Development GML reddit ressurrected

kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
oooh...I just joined. I'm not sure if I'd want to voluneer to mod so I'd have to think about that. I don't usually hang out on reddit much, but maybe I should.
 

lost

Member
Retrofriends (guy who is running the reddit) said he wants a GML-centric reddit, so he's going to do it. He doesn't care if there is already a r/gamemaker.
 

YellowAfterlife

ᴏɴʟɪɴᴇ ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴘʟᴀʏᴇʀ
Forum Staff
Moderator
Retrofriends (guy who is running the reddit) said he wants a GML-centric reddit, so he's going to do it. He doesn't care if there is already a r/gamemaker.
Well, so far this looks like another /r/gamemakertutorials/ - we'll see how long your friend's motivation lasts, I suppose. From experience managing the unofficial GameMaker news account for Russian speakers, finding new things to post about outside of official news is hard work.

Additionally, this had been since brought up elsewhere and it would seem like some parts of the story had been omitted:
  • [Dec 2020] Your friend has some sort of disagreement with Sidorakh over joining the GitHub organization
  • [Apr 30, 2021] Your friend gets a formal warning over posting a video in too many channels on Discord, argues with Sidorakh about it (?), gets muted for an hour, argues even more (??), gets banned, compares Sidorakh to a murderer (???)
  • [May 3, 2021] Has a friend come on Discord to complain about his ban
  • [May 3, 2021] Posts about the above events on /r/gamemaker/ subreddit (post, comments), removes the post after being told by several people that it's not a good look.
  • [May 3, 2021] Posts the first request for /r/gml/ ownership, gets auto-declined due to insufficient karma.
  • [May 3-May 13, 2021] Posts cat pictures in attempts to gain karma
  • [May 13, 2021] Posts the second request for /r/gml/ ownership, gets auto-declined
  • [May 13-May 18, 2021] Posts cryptocurrency memes (png.png) and more cat pictures to gain karma
  • [May 18, 2021] Posts the third request for /r/gml ownership, which is auto-approved.
  • [May 24, 2021] We're here now
Overall, the whole thing seems spite-based, which leaves me doubtful about /r/gml/'s future.

P.S.: In his own post, your friend says that he's the maintainer of "gml pro" repository. In your post, you say that you are the maintainer. There is only one contributor on GitHub. Do the two of you share the forum account?
 

lost

Member
Sounds a bit one-sided, YellowAfterlife. You make him out to be some sort of miscreant simply because he wants to resurrect r/GML. You're also airing dirty laundry so I will address that.

In this case, only I control my forum account. If you would like, I can request my friend to come here.

Lost Astronaut Studios is mainly a "me" but I do work with others. One of my first partnerships was with Ecere.org for example. We have translators, beta testers and press partners. We also have several times tried to find a wider range of collaborators. Sometimes it has worked out, other times it has failed.

To make things clear, "Retrofriends" is a group of people who are here in Pittsburgh (though some are remote) that includes me but also others who sometimes make videos on YouTube about gaming, electronics and DIY, and programming --usually games and graphics. We also ran the Pittsburgh Game Developers Meetup before the pandemic started, and are affiliated (sorta) with some other local game development groups. We have this one account that we share for each social media platform and Gmail. We're on Tumblr, YouTube etc. I've contributed to the YouTube channel, for example, and they link me on the tumblr and other places. On YouTube we go by "@rf<name>", so I am @rfh3 for example, and
there is @rfdr3w and others. This explains why it is "Retrofriends & Lost Astronaut" at the official Lost Astronaut discord.


I wrote GML-Pro. "We" maintain it. He may lay claim to that for that reason. I don't want to say which "RF" it is because this seems to be a trolling snowball.

The person who was on GameMaker discord is the person who is moderating r/GML, but I think the point is that he wants to contribute to the GameMaker community and found it to be an upstream battle with Sidorakh and others. He had posted links to my 1 hour discussion of InputCandy, a library, but had forgotten Rule 2. He also tried to avoid breaking rule 2 subconsciously by using different infographics. I've read the private messages. I see that those admins have little or no sense of humor in the private exchanges and are there just to wave around their stick because they don't want anyone on the public channels to see them doing that. This is not very transparent probably on purpose.

