Wow, this topic makes me wish I had registered on the JMMB or J2C, but I was too young to understand any of it back then.
Also, what happend to Dethman? Did he just leave jj2 when J2C and JMMB closed?

Regardless of why the JMMB was closed, and I do believe there were good reasons, I think the community deserved much more prior warning.

If YOU closed the board, Brian, why didn't YOU announce the closure in 2000. Noone knew you were responsible for that decision back then. I and many others only remember that one stupid last message by DethMan when the JMMB was closed, which obviously gave us, the community, the impression that it actually HAD something to do with "christian values". And that is not a lie, but all that were we able to see back then. Noone explained anything, noone knew the backgrounds, it was just down and gone all of a sudden.

I could not agree more. Well.. except for DethMan making the announcement.. nothing wrong with that.. but the "lies" and "half-truths" and whatnot all seemed well-founded to me (and (some of) the rest of us?) based on what information was available to the public..

Yeah, I definately remember that, and the jfc's forum as well.....

But dwelling on the past doesn't do us any good

Originally posted by Cyan_Blizzard
But dwelling on the past doesn't do us any good

Says who? We learn from our mistakes, our mitsakes are in the past. There is even a human emotion for it which actually makes us long for the past - nostalgia.

And anyway, if the past was good, you'd sure as hell want to dwell on and remember it.

Why didn't I announce the closure of the JMMB?

Because I didn't feel that it was my place to. The JMMB was more of an extension of J2C since it would be nothing on its own without J2C. I feel that's the only reason that the JCMB went under. (anyone remember that? The Jazz Central Message Board, I believe) J2C was bigger at the time and as a result, the JMMB was to, and more people went there instead of the JCMB, which eventually went under (not necessarily only because of that reason, but it sure didn't help any). With that being said, the close of the JMMB was basically the official mark of the death of J2C as well. So since J2C was founded solely by Dethman, I found it fitting to let him post the final words for when the JMMB was closed. The JMMB wouldn't exist without him after all. Besides, he's a better speaker than I am anyway. I didn't tell him what to say when it closed though. He chose his own words for that.

As for Derby... I can't remember if he was a member or not. If he did, then the only reason that he wasn't an admin was because I didn't know of his l33t moderator skillz. Had I known, the JMMB might have been around longer. It's quite possible. But with the moderators and admins that we had, though they were excellent, they were still taxed to the limit. And the JMMB started to fill up with junk that slowly led to its death. They just couldn't keep up.

hehe, man I wish I had 10 Derby's back then for admins. They'd have kicked some serious butt. It's not that the JMMB was more relaxed in its moderation, it's just that we couldn't moderate the same volume of stuff that's being moderated here. In fact, I think that the JMMB had stricter rules... they were over a page long in total. But we couldn't keep up. Oh well, there's not much we could do about it. And I don't believe that there was more bad eggs back in those days, it's just that the moderators couldn't keep up.

Kinda like how people break the law less when there's more cops around. You know, that sort of thing. :-) If they can see that they're going to get away with something, they're more likely to try it.

Personally, I'd have liked to see it stay alive. If it was moderated as well as this one (and it had a better host) I'm sure it would have stayed around much longer than it did. We didn't shut it down because everything was just perfect with it. We shut it down because it had some serious problems developing with it. Ask the admins/moderators that did try to keep up with it all.

I guess in retrospect, there should have been a bit more warning. But in reality, would it have mattered? Seriously. Think about it. We post a message saying something like: "Due to the declining level of support for the JMMB and the increasing abuse of it, we will be forced to close the JMMB in 3 weeks. Sorry for the inconvenience." But what happens next? There's 3 dozen threads started that say "don't close the JMMB, we'll be good." So we keep it open. And people are good for a week or two, then the junk starts flooding in again. So we post another message and get another "we'll be good" response, but people don't stay that way for long. Yes there are people who have always been good, but do we really want them visiting a message board with swearing, spamming, and hateful messages can't be kept in check? Honestly, no. I couldn't bear to see some of the crap that was being posted where younger people were going to be reading it. Now this stuff is fine on a *mature* level, but that's not how it was being posted. And you could have warned people to the ends of the earth to stop it, but in the end you'd have only slowed it down. Like I said, we closed it to stop the bleeding.

