The Dink Network

Since this thread is so me-centric, I'm sticking it in the off-topic section, though it does pertain in some way to the Dink Network. But it's mostly about me, which I'm sure excites you.

If it wasn't already apparent, Dukie's untimely passing immediately spurred me to renew my interest in the community I adore so much but had neglected for so long. Having abandoned this website almost as soon as I made my ascension to the throne, I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt and a debt of sorts to you, my fellow Dinkers. I feel compelled to establish myself again somehow.

Am I able to provide an adequate excuse for my negligence? Well... no, not really. I won't go into great detail, but my power over this place has been harebrained and disorganized from day one, and this played a significant role in pushing me away from the place. Things are so ridiculous now that I can honestly say I've lost my passwords to virtually everything - save for my own Dink Network account, which I spent the better part of an hour struggling to remember the password to so that I could make a few posts back in April. (Striker is probably grinding his teeth right now.) I will either have to get back in touch with redink1 to sort out my pathetic inability to access any of the "webmaster-y" stuff, or do an enormous amount of digging through my hard drives.

My abandonment of this place can further be attributed to romantic endeavors (my current relationship being amazing), being inebriated, trying to solidify friendships with people in real life, work, pursuing and sort of wasting an education, cats, going to other websites to spread my bad humor and pseudo-intellectual remarks, and last but not least, my puzzling living situation, which itself is probably worthy of an enormous amount of text.

I currently have no world-shattering plans or ideas for the Dink Network. My short-term aspirations are, basically, to reinstate all of my King-like abilities, make greater contributions to site updates and forum activity, stir up the community in positive ways, and do other meaningful things that I've yet to conceptualize. In other words, I want the community to at least not have to wonder whatever happened to its designated leader.

Do not expect sweeping changes anytime soon. The agreement several years ago was that I would look over the day-to-day workings of the site while redink1 remained in the background willing to add or adjust site features as desire or necessity mandated. This obviously did not come to fruition, and apparently even redink1 has distanced himself quite a bit - whether this was in any way influenced by me or not, I have no clue, though I do know that he has had several developments in his life outside of the Dink Network also. He's the man to go to if we want to make substantial changes to this place, but he remains busy with other things. I also don't know what we'd do with this place anyway (suggestions, anyone?). It would be incredible if I could take over the reigns of website development, but that would require a substantial skill-developing effort on my end that I will probably not have the time for in the foreseeable future.

Things may pick up a bit when I finally attain a new job and settle down with my significant other. I am in a very lame scenario right now, and a computer with internet access is not frequently available to me. You'll see me week after week, but not day after day.

Any questions or comments?

(Public note to Striker: Those messages you sent through Facebook IM to me in January and February? I swear I only saw those for the first time just yesterday. I have no idea how that is.)

This is what I wanted to see.

Welcome back man

Does this mean you'll actually update your bio?

Visiting talporn.com is even more awesome now that you're back

You know, I probably should. Not right this second though. I gotta wash myself.

What is this, a Duke Nukem reference? (link)

If you do get access to those admin features, one thing to update would be the Partners section on the right - the Dink Fan and Dinktionary are dead, and the Dink Squad was abandoned (joshriot moved it to Facebook, but I've no idea whether it's still alive over there).

Adding new quotes every now and then would also help a great deal with making the site feel less stagnant.

This is my favourite community on the internet. Glad to have you back.

PM me nominations for new quotes and I'll see what I can do, eventually. A good rule of thumb is not to nominate yourself or any flames (unless it's absolutely hysterical).

and the Dink Squad was abandoned (joshriot moved it to Facebook, but I've no idea whether it's still alive over there).

You mean we don't have idea if Josh is still alive or not?

As for quotes, I think you should make a sticky thread where people can post what they think are quote -worthy posts.

Eh, no big deal about the FB messages, I forget what they were even about. I'm pretty sure the reason redink1 left is about the same yours.

Was gonna say the same about duke.
Hail to the king baby

The white duck has returned... Yays

Great to hear you're back, you don't really know me beacause I've only been here like 2 and a half years, but I've still missed you XD

Welcome back Tal,
you asked for suggestions,
Well... I would love to see a downloads total added to all files uploaded here, I think this would be really interesting to see what sort of file is downloaded the most and will also show the nay sayers that this place is alive and kicking.