From my understanding, the GameMaker Discord admin person Sidorakh kept private messaging him. He is an American, so he feels that it is his freedom to speak. He had already stopped posting and didn't try to circumvent any bans or further break any rules. In fact the moment he was muted he was asking a question about the channel topic. Prior to that, he apologized publicly but apparently that didn't count. He also didn't insult anyone while they were supposedly "arguing" .. Sidorakh kept responding to him, even though he wasn't even talking to Sidorakh. In private, Sidorakh just kept worsening the punishment on him for saying anything. He categorized statements as arguments and offered no quarter. My friend was trying to talk to Sidorakh at that point, since he hadn't spoken to him. He had originally inquired about the Github because he felt we could contribute to it. Finally, we sent in the class clown, Mad Merv, to argue his case. Mad Merv never pretended to be a good lawyer, but he could see that the GameMaker Discord admins are interested in punishing rather than diffusing situations.

Our "Retrofriend" also said he was confused on April 1 when the entire Discord looked crazy and didn't realize it was a joke until after his feelings got a bit bruised by the fact that it appeared like they had hired 10 new admins and he had hoped they would have contacted him about the Github listicle thing. He did eventually figure out it was an April fools prank. But with all the rules and stodginess, he never expected it. It also seems that the Github listicle thing is something where he had tried to submit a change to it as it says you can do on the Github page, and they said they were too busy to work on it, and the process ended there, and it had been about 6 months since then so he was a bit disappointed because he had genuinely hoped to help that initiative.

Anyway, I think it is a bit paranoid to think that this person or any of the "Retrofriends" are going around trying to spitefully attack the precious GameMaker Discord (unofficial) or r/gamemaker as though this is a war or something. The only people who are dragging this on are people like you. We haven't made any attempts to attack anyone. It's a bit overblown for posting 4 messages to a Discord when it was 8am Eastern and there wasn't much traffic. "Retrofriends" account did try to deal with it once by posting on the GameMaker reddit about how he felt it was unfair but later deleted the post. I appreciate that he was trying to raise awareness, I think it's a little ridiculous that there should be this much controversy.

This is the last I'm going to say on the matter. It's really a moot point to me.


As to the original topic, well, me, he and others -- people -- the "community of interested parties" -- are invited to contribute to r/GML. That means anyone who wants to contribute to r/GML, not just "me" or "Retrofriends" or "Mad Merv" or anyone else. We'd be happier if it wasn't just us because it would show community health for r/GML

It's good to have decentralization and options. I personally went to r/gml before I found r/gamemaker looking for the very thing we're trying to create -- a place to keep links and posts about GML specifically, since some people use DnD and some people want to talk about how to make Games on r/GameMaker, not GML and GML-related resources specifically.
I hope people post to r/GML
 
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rIKmAN

Member
What a dumpster fire!
Sounds to me like your friend thought he could do what he wanted, got told he couldn't, abused an Admin and got slapped down for it - what did they expect?

I've never seen anyone banned from the Discord unless they were being a complete idiot and/or abusive, and breaking the rules is usually just quiet word and an honest apology away from being sorted, but your friend got timed out for an hour and then decided to compare it to a controversial murder.
Sounds like a ~40yr old man acting like an 8yr old to me.

Being American and having "Muh Freedom" doesn't give you the right to be abusive to people and then play victim when the repercussions arrive.
Just move on, no need to bring your drama here as well.
 

Dragonite

Member
Being American and having "Muh Freedom" doesn't give you the right to be abusive to people and then play victim when the repercussions arrive.
Just move on, no need to bring your drama here as well.
Freedom from speech != freedom from consequences, getting banned from a Discord for acting out is a consequence.

 

YellowAfterlife

ᴏɴʟɪɴᴇ ᴍᴜʟᴛɪᴘʟᴀʏᴇʀ
Forum Staff
Moderator
to be an upstream battle with Sidorakh and others
Contributing to GameMaker community certainly doesn't requite posting to a specific Discord or its GitHub organization - for instance, I have migrated most of my open-source projects out of the organization into my own organizations (list) since it was tricky to find them otherwise (and now it's getting tricky to find specific ones in my own organizations, but - that's another story).

