Website back or something, chat disabled

Due to the extremely poor reception of the site takedown, it's back for now. However, chat will be disabled for a while until we decide what to do there. Anyway, some information. I have many problems. I'm not a particularly good leader and I have a short temper. I can't be stretched too far and I don't deal with pressure well. I'm throwing all this out there so you better understand why I basically had a meltdown and removed the website. A set of users on the website were having some fun and took it much too far. This isn't the first time, but it certainly was the most severe. I didn't know how to handle it and so I tried to let it sort itself out. If it didn't, I was going to take severe action (which would've been bad). Luckily, the situation did eventually sort itself out, but it left me broken. Keep in mind all my serious flaws. After further mishaps, I had enough and decided that I couldn't handle running the website. You can read here for a discussion about the closure and my reasons, but here's a snippet which explains the gist:

However, this isn't just simple trolling; this was a severe intrusion of privacy and as the website owner, I could be involved in a criminal investigation if the parents want to launch one. If things like this continue, I could get involved in even more stuff, particularly if someone is pushed to suicide (which is, horribly, a real possibility). I... I cannot be responsible for the death of someone because I couldn't keep people in line. I would be destroyed, and I would forever feel guilty for destroying the lives of the victim's family.

In a combination of extreme frustration and fear of a horrible outcome, I decided to close the website. I've done this before with other things, so I'm sure it came as no surprise to those who've known me a while. Also this is pretty cliche, so I'm sure other people saw it coming too (along with me going back on my word now). I am absolutely serious; I believe that given the amount of stress these horrible actions place on people, someone can be pushed to suicide. I have worried about this for years, but in the PTC wiki, I was not the owner. I am always worried that someone is going to crack and just end it all, and it wouldn't be anybody's fault but mine. I should be keeping people in line, and I obviously can't. However, there was a significant backlash. I received many emails about the closure of the website, and I didn't know what to do. I don't want to be placed in the situation described above, but I also don't to destroy a community all these people obviously care about (and I didn't know they cared that much). It was selfish of me to close the website, but even now, I still don't know the right course of action. Lumage brought up the good point that we should disable the chat until we figure out what to do. I know the chat is a great place to get immediate feedback, but it's also a medium for some pretty terrible actions. I'm extremely sorry for going overboard, but please understand that I am VERY concerned about what might happen. These are not small issues; I don't care about silly arguments or dumb trolls. I care about real, serious issues that cause a huge amount of anguish on those involved. If you would like to discuss possible solutions or want more information, we can discuss in this thread. Edit: To all the people who were upset with the site takedown... are you sure you want someone like me running the place? Someone so easily broken and absolutely unconcerned about the terrible impact of his actions? I'm sure this simple 5 hour takedown was enough to lose a portion of the community, and I wouldn't be surprised if even more people leave after they learn that the owner of the website has so many problems. I'm also aware that to many, this event probably sounds like a silly overreaction to a bit of drama. I'm not sure what to think about it; I haven't distanced myself enough to figure out the scope of what happened. Just please keep in mind who the website owner is, and whether or not you want to stick around given his less-than-suitable personality.

I think the chat is irrelevant (there's plenty of alternatives if people want to chat with friends online) and difficult to moderate. A private messaging system is better and probably easier to control.

Anyway, just make a sticky thread warning about this kind of situation and advising people to use basic common sense and have a unique password for their email accounts Then just force every user to visit it once.

I was planning on making a private messaging system, but I disagree that it's easier to control. Private messages should probably stay private, and I should only "peek" at them if absolutely necessary. I don't think private messages can be moderated at all without an invasion of privacy. As for the chat, I don't know. The tabs apparently helped; people told me they didn't even know what was going on half the time because they were discussing SmileBASIC. Perhaps what we need are a set of easy to follow rules and we need to enforce them the best that we can. Edit: Hah, sticky threads. I still haven't gotten around to implementing that feature.... I'll get to it as soon as I can.

I was planning on making a private messaging system, but I disagree that it's easier to control. Private messages should probably stay private, and I should only "peek" at them if absolutely necessary. I don't think private messages can be moderated at all without an invasion of privacy.

Nah, private messages should be private to users (and moderators, if there's such a thing here), never to admins.

