After many months of random rumors, negotiation, corgis, and everything, I can somehow announce that MTGSalvation is being acquired by Curse Gaming.
It's been a pretty slow acquisition and I'm sure you guys heard about it back and forth on the forums, and making it official will hopefully let me clear up the situation for everyone.
1. I'll be the new guy to blame whenever something goes wrong on the site. I will try to jump in on the community progressively but everything remains in the hands of the existing team. You might have seen my name on a couple of other websites I created/ran in the past like MMO-Champion, Diablofans, Reign of Gaming, and a bunch of other stuff.
2. The main goal today is to stabilize the site, get used to everything here, and decide on what we can do in the future. You should see improvements but they will take a few weeks, the sale is very recent and we're not going to rush anything, especially before we get any kind of community feedback.
This is a half-official announcement, I'm mostly using it as an opportunity to say hi to the community now that the site has been moved to our servers and that we can actually fix things if problems come up.
I'll probably have more for you guys in the future but for now I just want to open a line of communication and address any questions you might have.
Hope we'll get along and stuff. Please ask absolutely any question you might have about the whole thing in this thread, I'll try to reply to them as best as I can.
So the site was purchased, hope the old owner got a good deal on it as this site generates a very fair amount of traffic for a very niche market.
Big question, will the website remain a forum based site or will the website branch out in terms of user interactivity, more articles and updates as we've seen on MMO-Champion?
Hi Boubouille! Welcome to MTGS! As the resident friendly member and new person-welcomer, though I'd take a minute to show you around our fine website.
The heart of this site is the Rumor Mill. Unsubstantiated rumors are not allowed in the Rumor Mill. All rumors should be go in the Baseless Speculation forum. If you have a rumor, please take it to a Rumor Mill moderator, who will be happy to confirm or deny your rumor. In threads about confirmed rumors, users are encouraged to comment, but not discuss. Discussion has its own forum. If anyone discusses in a non-discussion forum, they may be infracted.
There are lots of mods and admins on MTG Salvation. I'd advise you become friendly with some of them, but not all of them. Becoming friendly with all of them will only lead to disappointment and heartbreak, and heartbreak can lead to some very introspective and non-positive posts. Any non-positive posts may be infracted, unless they are posted in forums designated as safe zones for non-positive posts. Any non-positive posts in reply to threads made in designated zones for threads of non-positivity may be infracted, as these zones are simply for threads that are non-positive, rather than replies that are non-positive. Anyway, you should chat with the admins, and perhaps invite them to lunch if they are nearby. You will not get lunch with them. You will be very sad, but happy with the work they have accomplished, when the next admin or admins steps down. This is scheduled to happen in a couple weeks. Thursday is our day designated for admins to step down. Wednesday is for moderators to step down. Friday is for casual dress, but no jeans. Jeans-wearing may be infracted.
All users are expected to maintain a civil level of discourse at all times. Uncivil discourse is taken very seriously, and will nearly always be infracted. There are words that are considered uncivil, and saying, listing, hinting at, or talking around will be infracted. Consult your handbook if you have any questions. The other admins will be happy to assist you if you have any concerns relating to words you may not say. Please do not use these words when asking about them, as that is reason for an infraction.
Some of the moderators are female. This is more than acceptable. We are a very open-minded community here at MTGSalvation. Some moderate flirting with other members, once you have ascertained their sexual orientation, is allowable. Please do not ask another member's sexual orientation, as that is inappropriate for a work-friendly forum such as MTGSalvation. If flirting goes beyond moderate into moderate-to-heavy, that may be infracted. Some moderators may begin romances with other moderators, long-distance. Please pretend not to notice.
Every other Monday is "Cat Monday" in the Moderator lounge. Please post about your cat or cats then. Posting about cats at any other time may be infracted. The forum skin is updated on the first Tuesday of every month. Be sure to tell the technicians how good it looks. They don't talk to other members much, and will appreciate it greatly.
Let us know if you have any questions. We're here to help. We're a happy and friendly bunch here at MTGSalvation. Enjoy your stay.
There's a reason why I'm saying that the existing team will be handling more of that stuff. Last time I played MTG regularly was with a Stronghold/Tempest era deck I think. Also, all my cards are in french.
