .org is more rigid and Modified is a mess. If anyone on Modified could become a mod things would go downhill a lot faster. I agree that there should be a lot more mods to keep things real and have a more open perspective (rather than a few people controlling everything), but I don't agree that anyone who asks automagically becomes one.

I'm not sure how I feel about The Kicking Circle et al either. Chrissy and someone else had a good point about community, and how a part of that may die if those sections were gone. I think it could work to keep them, but to have a clear separation from the actual footbag forums, this would make it easy to ignore if chosen.

I also don't like the idea of usernames being changed to .org usernames. I made my username on Footbag.org 10 years ago-ish when I was, like, 16. I like the idea of real names, obviously, since my username is already my real name, but I know a lot of people would oppose that, and as much for it as I am, it could also breach the integral freedom of Modified.

Steve mentioned something about tournament info being combined between forum posts and .org event listings. This could be neat. But it made me think of something that interests me even more which would be somehow merging Trick Tips with the move list on .org. I know there is room for comments in this area of the website, but personally I don't really ever visit .org because it feels dated (the information as well as the look). I think somehow merging forum topics and Move List would be a real step forward. I don't know how user-friendly .org is these days, but if users could also upload their own videos of move demos, this could be really revolutionary. Something similar could be done with the Getting Started forum and the .org FAQ.

Oh, one other concern is "bots" and the potential for an increase of email spam (etc.) if Modified is merged with .org and all of our real email addresses, STREET ADDRESSES and PHONE NUMBERS become available to any user on the forums... A boost in privacy would be really nice.

Jeremy · Post by **Jeremy** » 15 Sep 2008 04:12

Footbag.org is surely the most secure and spam free forum and database on the internet. You would pretty much need to design a bot specifically to target footbag.org for it to be at all effective. Remember when there used to be a 100 fake modified members every day. Stuff like that has never happened on .org. It has a unique registry system.

I have a question for people to consider. It's pretty hypothetical, and perhaps false in suggesting a one or the other situation, rather than allowing for the possibility of both or a compromise between them, but I'm not even sure that answering it is necessary. Just consider it.

Would you prefer a decision made in the best interests of footbag, at the expense of the modified community, or would you prefer a decision made in the best interests of the modified community, at the expense of footbag? What is more important to you; an internet forum, or the sport?

King Monkey · Post by **King Monkey** » 15 Sep 2008 04:20

I dont have anything to add at the moment, no time. But i think at the minimum Moderators should be able to edit posts, and i think that PMs should be retained in order that warnings or advise about conduct on the forums reaches the person the moment they sign in to the forum, not sitting in their email accounts waiting to be checked.

ThisIsFate · Post by **ThisIsFate** » 15 Sep 2008 04:44

How about they use our forum. What I mean is when we click "Forum" on Footbag.org, it direct to this one

pips · Post by **pips** » 15 Sep 2008 05:17

Tsiangkun wrote:I have never felt welcome to post on .org , and yet made numerous posts on modified (2000+), and was active in the Flipsider forum before it was deleted. I chose not to participate in .org forums because I found it a hostile and unwelcoming place.

It is not only you moving over to .org to feel unwelcome. The whole community is moving over. You should be just as welcome as you are here, there. Sure there might be two groups of people in the new community (kind of like a .org vs. modified mentality), and it may take some time to become one, but it still think it is a good move for footbag. Give it a chance.

Can we move everything back to normal if everything doesn't work out?

pips · Post by **pips** » 15 Sep 2008 05:27

Moxie wrote:Modified sends a PM notification to a user's e-mail box so a user knows that they have a PM in their inbox on Modified.

Sorry for the double-post. I forgot there was a page 4 to read before I replied. But here's a thought if PM's have to go (which I hope they don't)...can we atleast get a pop-up notification when we sign on to .org that we have a new email in our account...kind of like the pop-up we get here about new PM's? I rarely keep up with multiple email addresses. Or have a new messages thingy at the top like at here?

Rieferman · Post by **Rieferman** » 15 Sep 2008 06:30

Phase 1 (from my understanding) is basically transparent to all users (all users on both modified and at footbag.org). Nothing changes except that the secure, never going to go away, servers of footbag.org are the host.

- So if I understand correctly, that step is a no brainer. Do it.

As for the other phases, I don't personally see the need, and have some reservations. To answer Jeremy's question regarding the good of the sport vs. the good of the modified community, I think modified (as it stands today) IS good for the community (certainly not bad for the community) - crappy things aside, many friends have been made and maintained here, and the "community" has strengthened player base in a lot of ways.

My feeling is that there are some people that will not post if footbag.org becomes the single place. I think some people like being a little further from the mainstream (has "mainstream" and "footbag" ever happened in the same sentence before? ha ha) for their own reasons. And I think that's OK. If we lost even 1 contributor because of this feeling, I don't think that's good. Sure there are explanations galore why that lost contributor is being stupid, but lost is lost.

----
I recently was interested in learning about a game called "washers" that is played at barbecues around here. Wanted to build my own set and know the rules. Googled it and found a bunch of different resources, including some forums, and an "official" site. And that was OK.

