RichMahogany
Straight Flush
Today I Learned: those names are in reference to boats!
those chips are really really expensive.
Sort of. Each boat never actually existed...
Today I Learned: those names are in reference to boats!
those chips are really really expensive.
Bingo! Sort of.
Although "Month phthon" is much funnier than anything I expected.
pm me your mailing address...
I was ostracized from the NE group as a result of participation in the boat buy, then later dragged through the mud and accused of all kinds of ridiculously stupid shenanigans by a specific person.
(Fun fact—had I not been accidentally brought in to the boat buy, I would’ve been part of the BTP buy.)
FWIW, other than that individual, I’ve let bygones be bygones. TBH, I miss being trapped between Guinness and Bergs in circus games. Those guys are fun. Absolute drunk-monkey maniacs...but fun.
Yes!This might be a dumb question but what is a “boat buy?”
Don't know what it was, but its result is the possibility for the poor layman to buy mint/near-mint THC Paulson chips second-hand, at objectively ultra-expensive prices (often verging on the obscene), still possibly the cheapest and least time-consuming (and soul-consuming) method of acquiring mint/near mint Paulson THC chips, especially if you 're NOT North-America-based and can't afford catch-and-release situations due to shipping costs and absurd Customs fees.This might be a dumb question but what is a “boat buy?”
Witty repartee, charming personality, crossed wires. The usual.How does one get accidentally brought into a NAGB??
How does one get accidentally brought into a NAGB??
I'd be disappointed in anyone that doesnt know that instantly.Bonus points and a mystery gift to the first person who comes up with the origin of that name!
Incontinentia buttocks.Speaking of Life of Brian, does anyone remember the name if Bigus Dickus' WIFE?
Witty repartee, charming personality, crossed wires. The usual.
“Hey, wait a minute! You aren’t gophergreen!!”
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.
Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.
What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.
Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.
What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?
Initially, I created Chip Donkeys as a fun technical project while I was on paternity leave because I had some extra time and thought it would be a small fun place to hang out with some friends online, mostly local to the bay area, and would be a fun project for me to learn some web development skills. I never took it too seriously, or at least didn't intend to; hence the name "Chip Donkeys". From a technical perspective, it was a lot of fun to build. I learned a lot about how to set up a forum, what things look like under the hood, and all the work that goes into keeping this updated, setting up mail servers, setting permissions, setting up galleries, user groups, admins, how to identify when a banned user tries to create new accounts, etc. etc. That stuff was a lot of fun to build. What I didn't anticipate though, and perhaps rather ignorantly, was bergs & crew wanting to find themselves a new home, especially one which I had created given our history. I had heard he was starting his own website, so I thought it was odd he'd want to crash mine. Anyhow, it didn't matter initially, because he wasn't allowed on the site anyhow. But all of his friends started joining and posting and harassing me daily to let him join. I was literally hounded by them daily and eventually, out of exhaustion, I gave in and allowed him limited access. That was a mistake.
There were a lot of people with hurt feelings back then surrounding the boat chip group buys (though I was never one of them) which is what caused most of the traffic heading to CD. Many people felt as though they couldn't discuss what happened with the GB here because mentions of it were not allowed publicly for some period of time, so they were looking for another outlet to learn about and discuss what happened. I thought transparency was the way to go. I thought letting adults be adults with pretty much the only rule being "no shitting on others" would make for a great discussion landscape. In some ways it worked, but ultimately, I learned that sometimes people are just shitty, and that it's a lot of work to have to run around wiping other grown-up's asses all the time. Several of the threads turned into huge GB food fights with people slinging shit from both sides of the fence. I wasn't in on the boat chip group buys, so a lot of people naturally assumed I was "on the side of the have-nots", perhaps because I had started the website, but I tried to remain neutral about the whole thing and truthfully, I usually found myself siding with the views expressed by those who were actually in the GB more often than I found myself siding with those who were left out of it, although there were certainly some exceptions to that, mostly with respect to those who were clearly attempting to obfuscate the facts. But I didn't have any issues with private group buys being done and people wanting to keep them private. Makes perfect sense to me. If you can score some Paulsons, do it. Ask some friends to join you. Well done. I don't really care to rehash all of various viewpoints/topics that were being discussed back then, but I bring it up because watching all the bickering back and forth was extremely taxing and it was wearing on me quickly. What started out as a fun technical project was quickly turning into an adult babysitting project where I was constantly having to deal with shit slinging left and right from both sides of the fence. It got old, and it got old very fast.
