hi...

does anybody know what happened with home of the underdog?

Here. :pissed: Read under "Website technical difficulties".

Have we established yet the need to make this a sticky?

Shouldn't we wait for 12 threads first, just for luck? ;)

Frankly, I begin to be very annoyed by all this HOTU talk. Not because I don't like HOTU, but because there is a very clear reason why I like this site over HOTU. If those people who liked HOTU and it's community are going to come here and pester the forum, then it's only a matter of time before I get tired of it and either get annoyed to the point I'll stop being newbie friendly, or I'll leave altogether.

The "newbie problem" thread been closed before I could express myself on the problem.

It's happening because Abandonia is pretty much the "other big site." When HOTUD disappeared, casual visitors started finding their way over here in hopes of finding it (and it's not like we don't know anything about the situation).

The problem has nothing to do with HOTUD and everything to do with forum etiquette: people are simply too lazy to search for existing threads which already answer their question. If it was an Abandonia-related issue the same thing would happen, so don't scape-goat HOTUD. Personally, I'd suggest making a sticky and then just deleting any subsequent "Where's HOTUD" threads as they pop up.

This won't fix the problem at all, because just like you said it's not about HOTU at all. Thing is, HOTU kind of attracted the majority of the kind of users I call "scum users". Those users are the kind of not caring the slightlest bit about Abandonware or even what it mean, it's just another way for them to get something for free.

Those kind of users spam the board about not being able to find their warez for free, spam the board like you said by not caring the slightlest bit about forum netiquette and searching around, and they usually go around all the forum protections by posting as guests. Only in the Troubleshooting forum in the last week I have an increase of about 300 to 400% of guests asking extremely basic or down right stupid questions which can either be answered by searching the board (troubleshooting forum or archive) or reading on the main site about DOSBox and VDMSound.

At the same time, this board is well known for it's openness, it's newbie friendlyness and the great atmosphere. Doing anything agaisnt those users would also harm indirectly the users we actually want on the site and on this board.

Still, the situation clearly appear to me to be far from nominal.

If the people posting HOTU threads aren't willing to read the first page of posts or the forum rules, what makes you think that they will read any stickies that there might be? Particularly when when there are so many of them.

And yes, being "newbie friendly" is a terrible burden, but one that must be shouldered by members and mods alike.

That's a very precise and correct statement, Mr. Havell.

The patience and calmness needed to maintain a constant state of newbie-friendliness is rarely found in mods these days... (not that I really blame them).