Also, it's not the password that was the issue. It's the extremely severe bullying and the nearly 0 remorse shown for it. These users basically have the run of the place because no matter how many times I ban them, they can simply create a new account. It's not hard to get infinite fake email addresses. I don't want them causing so many issues in the chat that the situation I described earlier comes along. It'd be nice to tell people to "use common sense" and have them actually follow it, but if someone really wants to cause trouble, you're not going to be able to stop them. Edit: About the private messages, I just don't like that kind of snooping. I wouldn't trust myself to read through everyone's PMs, let alone anyone else. It doesn't feel right. Edit2: Also, please keep in mind that I'm almost certain I drove everyone away. If the community gets split, it's entirely my fault. Please go wherever there's the most people, and hopefully the majority of the people will congregate there, wherever it may be.

This should be a mandatory read for anyone going online for the first time "No one here likes you" should make it clear to anyone. Also #15 is very relevant. It's a trial by fire, really.

And nah, people will be back here. Miiverse is good only for showing off screenshots. Can't really discuss much with their 30 daily posts limit.

I'm glad to see you brought the site back. If you ever need an extra moderator, I'm happy to help.

I'm glad you brought the website back. I agree 100% with removing the chat, it only ever caused problems back on the PTC Wiki, I don't see why it would be any different now. The forums work really well for when someone needs help with something, and if people want to chat they can easily find somewhere else. I also just want to say that none of this is your fault and you shouldn't feel guilty over it, just because you own the website. You definitely did the right thing in trying to stop it, though; however, removing the entire website was probably a bit overboard. :P

:'( .........

Lumage, could you keep the site + chat going if random let you?.....

Let me see if I've got this straight: 1. Some user (I'm not sure who) accidentally - or maybe even intentionally? - posted their SBS password in the chat. 2. Another user asshole by the name ArcPh1r3 used this password, which was reused on many other places, to hack that user's email account, steam user, and maybe other accounts. 3. ??? 4. randomouscrap freaks out (justifiably) and shuts down the website. Now, I'm not entirely sure what happened there on step 3. I know arc put some info in the chat, but what's that about driving people to suicide? Did that really happen? Here's my two cents: first of all, I would never consider anyone responsible for something that somebody else did. How people use a web chat (of all things) is impossible to control, due to the immediate/instant nature of it, and so words said and actions done in a chat are equivalent to those done in real life. The fault is of the doer, not the site owner. Secondly, I consider most of my favorite communities to be self-moderated. What that means is that moderators are mainly there just to remove spam, and if someone misbehaves, he would just be ignored or berated by other users. Of course, if something illegal is happening then moderator-edits and even bans sometimes have to be made, but for most proposes this can be avoided. And lastly, I love this community, though I completely forgot that the chat even existed. I may be alone in this, but I don't think the chat is the centerpiece of SmileBASIC Source. And the chat can easily be delegated to any IRC network (like QuakeNet) with a web interface. Sure, you wouldn't be able to tie accounts to chat nicks, but at least it's something, and then whatever happens in the chat happens on THEIR servers.

^ maybe

random should

Good to see the site back. I think removing chat probably was the best idea for now (even if I can't just ramble on and on about language features anymore :P). I don't really involve myself with drama (heck, I just stayed in the SB tab of chat most of the time), so I was really surprised to see the site gone. Hopefully we won't have to keep dealing with harassment from now on.

Let me see if I've got this straight:

The problem is that it's happened before, over and over again, back on Wikia and now here. And it's not just this one user.

http://chat-r.cf/ maybe we could use this to chat

I just want to say, Random, you're the perfect person to run this place. You're the only one I know that would be able to even try to put up with all this. I personally believe we need more moderators in order to keep this place from running into chaos. I also think that you did what you thought was best at the moment. You might of acted irrationally, but what does everyone expect? You have to put up with the stress of many users. No one should expect any more of you when you programmed this whole site (with Lumage's help, of course) and now have to put up with ArcPh1r3. All I can say is thank you, Random, for bringing the place back. Thank you for not deleting the community.

http://chat-r.cf/ maybe we could use this to chat

I'd have no problem with that, being the owner.