Can We Talk About "The War of the Visual Pinball Websites"?

[Itchigo]

It's not just cabs, it's supposed to be everything under one roof. It's possible that Dazz was working on it when you tried to register too Falalos. I don't run that place, Dazz does. It's possible he was working on it when you were registering too.

[yogiholzer]

I didn't follow the sites/forum news the last months well, I was only overflying the
pinball news without to log in all few days or once a week, so I didn't notice what's
happening behind. And I also didn't visit the chat.

When I thought it's time to contact some friends from the different places again just
for some fun talk last or two weeks ago, I found out that nearly everything has
changed. I didn't bookmark all links and I wasn't able to find some places anymore
and some known places were deserted, quit or suddenly password protected or what
else. Several new sites/forums/chats, but apparently no or only single members present.

I'm still confused about all that as I don't have that much time to read, translate and
even understand what others posted.

Since when and where exactly and between whom is there a war? Why? What's the reason
I don't manage to meet the people I wanted to meet again anymore? Where are they? They
don't seem to be anywhere, although I thought they weren't involved much. Who can explain
the situation, which I seem to dislike, in some few easy words? As long as I don't understand
all the controversy I prefer to be around at YOGI'S CORNER and around, where I still feel home
mostly. I can't visit and manage several sites/forums/chats in my small free time.

[Itchigo]

Glad to see you back Yogi! I understand about not being able to be everywhere. We started out slow due to site problems and my friend Pintrepid having limited time and my inability to fix things on my own. I know it hurt us and it's why we're slow. This place is to me what Yogi's Corner is to you, my home. I could care less about the war anymore. I support Dazz's new site because of all the community input going into it. Chat has moved by the way, the Big Bang Bar is no longer there. It is now at: http://vpuniverse.com/forums/index.php
But, I think you can log in as a guest without an account. At least for now. Good to see you again my friend.
Tim

[yogiholzer]

Hi Tim,
thanks for your reply, even if it doesn't answer my questions. As I said I try to be around even if I'm in background
and I am still around (some). I don't tend to support personal animosity. I just look for some friendly talk about things
in life, also pinball, but not exclusively, as long as I'm able to translate and to take part in the discussion. If posts seem
to be too complicate to understand I tend to keep out. Several formerly friends seem to be gone finally. Where are they,
why did they leave, what happened? I know it probably can't be posted here, but there's e-mail and pm too. Please let
me know your view. I'm sorry that I actually don't feel that I will be a permanent user of this forum, but who knows,
maybe some further insight will let me think different anyway? However, don't worry, I'm well-disposed to whatever
this leads to.
Greetings, yogi

[Itchigo]

I'm not quite sure what you mean Yogi, but I'll try to answer as best I can.I'm not worried about the war anymore, I'm doing my own thing, with friends, as I had planned to do from the start. If someone thinks I am doing this for other reasons, I don't care as it was not the intention when I started this place.

There are several people who haven't been here in a while. Most of them have gone to Dazz's site and are helping him out. Dazz has the experience and knowledge I don't so he has much more to offer. Not that it's a competition- it's not. He has the capability/want to have a much bigger site than I do. I want to be a smaller, closer community. Not like vpf where there are 50,000 members and 2% post anything at all. I'd rather have less, more active members, than many inactive ones. Specificlly I'm not sure who you mean.

If you're not here every day or everyother day, it's no problem. Pop in whenever you can. I'll always be happy to see you. :)

(We are working on getting the gallery up, but I have limited skills with this site. While I am learning php, it's taking a bit longer than vb).

[yogiholzer]

Damn, I needed about 1 hour to phrase my reply and I was logged out and now my reply is gone/deleted.

[yogiholzer]

In short:

What was the war about? How did it start and what was the content?
Why is there a need for several new sites/forums/chats?
Why "war"?
Isn't/wasn't VPF (asides PN and PO) enough?
Where hang the people from the old BBB chat around now? All gone?

[Itchigo]

Ok, from the begining. I had a forum, the timpinball forum to go along with my yolasite site. I promoted it a bit and started a thread inviting people. I kept to that thread. I asked a few friends if I could host their tables. Paul felt I was trying to take him down by doing this. I had planned to do a full site for some time, the only difference is that this site is HOSTED. The other site I was trying to do was full of ads. Paul demoted me to member from vip over this. I didn't know it was tepmorary but it didn't matter. I had no way of knowing it was temporary and Rukia was so mad she wanted to punch him, thankfully I talked her out of it. I was done with him. After the BBB Chat debaucle he feels like everyone is out to get him. That wasn't the case before. With the way he's acted it's not that way now. I'm not trying to get him- this site was planned and I don't care what he thinks of my motives.

There are many who thinks he profits too much from vp. Look at all the silver members and do the math. The same with the higher level memberships. Essentially the feeling is that what he takes in far exceeds what it costs to run the site. Also the cabinet buisness is considered a conflict of interest in many people's opinion. I wouldn't mind selling caps and t shirts but if I started selling parts and whole cabs, it has become a business at that point.

Dazz: Dazz had wanted to do a Pincabs only site and when Paul found out about this he went ape and accused Dazz of trying to take him down. He over-reacted (IMO). Dazz went into chat (supposedly accidentally) with a vulgar name. When he noticed he was at the wrong chat he clicked out immediately. I was there when this happened. Dazz said he accidentally went to the wrong chat, when he realized his mistake, he clicked out immediately. This is true, he was there no more than a few seconds. He also has come into the BBB Chat under this name before, that makes me believe the mistake explanation. I have seen this. For this Paul banned him for life. Dazz started VPUniverse, and the rest is history. To Dazz's credit he really doesn't want donations,  but people helping him want to donate so he's had to take some donations. He's taking an enourmous amount of community input imo to get this place going and how we'd like things. I give him huge credit for this. He will have vendors at VPU, but they will be third party, he will sell nothing and make nothing from it.