I don't have any opinion on moderation, I'll see how it goes for the first few weeks and give feedback to the team if I see something wrong. I probably won't agree with everything but it's also very hard to jump in and tell people what they should do in a community that they know a lot better than I do. I have my fair share of experience and we'll just see how it goes.
As for the Gutter, I'm kind of addressing the problem at the same time, it will take a few days to investigate fully and understand who's right. It doesn't mean anything for the future, I'm just trying to figure out where we are right now.
Can you provide any guidance on how much autonomy and discretion will be left to the community-grown staff as opposed to coming from the top down?
There's no change to the staff or anything like that, aside from devs fixing up stuff left and right I'm very likely to be the only Curse person you'll see on the community side. Everything stays up to the existing team, it's their site, they know it 10 times better than I do.
So the site was purchased, hope the old owner got a good deal on it as this site generates a very fair amount of traffic for a very niche market.
Big question, will the website remain a forum based site or will the website branch out in terms of user interactivity, more articles and updates as we've seen on MMO-Champion?
If we find a good way to do it and it makes sense, sure. I won't launch features just for the sake of launching features, but I also think there's decent room for improvements. I didn't really want to take any decision before we actually have things under control and know the needs and the community a little better.
When it comes to forum policies both current and going forward, will you yield to veteran staff members that might better suited to make decisions vis a vis policy? For example, the implementation of new forum policies within the Standard or Legacy forums.
Does the change of ownership in any way, shape, size or form effect Market Street? If so, how?
Alexia, brentcopeland, MagicalPower, Requiem and Telshin -- are all of these individuals administrators? Or are some administrators and some techs? If some are techs, will they be re-masked to the red "technician" mask to provide a clear delineation of power? If no, is this indicative that the existing power of technicians has been expanded to match that of a full administrator? If this is not the case, what, if any, power differences will exist between administrators and technicians?
Will Hannes continue on with MTGS in any official capacity? If so, what would that capacity be?
You talk about stabilising the site -- I'm assuming this means from a technical stand point, yes? If not, can you clarify as to what, exactly, this means?
And now for the completely irrelevant question: cats or dogs?
I appreciate you taking the time to answer questions that the community has.
Welcome to MTGS comrade.
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EDH UUU Azami, Lady of Scrolls RRR Diaochan, Artful Beauty UR(U/R) Tibor, Lumia, & Melek (WIP)
I don't have any hard numbers on this, but I'm targeted more often than a black guy driving a beat-up sedan with a broken tail-light and no license plate, and Cy's well aware of that.
About Frox: for nearly 10 years, Frox has been helping women look good and feel great in easy-fit, mix-and-match, and work-to-weekend with just a few pieces by helping them make the right choices when it comes to clothing and accessories.
I reccomend taking a look around the forums, and checking out the rules of the general forum as well as the various sections of the forums. We have made significant progress this year working to listen to the userbase and come up with adjustments to the rules that are beneficial to the users and moderators of the forum and beneficial to the forum as a whole. The community issues section of the forum (which you are obviously familiar with to some degree seeing as how you posted this thread there), is where users can come and discuss general site issues, and voice concerns or post suggestions to improve the site. Not everyone agrees what is best for the site, as Im sure you can imagine, so threads can often get rather long and convoluted, but in the end, most thread discussions end up with a positive result in some form or fashion through compromise or otherwise. Not everyone may agree with how the site is run, but the vast majority seem to enjoy it just fine.
We have a lot of colorful characters here. People from all around the world post on here and bring their own unique perspectives and styles to the site. While Magic the Gathering and many aspects related to it are the main topics of discussion for the site (we are most well known for our rumor mill where we are often the first site to post about new cards, whether officially or non-officially spoiled), there are also other areas where people can discuss anything from entertainment, politics, or simply asking for advice about various things.
Some users may suggest that infractions are just handed out like candy, or perhaps even in a malicious way, this, simply is not the case. The Warning/Infraction system is set up to allow some leeway for the moderators to not always have to leave a warning/infraction depending upon the context of the situation of rule breaking. The rules can be lengthy but they are fairly clear about what is and is not allowed (for the most part). If a rule is broken, then a user will get a warning first, and then if the same rule is broken again (after the warning has been issued and the user has been made aware of the rule) then they will receive an infraction. Three or more infractions will lead to a suspension, an excessive amount of infractions and thusly suspensions can lead to a ban.
