The Latest On The Ajarn Forum

Bangkok Phil · August 18, 2004

Louis (LMDA) is still running the ajarn forum and I'm very happy to leave him to it. I still want George to keep this forum open though and I hope that he doesn't mind me helping him get it off the ground so to speak. There are certainly loads of people interested in teaching topics. You can never have too much good information and I'm hoping that the ajarn regulars will also come over here and see what's happening. I'm going to take a back seat as regards the ajarn forum for the time being, but I'll pop in as a guest from time to time.

Actually, and you'll laugh at this - I can't even get my old name back at the moment si I couldn't post even if I wanted to. LOL

NoAjarn · August 18, 2004

u can borrow mine if u want phil lol

Harry Palmer · August 18, 2004

now that we have Ajarn back up & running again & discredited posters such as dirtydog have be banned for good, lets hope we have sailed into calmer waters

rollo tomasi · August 18, 2004

'banned for good' is a bit optomistic. This <deleted> need a good smack!

Storekeeper · August 18, 2004

Thanks for staying in circulation Phil.

Ijustwannateach · August 20, 2004

Ajarn's back, but a bit slacker on the teaching topics (have a feeling that the serious posters are still waiting for the penny to drop to see if the place'll stick around before putting work into a post that'll just disappear).

It's just as fun as ever, though, and somehow seems less troll-ridden than before.

"Steven"

george · August 20, 2004

You ole' Ajarns is always welcome here. Our furum rules are a bit stricter, but I belive we can be an alternative. Thanks to Bangkok Phil as well as other mods coming into this forum branch.

A sincere welcome!

Ijustwannateach · August 20, 2004

Thanks, George- I'd looked over here before, but had been warned that teachers sometimes're given short shrift- good to see that's not the case, and also good to have this extra teachers' room!

"Steven"

Harry Palmer · August 20, 2004

It's just as fun as ever, though, and somehow seems less troll-ridden than before.

Smiley · August 21, 2004

Steven I think you may have spoke to soon. I understand the the recovery of Ajarn.com to it's former glory will take time as you say it's about not putting too much energy into a post just to see it vanish time and time again.

The main problem I see over there now is the admin's free for all attutude. It's like they believe that if they don't ban anyone that this will somehow make the trolls stop trolling through some sense of fair play or something. What they fail to realize is that trolls troll because they are simple-minded losers with nothing better to do with their time. Allowing them to post practically anything they want is a ludicrous policy and has made the forum there now a troll haven with the likes of dirtydog(who just signs on with a new name every time he wants to post), smeg/smyth, davidbkk and a few other less notables. I'm getting sick of reading their crap and think I'll be spending less and less time over there. As a committed 3 year poster of that board, I fear that my sentiments will not be confined to myself, but that other longterm valued posters will feel the same and back away from there.

It is a shame but it seems that the hacker has done his intended damage, I just hope that Ajarn.com can survive. It just doesn't feel the same as it once was and I miss it.

Case in point:

Tonight being saturday, dirtydog has signed on as justin and posted over twenty, one line insults and his standard drunken crap and LDMA has posted that he won't personally ban him but that he bets that someone will soon. The level of tolerance for crap over there extends far beyond mine and I am just fed up with it. Well it seems as if TV has another regular poster in the works.

Harry Palmer · August 21, 2004

i'm only a newbie as far as the ajarn board goes, approx. 20 months of posting in one guise or another. one thing that does strike me is it's resilience, it's ability to be able to withstand all the crap, sniping & hacking that goes on then come back fighting, it's loyal membership who through thick & thin stick by it. ajarn must be doing something right or it would have gone the way of the rubber bucket long ago, it does serve it's audience well...

what does banning solve, nothing it would appear. smiley quite rightly points out that all one has to do is get a new nik &/ or change isp, then one is back in the game. i know posters here who have been banned here many times but they keep on coming back & entertaining us with their own brand of humour...

smiley... would you class me as one of the 'other less notables' hope not....

i enjoy the banter of the ajarn, something which i have yet to find on any other board (yeah, i'm a sad git )... lets keep modding to a minimum but of course there are limits...

enough babbling from me... lets go & see what the doggy has been posting...

Whitey · August 22, 2004

Yeah, this is like the 4th or 5th time it has happenned in the last few months. It hardly seems like it is worth the effort to post over there again. I registered for my account over there, but I dont know if I will post. Not too much to do with Thailand anymore anyways.

The thing i hate the most about this whole debacle is that I lost contact with many friends over there, we only sent pm's, now lost for good. Thank you very much, evil hackers.