The biggest lessons I learned though, is that I was wrong about @Tommy and the mods here. I wasn't a fan of the moderating that was taking place, and I thought moderating the forums at CD wouldn't be that big of a deal. I figured we'd just clean up a few random posts here or there, tell people not to shit on each other, and all would just work itself out and that we could just let everyone speak openly about anything and everything they wanted. LOL. Looking back, I was pretty ignorant. Moderating these forums is a lot of work. A LOT OF WORK! And it's work that really sucks having to do. It really does feel like changing people's diapers. Grown-up's diapers. It's just way too much work to go through and edit people's posts, respond to the criticism for editing said posts, etc. It's just an endless cycle. It's just so much easier to delete turd posts and tell people to stop dropping turds or they'll get banned. And to follow up on those ban threats. Add on top of that all the PMs you have to answer as the owner of the site about anything and everything, even from people you really like (and from a few you don't), and it just became extremely overwhelming. Everyone has an idea about how to run the website, and they all have different opinions. Some people get offended when their ideas don't get adopted, others don't. Countless people chime in with ideas about who should be banned, who should be allowed back in, which 'like' button we should add next, what font size they would prefer on their screens, what font color they want, whether auctions should be allowed or not, whether or not they can run a group buy, asking for permission for them to post x, y, or z, people posting NSFW pics as their avatars, people constantly criticizing your decisions to edit posts where some asshole called another asshole an asshole, people threatening other people, people getting mad at you for editing messages where asshole A threatened nice person B, people getting mad at you because nice person C is getting picked on by asshole D and nobody is doing anything about it, and on and on and on. It's a lot of work. Some of these conversations really suck to have to go through, read, and respond to. You guys have NO IDEA the flood of nonsense that Tommy unquestionably has to deal with on a daily basis. But even the good conversations with the people I really like became overwhelming. I just couldn't get through them all. I was constantly overwhelmed with the website and it was something I never really anticipated. I had just become a new father at the time, and it got to a point where the website was taking up way too much of my time and after I returned back to work from being on paternity leave, I just couldn't do it any longer. It didn't take long before I realized that what I had created was a huge mistake, at least from the perspective of me running it. I think it would be fun to build a site for someone else, I did enjoy the technical aspect, but running things is a whole different ball game that I wasn't prepared for and would never do again. Which is a good thing, because if I were to, the ban hammers would come down so fast that there wouldn't be anyone left.
This forum is by far the most lenient forum I've ever encountered. The fact that there are only a few banned members here is pretty remarkable. Most forums wouldn't put up with half the shit that people here get away with, myself included. Creating an environment that is open and welcoming to everyone is critical for any forum to succeed. Guys like bergs are an absolute cancer to a web forum. The idea that this community has suffered in any way whatsoever by his absence is laughable. A funny joke or two here or there can be fun to read, but it's almost always at someone else's expense, and those quickly tally up. The number of members that someone like him chases away is difficult to exaggerate, and you'd never know about them unless you were an admin or someone paying extremely close attention. People pop their head to check things out, then they get shit on by someone like bergs and then they leave and never come back (or only come back for the classifieds). The bergs crew terrorized CT, they terrorized PCF, and they terrorized CD. Banning bergs was the best decision Tommy ever made for this site IMO, and I wouldn't be surprised if he agreed with me on that (though I don't want to put words in his mouth). I never really had any major issues with JButler. Sure, he enjoyed trolling people, but I never felt like he was an asshole to me, and he usually stopped short of being an asshole to others while trolling, and there were even a few times where he was extremely helpful to me in offering some advice when he really didn't need to and didn't have much incentive to.
At first, I had a lot of spare time because I was off work with paternity leave and my daughter was sleeping 18+ hours per day. But after I went back to work and the website really started picking up steam (there were over 20,000 posts after just the first couple months), things started to really spiral out of control for me time wise. I was working full time and it would take me at least 2 hours per night just to follow up with people and respond to PMs. With only a few hours per night with my new baby girl to begin with, this just wasn't sustainable. I just couldn't devote 2 hours to a website every night. Time with my family was my priority. Adding moderators helps somewhat, but there is still only so much they can do. Much of the demands that the site needs really have to be done by an administrator. Somethings can be put into cruise control once they've been set up, but overall, the work never ends. If there's only one takeaway from my post, let it be this: @Tommy does a pretty damn great job here overall, and if you guys want to show your appreciation, then sign up as a "supporting member" and thank him in the forums, NOT via PMs (my words, not his). If you have some stupid ass question, please think twice next time before sending it. If you think you'd prefer a different font size, then please, for the love of Zeus, change the damn font on your screen and don't bug the admin or mods. Leave them alone and let them have a life please lol. They ALL do a great job here, and they deserve our gratitude. It's a difficult, time consuming, and less than thankless job.
What happened to the community?
As far as what happened to the "community", it's a combination of several things in my opinion, all of which were pretty easy to predict. It's just how markets work and what happens when people get their feelings hurt.
1) This community has grown by quite a bit over the years. That's a good thing overall, but it also has consequences that many of the long time members may not like. As the rate of posts with titles like "My chips are filthy, is there a way to clean these?" increases, it becomes exponentially less rewarding to respond to them for those of us who have seen it already 100 times (unless your name is @BGinGA, bless his heart). Nothing against the new members making these sorts of posts, this community is here to help and almost alway will, and all of us were new at some point, but as the community expands, these types of posts can begin to drown out some of the more interesting threads. And the interesting threads, instead of becoming more prevalent, just turn into longer and longer threads. Then people start derailing those extremely long threads and it takes FOREVER just to read through them (hell, this is going on night #3 for me just to get through this thread and respond to it). Long threads get longer and are more difficult to get through when the community grows. More and more posts become newer members asking, "what is the NAGB?" and people then start reexplaining stuff to them, and it just gets old for those of us who have been around for it all. Again, nothing wrong with asking questions, but as the community grows, the interesting content just becomes harder to find and it takes longer to get through.
