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Insomnia is going Free-to-Read (and to post in)

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Insomnia is going Free-to-Read (and to post in)

Unread postby icycalm » 15 Nov 2014 15:34

My financial situation recently changed for the better, and I no longer need the money coming in from subscribers in order to finance the site. The books are paying for themselves, as I recently noted [ > ], and at the same time I have finally found a way to have an essentially unlimited number of contributors without having to pay them anything (I will explain all in an upcoming article in detail).

I have been considering this move for a while, as my finances have been improving dramatically over the past few months, but what made me pull the trigger specifically today was the publication of the English translation of Recap's editorial, The New Technocrats. It's such a magnificent piece of writing that it made me want to shout it from the rooftops, so to speak. It is a tour-de-force, an awe-inspiring demonstration of the difference between passion and fagotry (for everyone who likes portable formats is a fagot).

And then the recent "Gamergate" hoopla, and all the new sites that are popping up to cover the perceived "void" (which as I've already explained [ > ] doesn't really exist, because Insomnia has been filling it since 2005) made me want to step it up, by investing even more of my time and money than I already have these past 10 or so years, to take the site "Mane Streem", so to speak, if you get my meaning. It really is Insomnia's time to fully shine and assume its place as the Cahiers du Cinéma or the New Yorker of videogames, since there do not really exist any other videogame sites today (as I will be explaining in Videogame Culture: Volume II eventually). If you look closely enough you'll realize that no one else is talking about videogames at all anymore.

Other things happening is that I will be devolving moderation of the forum to other people, so that the banhammer will not be coming down as swiftly and definitively as before. We'll try 1-week and 1-month bans, etc., when we need to, in order to help people become acclimatized with the nature of an intellectual forum as opposed to a gutter where every retard is allowed to speak his mind without thinking or even reading what has been been said before on the subject that he is replying to. At the same time I will be relying on long-time forum members to explain stuff patiently and nicely to new members, so that the majority of potential bans can be prevented ahead of time.

So the forum is already fully viewable by guests (except the Trading forum, which will always require membership), and whoever wants to register an account, in order to be able to post, should email Qpo at qpo@culture.vg with his two preferred usernames, and he'll set you up -- there is no fee required for it. The only thing we ask is that you use a REAL email address, not one of those fake, throwaway ones that people use like Mailinator. If you employ a site like that, we will not reply to your request for an account.

If you already have an account in the forum, please don't try to register a new one. All previous bans are anyway off, and no one is holding a grudge here. As long as you can behave yourself FROM NOW ON, you are welcome to use your old account and post here, even if you are the kid that hacked this site all those years ago. So if you are an old user and want your old account reactivated, email Qpo and he'll do it for you. It's no big deal. Eventually, I might try automatically reactivating all the old accounts, but there are some technical issues that prevent me from doing this right now, so until then Qpo will have to do it manually when it is requested of him.

As for the frontpage: most of the latest articles are now publicly viewable, but not all, and definitely not any of the older ones. The problem is that making all the articles viewable is not just a matter of pressing a button in the CMS I am using: I have to go to each individual article page and re-save it as "publicly viewable", which takes some time. If I spent an entire day doing this I could have the whole site visible within 24 hours, but it is a dreadfully boring job and I can't stomach more than a few minutes of it a time. So you'll just have to wait a week or two until I get around to making everything visible.

Finally, I will soon be expanding all the above into an article titled "Insomnia is About to Explode", so hold off any questions you might have on the subject until that article goes up, and make sure to read it carefully when it does because it will contain a ton of new material that is not included in this forum post. This post is merely a little preview of what is coming, to give a headstart to those who are wondering why the fuck they can suddenly view stuff that they couldn't have before.
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icycalm
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Unread postby JC Denton » 15 Nov 2014 16:19

Yep, I am taking over from icy on forum moderation, so he can concentrate on updating the frontpage more regularly, as he's been doing lately, and we'll see if I will be enough to handle everything myself, or if I'll have to ask for help from others down the line.

One thing I am considering doing is making guests able to post in the News forum. I might try it today as an experiment, we'll see.
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JC Denton
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Unread postby clayton.perdue » 16 Nov 2014 05:48

This is all very exciting. Thank you, icycalm.
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Unread postby JC Denton » 16 Nov 2014 17:27

I have provisionally re-enabled self-registration: http://culture.vg/forum/ucp.php?mode=register

icy hasn't used it in ages, so we don't know if it works smoothly anymore (there may be spambot issues, etc.) So I am going to try it out for a few days and see how it works.

Note that the "Register" button that now appears in various places on the forum (when you are not logged in, naturally) had been modded by icy to lead to the Subscription page, so I need to re-edit the code to make it lead to the self-registration page. I will do so once I have established that self-registration works fine again.

Existing users who want to get their accounts reactivated or unbanned will still need to contact Qpo in the email address provided above. Please do not create alternate forum accounts.
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JC Denton
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Unread postby icycalm » 17 Nov 2014 04:45

It's happening. And you 'aint seen nothing yet.

chart.png
chart.png (7.77 KiB) Viewed 32205 times
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icycalm
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Unread postby JC Denton » 17 Nov 2014 23:43

I have started reactivating/unbanning accounts.

Approximately 200 people subscribed to Insomnia 3.0 at some point between the November 2011 launch date of that version of the site and last week, so I started with those people, and reactivated a couple dozen of them last night. Those people should be able to log in and post on the forum just fine, and I will do the rest of them during this week. After that, I will start tackling the 700+ forum accounts that did not subscribe to the site, but it's gonna be rough, so please be patient. If you want to jump to the top of the line, all you have to do is email me at admin@culture.vg

For any technical/registration/logging-in problems, etc., as well as for any problems you may have with other users including icy, I can be reached at any time at the same address (forget about Qpo's address: I'll be handling everything from now on).
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JC Denton
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Unread postby JC Denton » 21 Nov 2014 23:47

All the "Register" links around the site work now, and we have tested self-registration with several new users, so there are no issues that I can see. If I have missed converting a "subscribe" link to a "register" link anywhere around the site, let me know here and I'll fix it.

Remember: if you have had an Insomnia account at any time since the site went live in 2005, DO NOT register a new one. Email me instead, and I'll set you up. There are fewer than half a dozen people that icy does not want to see back (Carceri, zinger, and a couple others), so you are probably not in that group, and I am authorized to unban you if you ask for it (and I will unban you anyway eventually when I get to reviewing your account; it'll just take longer that way).

Also, almost all of the content on the site has been made publicly viewable. I am probably missing fewer than half a dozen articles at this point, and I'll track them down and fix them soon.
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JC Denton
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Unread postby JC Denton » 22 Nov 2014 00:18

Also, unregistered guests can now post in the News forum. We want to make it the number 1 news destination on the web, and we can use all the help we can get. But make sure you use decent punctuation, etc., and don't shit things up, because you'll leave me with no choice but to IP ban you, and then you won't be able to read jack in the forum. Enjoy.
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JC Denton
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Unread postby JC Denton » 27 Nov 2014 02:15

Ok, I have finally unbanned all currently active users who had been previously banned, except Somali Pirate/taub, per icy's orders.

The next step is to reactivate all of the subscribers whose subscriptions have expired (unbanning them when necessary). This will take me a couple of weeks at least, so bear with me please.
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JC Denton
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