From my understanding, the GameMaker Discord admin person Sidorakh kept private messaging him.
According to your friend's Reddit post, the provided excerpt was the entirety of the conversation. As @rIKmAN said, most people would have said "oh, my bad" when warned, not argue about decision to the point of being banned and then more

Anyway, I think it is a bit paranoid to think that this person or any of the "Retrofriends" are going around trying to spitefully attack the precious GameMaker Discord (unofficial) or r/gamemaker as though this is a war or something.
To me, submitting an ownership request for a similar subreddit on the same day as you argue with people seemed amusingly "I'm gonna build my own theme park, with blackjack and —", but I could be mistaken.

The only people who are dragging this on are people like you
I'm fairly sure that this thread is my first time interacting with either of you

As to the original topic, well, me, he and others -- people -- the "community of interested parties" -- are invited to contribute to r/GML. That means anyone who wants to contribute to r/GML, not just "me" or "Retrofriends" or "Mad Merv" or anyone else. We'd be happier if it wasn't just us because it would show community health for r/GML
I meant in the sense that - as a general rule - communities exist because there's a core set of people that regularly post in them. So it takes effort to "get the ball rolling" - people won't talk unless someone else does.

I hope people post to r/GML
Hopefully so!
 

lost

Member
doesn't give you the right to be abusive to people and then play victim when the repercussions arrive.
No "Retrofriend" did that. Apparently you didn't read my post above. AFAIK he never did anything to try to get around the ban, continue to break rules, or even ask for any of the punishments to be lifted. He just changed the topic. Kind of like how YellowAfterlife did.
 
S

Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
@lost I'd like to sympathize because I've been there before in the past with this community, take my advice when certain topics or types of posts or behavior are not well received, its better to recognize that early on and avoid such things to talk about, it will help you enjoy yourself here socially more. To this day I struggle with avoiding discussion on religion and politics, but these guys are so cool here it doesn't seem to get anywhere angry or argumentative like it has in times past, and that is largely due that I've learned to cut certain discussions short or not take those discussions as seriously as I used to whenever i make the mistake to talk about them, i will quickly recognize that was not a good thing to post and change the subject or move on. Seeing as this topic about the new subreddit or talk about your friend isn't being well received, it would be good to avoid talking about those things.
 

lost

Member
To me, submitting an ownership request for a similar subreddit on the same day as you argue with people seemed amusingly "I'm gonna build my own theme park, with blackjack and —", but I could be mistaken.
Yeah, he came to the realization that day that it wasn't the kind of place he wanted to be a part of (GameMaker Discord). Big surprise! And then it took him several weeks to figure out how to gain control of the dead r/GML

And it is true that I first went to reddit.com/r/gml -- which is how we discovered r/gamemaker and the GameMaker Unofficial Discord. So, we've gone back to square one in the hopes of creating a slightly different take on sharing GML related information, specific to GML.

Our hopes to contribute weren't met with equal invitations despite our positive intentions. All the admins did for us there was complain about not having a lot of resources, and write about these supposed processes that they don't even follow or have a plan for. So, we did what any enterprising person would do: we started our own place to share links with our own rules in the way we want to, and we hope others come and share their projects, too. Period. There is nothing more to this.

I'm fairly sure that this thread is my first time interacting with either of you
Well, in our first interaction, you cast stones that it was going to somehow "split the community" by creating a new one. In our second, you performed a forensic analysis in the interest of "digging up dirt", which isn't exactly the best foot forward.

I don't get the urge to do this. I don't think I've ever dug up dirt on someone on a forum as a way to introduce myself.

Anyway I looked at your stuff and it looks like you have done a lot. Feel free to link it in to the r/GML thread if you want, and if you don't want to help r/GML, well we might link one or two things there ourselves just to keep track of all the great stuff that GML writers are writing..

I meant in the sense that - as a general rule - communities exist because there's a core set of people that regularly post in them. So it takes effort to "get the ball rolling" - people won't talk unless someone else does.
Yes, that's why I posted it here. I am trying to get the ball rolling. My colleague is also doing that by posting, and I am also posting. We are hoping to build a resource. Even if only my friends and I use it, at least I will be able to keep track of resources this way.