2) Chip Room sales, flippers, and flip-bashers - Chip Room sales have had a drastic effect on overall market prices over the years. Each time a new casino gets bought out and the chips drop, it has a very significant and measurable effect on the market. That's just basic economics. When the valuations of everyone's collections grow or shrink, people are going to be affected by it. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone here is well off, and what might seem like small fluctuations in the market prices to some can be large fluctuations to others. Everyone has a number for what they'd sell their grail sets for whether they admit it or not, and when markets change, chips will change hands more quickly. Again, that's just basic economics. When this happens, some people get butt hurt. They start throwing stones, calling people "flippers", etc. Sometimes people are going through some serious shit storms in life and they don't feel like discussing it publicly and don't need to get shit on for liquidating their assets at market prices when they're trying to raise a few hundred dollars to keep the lights on after blowing through their 401k to pay for their wife's chemotherapy. They don't need someone on their high horse slinging mud at them for buying a rack of chips for $200 and later reselling them for $220 because the market has adjusted. Sometimes people just need the benefit of the doubt and need to be extended kindness. But all the "flipper" bashing that goes on here just drives people away as well. And when I say "drives people away", I'm mostly referring to the forums, not the classifieds. There are a ton of people who get pushed out of the "community", but who remain subscribed to the classifieds and now pretty much only participate there.
3) The boat chips group buy - Fairly or unfairly, this had a pretty drastic affect on the community overall. As the guy who started Chip Donkeys and as someone who had several friends on the "inside" of the group buy, I probably saw first hand how much of an effect this had on the community as a whole as much as or more than just about anyone. My inbox at Chip Donkeys became the "complaint box" for just about everyone who was upset about the whole ordeal. Some of their concerns were pretty valid, some were just sour grapes, but everyone has their own truth, and people were definitely pissed off about it. A lot of people. Some still are, but I'd say it's mostly water under the bridge now for most people. But it has had a DRASTIC effect on the community's interactions with one another ever since. Several people who had previously been anti-flipping vocalists were now seen flipping chips, and it left a sour taste in everyone's mouths. Everyone inside the GB started getting lumped together, often receiving labels they didn't deserve, and they couldn't wash themselves of those labels no matter how hard they tried. So in turn, it changed the way they now addressed/approached the community as well. I've watched as people who previously never flipped chips before eventually get to a point where they just threw their hands up in the air and basically said, "ah fuck it", feeling defeated after getting falsely accused of flipping chips over and over despite them constantly either breaking even or taking a bath on most of their prior sales. Now, they want market prices. Nothing wrong with that IMO, but it's all part of the ripple effect that the GB caused. I've also watched several smaller cliques forming since the GB happened. PM deals have gotten more prevalent among some, and everyone's "I won't sell chips to you or you or you" lists have gotten longer. It's just what happens when lines get drawn and divisions get made. Personally, I was never upset at all about being left out of any of the group buys, and I can't really claim to fully understand the feelings of those who took being left out so painfully, perhaps because I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum (my nickname is "Rainman" for a reason lol), but I certainly watched it transpire and I probably saw it's full affect first hand more so than anyone else. It deeply hurt a lot of people to be left out, and it created divisions that will never be fully repaired. It is what it is.
4) BTP chips & SB chips - I don't know or care all that much about the drama surrounding these later Paulson buys, but it's definitely had an effect on the market/community as well. Perhaps it's just driven more wedges into the divides from the previous Paulson buys, but the divisions are present either way. Nice new Paulsons entering the market will apparently always piss some percentage of the community off and make some other percentage of the community tremendously grateful. It's sorta strange from my viewpoint though, because the only people who seem to be pissed off about these buys are the ones who either can't or don't want to pay the premiums that high end minty Paulson sets demand anyhow. Meanwhile, the introduction of all these newer "high end" sets entering the market has actually driven down the prices of almost all of the nice old school THC sets like LCOs, Empress, Palais des Congres, Outposts, Emerald Princess, Aztars, and others. These are some FANTASTIC sets that you can get your hands on now for some pretty great prices as a result of all these minty Paulsons hitting the market. Old school leaded THC sets with shaped inlays! Personally, I'd rather have any of these old school sets than most of the GB chips that go for 3x their prices anyhow. All the people bitching about GB chip prices should be thanking them for lowering the prices of the stuff they're actually buying IMO.
5) The economy - Overall, people have more expendable income now than ever before. It has had a very strong effect on every hobby, not just ours. Even baseball card prices have gone through the roof over the past few years. Markets change, and our hobby is a free market whether you like it or not. If everyone acknowledged that and started respecting each other's chip collections for whatever the market says they're worth instead of for what they want to pay for them, we could all separate the financial aspect of things from community and just get along. But I guess that's a pipe dream. But if I want chips from someone, I have zero problems with whoever I'm buying them from having made a profit by selling them to me. I don't care what they paid for them. I care what they're worth, and if I want them badly enough, I'll often gladly overpay. To each their own.
6) The combination of everything - Communities evolve over time. It's just natural. The chipping world is no different. The landscape of members is very different today from what it was just 2 or 3 years ago, let alone 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Add into that the current political divisions in this country, and everyone is on edge already.
Just popping in to quickly say this whole post (that I refuse to quote all of) might be one of the best things you've contributed to this forum.
There are some things where you have to take the bad with the good, Bergs was like that, helped me out with a GB side-deal gone bad (for me) on CT many years ago......so i owe him, but it was like water off a ducks back to him. lol....Onya Bergs.....oh yeh..... loved that Dunes set he had.I personally always had a great time with Bergs. A lot of bets on the cowboys and sarcasm, but this statement is dead on. I loved both of them, but Jesus, some days.....
Sometimes you just have to be able to “Agree to Disagree” with people.I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.
Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.
What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?
