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Twenty Years Of Func!
Based on the timestamp of the General Abuse thread, yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Func_Msgboard. I never expected, when putting this site together in 2002, that it might still be going 2 decades later, but here we are. I want to give thanks to the entire community of mappers and players that migrated here from Qmap, and mapped and chatted over the years. Thanks to Shambler, Vondur, and nitin for moderation. And finally a big thanks to SleepwalkR for hosting and frequent technical assistance over the years.
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#12 
Haha, cheers mfx, for me it's always been about the banter here - the poetry, as it were.

I've always seen social media and chat-based web communities as a sort of disease of the modern world.

Perhaps just as smallpox (Discord) caused the abandonment of the great cities of the Amazon (that we are only just discovering now via new laser-based, radar-like technology), we are seeing func fall victim in a similar way. 
Metlslime 
First of all, congratulations for this incredible run, and thank you for keeping the lights on all these years. func has been around much longer than its predecessors (frib's electric fish board, the QBoard, PnF) combined. I believe that it is because you struck a good balance with the features and limitations of this board.

Anyway, on the question of keeping the board open - I am questioning the need to change anything, to be honest. Of course, traffic has slowed down to a trickle, and I imagine that to you and the mod team, the actual content getting posted doesn't justify the cost of moderating and clearing the spam posts.

On the other hand, the new "homes" of the community are not entirely under our control. Discord and twitter could go away or become unusable at any given point in time. I mean, it's pretty obvious in the case of twitter that its days are counted. What if discord changes its policies in ways that are incompatible with this community? What if discord goes bankrupt? Where would this community go, and how would it communicate until it finds a new home?

I believe that keeping func around as a place that is 100% under our control in every aspect is important not only as an archive but also as in case one of these other services goes away or becomes unusable for us permanently. In the very least, make it so that we can re-establish it easily. 
#16 +1 
Yes, as a few have mentioned now...

Func doesn't actually need to shut down. It can carry on if we want it to, and as long as people are logging the important developments here, it still has an extremely relevant function, even if the general banter aspect has been largely replaced by discord. 
To 20 Years! 
This site has been invaluable over the years to helping me find the latest quake/doom maps and mods. Hope it continues for at least that long. 
Congratulations On 20 Years. 
Congratulations on 20 years.

I'm a bit of a lurker here. Always find myself checking out the main news and what has been released, but never commenting.

It is hard to maintain an active site and even harder with spammers, spam bots (and now AI bots), constant code changes and security updates. All of which takes so much time.

The idea of no more Func_Msgboard is a sad feeling.

Whatever you decide, I would like to thank all involved with Func_Msgboard for all your time over the last 20 years. It really has been awesome! 
Hi Everyone 
Thanks for all the kind words about func. I'm proud of what it's been so far and appreciate all the contributions of others that made it possible.

It's not just chat and banter that moved to discord, but all the other valuable activity of func too -- announcements of every new map release, organizing jams, posting WIP screenshots, getting help with mapping problems, and giving feedback on the work of others. These were the things that made it worth coming here. ALL of those have moved to discord. For the last year, if you only visited func and not discord, you have been missing out on a lot.

I share the concern that corporate-owned platforms like twitter or discord, and especially walled gardens like discord, are bad for communities, but, we do also have quaddicted and slipseer which are both community-owned and have forums, and might end up being more "sticky" since they are integrated with map/mod databases.

I'm sympathetic to the idea of "keep func going as it is" but... the spam moderation is an ongoing chore for me, which is one negative. Also, it feels bad to be putting time into a thing very few people use. But I recognize that some people still use it, just not many and not very much. Maybe I'll let it go for a while longer and see how it goes. 
That Were Cool 20 Years 
i hope func will live in light_flicker mode. i visit it almost daily, it's automated habit already :>

thanks everyone for contribution! 
#20 - Metl 
the spam moderation is an ongoing chore for me

Would enforcing user login for ALL parts of the board help with this?

I think right now the only audience that cares about the continued existence of this site are the "old soaks", as it were, the ones who are already part of the woodwork.

If all else fails, and the site essentially has to shut down... perhaps (and I'll probably get flack for this)... perhaps just do the above, and also close off the ability for new accounts to be made, so the site is still usable for existing accounts. Maybe trust a few mods to give people new accounts on request if they ask them in Discord or whatever, so we know it's not some bot or scumbag spammer.

That way the site can enter a new phase, that stops just short of the ol' "Grandad's Winchester in the backyard" trick.

An afterlife perhaps.

Or maybe dead...but dreaming. 
... 
... and when Twitter blows up because of some US-politics related shitstorm, and Discord does something weird and disgusting, like getting all involved in AI-generated content, then this place can roar back to life. 
Metlslime 
I understand that keeping this place running feels like a chore and that at some point, you gotta move on. I'd just request that, if you shut it down, please do it in a way that allows you to reinstate it quickly. And maybe leave a set of instructions with a few trusted individuals, just in case we need the place again and you're not around.