Look... we did what we had to do. Now my view of this whole thing is from the top since I pretty much ran things. I saw it decline, I saw a lack of self-moderation from the community, and I saw how hard it was to keep the JMMB running on its own. (in the early days, I could fix the JMMB when it broke in minutes usually... in the end, it took from hours to days to fix it. Believe me, it was NOT an easy thing to keep working properly.) You have to understand, we did not close it because it had to do with a lack of Christian values. We closed it because we had to, for many reasons that the general public just didn't see.

How about this. If you feel that I made the wrong choice, step into my shoes and tell me how you would have done things differently. You know, if nothing else, maybe the suggestions could somehow be used to improve the JCF. (maybe now, maybe in the future. Who knows.... it's just ideas at this point) Or maybe there was some big point that I just overlooked that could have made things all better should my decisions have gone another way. In any case, let me know how you'd have done things. I'm genuinely curious about this one.

What? It's been 10 days and no one has said that I should have kept it open still? ;-)

I guess whoever saved the accounts, didn't save mine.

Its true Krez, the past does teach us to learn. Looking back on it though, some of us do learn, and others don't. We still fight each other, their still is racial disagreement, we judge others. Humanity will _never_ change, no matter how much we try. We will always do the same things we've done just as our ancestors have before us. The only change I see is the advancement in knowledge and destruction. Otherwise I still see suffering....


Sorry, im done now.

Tublear, you misunderstand. The indexer did not save some accounts because it just did not happen to index many pages pointing to those accounts' profiles. It is not that someone decided whether or not they would be saved.

Ah! Err evil index.

Its actually good the JMMB closed....It really stared to get Chaotic around there, and everything just went crazy. True, it is deeply missed, and yes, alot was learned from that(the past);P. But yes, we have the JFC now, so let us enjoy this time.

I think it died not long before I got Jazz2, then again I never posted there...

Not that it means anything to add my comment after the many above me, but I miss the old JMMB as well... I guess Dethman got fed up with it, that's all.

I have played JJ2 from the beginning, J2C was the best JJ2 site from the beginning until it died, I have downloaded lots of stuff there. too bad it's gone

...Ha, for a second I thought you said you had a backup of the Epic MMB. I want to see -that- again =P

Of course I remember the JMMB. I joined there within weeks of its creation, and stayed until J2C's fall. After Jazz2City closed my interest waned; I popped in every month or so, until one day, it was simply... gone.

I wasn't there for the closing announcement, but I can assure you, blaming Dethman, Brian, or the administration in general is ludicrous. The JMMB's days were numbered after the the closure of J2C, which also was not Dethman's fault - Wakeman no longer had time to deal with the site, and the replacements, Bluez and some others I don't remember, also could not deal with the site sufficiently. Dethman was, at that point, AWOL, and had been for some time, though he had done brilliant work before and immediately after the JMMB's founding, a true pioneer into the workings of the JCS when much of it remained undiscovered and obscured - he was the first to incorporate MCEs into his pack Queen of Board, for example. (Which I, IIRC, was the first to hack to describe MCEs, in those days much more complicated, with 8 events instead of 3, to the general public. IceMANN then laboriously created his list of all MCEs, discovering some additional neat tricks along the way.) But by the time J2C shut down, Dethman had left the community, and Brian was head administrator of the JMMB anyways. Of the people who have posted in this thread, I can say I remember only two, Brian and Onag; I'm not sure when the remainder joined, but in my stay, at least, things were relatively peaceful - there was only one banning, with scattered "incidents" involving Alienator and Bluez. If the community later degenerated into uncontrolled flamage, I can guarantee you it was entirely the fault of the active members, and not of Dethman, who was busy with real life most of the time anyhow, and certainly didn't sit around scrutinizing the boards, waiting for a chance to shut you down for violating "christian principles." Brian also had no incentive to shut down the board he owned, unless he truly felt that the JMMB had become something worthless.