Initially, I created Chip Donkeys as a fun technical project while I was on paternity leave because I had some extra time and thought it would be a small fun place to hang out with some friends online, mostly local to the bay area, and would be a fun project for me to learn some web development skills. I never took it too seriously, or at least didn't intend to; hence the name "Chip Donkeys". From a technical perspective, it was a lot of fun to build. I learned a lot about how to set up a forum, what things look like under the hood, and all the work that goes into keeping this updated, setting up mail servers, setting permissions, setting up galleries, user groups, admins, how to identify when a banned user tries to create new accounts, etc. etc. That stuff was a lot of fun to build. What I didn't anticipate though, and perhaps rather ignorantly, was bergs & crew wanting to find themselves a new home, especially one which I had created given our history. I had heard he was starting his own website, so I thought it was odd he'd want to crash mine. Anyhow, it didn't matter initially, because he wasn't allowed on the site anyhow. But all of his friends started joining and posting and harassing me daily to let him join. I was literally hounded by them daily and eventually, out of exhaustion, I gave in and allowed him limited access. That was a mistake.
There were a lot of people with hurt feelings back then surrounding the boat chip group buys (though I was never one of them) which is what caused most of the traffic heading to CD. Many people felt as though they couldn't discuss what happened with the GB here because mentions of it were not allowed publicly for some period of time, so they were looking for another outlet to learn about and discuss what happened. I thought transparency was the way to go. I thought letting adults be adults with pretty much the only rule being "no shitting on others" would make for a great discussion landscape. In some ways it worked, but ultimately, I learned that sometimes people are just shitty, and that it's a lot of work to have to run around wiping other grown-up's asses all the time. Several of the threads turned into huge GB food fights with people slinging shit from both sides of the fence. I wasn't in on the boat chip group buys, so a lot of people naturally assumed I was "on the side of the have-nots", perhaps because I had started the website, but I tried to remain neutral about the whole thing and truthfully, I usually found myself siding with the views expressed by those who were actually in the GB more often than I found myself siding with those who were left out of it, although there were certainly some exceptions to that, mostly with respect to those who were clearly attempting to obfuscate the facts. But I didn't have any issues with private group buys being done and people wanting to keep them private. Makes perfect sense to me. If you can score some Paulsons, do it. Ask some friends to join you. Well done. I don't really care to rehash all of various viewpoints/topics that were being discussed back then, but I bring it up because watching all the bickering back and forth was extremely taxing and it was wearing on me quickly. What started out as a fun technical project was quickly turning into an adult babysitting project where I was constantly having to deal with shit slinging left and right from both sides of the fence. It got old, and it got old very fast.
The biggest lessons I learned though, is that I was wrong about @Tommy and the mods here. I wasn't a fan of the moderating that was taking place, and I thought moderating the forums at CD wouldn't be that big of a deal. I figured we'd just clean up a few random posts here or there, tell people not to shit on each other, and all would just work itself out and that we could just let everyone speak openly about anything and everything they wanted. LOL. Looking back, I was pretty ignorant. Moderating these forums is a lot of work. A LOT OF WORK! And it's work that really sucks having to do. It really does feel like changing people's diapers. Grown-up's diapers. It's just way too much work to go through and edit people's posts, respond to the criticism for editing said posts, etc. It's just an endless cycle. It's just so much easier to delete turd posts and tell people to stop dropping turds or they'll get banned. And to follow up on those ban threats. Add on top of that all the PMs you have to answer as the owner of the site about anything and everything, even from people you really like (and from a few you don't), and it just became extremely overwhelming. Everyone has an idea about how to run the website, and they all have different opinions. Some people get offended when their ideas don't get adopted, others don't. Countless people chime in with ideas about who should be banned, who should be allowed back in, which 'like' button we should add next, what font size they would prefer on their screens, what font color they want, whether auctions should be allowed or not, whether or not they can run a group buy, asking for permission for them to post x, y, or z, people posting NSFW pics as their avatars, people constantly criticizing your decisions to edit posts where some asshole called another asshole an asshole, people threatening other people, people getting mad at you for editing messages where asshole A threatened nice person B, people getting mad at you because nice person C is getting picked on by asshole D and nobody is doing anything about it, and on and on and on. It's a lot of work. Some of these conversations really suck to have to go through, read, and respond to. You guys have NO IDEA the flood of nonsense that Tommy unquestionably has to deal with on a daily basis. But even the good conversations with the people I really like became overwhelming. I just couldn't get through them all. I was constantly overwhelmed with the website and it was something I never really anticipated. I had just become a new father at the time, and it got to a point where the website was taking up way too much of my time and after I returned back to work from being on paternity leave, I just couldn't do it any longer. It didn't take long before I realized that what I had created was a huge mistake, at least from the perspective of me running it. I think it would be fun to build a site for someone else, I did enjoy the technical aspect, but running things is a whole different ball game that I wasn't prepared for and would never do again. Which is a good thing, because if I were to, the ban hammers would come down so fast that there wouldn't be anyone left.
