So GotWoot is 20 years old now. Maybe older if you count ANBU. Anyone think GW will still be here 20 years later or another 20 years from now?
So GotWoot is 20 years old now. Maybe older if you count ANBU. Anyone think GW will still be here 20 years later or another 20 years from now?
the site is "dying" longer than it was active, so it can probably hold on for a few more years.
not twenty, but six or seven maybe?
sig made by Itachi-y2k5, thanks, dude!
Currently Watching: probably a show directed at 9 years old girls, lets be honest.
You know the important distinction between Batman and me? Batman is fictional. In real life, there isn't always an alternative.
I'll be in my 50s when 20 years comes around. Depends on server costs etc. I can see myself using this until then. Transition would be eventually just to IRC or maybe Discord.
As far as actual discussions go, I've definitely gotten less verbal. I'm less reactive towards stuff I watch now. Stuff is enjoyable, not, or meh and that's about it. In very few series now do I have heated discussions about plot points or morality issues. I don't know how much of that is me getting old, or the shows, or just the difficulty in having discussions in a small group that is further divided into those who've seen the manga and those who haven't.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
At the end of the day, the site's existence is purely up to Complich, so technically all of this could disappear tomorrow. Like DBZ said, this isn't really a living site anymore, with the registration having been closed for many years, so I kind of doubt Gotwoot would resurface if Complich decided to terminate it. It's already quite remarkable he has kept this online purely for old times sake.
The current Gotwoot irc channel was created by Archie, who is no longer among us.
I'm not using any other anime forum, so this has been it for me. I don't watch more than a few series a season these days, so it's also enough. Back when Gotwoot was truly alive, I'd watch a dozen series, so a more living forum was nice.
Yeah, I remember the early days when all I did was watch up to 16 series per week or something. These days it's single digits, and probably 5 or so is about average.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
As in he got bored and left, right? Right?Originally Posted by Kraco
10/4/04 - 8/20/07
He disappeared one day and never logged back into GW, IRC or his gaming accounts since. He mentioned he felt sick with perhaps a respiratory focus a day or two before this happened (this was pre-COVID). He hasn't responded to his emails, and showed no intention of leaving prior to this happening.
A few of us are pretty sure he didn't leave voluntarily.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Arch fucking died?
Peace.
That's my best guess.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
So said the doctor. Pack it up guys, Arch is dead.
Damn, that's sad. Is Animeniax also dead?
Peace.
No idea. He last logged in during 2016. I don't think I've ever spoken to him outside of forum posts, and prior to his departure he posted sparingly in non-anime threads.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
Reasonably sure I've seen his exact avatar on right-wing American news sites comments at least once...which tracks with most of his posts here.
Goddammit, somehow that's worse than if he died...
Peace.
Oh my, sneaky anniversary thread. Congrats to Gotwoot!
I remember how got here when fansubs were stil super active during the time Naruto first aired. ANBU subs, ToriyamaWorld subs, those were the go-to subbers back then.
It's a bummer that Gotwoot cannot re-open its registration function, because really: This is the best anime forum I know. Even if it sometimes gets a bit too heated. But compared to websites like MAL, this is heaven. I wish we got a little more active again, a couple new users, etc..
Really shocking to hear Arc died, wow. RIP. Not that I knew him really, but it always makes me sad to hear about the death of someone in my vicinityAnd how quickly people proceed with their everyday life.
Same, but tbf: These days there just aren't enough new anime airing worth watching to reach that count. I remember my busiest season with about 20 anime I was watching. Super stressful, lol. I'd watch more anime if more good shows were airing ...
"She's the only non-loli girl in the show, your honor!" will be my defense in court
So fitting and so hilarious
That is depressing
Dreaming impossible dreams.
Sapphire is awesome!
It's funny too, because the only reason it's here at all is that when Ciber and Wilik wandered away from responsibility and handed me the keys, I was like "I don't feel comfortable leaving this running on that old sketchy cpanel server anymore" and moved the forums off to alternative hosting and set up a backup domain. When the original domain (gotwoot.net) stopped working, I found out it was because the datacenter that old dedicated server was in got decommissioned. Like, the whole actual datacenter. Turns out thinking like a sysadmin is useful for adminning systems, who knew?
It doesn't really cost anything meaningful to keep the site up and running since that move. It's like 12 bucks a month for the digitalocean droplet, certs are free and automated, and ... I've been neglecting the actual forum software updates forever but we're on a dead revision of vbulletin where there's not really any need for attention anymore, at least for now.
I will need to migrate to a new droplet for OS major release updates in the next 8 months or so, and I'm a little concerned about php version compatibility with the old software, so I might have to pay some attention to that, possibly drop a couple bucks on a refreshed license or something. But for the most part it's just kinda rolling along for now. Costs me dramatically less than my Genshin habit either way.
Still have fond memories of how I kinda randomly got pulled into AnimeOne in the old dalnet days and somehow that turned into this whole deal. Been a wild ride!