BenRea · Post by **BenRea** » 15 Sep 2008 06:48

It would take me a long time to get used to the name thing just because I know so many people on modified by their username.

sounds like a cool idea though.

don't let people stop you from doing it if you want to, theres very little they can do back in retaliation.

krawallier · Post by **krawallier** » 15 Sep 2008 08:03

i am totally for the change. all this online community shit is a huge load of bull. my friends on modified are my friends in footbag. if your friends on modified are not your friends in footbag and you'll miss spending time with people whose real name you don't even know and who don't know yours, go get a life. or go fuck yourself. go play WOW.

i do have a very big concern about the username/ real name thing though. maybe steve isn't too concerned about it because he works for a company that earns its money centralizing information and making it available to anyone..

how it is now on modified, is that my real name is in my signature, which is only visible for logged in users. you will not find a post in my name via google (or so to say, via steve

). this should not change.

i want to have the maximum control on what future clients, employers & groupies find out about me on the internet. i have no problem telling somebody to go fuck themselves straight into the face (hence the black eye in prague). i do have a problem with people finding this phrase of mine online too easily.
to repeat: i have no problem with my real name being automatically in my signature that is only visible to logged in users and not to search engines. i should have the full power to choose in which username my posts are visible to the whole world.

phase 1 should be done ASAP.

webmaster · Post by **webmaster** » 15 Sep 2008 08:19

I'll just reply on the "real name" issue and on the "personal information" issue briefly, because it's been brought up a few times.

Regarding privacy, I don't think you guys quite understand what I'm proposing here.

First of all, as I've tried to explain a few times, there is on average more personally-identifiable information on your Modified profiles than on your footbag.org profiles. It's not that you use Modified more, it's that footbag.org doesn't collect very much information (except in the footbag.org forum profile, which is obviously similar).

For the 97% of you who already have footbag.org profiles, whatever information you have in your footbag.org member profile is already there. We're not adding to it.

All we're proposing doing is changing the text that's displayed on your Modified profile to include your real name. This is not about your mailing address, your phone number, or any other truly private information.

So let's limit this discussion to the stuff that's really in question, not all the fears people have about how they can be violated by someone knowing their private information. We're not talking about that.

And let's suspend for a minute the issue of non-signed-in users. If we can all agree that signed-in users should see each others' real names, and that one major use of Modified is for people to find each other IRL and get in contact (i.e., "I'm coming to Detroit this weekend, any players there?"), I don't see why anyone wouldn't think this advances the state of our ability as a community to come together even more.

The idea is that instead of using the somewhat constrained phpBB search feature and PM features to find people (many of whom don't actually read PMs, they're just listed on the forum because they used it once), the best thing to do is to look them up in the footbag.org member search feature (which can be improved greatly, no doubt, but WE control that directory and can make it nicer and more useful).

Anyway, just some thoughts to keep that side of the discussion on track. It's easy for me to make it so full names don't show up if you're not signed in, so let's just assume that's part of the proposal.

Thanks.

Steve

webmaster · Post by **webmaster** » 15 Sep 2008 08:29

Sorry, meant to also reply to this:

Emily Kulczyk wrote:People do know each others' usernames. We see the username every time a person makes a post, and it is associated with the online personality of each user. I type usernames when sending PM's. I like having my self-chosen username, but it's not a make-or-break thing to me.

Right -- in my proposal, after Phase II was complete, it's quite possible the usernames of all the people you care about would stay the same.

For people who think of their username as their "brand", i.e., the way they want others to think of them (e.g., "Moxie", though I would say, "Ice Queen (tm)"

), they have nothing to fear. They simply change their username on footbag.org to that as well, before the merger. (Or, as Ville suggests, explicitly as part of the migration opt-in. In other words, the day you decide to opt into the new forum, you click a button that lets you change your username on footbag.org to "Moxie", if you so desire. But if you care more about your e-mail alias on footbag.org, you probably would forego the old handle on Modified if it isn't the same.)

Ville, by the way, you're close to right -- this is how I'd probably structure it. Though again, that part isn't spec'ed out yet. I'd probably actually not lock things. I'd "flip" accounts from one world to the other on-demand, so for some period we'd have the forum with users who were "newly combined with footbag.org" and users who were "still on the original modified", and then I'd make the script the "opt-in" script. When some period was over, I'd probably say "those who haven't opted in are now locked" and those users won't be able to make any new posts until they opt in. And of course, if we get really snazzy, at that point we can do some of the stuff Cameron is asking for. Or maybe this whole paragraph is a load of crap and we'll do something entirely 100% different.

That's what makes proposals so nice: they're just proposals.

Finally, it seems many of you don't quite understand that footbag.org does not offer e-mail service. Just because you have an account on footbag.org does not mean you have an e-mail box there. So, the reason we don't allow PMs there is because we don't store people's private communications at all -- for lots of reasons. We can amend that policy as we slog through this stuff, but I just want to say that there is no problem with suddenly having a new mailbox to check every day just because you're using footbag.org. The e-mail alias service on footbag.org is only a convenience that forwards all mail sent to your username on footbag.org to your registered e-mail address. Presumably, that's the same registered e-mail address you have on Modified, which sends alerts that you have new messages to read (either PMs or replies to threads). So, there's really no change there.

Thanks.

Steve