Having just re-emerged due a friend wanting to play the game, decided to take a look around again. I remember the JMMB too well, and am glad it shut down. What went wrong there, seems, on the surface anyways, to be working more efficently here. It worked out for the better apparently. Better to thank the forum hosts of the JMMB for pulling together a community as they did and knowing when to stop.

avngr hh/avngr dw/argle dw/thsmar/l-gy

Originally posted by Argle
Having just re-emerged due a friend wanting to play the game, decided to take a look around again. I remember the JMMB too well, and am glad it shut down. What went wrong there, seems, on the surface anyways, to be working more efficently here. It worked out for the better apparently. Better to thank the forum hosts of the JMMB for pulling together a community as they did and knowing when to stop.

avngr hh/avngr dw/argle dw/thsmar/l-gy

Wow. Yet another oldie. Good to see ya!

~ Traft

Originally posted by TheE
Of course I remember the JMMB. I joined there within weeks of its creation, and stayed until J2C's fall. After Jazz2City closed my interest waned; I popped in every month or so, until one day, it was simply... gone.

Egad, is that really you? Anyhow, in case you don't already know, you got me interested in debugging and hacking. So I owe a lot to you (even if you don't personally know me).

Come on. it has happend, nothing we can do about it
Next

I blame Dethman for being so anti-social. At least...I've barely seen him on the servers. But yeah, J2C was cool. I remember it well. Did my first level pack there get a 2? I think it deserved a one now that I've looked at them again. Wow, they dont even connect correctly....

Either that or I'm missing some of those levels....good ridance.

I used to post on the JMMB, and I remember posting a story in the War Tavern. Now, I'd very much like to see that story again, just for kicks and to soak in all the nostalgia. I was wondering if the forum was backed up, and if there is any chance I could see it, somehow.

The forum was backed up, but it hasn't been restored yet.

It would indeed be nice to see the stories of the War tavern back.

I have a small part of the War Tavern backed up. I can see if your story is in there if you want to, although I doubt it.

I believe Brian does not want the JMMB back on the net as a non-posting archive, not sure, that was what I was told. Maybe there is a way to agree with him to get certain classic thread back or something.

I don't rememebr my username or the name of the thread, I just remember the first chapter of the story, and I know I posted all the rest there. Just remembering writing the story gets me all nostalgic, I'd give my left nut to read it again.

I went to J2C and JMMB when I got the JJ2 shareware demo. It was scary. Erm... anyway, I went back there for a little while when I finally got the full version. I think I spent a couple of minutes browsing through the forum but then I found J2o. J2o didn't have as much lvls or stuff in general to compete with J2C at that time but it was much more organized and well-structured. I'm not at all surprised that J2C went down and J2o survives to this day. Besides, I can J2o and the JCF is way better than JMMB althouh I do feel sad that I missed all the fun at J2C.

At least now you can visit J2C again.

Originally Posted by Cyan_Blizzard

Its actually good the JMMB closed....It really stared to get Chaotic around there, and everything just went crazy. True, it is deeply missed, and yes, alot was learned from that(the past);P. But yes, we have the JFC now, so let us enjoy this time.

Who thinks that this place is getting chaotic?
----
BTW, could I get maybe 1 or 2 of my threads stored, I'd like to see one of them, since I can't remember them, please!

In the J2C days, I played online some under various aliases and I used to lurk on the JMMB occasionally, but it wasn't until well after J2O and the JCF started that I really involved myself in the community. I regret not starting sooner.

HAHAHAHA!

Good times on the JMMB.

Originally Posted by Fquist

I believe Brian does not want the JMMB back on the net as a non-posting archive, not sure, that was what I was told. Maybe there is a way to agree with him to get certain classic thread back or something.

I've tinkered with the idea of a JMMB archive in the past, but I really never bothered to put much effort into it. Too many variables. The server I have to put it on would most likely be slow, and I'd rather it not be hosted anyplace else. I want the JMMB to remain an archive, and in someone else's hands it may not. I don't think that it would ever try and take over the JCF, but I would want it to remain an archive and nothing more. That was the end of an era, and I want it kept the way it was.

Now I just don't have the time to deal with it. Too many issues in my life, too many other things to worry about. And so it remains, on CD.

(and to those who say "send it to me! I'll put it online! I say: "that takes my time too, does it not?")