I imagine a lot of people, including myself are curious as to what changes Curse may be looking to make to how the site is run. Im not really aware of how the other sites own by Curse are run, so I would be curious to hear if there were any changes you guys had planned for the site that we should be aware of. It sounds like you guys plan to leave the general running of the site to the current mod/admin group, but any changes that we should be looking forward to, whether mechanical/rule/policy wise would be good to know :).
Anyhow, once again, welcome to the site, and I look forward to any positive changes we may see in the future from the switch in ownership.
hi, will infraction reviews be the same because sometimes the infractions arnt reviewed. thanks
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Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets. (Matthew 7:12)
Make the white queen run so fast, she hasn't got time to make you wise.
Pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream.
Doctor, my eyes, tell me what you see. I hear their cries... just say if it's too late for me.
Doctor, my eyes...cannot see the sky. Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry?
I think the big question yet unsaid so far... the ads.
You see, the previous ad client (usually shows up at top of the forum) ((Is it still turned off from our last misadventures?)) was notorious for malware distribution.
Please check the Tech Support forum for various stickied threads where users have reported this for our history.
Honestly, I hope I am not the only one that puts this issue, site safety, and security, (recurring issues, mind you) as a priority. What good is the talk about everything else (moderation strictness, gutterz, infractions, forum structure, etc) if the site is not usable and is not safe to use. We also need quick response answers and fixes should these types of things do occur.
Thanks for listening and welcome. Bear with us; we're an... unique, group of folks.
Hello Boubouille! Welcome to MTGSalvation! It's a nice forum so I hope you like it too. I look forward to seeing the changes if any that curse brings to the site.
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Nicol Bolas is so awesome! And so is Kokusho! Bolas x Kokusho 4eva!!! <3
Read their story here!
I think the big question yet unsaid so far... the ads.
You see, the previous ad client (usually shows up at top of the forum) ((Is it still turned off from our last misadventures?)) was notorious for malware distribution.
Please check the Tech Support forum for various stickied threads where users have reported this for our history.
Honestly, I hope I am not the only one that puts this issue, site safety, and security, (recurring issues, mind you) as a priority. What good is the talk about everything else (moderation strictness, gutterz, infractions, forum structure, etc) if the site is not usable and is not safe to use. We also need quick response answers and fixes should these types of things do occur.
Thanks for listening and welcome. Bear with us; we're an... unique, group of folks.
Recently, Curse and it's affiliated sites were struck by a similar virus in the coding of the ads they use. You couldn't go to Curse, MMO-Champion, or anything else run by Curse, Inc. without risking a nasty infection. It was bad enough that World of Warcraft had an update on their page that you should stay away form Curse for the time being until it's resolved. From the message I got telling me about the issue:
Languishing (10:30:09 AM): Fried two of my RAM sticks.
Languishing (10:30:22 AM): Had to do a full mobo driver wipe and reinstall, had to repair the BIOS.
ArdentxofxMind (10:30:29 AM): Oh ****...
Languishing (10:30:53 AM): *nod* Bad bad bad bad.
ArdentxofxMind (10:30:57 AM): Have they made people aware via the forums?
Languishing (10:31:19 AM): I sent them my quarantine files and system specs.
ArdentxofxMind (10:31:27 AM): You sent Blizzard that?
Languishing (10:31:35 AM): Blizzard and Wowhead, yep.
Languishing (10:31:47 AM): Popped 'em over to [email]hacks@blizzard.com[/email] and the wowhead team.
Languishing (10:32:23 AM): It may be a local thing, yanno? Lots of ad-powered sites also use MAC/IP address location to target relevant advertisements. It's best to be safe, though.
Languishing (10:32:29 AM): Forewarned is forearmed.
ArdentxofxMind (10:32:43 AM): Well, I don't pay attention to WoW Head anyways, so...