It's pretty interesting how CrunchyRoll more or less completely obliterated the fansub world though. I mean, good on them, the unlicensed subbers in particular were always like "we'd love it if this was actually released in our region at all, much less in a decent timeframe" and like, convenient simulcast sub streaming for a couple bucks a month is pretty amazing. Y'know, for parts of the world that it's affordable anyway.
I'm also a bit sentimental about it ... maybe just because I'm the guy holding the keys to the whole thing, but I definitely feel like there's a unique community here. I'm also pretty unhappy about having had to close registration and really not having a workable way to reopen... we just got such a ridiculous hammering from all the spambots the last time I tried, and nobody's exactly volunteering to vet newcomers or maintain an alternative to the captcha system. Maybe something like an automated workflow leveraging a different platform like discord or something, but I definitely don't have the energy to come up with a workable solution.It's a bummer that Gotwoot cannot re-open its registration function, because really: This is the best anime forum I know. Even if it sometimes gets a bit too heated. But compared to websites like MAL, this is heaven. I wish we got a little more active again, a couple new users, etc..
As we all get older and grapple with our mortality, it's definitely something on my mind. I'm in a bunch of online communities, and basically none of them would have any way of knowing if I suddenly passed away. Just suddenly the bill would stop getting paid for this site, and that'd be kinda it.Really shocking to hear Arc died, wow. RIP. Not that I knew him really, but it always makes me sad to hear about the death of someone in my vicinity
I saw a facebook post just this morning about a classmate of mine from high school who died a day or two ago. Hadn't even remembered he existed, but reading his name I was like "oh yeah, I remember him, he was a really nice dude, total goofball and never in a mean way". We touch so many people's lives in so many unrealized little ways as we move through our own, and it's good to stop and reflect on the impacts we have in our short time here.
I guess that's kind of why I keep these forums running. Lots of good connections, lots of small positive impacts, and it's just generally worthwhile to preserve those things. I'm glad you've enjoyed your time here, and I'll keep the lights on as long as I can...
Are we stuck with old versions of captcha, or do the new versions (the ones that supposedly look at mouse movements or something) also fooled?
Apparently "suspicious" activity came from our hospital/local government computers a few months back and every time we googled something on there we were asked to click all the bicycles etc.
If it's not Isuzu-chan Mii~
what's the breakdown in terms of time vs money? is this an issue that you can throw 200 bucks to solve the problem?
sig made by Itachi-y2k5, thanks, dude!
Currently Watching: probably a show directed at 9 years old girls, lets be honest.
You know the important distinction between Batman and me? Batman is fictional. In real life, there isn't always an alternative.
The version built into vbulletin 4 is just using imagemagick or php-gd to convolute a random string of text. It wasn’t great in 2004, and completely doesn’t work anymore, not even a speedbump for modern bots.
Vb4 also supported “human verification questions”, but for them to be effective you’d have to generate dozens or hundreds of questions that are hard for bots to answer. It was doable in 2005-2006, but the humans here hated it if the questions were actually effective at filtering out contemporary bots, and a too small or too easy question pool made it easy for even relatively dumb bots to breeze past. Now with gpt-powered bots, completely dead approach.
Last vb4 option was recaptcha. But recaptcha went commercial, went AI training tool, and completely changed their api. I’d have to upgrade to vb6 to be compatible with any current recaptcha, and then stay on that treadmill.
New droplet migration is a couple bucks and a couple hours at most. Mainly the time spent would be dumping out the database and loading it into a new mysql, and we’re like a gig of db and a couple hundred megs of other stuff. Probably more work getting certbot up and happy, lots of little administrivia, but … yeah, couple hours of work.
If php versions aren’t compatible, new license is $179, which is not really a meaningful amount of money to me. Bigger issue is porting over theme bits and customizations, like our image rotator banner and custom rep system rework, but also maybe nobody cares much about that anymore and I could just set fixed rep power values instead of having complicated scaling to try to balance it. I mostly just scratched together the current theme to try to have a little continuity with the previous forums back when I moved to vb4. So … yeah, still not sure, anywhere from a couple hours to a couple tens of hours to get it looking and working comfortably again, and a the usual risks of any major version move.
Basically, it’s not a huge deal either way, but just something I’ve gotta find the spoons for. It’s pretty similar to the work I am doing in my actual job, which just sucks the novelty out of the whole thing and makes it kinda a drag to do, you know?
The reputation system could be disabled entirely. I assume it's just a voluntary option in the settings, thus removing that little bit of work. I remember doing some "colour correction" and whatnot tiny bit of work for the graphics when a major version upgrade happened, years ago, as the forum UI changed a lot from the old. Or maybe it was a port from a totally different engine? I reckon it was for the sake of this general colour scheme, which wasn't an option by default. I wonder if those changes could even still be brought along with a version upgrade?
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