This forum is by far the most lenient forum I've ever encountered. The fact that there are only a few banned members here is pretty remarkable. Most forums wouldn't put up with half the shit that people here get away with, myself included. Creating an environment that is open and welcoming to everyone is critical for any forum to succeed. Guys like bergs are an absolute cancer to a web forum. The idea that this community has suffered in any way whatsoever by his absence is laughable. A funny joke or two here or there can be fun to read, but it's almost always at someone else's expense, and those quickly tally up. The number of members that someone like him chases away is difficult to exaggerate, and you'd never know about them unless you were an admin or someone paying extremely close attention. People pop their head to check things out, then they get shit on by someone like bergs and then they leave and never come back (or only come back for the classifieds). The bergs crew terrorized CT, they terrorized PCF, and they terrorized CD. Banning bergs was the best decision Tommy ever made for this site IMO, and I wouldn't be surprised if he agreed with me on that (though I don't want to put words in his mouth). I never really had any major issues with JButler. Sure, he enjoyed trolling people, but I never felt like he was an asshole to me, and he usually stopped short of being an asshole to others while trolling, and there were even a few times where he was extremely helpful to me in offering some advice when he really didn't need to and didn't have much incentive to.
At first, I had a lot of spare time because I was off work with paternity leave and my daughter was sleeping 18+ hours per day. But after I went back to work and the website really started picking up steam (there were over 20,000 posts after just the first couple months), things started to really spiral out of control for me time wise. I was working full time and it would take me at least 2 hours per night just to follow up with people and respond to PMs. With only a few hours per night with my new baby girl to begin with, this just wasn't sustainable. I just couldn't devote 2 hours to a website every night. Time with my family was my priority. Adding moderators helps somewhat, but there is still only so much they can do. Much of the demands that the site needs really have to be done by an administrator. Somethings can be put into cruise control once they've been set up, but overall, the work never ends. If there's only one takeaway from my post, let it be this: @Tommy does a pretty damn great job here overall, and if you guys want to show your appreciation, then sign up as a "supporting member" and thank him in the forums, NOT via PMs (my words, not his). If you have some stupid ass question, please think twice next time before sending it. If you think you'd prefer a different font size, then please, for the love of Zeus, change the damn font on your screen and don't bug the admin or mods. Leave them alone and let them have a life please lol. They ALL do a great job here, and they deserve our gratitude. It's a difficult, time consuming, and less than thankless job.
What happened to the community?
As far as what happened to the "community", it's a combination of several things in my opinion, all of which were pretty easy to predict. It's just how markets work and what happens when people get their feelings hurt.
1) This community has grown by quite a bit over the years. That's a good thing overall, but it also has consequences that many of the long time members may not like. As the rate of posts with titles like "My chips are filthy, is there a way to clean these?" increases, it becomes exponentially less rewarding to respond to them for those of us who have seen it already 100 times (unless your name is @BGinGA, bless his heart). Nothing against the new members making these sorts of posts, this community is here to help and almost alway will, and all of us were new at some point, but as the community expands, these types of posts can begin to drown out some of the more interesting threads. And the interesting threads, instead of becoming more prevalent, just turn into longer and longer threads. Then people start derailing those extremely long threads and it takes FOREVER just to read through them (hell, this is going on night #3 for me just to get through this thread and respond to it). Long threads get longer and are more difficult to get through when the community grows. More and more posts become newer members asking, "what is the NAGB?" and people then start reexplaining stuff to them, and it just gets old for those of us who have been around for it all. Again, nothing wrong with asking questions, but as the community grows, the interesting content just becomes harder to find and it takes longer to get through.
2) Chip Room sales, flippers, and flip-bashers - Chip Room sales have had a drastic effect on overall market prices over the years. Each time a new casino gets bought out and the chips drop, it has a very significant and measurable effect on the market. That's just basic economics. When the valuations of everyone's collections grow or shrink, people are going to be affected by it. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone here is well off, and what might seem like small fluctuations in the market prices to some can be large fluctuations to others. Everyone has a number for what they'd sell their grail sets for whether they admit it or not, and when markets change, chips will change hands more quickly. Again, that's just basic economics. When this happens, some people get butt hurt. They start throwing stones, calling people "flippers", etc. Sometimes people are going through some serious shit storms in life and they don't feel like discussing it publicly and don't need to get shit on for liquidating their assets at market prices when they're trying to raise a few hundred dollars to keep the lights on after blowing through their 401k to pay for their wife's chemotherapy. They don't need someone on their high horse slinging mud at them for buying a rack of chips for $200 and later reselling them for $220 because the market has adjusted. Sometimes people just need the benefit of the doubt and need to be extended kindness. But all the "flipper" bashing that goes on here just drives people away as well. And when I say "drives people away", I'm mostly referring to the forums, not the classifieds. There are a ton of people who get pushed out of the "community", but who remain subscribed to the classifieds and now pretty much only participate there.
3) The boat chips group buy - Fairly or unfairly, this had a pretty drastic affect on the community overall. As the guy who started Chip Donkeys and as someone who had several friends on the "inside" of the group buy, I probably saw first hand how much of an effect this had on the community as a whole as much as or more than just about anyone. My inbox at Chip Donkeys became the "complaint box" for just about everyone who was upset about the whole ordeal. Some of their concerns were pretty valid, some were just sour grapes, but everyone has their own truth, and people were definitely pissed off about it. A lot of people. Some still are, but I'd say it's mostly water under the bridge now for most people. But it has had a DRASTIC effect on the community's interactions with one another ever since. Several people who had previously been anti-flipping vocalists were now seen flipping chips, and it left a sour taste in everyone's mouths. Everyone inside the GB started getting lumped together, often receiving labels they didn't deserve, and they couldn't wash themselves of those labels no matter how hard they tried. So in turn, it changed the way they now addressed/approached the community as well. I've watched as people who previously never flipped chips before eventually get to a point where they just threw their hands up in the air and basically said, "ah fuck it", feeling defeated after getting falsely accused of flipping chips over and over despite them constantly either breaking even or taking a bath on most of their prior sales. Now, they want market prices. Nothing wrong with that IMO, but it's all part of the ripple effect that the GB caused. I've also watched several smaller cliques forming since the GB happened. PM deals have gotten more prevalent among some, and everyone's "I won't sell chips to you or you or you" lists have gotten longer. It's just what happens when lines get drawn and divisions get made. Personally, I was never upset at all about being left out of any of the group buys, and I can't really claim to fully understand the feelings of those who took being left out so painfully, perhaps because I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum (my nickname is "Rainman" for a reason lol), but I certainly watched it transpire and I probably saw it's full affect first hand more so than anyone else. It deeply hurt a lot of people to be left out, and it created divisions that will never be fully repaired. It is what it is.