Languishing (10:33:23 AM): All of ZAM's sites, wowpedia and Curse pull from the same ad pool.
Languishing (10:33:27 AM): Something to be aware of.
ArdentxofxMind (10:33:46 AM): I don't visit any of those sites to begin with. Especially Curse.
ArdentxofxMind (10:34:14 AM): Curse has always been a haven for viruses and the like.
Languishing (10:38:08 AM): It's true, yeah. I mean, makes sense to target those sites. Millions of users every day.
Languishing (10:38:16 AM): I think MMO-champ may have some of the same ads too, not sure.
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"The above post is the opinion of the poster and is not indicative of any stance taken by the President of the United States, Congress, the Department of Defense, the Pentagon, the Department of the Navy, or the United States Marine Corps."
When it comes to forum policies both current and going forward, will you yield to veteran staff members that might better suited to make decisions vis a vis policy? For example, the implementation of new forum policies within the Standard or Legacy forums.
Does the change of ownership in any way, shape, size or form effect Market Street? If so, how?
Alexia, brentcopeland, MagicalPower, Requiem and Telshin -- are all of these individuals administrators? Or are some administrators and some techs? If some are techs, will they be re-masked to the red "technician" mask to provide a clear delineation of power? If no, is this indicative that the existing power of technicians has been expanded to match that of a full administrator? If this is not the case, what, if any, power differences will exist between administrators and technicians?
Will Hannes continue on with MTGS in any official capacity? If so, what would that capacity be?
You talk about stabilising the site -- I'm assuming this means from a technical stand point, yes? If not, can you clarify as to what, exactly, this means?
And now for the completely irrelevant question: cats or dogs?
I appreciate you taking the time to answer questions that the community has.
Welcome to MTGS comrade.
Veteran staff's opinion is always important, I mean, they know how **** works, I don't. I do plan to bring some of my experience in there if I think we can improve things, but no drastic "LET'S BAN ANYONE USING MORE THAN ONE HAPPY FACE IN A POST" changes. I like happy faces.
Nope. I don't see how it would? (If there's something specific you want to bring up, go for it)
We can figure out clearer ranks a little bit later, not a big deal. Right now all our devs are flagged as administrators because that's how vBulletin works, we can clarify.
Yes and no, to be honest it's up to him. I'm fine with having him arounds, and he's still going to be in charge of magiccards.info and stuff. I've been trying to meet him in RL but he's a hard man to catch, will try again in January. But ultimately yeah, good relationship, if there's something to do I'll be happy to do it.
I reccomend taking a look around the forums, and checking out the rules of the general forum as well as the various sections of the forums. We have made significant progress this year working to listen to the userbase and come up with adjustments to the rules that are beneficial to the users and moderators of the forum and beneficial to the forum as a whole. The community issues section of the forum (which you are obviously familiar with to some degree seeing as how you posted this thread there), is where users can come and discuss general site issues, and voice concerns or post suggestions to improve the site. Not everyone agrees what is best for the site, as Im sure you can imagine, so threads can often get rather long and convoluted, but in the end, most thread discussions end up with a positive result in some form or fashion through compromise or otherwise. Not everyone may agree with how the site is run, but the vast majority seem to enjoy it just fine.
We have a lot of colorful characters here. People from all around the world post on here and bring their own unique perspectives and styles to the site. While Magic the Gathering and many aspects related to it are the main topics of discussion for the site (we are most well known for our rumor mill where we are often the first site to post about new cards, whether officially or non-officially spoiled), there are also other areas where people can discuss anything from entertainment, politics, or simply asking for advice about various things.
Some users may suggest that infractions are just handed out like candy, or perhaps even in a malicious way, this, simply is not the case. The Warning/Infraction system is set up to allow some leeway for the moderators to not always have to leave a warning/infraction depending upon the context of the situation of rule breaking. The rules can be lengthy but they are fairly clear about what is and is not allowed (for the most part). If a rule is broken, then a user will get a warning first, and then if the same rule is broken again (after the warning has been issued and the user has been made aware of the rule) then they will receive an infraction. Three or more infractions will lead to a suspension, an excessive amount of infractions and thusly suspensions can lead to a ban.
