405th Ownership Change, Site Move and Updates - ALL PLEASE READ!

Status
Not open for further replies.
Art Andrews

Art Andrews

Community Owner
Community Staff
OMG!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO THE 405th?!?

First off, let’s back up a bit…

Hi, my name is Art and I recently acquired the 405th from Adam Grumbo. Many of you might already know me from therpf.com, thedentedhelmet.com, and thehunterslair.com. If you don’t know me already, I run a website management company (Movie Prop Sites, LLC) that specifically focuses on managing communities like the 405th.

With that in mind, let’s just get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first. With this transition, you are going to see change… a LOT of change. No one likes change, but without change we cannot grow and improve. You are already witnessing the first of that change now. If you are reading this, you are reading it from an all-new, much more powerful server, as we have moved the 405th onto our own platform. We have also updated the site software to the latest version (not vB 5… everyone knows how bad that is), and we have also made some minimal changes to the structure of the forums and made a couple of forum name tweaks. Again, while I know it is uncomfortable, this and more change will be coming down the road. Please be patient with us because once we come out on the other side of it, things will be a lot better.

Now that we have explained the unpleasant part, let’s talk about the good things. First, I believe this is an amazing community and we are very excited to be able to serve you. We think there is a lot of potential here and over the next year or so, we plan to try some new and interesting things… some of which many of you have wanted, and probably a few things you haven’t even thought of! We don’t want to spill all the beans just yet, but we see a fun future for the community!

I am sure you have questions and possibly concerns, so instead of me prattling on, let me know what is on your mind and I’ll try to answer to the best of my ability.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
I just want to say Art after having my account deleted and then the whole hacking thing i was really ready to give up on the 405th but after seeing what you've did to the site i feel like you have breathed new life into the site and under your leadership this site will do better than ever, so really thank you for everything you've done.
 
Upvote 0
Drsalmon616 said:
I just want to say Art after having my account deleted and then the whole hacking thing i was really ready to give up on the 405th but after seeing what you've did to the site i feel like you have breathed new life into the site and under your leadership this site will do better than ever, so really thank you for everything you've done.
Click to expand...

Thank you. Always keep in mind, I just build the infrastructure. It is members like you who make a community live or die and it will be up to the community to make the 405th thrive again.
 
Upvote 0
I must ask - I've seen a few new Staff members online recently - are we receiving new Staff from outside the forum?

Personally, I'd far prefer members from within the community, who are familiar with the forum and the membership, to take up staffing posts, rather than import Staff from elsewhere. I want to know and be familiar with the people in contol of the forum, and I'd prefer knowing WHY these people were promoted. One of the large issues with the forum previously was the fact that people were promoted based on friendships rather than actual talent, so I want to know that these staff members are capable and trustworthy.
 
Upvote 0
Arcanine said:
I must ask - I've seen a few new Staff members online recently - are we receiving new Staff from outside the forum?

Personally, I'd far prefer members from within the community, who are familiar with the forum and the membership, to take up staffing posts, rather than import Staff from elsewhere. I want to know and be familiar with the people in contol of the forum, and I'd prefer knowing WHY these people were promoted. One of the large issues with the forum previously was the fact that people were promoted based on friendships rather than actual talent, so I want to know that these staff members are capable and trustworthy.
Click to expand...

From what I've seen Arcanine, there's nothing to worry about. I think these individuals you have seen are merely helping with site maintenance at the moment helping to clean out the spam and stuff.
 
Upvote 0
Arcanine said:
I must ask - I've seen a few new Staff members online recently - are we receiving new Staff from outside the forum?
Click to expand...

You are most likely seeing Montagar who is helping setup a number of things with me. He is specifically focusing on the management side, while I am handling more of the look & feel side. With that being said, we are not planning on bringing in outsiders. We plan to continue to staff from within.

Arcanine said:
Personally, I'd far prefer members from within the community, who are familiar with the forum and the membership, to take up staffing posts, rather than import Staff from elsewhere. I want to know and be familiar with the people in contol of the forum, and I'd prefer knowing WHY these people were promoted. One of the large issues with the forum previously was the fact that people were promoted based on friendships rather than actual talent, so I want to know that these staff members are capable and trustworthy.
Click to expand...

Completely understandable. Part of our method of managing communities like this is not to continually micromanage them (as you are seeing me do at the moment), but to set them up for success, put the systems and policies in place for them to thrive, and then let them manage themselves with us providing oversight. Now... this community will be a bit different due to us building the club aspect, but overall this is not about us supplying the needs of the community, but ultimately the community providing for itself.