4) BTP chips & SB chips - I don't know or care all that much about the drama surrounding these later Paulson buys, but it's definitely had an effect on the market/community as well. Perhaps it's just driven more wedges into the divides from the previous Paulson buys, but the divisions are present either way. Nice new Paulsons entering the market will apparently always piss some percentage of the community off and make some other percentage of the community tremendously grateful. It's sorta strange from my viewpoint though, because the only people who seem to be pissed off about these buys are the ones who either can't or don't want to pay the premiums that high end minty Paulson sets demand anyhow. Meanwhile, the introduction of all these newer "high end" sets entering the market has actually driven down the prices of almost all of the nice old school THC sets like LCOs, Empress, Palais des Congres, Outposts, Emerald Princess, Aztars, and others. These are some FANTASTIC sets that you can get your hands on now for some pretty great prices as a result of all these minty Paulsons hitting the market. Old school leaded THC sets with shaped inlays! Personally, I'd rather have any of these old school sets than most of the GB chips that go for 3x their prices anyhow. All the people bitching about GB chip prices should be thanking them for lowering the prices of the stuff they're actually buying IMO.
5) The economy - Overall, people have more expendable income now than ever before. It has had a very strong effect on every hobby, not just ours. Even baseball card prices have gone through the roof over the past few years. Markets change, and our hobby is a free market whether you like it or not. If everyone acknowledged that and started respecting each other's chip collections for whatever the market says they're worth instead of for what they want to pay for them, we could all separate the financial aspect of things from community and just get along. But I guess that's a pipe dream. But if I want chips from someone, I have zero problems with whoever I'm buying them from having made a profit by selling them to me. I don't care what they paid for them. I care what they're worth, and if I want them badly enough, I'll often gladly overpay. To each their own.
6) The combination of everything - Communities evolve over time. It's just natural. The chipping world is no different. The landscape of members is very different today from what it was just 2 or 3 years ago, let alone 5, 10, or 20 years ago. Add into that the current political divisions in this country, and everyone is on edge already.
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.
Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.
What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?
Initially, I created Chip Donkeys as a fun technical project while I was on paternity leave because I had some extra time and thought it would be a small fun place to hang out with some friends online, mostly local to the bay area, and would be a fun project for me to learn some web development skills. I never took it too seriously, or at least didn't intend to; hence the name "Chip Donkeys". From a technical perspective, it was a lot of fun to build. I learned a lot about how to set up a forum, what things look like under the hood, and all the work that goes into keeping this updated, setting up mail servers, setting permissions, setting up galleries, user groups, admins, how to identify when a banned user tries to create new accounts, etc. etc. That stuff was a lot of fun to build. What I didn't anticipate though, and perhaps rather ignorantly, was bergs & crew wanting to find themselves a new home, especially one which I had created given our history. I had heard he was starting his own website, so I thought it was odd he'd want to crash mine. Anyhow, it didn't matter initially, because he wasn't allowed on the site anyhow. But all of his friends started joining and posting and harassing me daily to let him join. I was literally hounded by them daily and eventually, out of exhaustion, I gave in and allowed him limited access. That was a mistake.
There were a lot of people with hurt feelings back then surrounding the boat chip group buys (though I was never one of them) which is what caused most of the traffic heading to CD. Many people felt as though they couldn't discuss what happened with the GB here because mentions of it were not allowed publicly for some period of time, so they were looking for another outlet to learn about and discuss what happened. I thought transparency was the way to go. I thought letting adults be adults with pretty much the only rule being "no shitting on others" would make for a great discussion landscape. In some ways it worked, but ultimately, I learned that sometimes people are just shitty, and that it's a lot of work to have to run around wiping other grown-up's asses all the time. Several of the threads turned into huge GB food fights with people slinging shit from both sides of the fence. I wasn't in on the boat chip group buys, so a lot of people naturally assumed I was "on the side of the have-nots", perhaps because I had started the website, but I tried to remain neutral about the whole thing and truthfully, I usually found myself siding with the views expressed by those who were actually in the GB more often than I found myself siding with those who were left out of it, although there were certainly some exceptions to that, mostly with respect to those who were clearly attempting to obfuscate the facts. But I didn't have any issues with private group buys being done and people wanting to keep them private. Makes perfect sense to me. If you can score some Paulsons, do it. Ask some friends to join you. Well done. I don't really care to rehash all of various viewpoints/topics that were being discussed back then, but I bring it up because watching all the bickering back and forth was extremely taxing and it was wearing on me quickly. What started out as a fun technical project was quickly turning into an adult babysitting project where I was constantly having to deal with shit slinging left and right from both sides of the fence. It got old, and it got old very fast.