I imagine a lot of people, including myself are curious as to what changes Curse may be looking to make to how the site is run. Im not really aware of how the other sites own by Curse are run, so I would be curious to hear if there were any changes you guys had planned for the site that we should be aware of. It sounds like you guys plan to leave the general running of the site to the current mod/admin group, but any changes that we should be looking forward to, whether mechanical/rule/policy wise would be good to know :).
Anyhow, once again, welcome to the site, and I look forward to any positive changes we may see in the future from the switch in ownership.
I'm familiar with the infraction system, have a couple of years of XP with it on MMO-Champion and we also have a pretty strong appeal system for it. We'll see what can be ported in due time if the team is interested.
No real changes for now, I'd like to improve things left and right in the future but for now we're still trying to land the plane.
I think the big question yet unsaid so far... the ads.
You see, the previous ad client (usually shows up at top of the forum) ((Is it still turned off from our last misadventures?)) was notorious for malware distribution.
Please check the Tech Support forum for various stickied threads where users have reported this for our history.
Honestly, I hope I am not the only one that puts this issue, site safety, and security, (recurring issues, mind you) as a priority. What good is the talk about everything else (moderation strictness, gutterz, infractions, forum structure, etc) if the site is not usable and is not safe to use. We also need quick response answers and fixes should these types of things do occur.
Thanks for listening and welcome. Bear with us; we're an... unique, group of folks.
**** happens with ads. Like, honestly, there's almost no way to 100% guarantee that everything will be nice and fine, especially these days. Pretty much every major company out there got hacked at one point of its history and ads companies aren't immune to that. We have a pretty big ads team that takes care of all that stuff, so no, it shouldn't happen, but I spent enough time on the web to not give you a firm yes.
I do agree that security and user privacy is pretty much the first thing on the line though, my stand on this didn't really make everyone happy today but it will definitely come first in every decisions.
Recently, Curse and it's affiliated sites were struck by a similar virus in the coding of the ads they use. You couldn't go to Curse, MMO-Champion, or anything else run by Curse, Inc. without risking a nasty infection. It was bad enough that World of Warcraft had an update on their page that you should stay away form Curse for the time being until it's resolved. From the message I got telling me about the issue:
As I said, **** happens, and Curse servers were not compromised in any way. Ads were shutdown pretty much instantly as soon as the problem arised and we did a public announcement about it as soon as we figured out how it happened. A very popular ad provider got hacked by someone who was skilled enough to push a custom coded virus, we also went ahead and contacted all the major antivirus providers to get it analyzed and flagged as possible.
It wasn't really a Curse only thing, as you pointed out, and it affected a lot of sites. The only difference is that I usually try to communicate openly about this, while other sites might just hope that no one noticed.
The whole "Curse has always been a haven for viruses" part is flat out wrong, the only people who got compromised is people who were googling for "curse client" and ended up hitting sponsored ads bought by hackers to get them to download a fake client, it was just basic phishing and it was always reported to google asap.
In the end, I cannot promise 100% security because it would be bull**** these days, but this is a pretty serious concern and not something I take lightly.
NSFW sections are weird to me, because I don't usually do that on my forums. But honestly, as long as it's legal and not incredibly bad content, I don't really care. I mean, I'm not going to shift an entire community just based on my opinion, ultimately no one really cares about what I think when it comes to day to day life on the forums.
What sort of timeframes should we expect to be able to contact the curse team? Obviously there is always leaving a PM but I was just sort of curious as to what hours the curse team regularly holds.
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I have officially moved to MTGNexus. I just wanted to let people know as my response time to salvation decks being bumped is very hit or miss.
KoolKoal: Feel free to take this with a grain of salt since self meta isn't particularly helpful, but I think I get scumread mostly for style over substance, but also for a certain lack of substance over style. It's not so much what I AM posting most of the time (though sometimes that can seem bad) but what I'm NOT posting. I've been told I come to non-obvious conclusions a lot, so when I post, quite a bit of the time there's jumps in logic that people can't follow and they think that's scummy. I get that accusation about a lot of questions I ask specifically. People call them "busy work" when the questions are legit etc.