The quotes changed/ updated/added to would be good - I always end up with DraconicDink waffling on about my fav fantasy series which I now cant stand cause of him (whoever he was) or I get "Cow" which is rather apt hehe and cracks me up every time.

There will (hopefully) be a few buttons removed from the "partners" list in your update, maybe with a rename this could actually become a better utilised part of the DN. (I think personally I have only ever clicked those links a couple of times each since I came here).

I would love to see that area used more and by clicking a button it takes you to another dedicated DN page of info as follows. (ps: This gets rid of a number of stickies as well!) If you are keen I am happy to design a few new buttons for you to use... Just let me know.

Button 1: (STAFF/Rules) for newbies where they click and gives them all the information about who is staff, what that staff persons job envolves. This means if there is something that needs staff attention, they know which member to approach. Included in this section I would like to see a set of rules that the community runs on minus the forum comments as in the list Striker made

Button 1: Platforms; I would like to see all Dink related platforms listed here, thats the Dink HD, Freedink, psp and so on and instructions for use kept with these links.

Button 3: Dmod Creation: Would like to see a button with all good files for creating dmods in (cause that essentially is why people come here at the start) like metas intro to dmodding, rudiments of scripting, the best skeleton dmod, robs videos, because if everything that is useful is accessable in one place, people wont have to ask for it all the time and perhaps get an "inappropriate" answer when the community is overwhelmed with people asking the same questions over and over. These could be added to as a great file comes out.

So thats my thoughts for now - welcome back and lets hope the crown doesnt get too heavy for quite some time

[EDIT Added} maybe the top ten downloads of the month could show up on the front page somehow under you got it "Monthly TOP Ten downloads" because I am pretty sure there are hundreds of people visit here looking for good ole dink games - so lets make it easy for them. Add new dmod files for the month?

Maybe a new couch for the FP's (Forum Parkers) on the site could be a nice touch as well

There could be a button for the Dink Wiki too.

Romp: "A short adventure that is usually lasts less than an hour."

Nuff said. xD

Why I'm So Great

BLAH!!

My abandonment of this place can further be attributed to romantic endeavors

Why dont you make someone else the king?
So that you can get busy humping your girlfriend.

Be more harsh with the security, Tal and mods.

Some kind of warning system? Dunno how this would work for ghosts but it would be freaking useful to limit the posts around here and halt some user to not post mean, bad, and angry posts about users and countries.

There are some users and ghosts here who really messes things up and starts flame wars here on the forum. I don't like it.

Genuinely glad to see you back, Tal.

If there's anything I can help you with, let me know.

Apologize to me Tal!

Great to have you back.

There are some users and ghosts here who really messes things up and starts flame wars here on the forum. I don't like it.

+1

+1

I would release the beast (WC) for one week... If we're all still alive, it will be a better place for us all! This is what God thought when he unleashed the great flood I'm sure.

There are some users and ghosts here who really messes things up and starts flame wars here on the forum. I don't like it.

+1

Something must be done. Constantly negative attitudes ought to be minimised.

I see the wizzies are with me.

Aww man... You guys were so close to finaly end the monarchy.

Not that I have tons of free time, but I can help with programming if you need. I think we need a graphics guy more though. lol

WC, your n00b cannon please. kill them all now thank you. Aim for their nuts.... no wait sorry they have none.... oh well, be creative.

...or a graphics Gal happy to make new buttons or whatever.

No chicks on the Internet.

Well guess what, I am ... sleepy
godley, your statement was cruel. Ah well, it was whar was coming to him, and I cannot help but agree with you.

I don't godley .

@msdink we could only afford a Chair for all the "forum parkers".

Wow. You actually wasted PAPER on that!

And ignore Godley, Tal. As far as I can tell, he hates everybody.

Godley's not so bad. He's fine in the chat.

Hmmm... Well mrgantoe, I would have prefered something more in this vein. It could encourage them to get off their bums and actually produce something instead of squatting and taking up valueable parking spaces in the threads heh heh

A belated welcome back to you, Tal! Looking forward to seeing whatever changes you bring about.

@msdink this new Addition came straight out of tal's paycheck you can thank him later for making it so easy to steal.