The biggest lessons I learned though, is that I was wrong about @Tommy and the mods here. I wasn't a fan of the moderating that was taking place, and I thought moderating the forums at CD wouldn't be that big of a deal. I figured we'd just clean up a few random posts here or there, tell people not to shit on each other, and all would just work itself out and that we could just let everyone speak openly about anything and everything they wanted. LOL. Looking back, I was pretty ignorant. Moderating these forums is a lot of work. A LOT OF WORK! And it's work that really sucks having to do. It really does feel like changing people's diapers. Grown-up's diapers. It's just way too much work to go through and edit people's posts, respond to the criticism for editing said posts, etc. It's just an endless cycle. It's just so much easier to delete turd posts and tell people to stop dropping turds or they'll get banned. And to follow up on those ban threats. Add on top of that all the PMs you have to answer as the owner of the site about anything and everything, even from people you really like (and from a few you don't), and it just became extremely overwhelming. Everyone has an idea about how to run the website, and they all have different opinions. Some people get offended when their ideas don't get adopted, others don't. Countless people chime in with ideas about who should be banned, who should be allowed back in, which 'like' button we should add next, what font size they would prefer on their screens, what font color they want, whether auctions should be allowed or not, whether or not they can run a group buy, asking for permission for them to post x, y, or z, people posting NSFW pics as their avatars, people constantly criticizing your decisions to edit posts where some asshole called another asshole an asshole, people threatening other people, people getting mad at you for editing messages where asshole A threatened nice person B, people getting mad at you because nice person C is getting picked on by asshole D and nobody is doing anything about it, and on and on and on. It's a lot of work. Some of these conversations really suck to have to go through, read, and respond to. You guys have NO IDEA the flood of nonsense that Tommy unquestionably has to deal with on a daily basis. But even the good conversations with the people I really like became overwhelming. I just couldn't get through them all. I was constantly overwhelmed with the website and it was something I never really anticipated. I had just become a new father at the time, and it got to a point where the website was taking up way too much of my time and after I returned back to work from being on paternity leave, I just couldn't do it any longer. It didn't take long before I realized that what I had created was a huge mistake, at least from the perspective of me running it. I think it would be fun to build a site for someone else, I did enjoy the technical aspect, but running things is a whole different ball game that I wasn't prepared for and would never do again. Which is a good thing, because if I were to, the ban hammers would come down so fast that there wouldn't be anyone left.
This forum is by far the most lenient forum I've ever encountered. The fact that there are only a few banned members here is pretty remarkable. Most forums wouldn't put up with half the shit that people here get away with, myself included. Creating an environment that is open and welcoming to everyone is critical for any forum to succeed. Guys like bergs are an absolute cancer to a web forum. The idea that this community has suffered in any way whatsoever by his absence is laughable. A funny joke or two here or there can be fun to read, but it's almost always at someone else's expense, and those quickly tally up. The number of members that someone like him chases away is difficult to exaggerate, and you'd never know about them unless you were an admin or someone paying extremely close attention. People pop their head to check things out, then they get shit on by someone like bergs and then they leave and never come back (or only come back for the classifieds). The bergs crew terrorized CT, they terrorized PCF, and they terrorized CD. Banning bergs was the best decision Tommy ever made for this site IMO, and I wouldn't be surprised if he agreed with me on that (though I don't want to put words in his mouth). I never really had any major issues with JButler. Sure, he enjoyed trolling people, but I never felt like he was an asshole to me, and he usually stopped short of being an asshole to others while trolling, and there were even a few times where he was extremely helpful to me in offering some advice when he really didn't need to and didn't have much incentive to.
At first, I had a lot of spare time because I was off work with paternity leave and my daughter was sleeping 18+ hours per day. But after I went back to work and the website really started picking up steam (there were over 20,000 posts after just the first couple months), things started to really spiral out of control for me time wise. I was working full time and it would take me at least 2 hours per night just to follow up with people and respond to PMs. With only a few hours per night with my new baby girl to begin with, this just wasn't sustainable. I just couldn't devote 2 hours to a website every night. Time with my family was my priority. Adding moderators helps somewhat, but there is still only so much they can do. Much of the demands that the site needs really have to be done by an administrator. Somethings can be put into cruise control once they've been set up, but overall, the work never ends. If there's only one takeaway from my post, let it be this: @Tommy does a pretty damn great job here overall, and if you guys want to show your appreciation, then sign up as a "supporting member" and thank him in the forums, NOT via PMs (my words, not his). If you have some stupid ass question, please think twice next time before sending it. If you think you'd prefer a different font size, then please, for the love of Zeus, change the damn font on your screen and don't bug the admin or mods. Leave them alone and let them have a life please lol. They ALL do a great job here, and they deserve our gratitude. It's a difficult, time consuming, and less than thankless job.
What happened to the community?
As far as what happened to the "community", it's a combination of several things in my opinion, all of which were pretty easy to predict. It's just how markets work and what happens when people get their feelings hurt.