With that being said, I am not going to promise that you will like every decision we make or every person we put in place, and while there is always a reason behind the decisions we make and we are often pretty open about why we made them, we are not going to put ourselves in a position in which we feel forced to defend our decisions or feel compelled to convince the community why we did this or that. I don't say that to be snarky, but to make sure that your expectations are realistic. Keep in mind, while we have a great passion for this hobby, for us this is also a business effort, so even moreso than you, it is very important to us that we place capable and trustworthy people in positions of authority and that decisions are based on what is best for the community as a whole instead of who are friends are. And trust me... anyone who knows me from our other sites will tell you, I am good, to a fault, at separating friendship from business. ;)
 
Upvote 0
Looking forward to getting to know the new staff, and seeing what the future holds for the 405th!
 
Upvote 0
Arcanine said:
Let's be fair, a lot of the time the mods were only doing their jobs to keep the peace. Have some respect for the staff - they do a pretty dirty, thankless job and while you might want to tear a member in two for some perceived slight, it's their job to stand between you and that member and keep the peace in order. That includes calling people out for a perceived slight.

It's unfortunate, but it's often the case that you have to swallow your pride and let some things slide, as unpleasant as people have been towards you. No matter how much you want to be toxic back, poor attitude breeds poor attitude. It's the staff's job to stop things from escalating.
Click to expand...

Have you read the thread? I wasn't the only one. A lot of people were calling Paige out for what she was doing, but she seemed to have the mods on her side deleting everything negative people said in the thread. This made her able to keep doing what she was doing and new people that came to the thread had no idea this was happening since everything bad had already been removed.

Here's the thread. In short Paige knew that she had ripped Halo Reach assets that noone else had released yet and was trying to exploit people into kissing her ass in order to get them. Like a carrot on a stick. People saw right through that and called her out, but their posts got deleted by the mods for some reason(including mine). Then another member started posting files in the thread like "Hey, don't worry. I've already ripped a lot of these files". This made Paige flip out and threatened with stopping her release since she felt another member got all the glory. She eventually stopped releasing files completely. This is when I left my response(second page). After I left that response I got a lot of PMs from other members thanking me for standing up.

What Paige was doing was disgusting and I hope that nobody does again. As someone who releases game assets myself I have no problem with people helping me out in releasing ripped files. I did not make those, the game devs did and anyone with an extractor can do the same. That's why I let people know in my Titanfall thread that they could also do this. This forum is about learning and contributing together! Not about taking all the credit for yourself. I get so happy every time I see people help out and work alongside me. I don't need people to thank me for everything I do. All I need is to know that what I made helped someone. That makes every bit of work worth it.

I'll leave my response here since I think it's important for members to understand what the core of 405th is. Unity!
Jico; said:
PaigeMaster; said:
Then please, feel free to. I'm not wasting my time trying to provide for a community that, for the most part, is pretty gods-darned thankless with how it receives them.

I want this thread locked. If the files are so easy to obtain, extract and post, then please - do so. I do hope that being sharing and caring makes you feel so much nicer and fuzzier than it has me, because I, frankly, am tired of giving and not receiving.

I'm done. Well done, 405th, for completely burning out my desire to be a sharing member of the community.
Click to expand...

Dude, shut up. We are a community. We work together. We help each other. We Criticize each other. That is what improves us and that is what makes this forum great. You can't just exploit us by dividing your content into "releases" and demanding that the only thing we are allowed to say is "thank you great master of things we don't have and really want".

While you have been complaining about how we do things around here I have used the models you provided. I had to find my old rip files that I released a while ago to get the Texture for the ODSt helmet because you couldn't just release them in the first place.

HaloReachODSTByJico.png


Here is the download link for the members who appreciate our COMMUNITY!

Remember our motto!
Honor, Armor, Unity
​
Click to expand...

HaloReachODSTByJico.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Upvote 0
Jico said:
-snip-
Click to expand...

I was curious about this so I looked up this person. Makes a lot more sense now knowing who "she" was in reality. Not sure why anyone was deleting posts, but there must have been a good reason for it as I trust the mods that were active during that time period. Don't worry. "She" shouldn't be making anymore trouble here.
 
Upvote 0
Jico said:
A lot of people were calling Paige out for what she was doing, but she seemed to have the mods... deleting everything negative people said in the thread.
Click to expand...

Which is how moderating usually works. Their job is to clean up the mess when arguments and problems come up.

