Basic run down:
- AI bot secretly installed into the forum no announcement, warning or discussion. Just put upon the community.
- The community started to notice something was off/wrong with a new user called ForaFrank.
- Many posts started to pop up by the community on “what is this” “why do we have this” “who’s in charge here”
- Community started to create a lot of noise about this AI bot. Also took notice of it being implemented across the Vertical Scope network for forums. Those other forums the members didn’t appreciate or like it either. Basically seen as a universal flop and middle finger to those communities too.
- Site admin took WEEKS to respond.
- MS Admin response was and I’m quoting directly here “Stand down” on all and any conversation that they perceived negative to the implementation of ForaFrank.
- MS admin started to delete or change posts they didn’t like.
- They banned members and removed their nicknames, changing to short strings of letters and numbers.
- Or went into members profiles, changed passwords and email addresses, for example in my case my forum nickname remains (iMacattack) but they restricted me from accessing my old account.
- They banned their active moderators because they (privately) communicated that this was not a good idea.
So a small group of us decided the skiff community deserves better. Deserves a place where bots, AI or intrusive ads DON’T make up the community experience. We decided to make something different, better and permeant. See this post. As they say… “that escalated quickly”
Since then many among us see MS as an ever dimming reflection in the rearview mirror. We have a new and hopefully everyone feels a better home.