The power of closing threads should be taken away from the staff and even the King. It benefits the forum in no ways at all, and it's just plain annoying when you have something to say on a subject yet you can't cause the thread is closed. The staff have also been abusing this power for the past two or so years and Tal has been abusing it all the time since his oh so triumphant return. Really, half of the threads are getting closed now for basically no reason whatsoever.

Forgive me for trying to quell the annoying people. I'd like to see you say something to someone you disagree with other than, "You're a noobular noob with a big dumb face of stupidness."

abusing it..... truimphant return
Agreed. The staff close and delete a lot of posts for no reason, and Tal closes so many threads it's annoying.
I'd like to see if he has the guts to close this one though, in which he thinks he's so great.

Well I think the closed threads deserved to be closed (And making staff unable to close threads would be silly!)

But I don't this the latest "fat americans" thread needed to be deleted, it was still under control and a (kind of) civil discussion, but than again it was only a matter of time...

It was closed on principle. The fellow seems to enjoy incendiary remarks based on groups of people, Americans specifically, and each and every thread of his that starts in that manner inevitably becomes a cesspool. I will freely admit that perhaps it was closed before a problem had truly erupted, but I'm sure you can understand when I say that the problem was unavoidable.

I am in the process of writing up a thread dedicated specifically to these recent forum developments, let's please move the discussion there - it'll be up shortly, gimme time.

We all (most, anyway) want him IP banned anyway. I don't see the problem deleting the majority of his threads if our goal is to eradicate him completely.

I am really curious would it have been closed if he was talking about someone else rather than Americans? I doubt it. Besides, it is very stupid to close threads before they have erupted into an all out flame war. I'm not saying it wouldn't have happened in most of Predator's closed threads, but the staff shouldn't make rushed decisions. After all, there's always the possibility that the thread wouldn't have seen the day of flaming at all.

EDIT: Also, if looked more into detail, there are lots of people currently on this site that have posted all out flaming threads on the forums. Predator never posted as many of these kinda threads. At least, in most cases, he has had some sort of a reasonable opinion behind his flaming, unlike certain other people.

I'm pretty sure that if I created threads like "Muslims are stupid undeveloped monkeys" (I really don't think this, it's an example), it would be closed at once!

Whatever, man. I still don't like the fact that Tal goes away for all these years and then comes back just to go around commanding people. He might have the power to do so, but that's all.

He's king skull if I was a staff (the thought scares me) I would close alot of the recent threads no offense paticulaurly this created by Pred. I like a good argument if tal could get ask tal up and running for just a week he earns my respect and my vote in the king electio.,....oh wait we don't have those.

I'm pretty sure that if I created threads like "Muslims are stupid undeveloped monkeys" (I really don't think this, it's an example), it would be closed at once!

Heh, you can bet your ass it would be closed. I've known Tal for over a decade and I trust his judgment as a mod and admin. He's largely doing and saying things I agree with here.

Not like I take the time to read these things anyway I just look at the last comment and guess .

I have nothing against Tal from a personal standpoint. But someone who's been absent from a website for as long as he has, is not a suitable person to be its king. I've (along with most of you) have been watching this stupid spamming for since he left in the first place, and now yesterday, after he returns and has no idea what's been going on here for the last 3 years, I'm the one who he PM's and threatens with "consequences". Why would he say this to me, when he SHOULD be saying this to the real spammers and flamers of the site. I might come along a little harsh at times, but at least I don't post threads like this or this. The real people he should be threatening with consequences are people who post those kinda threads. Such as, DinkDoodler, Predator, Skorn and numerous other people. If I'm the one people here think should be threatened here, this network has sunk really low and Tal's judgments are way off.

Oh, and I bet that if Iplaydink was to post a thread such as "Finnish people are overweight" it wouldn't get closed even with the harshest of flaming.

How about a fresh start nothing anyone has said up to now matters to me I can't speak for the whole community what ever comes after this will affect the way I think about you.

Thread posted, move all "I hate Tal and his evil rule" discussion here.

I still don't like the fact that Tal goes away for all these years and then comes back just to go around commanding people. He might have the power to do so

I, for one, am glad that troll regulations have been re-administered. It's kind of a one-man revolution.