So, in a nutshell Paul wants to be the only guy on the block with a monopoly on VP (pun intended lol). Anyone who wants to do their own thing is against him and trying to take him down by default. Can we say General Motors and Delorean? ;D

You asked Yogi... ;D

[yogiholzer]

That's all? That isn't a war! That are laughable disputes and then it's most probably only the felt injury of the ego of the involved and then just overreaction. You have the German word "Kindergarten" in the English language for that, or?

You generally can't expect enjoyment/delight on the others end if you first announce competition at the others place and then in fact start it and keep the advertising. No matter what are your aims and what explanations you deliver. Should be clear for everyone, or?

Do you remember the "war" of the VP and VPM installers? It was a comparable situation and I had fun to dispute. All I did was to write step by step instructions to install VP and VPM manually without to use an installer, as the installers either didn't work 100% or didn't let one decide where to install or what else. Todays result is the Visual Pinball (VP) & Visual PinMAME (VPM) Installation & Setup Guide (IG) in several languages. Too bad it's become a bit excessive over the time where I didn't work on it anymore and it's not fully actualised. Especially one person, who build one of the installers, was extremely pissed about my written instructions. Just for fun and to annoy him additionally I quickly wrote a small batch routine to install everything (I still think it worked better than his installer). Kindergarten.

About VIP status: What's the real problem to not have VIP status anymore? Who needs unlimited downloads and what else (I don't know what exactly)? Ego.

Profits from VP? Maybe there are some or more or even not. Who knows? So or so it's all much of work and there's generally no much help offered by users/members separate from the real contents. I learned to know that when I requested help to continue/administer/update the gallery and the installation guide for example. If there's finally some compensation left, I don't see a great problem there anyway. If there's an additional business aside, there sure can be a conflict of interests. If there is one, I never felt and I didn't notice, that it exceeded a probably standard rate. I can't imagine that the additional business is much more than a very very small volume of sales and doesn't guarantee any extra income. What's left after selling maybe 3 cabinets in a year? People tend to see only the gross profit, but not the net income, which is often is a loss. So who knows? I don't want to be envious.

Maybe this helps to cool down feelings?

[yogiholzer]

Why is there my IP address openly shown on the right of the posts? I don't like that.

[Itchigo]

I'll have to look at the IP thing, likely it's a checkbox in your profile.

It is childish. I had no bad intentions, I only wanted this place to succeed. His overreaction prompted my overreaction, and things escalated from there. Personally I didn't think I deserved vip when I got it. I think I've reached that level now, but when I got it I was nowhere near where I am today. Let's face it, vip is more of an ego thing. It's nice to have the higher pm attachments and all, but it's just ego to have vip.

It's the message being sent imo. The same is true for Dazz. If Dazz hadn't wanted to do a Pincabs site I am confident his "accident" would've had a reprimand (that it warranted), and not a lifetime ban (it didn't).

[yogiholzer]

Oh, I still din't care much about my profile. I will have a look at that soon.
Edit: I didn't notice any setting where I can enable/disable the IP address.

I'm nearly sure the conflicts were avoidable, if the involved people would have thought well about each
of their actions/reactions first before they acted/reacted, but they all most probably didn't. They have to
learn from that. I'm nearly sure not all will. But then they have to accept the results. It's an art to argue
with someone about something without to lose the face.

If people don't agree about things, they just have to agree that they don't agree and that's it. There's no
urgent need to break up with anyone in deep bad dispute.

[Pintrepid]

Hi, Yogiholzer,

I agree that the  IP should not be visible to the world. It's supposed to be only for admins and moderators to assist in purging spam and troublemakers. We're looking into this and should have it fixed soon.


RE: VP Warz:

You're completely right ... these "disagreements" are very much like Kindergarteners squabbling over some toy or something. And, by the very nature of the internet, these things can get blown way out of proportion. Very childish, unprofessional.

Like many of the respectable authors and other VIPs in the community, I humbly try to avoid getting in the middle of these squabbles. I prefer to keep my conversation to discuss pinball, help with any assistance if I can, and discuss new and interesting things in the hobby. Most people in the community are dedicated to that. These few "children" with their silly can go stand in the corner for wasting our time and stay there until their tantrums are over. Then we all can get on with the hobby we love.

[Itchigo]

Yeah, I wasn't trying to relive this, but Yogi asked for an explanation. It absolutetly is Kindergarten, no question. The first person over reacts, the second goes one better, and things go from there, then ego's get involved. Never a good thing. Here's what we want to do here Yogi, have a place to hang out with friends (and hopefully some new friends) and talk pinball or whatever. Download tables, etc. I support Dazz not because he's defying paul, but because it's a community vp site, well run, that furthers vp.

[yogiholzer]

Thanks Pintrepid and Tim for your replies.

When I'm logged in I can see all the latest IP addresses, not only mine. I understand that things are WIP.
Just wanted to point to that.

Yes, I asked, because I wanted to understand, because I wasn't around enough while it all happened.
Thank you for let me know. I didn't want to side with anyone, but just to understand what happened
and then eventually try to calm you all down a bit. I don't bother you any further in that incident.

Have a good time all.