Scrotnig

I don't 'really love' Gary, but I do not have the abject hate for him that one or two people have. I wish him no harm and I hope he's ok. That, however, doesn't mean he's immune to criticism, and when he's pulling silly stunts like the past few days, it's perfectly ok to point that out. What I don't like is the more personally absuive attacks, and also attacks on his family, all of which are below the bekt and not acceptable.

The guest posting rather spoils this place a bit. The guest posts aren't particularly funny or clever, and just make the site look a bit cheap and nasty to be honest. There's plenty of 'real', verifiable people here. Why spoil it with guest posting? It just brings in silly trolls and spammers.

That's a possibility, but then again, I recall being on Gary's sites six or seven years ago, and it was always the same. For a while he kept switching between being a blog and being a forum. Sometimes it switched on a daily basis. You can see this if you pull up the web archive of his old domain, mrgtb.com. The amusing part was all the different versions of what 'mrgtb' stood for. We all knew it was Mr GTB (GTB being his initials of course), but we got such nonsense as "Movie Reviews - Getting The Blockbusters" and other such fun. Pretty sure I've linked to some examples in the past.

Gary's wiped the site again. So now it's different every day...wiped one day, restored the next. I don't think he's in a good way at the moment. He probably ought to drop the idea of running a forum, it's not good for his health, seriously. This behaviour is that of someone who is really struggling to cope with running a forum. :(

Sounds nothing like Gary I'm afraid.

This is a long period to be offline for Gary, I think he's shut it.

Boring! It's almost as exciting as the latest updates on Skooppa.

I don't get to see most of that stuff, as unlike these new johnny-come-latelys, *I* have been banned for over a year!

You would have to hope that was it, because 22 posts in 24 hours would be a bit....terminal.

When it says 'New Messages Today'...is that, in the past 24 hours, or since the start of the day (whatever that may be classed as)?

At what point does TAZ reach 'BAN EQUITY'? That is, the point at which there are as many banned users as active ones.

Whenever these errors turn up on Gary's site, you have to ask what the cause is. Is it: a) The server is b0rked. b) Gary's closed the site in a huff. To be fair, it could be either.

I recall Brad pretty much finished off AdminExtra in the days before TAZ bought it. On every occasion that a discussion started up, he'd start wading in deleting posts, editing people's comments and then eventually he'd close the thread. So people just drifted away.

Eh?

Yes, I realise that, however bjklhlhkjhjhjklh. And furthermore, it's hjkhkbb nj hjb before you know it.

Bob Schwartz? (AWS) Brandon Sheley? Can't think of any others. Were either of them ever TAZ staff members? I'm a bit behind the program with all this stuff, I must confess.

Well that would be a good start. However, I admit I also don't know who you were when you were a staff member on TAZ....perhaps revealing that might aid with credibility.....anyone can say they saw staff chats but never took screenshots.... Not trying to be provocative but I do like some weight behind this sort of stuff, otherwise I will (mostly) give TAZ the benefit of the doubt....apart from in banning me, obviously....

Well, I dunno. Nobody's provided any actual evidence for many of the supposed wrong doings at TAZ. I know they banned me, so I'm not really here to sing their praises, but some of the stuff that gets claimed seems a little too far fetched to me. If anyone's got any actual evidence I'll glady change my tune but until then, I just view them a fairly ok site that sometimes gets a bit over-zealous with banning people, that's all. Maybe I'm just being gullible and / or try to see the best in people. Charges I won't necessarily contest.

Another point. I don't think this is a "TAZ hate site". Though I can see why Howard might see it that way. If I thought it was, I wouldn't even be here. I am not here because of anything TAZ-related, for example.

This is all eerily reminiscent of how my own site got going a whole fourteen years ago....resulted in my own dismissal as a moderator from a UK ISP's support forums and the traction sort of built up from there. I don't wish TAZ any ill will, but they appear to have got to this dangerous point of what seem to be paranoid bans / demotions etc. With that and the apparent security issues, it's not a great time for them at the moment. Despite them rather inexplicably banning me a couple of years ago, I hope they pick things up and sort them out. TAZ isn't a bad site overall, Howard isn't a "bad person", and I don't think they do anything intentionally malicious.

Is this Bash Zone's first flounce? If you want to run a proper troll forum, it will be the first of many. Luckily, most flouncers later return, though not all.

No, I just have different opinion to you. Hard luck.

That TAZ is not 'the best admin site'. That is my opinion. It's perfectly fine if you don't agree, but you're not likely to change my view on the subject. I don't, however, 'hate' TAZ. They are a commercial forum and they need to do what they believe to be best for their site. I don't bear them any grudges for banning me, but I don't, and never did, consider them the 'best admin site'. The actual best admin site, for me, was AdminAddict in the days when Nick owned it and before he lost interest. Unfortunately he ruined it by listening to people who said 'don't allow all the vB drama stuff'. So he stopped allowing it and the site - which at one point even had the then manager of vBulletin, Ray Morgan, posting on it - died. Then AWS bought it and it died even more.

Yes that is pretty much the case. I asked them to 'close my account' previously. The issue at that time was that they introduced a rule insisting that I (and any other software staff) must identify myself as 'vBulletin Staff' and accept their statement that any such staff WERE posting on behalf of the companies we worked for. This was after pressure from people who constantly followed us around posting 'is this an official statement from vBulletin?' and suchlike. I believe a few started complaining to the company. Disclaimers in sigs started to appear, and this seemed to fan the flames of the hate mob still further. I, and I believe some others, could not accept this, because nobody is authorised to make 'official statements on behalf of the company', so to protect myself, comply with the terms of my contract, and to protest against such a ludicrous rule, I asked them to close my account, which they duly did. Not long afterwards the issue got resolved....Howard got in touch by email and basically said they'd had second thoughts about that idea. I returned, but asked for my name to be changed to 'Scrotnig', which is a name I often use on sites to obscure my real name. I asked for 'Formerly Mark.B' to be specified as my user title, to avoid any confusion, but I wanted a separation from the name I used on the support forums, given the attitude of some of the TAZ posters. That account got banned against my wishes a year or so later for - as far as I can tell - the reasons outlined in my earlier post.

I don't think it IS the best thing out there. It perhaps has the most activity, which is not remotely the same. I also don't hate it, so you managed to be wrong in almost every part of your post.