As far as things to ignore, I can't think of anything. I would suggest you focus less on what I'm doing and more on how I'm doing it. That's probably more likely to be accurate. Like I've just said, what I do tends to come off a little weird, but if you look for how I do it, mindset comes into play and maybe you figure out something useful.
Hey,
So glad that this is now public knowledge. I'm not sure if I've previously said hi but hi anyway. To many years of you and site stability, I guess!
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After many months of random rumors, negotiation, corgis, and everything, I can somehow announce that MTGSalvation is being acquired by Curse Gaming.
It's been a pretty slow acquisition and I'm sure you guys heard about it back and forth on the forums, and making it official will hopefully let me clear up the situation for everyone.
1. I'll be the new guy to blame whenever something goes wrong on the site. I will try to jump in on the community progressively but everything remains in the hands of the existing team. You might have seen my name on a couple of other websites I created/ran in the past like MMO-Champion, Diablofans, Reign of Gaming, and a bunch of other stuff.
2. The main goal today is to stabilize the site, get used to everything here, and decide on what we can do in the future. You should see improvements but they will take a few weeks, the sale is very recent and we're not going to rush anything, especially before we get any kind of community feedback.
This is a half-official announcement, I'm mostly using it as an opportunity to say hi to the community now that the site has been moved to our servers and that we can actually fix things if problems come up.
I'll probably have more for you guys in the future but for now I just want to open a line of communication and address any questions you might have.
Hope we'll get along and stuff. Please ask absolutely any question you might have about the whole thing in this thread, I'll try to reply to them as best as I can.
Welcome! What are your opinions on the following topics?
Practice for Khans of Tarkir Limited:
Draft: (#1) (#2) (#3) (#4) (#5)
Went to a new shop from a friend's recommendation, DQ'ed for willful violation of CR 100.6b.
Have played duals? I have PucaPoints for them!
(Credit to DarkNightCavalier)
$tandard: Too poor.
Modern:
- GW Birthing Pod(?)
Legacy:
- UWR Delver
So the site was purchased, hope the old owner got a good deal on it as this site generates a very fair amount of traffic for a very niche market.
Big question, will the website remain a forum based site or will the website branch out in terms of user interactivity, more articles and updates as we've seen on MMO-Champion?
The heart of this site is the Rumor Mill. Unsubstantiated rumors are not allowed in the Rumor Mill. All rumors should be go in the Baseless Speculation forum. If you have a rumor, please take it to a Rumor Mill moderator, who will be happy to confirm or deny your rumor. In threads about confirmed rumors, users are encouraged to comment, but not discuss. Discussion has its own forum. If anyone discusses in a non-discussion forum, they may be infracted.
There are lots of mods and admins on MTG Salvation. I'd advise you become friendly with some of them, but not all of them. Becoming friendly with all of them will only lead to disappointment and heartbreak, and heartbreak can lead to some very introspective and non-positive posts. Any non-positive posts may be infracted, unless they are posted in forums designated as safe zones for non-positive posts. Any non-positive posts in reply to threads made in designated zones for threads of non-positivity may be infracted, as these zones are simply for threads that are non-positive, rather than replies that are non-positive. Anyway, you should chat with the admins, and perhaps invite them to lunch if they are nearby. You will not get lunch with them. You will be very sad, but happy with the work they have accomplished, when the next admin or admins steps down. This is scheduled to happen in a couple weeks. Thursday is our day designated for admins to step down. Wednesday is for moderators to step down. Friday is for casual dress, but no jeans. Jeans-wearing may be infracted.
All users are expected to maintain a civil level of discourse at all times. Uncivil discourse is taken very seriously, and will nearly always be infracted. There are words that are considered uncivil, and saying, listing, hinting at, or talking around will be infracted. Consult your handbook if you have any questions. The other admins will be happy to assist you if you have any concerns relating to words you may not say. Please do not use these words when asking about them, as that is reason for an infraction.
Some of the moderators are female. This is more than acceptable. We are a very open-minded community here at MTGSalvation. Some moderate flirting with other members, once you have ascertained their sexual orientation, is allowable. Please do not ask another member's sexual orientation, as that is inappropriate for a work-friendly forum such as MTGSalvation. If flirting goes beyond moderate into moderate-to-heavy, that may be infracted. Some moderators may begin romances with other moderators, long-distance. Please pretend not to notice.