1) This community has grown by quite a bit over the years. That's a good thing overall, but it also has consequences that many of the long time members may not like. As the rate of posts with titles like "My chips are filthy, is there a way to clean these?" increases, it becomes exponentially less rewarding to respond to them for those of us who have seen it already 100 times (unless your name is @BGinGA, bless his heart). Nothing against the new members making these sorts of posts, this community is here to help and almost alway will, and all of us were new at some point, but as the community expands, these types of posts can begin to drown out some of the more interesting threads. And the interesting threads, instead of becoming more prevalent, just turn into longer and longer threads. Then people start derailing those extremely long threads and it takes FOREVER just to read through them (hell, this is going on night #3 for me just to get through this thread and respond to it). Long threads get longer and are more difficult to get through when the community grows. More and more posts become newer members asking, "what is the NAGB?" and people then start reexplaining stuff to them, and it just gets old for those of us who have been around for it all. Again, nothing wrong with asking questions, but as the community grows, the interesting content just becomes harder to find and it takes longer to get through.
2) Chip Room sales, flippers, and flip-bashers - Chip Room sales have had a drastic effect on overall market prices over the years. Each time a new casino gets bought out and the chips drop, it has a very significant and measurable effect on the market. That's just basic economics. When the valuations of everyone's collections grow or shrink, people are going to be affected by it. Contrary to popular opinion, not everyone here is well off, and what might seem like small fluctuations in the market prices to some can be large fluctuations to others. Everyone has a number for what they'd sell their grail sets for whether they admit it or not, and when markets change, chips will change hands more quickly. Again, that's just basic economics. When this happens, some people get butt hurt. They start throwing stones, calling people "flippers", etc. Sometimes people are going through some serious shit storms in life and they don't feel like discussing it publicly and don't need to get shit on for liquidating their assets at market prices when they're trying to raise a few hundred dollars to keep the lights on after blowing through their 401k to pay for their wife's chemotherapy. They don't need someone on their high horse slinging mud at them for buying a rack of chips for $200 and later reselling them for $220 because the market has adjusted. Sometimes people just need the benefit of the doubt and need to be extended kindness. But all the "flipper" bashing that goes on here just drives people away as well. And when I say "drives people away", I'm mostly referring to the forums, not the classifieds. There are a ton of people who get pushed out of the "community", but who remain subscribed to the classifieds and now pretty much only participate there.
3) The boat chips group buy - Fairly or unfairly, this had a pretty drastic affect on the community overall. As the guy who started Chip Donkeys and as someone who had several friends on the "inside" of the group buy, I probably saw first hand how much of an effect this had on the community as a whole as much as or more than just about anyone. My inbox at Chip Donkeys became the "complaint box" for just about everyone who was upset about the whole ordeal. Some of their concerns were pretty valid, some were just sour grapes, but everyone has their own truth, and people were definitely pissed off about it. A lot of people. Some still are, but I'd say it's mostly water under the bridge now for most people. But it has had a DRASTIC effect on the community's interactions with one another ever since. Several people who had previously been anti-flipping vocalists were now seen flipping chips, and it left a sour taste in everyone's mouths. Everyone inside the GB started getting lumped together, often receiving labels they didn't deserve, and they couldn't wash themselves of those labels no matter how hard they tried. So in turn, it changed the way they now addressed/approached the community as well. I've watched as people who previously never flipped chips before eventually get to a point where they just threw their hands up in the air and basically said, "ah fuck it", feeling defeated after getting falsely accused of flipping chips over and over despite them constantly either breaking even or taking a bath on most of their prior sales. Now, they want market prices. Nothing wrong with that IMO, but it's all part of the ripple effect that the GB caused. I've also watched several smaller cliques forming since the GB happened. PM deals have gotten more prevalent among some, and everyone's "I won't sell chips to you or you or you" lists have gotten longer. It's just what happens when lines get drawn and divisions get made. Personally, I was never upset at all about being left out of any of the group buys, and I can't really claim to fully understand the feelings of those who took being left out so painfully, perhaps because I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum (my nickname is "Rainman" for a reason lol), but I certainly watched it transpire and I probably saw it's full affect first hand more so than anyone else. It deeply hurt a lot of people to be left out, and it created divisions that will never be fully repaired. It is what it is.
I do appreciate the well written perspective from @RainmanTrail and find it especially interesting as so many of the negative aspects that he focuses on, I barely remember. If you asked me to describe the Chip Donkey experience, I mostly remember AMA's and Fantasy drafts which I thought were incredibly fun and inclusive of everyone. Yes, there were more arguments over NAGB's and boat chips on CD, but thats only because those conversations were allowed over there, while being censored over here. I feel like the site would have been successful had travis elected to keep it open, but I also dont blame him for walking away.
Its important to note that CD came at a time when people needed it, just as PCF had done previously for the Chiptalk community. Its really the same story, and whats shouldnt be overlooked is that Butler, Bergs, Courage, Bginga etc. all played a big part in the CT exodus to PCF. At that time it was @BGinGA trolling Ten with avatars and free speech, while getting banned for possibly the stupidest reason of all time.
I know Bergs in person, have met BG a few times, never met rainman, but have shared many of PMS, and they are all the same people. They can have abrasive online personalities, but seem nothing like that person in real life. I think they are all great contributors and we all lose, when they aren't part of the cipping community.
I think I have a fairly unique perspective on all of this as I'm one of the few people in this community that has experienced it from almost every angle. I've been a site owner/administrator, I've bought out a casino and sold the chips as a vendor, I've participated in group buys, I've ran group buys, I've been excluded from group buys, I've been the sounding board for everyone's group buy complaints, I've been the primary target of bergs & crew's attacks, and I've had more chipping transactions than nearly everyone on the forums over the years.
Here's what I've learned and observed from from my vantage point, and the story of Chip Donkeys, which is obviously relevant to the conversation.
What happened with Chip Donkeys and what did I learn from it?