I think I'd also like to create a permanent backup and leave it with someone else in case I'm not around anymore at some point. I make regular backups of the database, but if something happens to me, it could all become inaccessible to the community.

It will feel sad to let this board go. In some sense, it's already gone, but still... it played such an important role for me over many years. And somehow, I haven't made the transition to the other community homes... I don't spend much time there. 
 
For spam filtering do Quake lore captcha, will filter bots and random spammers. 
Quake Lore Captcha 
You could also make it semi-subjective, in order to filter out wrong 'uns as a bonus.

"Do Shamblers have fur?"

"Do Fiends have eyes?"

"What texture filter mode do you play in?"

"Have you ever, even just once, and even if only by accident, played Quake using HD texture replacements?"

(Incidentally, the third one would block Shambler from posting, but you have to look at the bigger picture here.) 
 
Yes, no, filtered, yes, Rygel + DP, but it was a while ago. 
#27 
Looks like it's the special "goatse re-direct" version of func for you then. 
It’s Been A Great 20 Years 
This is one of the websites I still visit on the regular. I don’t post much, but this place has been an invaluable resource for finding out about maps and mapping issues.

Even the older ‘mapping help’ thread posts have been invaluable in getting these Tremor maps working (signon buffer? Had never seen that one before).

Even if not every map gets posted here, it doesn’t feel proper to release a level and not have it posted here. Doing so almost crystallizes it, in a more permanent way that Discord and Twitter do not.

Thanks Metl for keeping things running this long. 
The Part Where I Climb Out From Under My Rock Once Every Few Years... 
...wave, and retreat again.

Thank you metlslime for keeping the lights on for all these years, and thanks everybody for posting cool stuff and invaluable information.

So much has changed in 20 years - in our own lives, in the video game industry, in how we use the internet, yet this site still stands as it was, a humble middle finger to social media trends. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Perhaps an appropriate question to direct towards metlslime would be - what would you need to keep this site going? Money? Moderators? More user activity?

Discord might replace #terrafusion, but not a forum like this. I looked at Slipseer for the first time just now, very new and modern, but kinda empty feeling.

Here's a random story: back in the mid-2000s, when I lived in a house with no internet access, I would download the entire Mapping Help thread to an html archive, so that I would have a troubleshooting reference. It really helped and I learned so much. I think I did the same for the General thread, just to pretend I had friends.

It's nice to see both a steady trickle of new faces learning about Quake for the first time, and the old farts who've been here since the beginning. 
Congratulations! 
Wow 20 years. Thank you metl for all you have done. And thanks to Sleep for backing this baby up. I'd be sad to see func as an archive only. But the spam moderation issue is completely understandable. A lot of work for a handful of people.

Do what you need to do metl.

With that said, if there was support for multi-media posts (screenshots at the very least) this place would probably thrive again. Or at least be more attractive to posters.

There are studies that show engagement increases dramatically with images and video. Not sure if this is even possible but if you are going down, go down swinging.

My 2 cents! 
I Love This Place... It Smells Like Home 
I haven't mapped for years, but because I did, I definitely appreciate the dedication that's kept you all going.

If the workload is too great to keep jackasses out, then you do what you need to do. You'll still have my respect.

What have I been doing? Wood carving. 
Woodcarving? 
That's actually really cool. I've been doing little woodworking projects myself like gift boxes and iPad holders. It's nice to break up computer time with a hands on work. Also you can't cut your thumb off making a map so woodworking is much more dangerous and sexy! 
Quake Inspired Woodcarving 
Quake fits my dark moodiness. I truly love it's atmosphere. The lighting, player movement, music and ambience... the sound of an Ogre dragging his chainsaw. "STOP! You're dulling the teeth!"

You guys should know that the dedication you each have put into Quake and this community have helped fuel my creative process.

Cheers Fuckers!
jester wip 
LOL 
It's clear from that photo you take chainsaws seriously! Beautiful work. 
 
I didn't realise everything had moved to discord. Probably best I don't go looking, it'll seep into more of my limited spare time.

Anyway so I guess it's not the posts that's the problem since only members can post, but account creation from spammers? Why don't you put multiple captchas or at least Google Recaptcha on the account sign up, as well as email verification? At the moment it doesn't look like there's anything stopping them. 
Let Me Talk One Word, MyLord 
This place look like an old-good home, leaved by citizens, but not abandoned. Many of them, even mostly of every grew up here became a legends for now.
So this place should sill alive in any way, becose legends must live forever. 
 
Maybe I've just finally aged out of the internet, but I managed about 3 days on Discord before I got left behind by the transience of it all. There may be a shit load of "content" being spewed out on it, but we won't be able to go back to it in 20 years time, nor will we want to. That throwaway culture has a very negative effect on the quality of discourse/content being posted, so it's useful to have somewhere like Func_ which can almost triage the deluge of shite being posted on Discord/Twitter/etc. 
Text_Fish 
You did better than me. I only last 15 mins before throwing my hands up asking what the appeal of discord was. 
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