Every other Monday is "Cat Monday" in the Moderator lounge. Please post about your cat or cats then. Posting about cats at any other time may be infracted. The forum skin is updated on the first Tuesday of every month. Be sure to tell the technicians how good it looks. They don't talk to other members much, and will appreciate it greatly.
Let us know if you have any questions. We're here to help. We're a happy and friendly bunch here at MTGSalvation. Enjoy your stay.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccoj5lhLmSQ
There's a reason why I'm saying that the existing team will be handling more of that stuff. Last time I played MTG regularly was with a Stronghold/Tempest era deck I think. Also, all my cards are in french.
I don't have any opinion on moderation, I'll see how it goes for the first few weeks and give feedback to the team if I see something wrong. I probably won't agree with everything but it's also very hard to jump in and tell people what they should do in a community that they know a lot better than I do. I have my fair share of experience and we'll just see how it goes.
As for the Gutter, I'm kind of addressing the problem at the same time, it will take a few days to investigate fully and understand who's right. It doesn't mean anything for the future, I'm just trying to figure out where we are right now.
There's no change to the staff or anything like that, aside from devs fixing up stuff left and right I'm very likely to be the only Curse person you'll see on the community side. Everything stays up to the existing team, it's their site, they know it 10 times better than I do.
If we find a good way to do it and it makes sense, sure. I won't launch features just for the sake of launching features, but I also think there's decent room for improvements. I didn't really want to take any decision before we actually have things under control and know the needs and the community a little better.
Well, hi to you too! If you have specific problems/concerns feel free to send me a PM. If not, well, I'm also open to hugs.
Welcome to MTGS comrade.
UUU Azami, Lady of Scrolls
RRR Diaochan, Artful Beauty
UR(U/R) Tibor, Lumia, & Melek (WIP)
Mafia Stats
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About Frox: for nearly 10 years, Frox has been helping women look good and feel great in easy-fit, mix-and-match, and work-to-weekend with just a few pieces by helping them make the right choices when it comes to clothing and accessories.
Trades
Pucatrade with me!
(Signature courtesy of Argetlam of Hakai Studios
I guess you are welcome here. As long as you know when to look the other way when I'm up to my antics.
I reccomend taking a look around the forums, and checking out the rules of the general forum as well as the various sections of the forums. We have made significant progress this year working to listen to the userbase and come up with adjustments to the rules that are beneficial to the users and moderators of the forum and beneficial to the forum as a whole. The community issues section of the forum (which you are obviously familiar with to some degree seeing as how you posted this thread there), is where users can come and discuss general site issues, and voice concerns or post suggestions to improve the site. Not everyone agrees what is best for the site, as Im sure you can imagine, so threads can often get rather long and convoluted, but in the end, most thread discussions end up with a positive result in some form or fashion through compromise or otherwise. Not everyone may agree with how the site is run, but the vast majority seem to enjoy it just fine.
We have a lot of colorful characters here. People from all around the world post on here and bring their own unique perspectives and styles to the site. While Magic the Gathering and many aspects related to it are the main topics of discussion for the site (we are most well known for our rumor mill where we are often the first site to post about new cards, whether officially or non-officially spoiled), there are also other areas where people can discuss anything from entertainment, politics, or simply asking for advice about various things.
Some users may suggest that infractions are just handed out like candy, or perhaps even in a malicious way, this, simply is not the case. The Warning/Infraction system is set up to allow some leeway for the moderators to not always have to leave a warning/infraction depending upon the context of the situation of rule breaking. The rules can be lengthy but they are fairly clear about what is and is not allowed (for the most part). If a rule is broken, then a user will get a warning first, and then if the same rule is broken again (after the warning has been issued and the user has been made aware of the rule) then they will receive an infraction. Three or more infractions will lead to a suspension, an excessive amount of infractions and thusly suspensions can lead to a ban.