I'm not defending the poor attitudes that were levelled in that thread - I went and did some research myself to get the story before continuing with this - but, as I said earlier, moderating is a pretty thankless task. I've done it, it's not fun, and sometimes you're going to catch heat for the work you do. And honestly, it seems as if tempers were high all around at that time - don't resent the staff for doing their job. Nuking the bad posts is pretty much the only option staff have for preventing further arguments.
 
Upvote 0
To be honest. Adding anything to any internet forum is pretty much a thankless task. Hopefully you contribute for the right reasons, and the critics/trolls stay off your back. That's not always the case though. Trick is to not feed the trolls..:)
Every now and again though you get to see things take off in a big way, which is nice.
I'm glad to see the forums are getting the level of organisation and support they need.
Good luck guys..:)
 
Upvote 0
JediFraz said:
To be honest. Adding anything to any internet forum is pretty much a thankless task. Hopefully you contribute for the right reasons, and the critics/trolls stay off your back. That's not always the case though. Trick is to not feed the trolls..:)
Every now and again though you get to see things take off in a big way, which is nice.
I'm glad to see the forums are getting the level of organisation and support they need.
Good luck guys..:)
Click to expand...

Wow hey there Jedifraz! I was actually just today going through Stuck threads and came across the Frizzlefry/ Jedifraz pep tutorial, I spent a good long while reading through that and some of the other early pepakura threads. Cool to see you poke in here!

Edit: And your Excalibur 2008 Calendar is still a Stuck thread in the UK section, lol. I'll be fixing that soon...
 
Upvote 0
Hey Ruze. Yeah It's been a while. Been meaning to check out the forums in what seems like forever. [Start sad piano music] My shed leaked destroying my pep armour. (HINT. Don't wait til it's finished to glass it.) Fixed the roof. Then had to psyche myself up to do it all again, Took a while, real-life kept intruding. Then my shed was broken into. All my tools were stolen and my completed helmet and chest/ biceps. Then I was made redundant. [/sad piano music] :)
At least the site is all working again. Which is nice..
Hey, you take your silver linings where you can. :)

Does this mean the geographical grouping will now be 'official'?
 
Upvote 0
I think this is an excellent change! I've been avoiding coming on here for a good bit because it got so cluttered and cramped and headed strictly on facebook. I'm working on organizing a group for Wizard World Chicago right now!
 
Upvote 0
Art, not sure when the like button was officially added, but I like it! :D

Also, is there going to be a chat feature like at the RPF? Sorry in advance if this has been mentioned already, however, I did a quick search and nothing came up about it.
 
Upvote 0
vshore100 said:
Also, is there going to be a chat feature like at the RPF? Sorry in advance if this has been mentioned already, however, I did a quick search and nothing came up about it.
Click to expand...

NO! We have implemented that stupid chat program on 3 sites and everyone uses it for about a week and then NOTHING! It is expensive and temperamental and not worth the time or effort to implement.
 
Upvote 0
Sorry... it is one of those painful learning lessons that the 405th benefits from because we know better than to implement it here!
 
Upvote 0
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

CrimsonViper97
  • Locked
  • Question
405th Shop Down
Replies
2
Views
487
CrimsonViper97
CrimsonViper97
Spiderboy196
  • Locked
  • Question
405th armory update(halo infinite specifically)
Replies
5
Views
1,024
Cadet
Cadet
SSGLordElmo
  • Locked
  • Question
405th Discord
Replies
5
Views
1,492
PerniciousDuke
P
ShoeGum
  • Locked
  • Question
Epoxy, resin, and epoxy resin, whats the difference?
Replies
3
Views
2,114
PerniciousDuke
P
CD Bullet
  • Locked
  • Question
New here and need some help/ advice.
Replies
2
Views
823
CD Bullet
CD Bullet

Similar threads

CrimsonViper97
  • Locked
405th Shop Down
Replies
2
Views
487
CrimsonViper97
CrimsonViper97
Spiderboy196
  • Locked
405th armory update(halo infinite specifically)
Replies
5
Views
1,024
Cadet
Cadet
SSGLordElmo
  • Locked
405th Discord
Replies
5
Views
1,492
PerniciousDuke
P
ShoeGum
  • Locked
Epoxy, resin, and epoxy resin, whats the difference?
Replies
3
Views
2,114
PerniciousDuke
P
CD Bullet
  • Locked
New here and need some help/ advice.
Replies
2
Views
823
CD Bullet
CD Bullet
Back
Top