Forwarder Factory is over. (Please read the blog post)

2022-10-26

So let's stop wasting time, very important (but not good) blog post today. In short, Forwarder Factory is done, it's over. Now, so I can get this blog post out quickly, I am simply going to repost the huge and last Discord message I sent in the #announcements channel in its entirety. I know I said I wasn't going to make another blog post before the redesign but I need to get this out.

Original post: "So.. I've known this day would come for a very long time and unfortunately, today is that day! In the end, Forwarder Factory is (finally) over. I want to take some time into writing an announcement for you so that you're not lost. If you even remotely support me, please read the entire thing!

Before you start screaming "But what about preservation", note that the GitHub repositories will stay up, along with the Forwarder Factory organization. The YouTube channel will also stay up, however I will be removing the invite for the Discord server and replacing it with a link to a direct download. All the GitHub content is going to be mirrored to my Codeberg (speedie), and will get its own repository. I suggest you fork either the Codeberg or GitHub repositories to make sure they stay up if I decide to one day delete them, or if GitHub thinks I am breaking the terms of service (it is a Microsoft product we're talking about).

Myself and my staff have been thinking about and debating this for a very long time, but I can no longer take the daily conflicts and other maintainence issues that come with owning a server/IRC channel like this. Yes, I could in theory transfer ownership but the FF name has already been through way too much so I don't feel like giving someone else responsibility for a mess I created is fair. So the goal here is to eventually archive this channel and Discord server.

Recently (about an hour ago as of posting this), the server suffered yet another conflict, specifically about moderation. While this is not the direct cause, I would consider it the final straw as I have been thinking about leaving the internet/ending the server and IRC channel for a very long time now, months actually.

I want you to know that this is not the fault of any members here. And if it must be then it is every staff members' fault. I should take most of the blame but it is a waste to dedicate my last announcement here to that. To be honest though, I've been expecting this to happen for a very long time as I said earlier and the reason is fairly obvious looking back.

This server has been through a lot of drama, has had staff joining and leaving, raids and more over the last 1.5 years or so that it has existed for. For example:

The last one, #based-general is in my eyes the root cause of this. What I now call "the #based-general mentality" which is a term I just invented while writing this basically spread to the rest of the server. The biggest issue however, is how I am not a good leader. It is this fact and lack of moderation by myself that caused this.

First of all, I am very sorry for potentially taking away your (definitely not) favorite place to talk. However I no longer think I should be the one leading the Forwarder Factory project and as such, I would like you to go to a better community that is focused on what it should be; the Nintendo Wii console and modding it.

Again, all Wii repositories will stay up. Any Discord specific content is also going to be uploaded to these repositories to make sure nothing gets lost. That's what we tried to prevent in the beginning, right?

Either way, with that being said, if you'd like to keep up with me and/or my projects, I have a website at speedie.site where I post the current information. In fact I may post this on my website too! As for the staff members here, simply ask them!

I would like to give a big thank you to:

..and everyone who watched one of my videos, tried one of my projects, installed one of my forwarders or joined the Forwarder Factory Discord server/IRC channel. You guys rock and we will miss you a lot.

I would also like to apologize to Domzuq for joking around with his IP and I would also like to apologize to bloodythorn and the r/WiiHacks community for letting them down (the server invite is/was in #affiliates).

I personally have very mixed feelings about this, however I feel like it is the right thing to do. Remember; all good things eventually end. The end of Forwarder Factory is today! If you have any questions about what is going to happen, you can DM me on Discord or /query me on IRC. I am going to be somewhat active on Discord until the end from now on to make sure everyone gets a chance to say something to me!

Thank you for everything, everyone!"

Yes, thank you everyone for the support, I appreciate it.