We invite anyone to follow the posting guidelines and share their stuff. End of story.

r/GML
 

lost

Member
@lost I'd like to sympathize because I've been there before in the past with this community, take my advice when certain topics or types of posts or behavior are not well received, its better to recognize that early on and avoid such things to talk about, it will help you enjoy yourself here socially more. To this day I struggle with avoiding discussion on religion and politics, but these guys are so cool here it doesn't seem to get anywhere angry or argumentative like it has in times past, and that is largely due that I've learned to cut certain discussions short or not take those discussions as seriously as I used to whenever i make the mistake to talk about them, i will quickly recognize that was not a good thing to post and change the subject or move on. Seeing as this topic about the new subreddit or talk about your friend isn't being well received, it would be good to avoid talking about those things.
Thanks for this. I personally don't need the advice but will pass it along to my friend. However, I would mention that I did not bring up the stuff, I just posted an innocuous request about r/GML ... and also, I would say that all of this is happening in text, over the internet, which makes it hard to hear people's intonations. One person's sympathy may be another person's snarky comment. I think Sidorakh assumed the worst and intrepreted Retrofriends' comments in the worst way, for whatever personal reasons are relevant to Sidorakh.

I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps this is too generous but on principle I will continue to.
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
So, I had a couple of reports about this topic, and came here expecting a hot mess, and.... Well, it's not! In fact, it seems that some of the people that reported the topic actually are the ones that are egging the topic into the dumpster, and are just waiting to set fire to it, which is sad to see. Please don't post memes or irrelevant posts in topics. If you have nothing of any worth to contribute then please don't say anything, and save me some time tidying the topic of stupid posts. ;)

As far as I can see, the main contributors to this thread (@lost and @YellowAfterlife) have been respectful towards each other and there doesn't seem to be any bad blood or flaming or rudeness going on, so I'm not sure I understand the reports that I received. As such, after giving the topic a wee tidy, I'm leaving it open. Personally, regardless of past events OUTSIDE of the GMC, I welcome anything that expands the ability for people to get help and learn, and if this Reddit does that then great! And if it doesn't work out then, that's life. Either way, I see no reason to be all dramatic about it.

PS: I'm moving this to the Game Design and Distribution forum as it's not really a programming question, and I don't want to put it in Off-Topic, as that'll just encourage further trashtalk and memes. ;)

PPS:
I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps this is too generous but on principle I will continue to.
Never is it too generous! It's a rule to live by and, personally, I can say that there are a few members of this community to whom I have given the benefit of the doubt and been very much rewarded. I'd say that I also consider some of those people friends now, even though they caused me grief at some point (you know who you are!)... 😅
 
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kburkhart84

Firehammer Games
So I don't know what all is true, etc... as far as the history of retrofriends and that reddit. However, I personally don't see any reason for their not to be a dedicated reddit to GML separate from the main gamemaker one. GML is a language all its own and certainly merits such a thing. The trick will be to see how things go forward. If retrofriends is a toxic person, people will see that toxicity in the community, and their won't be much of a community. However, if retrofriends is the victim of misunderstandings(or toxic people as the case may be), then hopefully this other reddit will thrive. I already see some stuff added, and I certainly want to plug my input system and my audio system(once that one is ready), though I have to look at the rules on how to do that properly. And as I say, we will see what the future holds. People who are at fault for these things can change, and people who aren't at fault don't have to....and if retrofriends is in either of those categories, this community could indeed thrive.
 

Shut

Member
Not everyone is a fan of someone else's rules and since there is no official Discord server I can completely understand @lost 's point here. All he did was ask if there were any volunteers willing to moderate. As someone who grew up with GM since 2001, I'd be willing to volunteer but I'm not active that much and that certainly wouldn't help the subreddit much. Anyway, good luck!
 
S

Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
I will say I may have misunderstood quite a bit what was going on in this topic after reading @Nocturne's response, perhaps while my advice was good, it may not have applied here as much as I thought. The memes definitely made me quicker to conclude a flame war was going on, so I agree generally that's not a good thing to add to a serious discussion.
 

Rayek

Member
I feel it is important to understand that rage can be a powerful motivator - one that may seed both constructive and destructive endeavours.

As long as it feeds constructive things, it's fine. Look at Greta :)

Here it led to something potentially useful: a restored Reddit focusing on GML. As @Nocturne wrote: it expands the online presence of GM, which is a good thing, I think. :)
 
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