I am glad that the board moved from Ikonboard. My guess is that someone with knowledge of Ikonboard(it's open source) was able to exploit the weaknesses of the software. I think people should be wary ever using Ikonboard again.

Greg

ldma · August 22, 2004

Thanks Smiley for your descision to bitch about me on another forum rather than PM me with your concerns. FYI, Justin aka DD is now switched off. I am not in favour of banning people, for the very reasons outlined above by Harry, and I will not take lectures from you Smiley on the best ways to handle rowdy posters. It is far more simple to just ignore idiots, than having to second guess what their new nik is.

The reason I did not ban Justin straight away last night was because I was very pissed last night and it was all I could do to tap out what I did say, there are other admin on Ajarn... (and banning whilst pissed is never a good idea no matter who it is.)

For now the board is stable...backups are being made twice a day, and unlike on Ikon Board these back-ups can actually restore everything.

I am confident that the board will recover it's lost membership and become as strong as before.

Smiley · August 22, 2004

Your welcome, just look at your member list and see the top ten posters. Then look for the old regular sane posters and add up thier post count. That should dispell any myths about the strength of ajarn.com

Oh and about regaining the lost glory that was Ajarn.com, two words spring to mind...

Harry Palmer · August 22, 2004

Yeah, this is like the 4th or 5th time it has happenned in the last few months. It hardly seems like it is worth the effort to post over there again. I registered for my account over there, but I dont know if I will post. Not too much to do with Thailand anymore anyways.
The thing i hate the most about this whole debacle is that I lost contact with many friends over there, we only sent pm's, now lost for good. Thank you very much, evil hackers.

Greg

...following the move to a new provider i think the ajarn is in much better shape to recover from an attack (re the regular back-ups & installing a seemingly never-ending set of securiy patches), so from that perspective one should feel a good deal more confident in posting without the fear of losing track of the valuable posts or yer mates again...

at the moment i think those that are posting are treating it as if 'today is our last day' therefore ( i am guilty of this) its mostly throw away pub banter... i'm confident that once the management have demonstrated a willingness to deal with any nasty characters (there are very few in my opinion) & that their business continuity plan is more than a match for the hackers... things will pick up again quite quickly...

i'm sure that if your mates are worth anything they will locate you again... i have made very few mates myself but take the precasution to swap email addresses with them so that we can communicate outside of the message board environment...

Ijustwannateach · August 22, 2004

Smiley,

I have to agree that one of weaknesses of the last few shorter-lived incarnations of Ajarn has, in my opinion, been the reluctance of the mods/admin to ban the obvious troublemakers- not to even call them trolls, since a few NORMAL trolls can be valuable to a forum for other reasons than the actual content of their posts.

I've stated this on every incarnation of Ajarn since they stopped trying to ban the troublemakers, so I don't think this'll come as talking behind anyone's back. I've begun to wonder if the problem is simply that the admin. there doesn't have staff/technical backup to eliminate the problem. There are certainly a handful of posters whose regular "contributions" would earmark them as automatic deletion candidates from many other forums.

Naturally, I'm not in the trenches and I can't claim to have done any of the work that would give me a real opinion in the matter- but the reluctance to ban some of these fellows is a bit mind-boggling. I hope to support Louis as much as possible, but if it's going the way of the last "permissive" ikonboard arrangement, it'll be a troll's party again.

"Steven"

ldma · August 22, 2004

I think that Phils current sig says it all. Do the hardline approach and you end up with sickbucket, go the softly softly route and you end up with a board full of trolls. What would you have me do. Where do we draw the lines?

Do we allow Smeg to keep posting? Personally I don't think that he does enough to warrent banning aside from the fact that he touts an unpopular viewpoint ad nauseum.

Believe it or not I am not 100% in charge of policy here and I'd like to think that the other admins can give me some guidance here. I'm seeing a lot of disquiet here and it's all aimed at me despite me being only one of the 3 admins.

To be quite honest I'd much rather get on with the technical side of the board and leave the human side to other people, however since everyon is looking to me on this, I'll go along with a slightly more uncompromising approach if that's what a majority want, however theres a fine line we tread, and one ban in the wrong place and suddenly I'm an undemocratic nazi ###### bent on stifling fee speech...the Smilys and IJWTs of this world are happy, but others suddenly leap on me for it. Damned if I do damned if I don't.

Ijustwannateach · August 23, 2004

Yes, that's power for you!

I think you'll find that judicious deleting doesn't get you called a nazi.

Hang in there!

"Steven"

Harry Palmer · August 23, 2004

why don't the admins do their stuff & keep away from modding... thus depriving the disgruntled from having any ammunition against them in particular....

then make the mods. anony-moose, again there would be no direct target for those unhappy with things getting moved & deleted....