Out of a morbid curiosity, I ran the inactive account reaper for the first time in many years. We lost 102 user accounts, among which were a few surprising names. If you hadn't logged in since before March 1 of this year, that's why your account is gone. If you've come back after a long absence to find that this has happened to you, no worries - your old name is available, DCF doesn't maintain a list of names that have been used but aren't any more.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

(Shrugs)

Haven't felt the urge to post, so haven't bothered to login.

It's quiet here in the forums...

Too quiet.

>It's quiet here in the forums...
>
>Too quiet.

I know, right?

I didn't want to be the one to bring it up - bit needy - but dang.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

But its so easy to lurk! I do check the forum everyday but well, shy and lurky I am. So here i've reregistered and will procede to chime in with awkward and worshipful ramblings.

You are my favorite writer ever! And considering how much I read that's actually saying quite a lot. I've spent the last couple months reading UF in chrono order. Even after reading for ten years or so you can still choke me up or make me fall off the couch laughing.

Carry on sir you rock!

>I didn't want to be the one to bring it up - bit needy - but dang.

Have you considered doing any promotion of your work? I know the options for fanfic are sharply limited, but there's always fanfiction.net and the like. You're a great writer, but I feel like now that no one goes to USENET anymore, not many people are finding their way here.

LAST EDITED ON Dec-10-13 AT 03:30 AM (EST)
 
>
>>I didn't want to be the one to bring it up - bit needy - but dang.
>
>Have you considered doing any promotion of your work? I know the
>options for fanfic are sharply limited, but there's always
>fanfiction.net and the like. You're a great writer, but I feel like
>now that no one goes to USENET anymore, not many people are finding
>their way here.

I would suggest maybe talking about it on forum.spacebattles.com There also might be an appropriate sub-reddit for fanfic discussions.

You know, I still have not visited Reddit.

I also don't have a Facebook account (or anything from Facebook's progenitor social sites), a Twitter account, and am only vaguely aware as to what Snapchat is.

I am the neolithic equivalent of an interweb use...

Brian

LAST EDITED ON Dec-10-13 AT 12:18 PM (EST)
 
>There also might be an appropriate sub-reddit for fanfic discussions.

Oh man, Reddit? Fuck that; Reddit is the web equivalent of those newsgroups where predatory net.larvae would gather to get their kicks and celebrate their eliteness by picking on the steadily arriving freshmen every September. Advertising for new readers there would be like taking out a personal ad with a heading like SEEKING SOMEONE TO ABUSE ME - ARE YOU THE ONE?

True story: I was in a class a while back with a kid who liked to talk about his personal life, which mainly involved being an active redditor and belonging to an explicitly griefing-oriented PVP guild in EVE Online. I once asked him if he had any hobbies that didn't involve being a dick to strangers on the Internet, and he proudly replied that he did not. He was particularly proud of one adventure in which he and his Reddit posse had allegedy ganged up and gotten some guy fired from his job in revenge for some trivial social faux pas. No thank you. Even if that wasn't true, why would I risk attracting the kind of asshole who thinks it's a fun tall tale?

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Oh, man, those guys. They're so awful that they make the somethingawful Goon alliance (EVE's verison of 'guilds') look like paragons of civility and politesse.

In fact, they even managed to so grievously offend the afforementioned Goons that the Goons wiped them out in the last major war, and are vaguely embarrassed that they were ever associated with them.

I actually know a guy who was (maybe is, depends on if he's still involved in the game at all) who was part of Goons. I've heard a good deal about that whole situation, and I count it as being among the primary reasons for avoiding that game like the plague.

>I actually know a guy who was (maybe is, depends on if he's still
>involved in the game at all) who was part of Goons. I've heard a good
>deal about that whole situation, and I count it as being among the
>primary reasons for avoiding that game like the plague.

Truth be told, I run an internet spaceship guild that is a close ally of theirs, and the leader of Goonswarm is an old friend/drinking buddy at this point.

Members of Goonswarm can be howling barbarians at times, but their leadership are, by and large, intelligent, capable and reasonable folks. You have to be, to manage a 12,000-member organization.

LAST EDITED ON Dec-11-13 AT 06:33 AM (EST)
 
One of Goonfleet's major leaders - Vilerat - was one of the US diplomats killed at Benghazi. Hell of a guy. The tributes that poured out after his death were incredible. I'm pretty sure the SA community raised tens of thousands for his wife and kid, too.

Edit: Full disclosure, I've been a goon since around 2007. I'm even a member of a very small-scale troll fleet in Star Trek Online (we 'troll' by spraying people trying to have cybersex in public zone chat with fire extinguishers). Joined for the photoshops, stayed for the surprisingly deep discussions around Australian politics.

>One of Goonfleet's major leaders - Vilerat - was one of the US
>diplomats killed at Benghazi. Hell of a guy. The tributes that poured
>out after his death were incredible. I'm pretty sure the SA community
>raised tens of thousands for his wife and kid, too.

Shoot Blues, Tell Vile Rat. RIP.

>He was particularly proud of one adventure
>in which he and his Reddit posse had allegedy ganged up and gotten
>some guy fired from his job in revenge for some trivial social faux
>pas.

It's always been an unwritten rule (at least in those places I've chosen to frequent) that, even if all other bets were off and you were ripping into someone in the cruelest possible manner, you left real life out of it.

I actually left a community because one of the members kept threatening to bring his...anger issues into real life.

Pranks, flames, and embarrassments online are one thing; crippling someone's ability to make a living is quite another.

Yeah look Reddit can be a pretty dark place, from what limited stuff I've read. 4chan too, for that matter.

To drag the conversation back to internet referrals, I originally found NXE through an Everything2 article (http://everything2.com/title/Neon+Exodus+Evangelion) that was last updated in 2000. Somebody should probably tell them that Apotheosis Now came out, um, a while ago.

Fair enough, I honestly avoid Reddit for the most part myself. On second thought, it might be better off if one of your fans did any promotion of UF elsewhere. That way it would be a lot less likely to invite trolls.

As an aside, I wasn't even introduced to UF via anything on the internet. The friend who introduced me to fanfics in general told me about it back in 2001.

>On
>second thought, it might be better off if one of your fans did any
>promotion of UF elsewhere. That way it would be a lot less likely to
>invite trolls.

Yeah, it's a little like political campaigning in the 1800s. The candidates didn't do it themselves; that was considered crass. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.