I imagine a lot of people, including myself are curious as to what changes Curse may be looking to make to how the site is run. Im not really aware of how the other sites own by Curse are run, so I would be curious to hear if there were any changes you guys had planned for the site that we should be aware of. It sounds like you guys plan to leave the general running of the site to the current mod/admin group, but any changes that we should be looking forward to, whether mechanical/rule/policy wise would be good to know :).
Anyhow, once again, welcome to the site, and I look forward to any positive changes we may see in the future from the switch in ownership.
Make the white queen run so fast, she hasn't got time to make you wise.
Pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream.
Doctor, my eyes, tell me what you see. I hear their cries... just say if it's too late for me.
Doctor, my eyes...cannot see the sky. Is this the prize for having learned how not to cry?
You see, the previous ad client (usually shows up at top of the forum) ((Is it still turned off from our last misadventures?)) was notorious for malware distribution.
Please check the Tech Support forum for various stickied threads where users have reported this for our history.
Honestly, I hope I am not the only one that puts this issue, site safety, and security, (recurring issues, mind you) as a priority. What good is the talk about everything else (moderation strictness, gutterz, infractions, forum structure, etc) if the site is not usable and is not safe to use. We also need quick response answers and fixes should these types of things do occur.
Thanks for listening and welcome. Bear with us; we're an... unique, group of folks.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=4557651&postcount=1
TheWarden's Creative Commons Music Pick Project (Retired):
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=336498
Nicol Bolas is so awesome! And so is Kokusho!
Bolas x Kokusho 4eva!!! <3
Read their story here!
BMy Little KokushoB
RBRakdos UNLEASHED!!!RB
My Standard Decks:
UGRakdos, Bolas, and Ludevic Go To A PartyUG
Recently, Curse and it's affiliated sites were struck by a similar virus in the coding of the ads they use. You couldn't go to Curse, MMO-Champion, or anything else run by Curse, Inc. without risking a nasty infection. It was bad enough that World of Warcraft had an update on their page that you should stay away form Curse for the time being until it's resolved. From the message I got telling me about the issue:
Captain, United States Marines
"Peace through superior firepower."
Thanks to GR @ Yavin IV Studios for the signature!
I'm familiar with the infraction system, have a couple of years of XP with it on MMO-Champion and we also have a pretty strong appeal system for it. We'll see what can be ported in due time if the team is interested.
No real changes for now, I'd like to improve things left and right in the future but for now we're still trying to land the plane.
I guess? Depends on the infraction, I mean, if it's a viable appeal/review request I don't see why it wouldn't be.
**** happens with ads. Like, honestly, there's almost no way to 100% guarantee that everything will be nice and fine, especially these days. Pretty much every major company out there got hacked at one point of its history and ads companies aren't immune to that. We have a pretty big ads team that takes care of all that stuff, so no, it shouldn't happen, but I spent enough time on the web to not give you a firm yes.
I do agree that security and user privacy is pretty much the first thing on the line though, my stand on this didn't really make everyone happy today but it will definitely come first in every decisions.
As I said, **** happens, and Curse servers were not compromised in any way. Ads were shutdown pretty much instantly as soon as the problem arised and we did a public announcement about it as soon as we figured out how it happened. A very popular ad provider got hacked by someone who was skilled enough to push a custom coded virus, we also went ahead and contacted all the major antivirus providers to get it analyzed and flagged as possible.
It wasn't really a Curse only thing, as you pointed out, and it affected a lot of sites. The only difference is that I usually try to communicate openly about this, while other sites might just hope that no one noticed.
The whole "Curse has always been a haven for viruses" part is flat out wrong, the only people who got compromised is people who were googling for "curse client" and ended up hitting sponsored ads bought by hackers to get them to download a fake client, it was just basic phishing and it was always reported to google asap.
In the end, I cannot promise 100% security because it would be bull**** these days, but this is a pretty serious concern and not something I take lightly.
I would pat you but then I might get sent to the time out corner again. I'm happy the months of wondering are at an end.
Take me now.
Seriously, do this all the time, and I'm sure we'll be dancing together in forum harmony within nanoseconds!
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Signature by Inkfox Aesthetics by Xen
[Modern] Allies
*tips hat*
So glad that this is now public knowledge. I'm not sure if I've previously said hi but hi anyway. To many years of you and site stability, I guess!