Is2?

[mizal]

At some point, someone (End?) posted a link to a new version of the site, with a working front page and everything.

I vividly remember looking at it and I'm almost definitely sure I wasn't on any hallucinogens at the time, but I've been searching now and I can't find it anywhere. Possibly it was just stuck in a random thread somewhere.

Does anybody have any idea what I'm talking about?

[Locke]

DEP found it originally, something like four years ago (07/15/07 09/23/07: snapshots, possibly inaccurate as they lack images present at the time of DEP's post). It wasn't anywhere near finished at that point, so Sev took it offline (he did say it was half finished at the end of 2007). He mentioned it in 2008, through a dedicated thread with a linked developer's blog (the blog has since disappeared, but here's the archive), saying it was about 85% complete, with a projected launch date of "2009 or bust." Admittedly - if you read the threads - there's a laundry list of extenuating circumstances.

A couple months back, I posted after seeing the "alpha" site up again. Looked like the only things missing were "friends list" functionality and the ability to add/edit text/rooms at that point.

The site was hosted at http://dev.infinite-story.com/, but doesn't seem to be working at the moment (here's a Google cache, definitely not accurate unless some of the design was lost or disabled recently). This is par for the course; it looked almost finished last time it was working, but this place doesn't make much money and isn't top of Sev's agenda. IS2 may happen tomorrow, or never.









...and it's also possible you were hallucinating. There's a thread for that; make sure you haven't posted in it recently. Alternatively, maybe I'm the one who's lost it, and all of this is a lie.

[End Master]

The problem with the new site, is none of my stories show up on it. They're just blank pages and in some case blank links, which pretty much means I'd have to wait for Sev to fix the problem which is highly unlikely or take down everything and rewrite all the stories which I'm not about to bother doing either.

Doesn't really matter in the scheme of things, I'd still hang around on the forums here just to keep up on any potential changes in the site, but I'd probably just do all my writing at CYS in the meantime.

[mizal]

Thank Locke but wtf, do you write wiki articles in your spare time? I was not expecting anything quite that well researched.

Too bad it's not up anymore, I remember it looked basically functional when I saw it and I was hoping that meant that maybe some day/year it would be finished. I know Sev had a ton of stuff going on in his life last time he posted, but I keep hoping one day he'll have time to do something with this place again.

It feels treasonous to say it but right now, even though it's basically been abandoned too, as far as functionality goes CYS is just a much better site. Some of the forum-goers there are pretty immature, yeah, but I don't know, maybe we could beat them up and take it?

[End Master]

Some of the forum-goers there are pretty immature, yeah, but I don't know, maybe we could beat them up and take it?

DEP tried that by himself once, but all his posts got deleted rather quickly. That was back when they had about 50 mods though. (And when IS and CYS were hated enemies of each other for no particular reason)

On the plus side they can't actually ban anyone there so Usoki could go around and be a sarcastic bastard to everyone, Chubby could flood the boards with random drunkenness, DEP could talk about everyone's mother, Locke could put on the blackface and I'll just kick it into full blown creepy mode and post nightmare fuel inducing pics and text.

All of this would undoubtedly incite the rest of the peeps on there to either join in the chaos or argue/complain about us.

So with a concentrated effort we MIGHT be able to harass poor JJJ until he finally gives up on deleting everything, but he's pretty stubborn and we're pretty lazy and we'd end up just getting bored, so it's probably not worth it.

I dunno, for most part I get along with everyone on the CYS forums. I've only ever gotten into a heated argument there once with someone years ago and they don't even post there anymore.

[Usoki]

That does sound like fun... but, yeah, I'd definitely get bored. I'm that lazy.

I dunno, I really hate the nested list style of forum. I find it rather inconvenient to try and read a thread when there are five different conversations going on in ten different places. The engine sounds nifty, but I'm too lazy to learn how to use it. It seems intimidating, and it's not entirely user-friendly. That, and I don't need all of the features it has, even if the copyright stuff wasn't wonky.

[Locke]

Thank Locke but wtf, do you write wiki articles in your spare time? I was not expecting anything quite that well researched.

Got carried away. It's easy - and somewhat fulfilling - on the rare occasions I manage to make myself interested enough in something to concentrate and give it effort. It happens so seldom I really don't regret the indulgence.

The nostalgia factor is nice, too; it's fun crawling through old threads, remembering what was happening at the time. I always liked this place, even though it's been in slow decline since I joined, and even though I never did much about it.

I know nobody's going to click through all the links (if I post more than a paragraph or so anywhere on the internet, I fully expect everyone to skip it). I was just (oddly) enjoying the writing, and the completeness as the pieces fell in and I'd written everything there was to say on the subject. I usually just lose interest instead, somewhere around the beginning.


I have no problems agreeing that - particularly with our permanently broken homepage - CYS has a lot more to offer in terms of function and mechanics (maybe design, too, when it comes to the drafting interface; I never explored theirs much). I came here first, though, because of the long, absorbing stories, and the raw quality of writing CYS has always lacked by comparison (I do find their forums a bit messy, but it's beside the point).

For whatever reason, I always just preferred our community, too, even when everyone was fighting over nothing, and I was throwing out immature rants, and Ves was bitching and Chubby was drunk and MRH and Mega and Leblanc were all over the place. It kept things interesting. I'd really like to see IS2 breathe some life back into everything. Between the spam bots and the end of last year's contest, I actually had a lot of fun; it used to be like that more often.

It's been at least four years coming, though, and there's just not enough information to speculate as to whether it will happen at all. Maybe the indefinite (dare I say "infinite"?) wait for the redesign is fitting, in the context of our "never-ending story engine" and slacker member base. Sev's got his issues and priorities. I've had enough go wrong in my life that I get it, and I don't blame him; it would be awesome if he could knock together what's left and throw it up at some point, but if IS2 is dead in the water, at least it was good for some discussion. Pages and pages of it.

I might never add anything of value to this site, but I'll probably keep checking in till Sev stops paying the bills.

[JJJ-thebanisher]

Re: Mizal, yeah the community's mean age is probably roughly 60% of the mean age over here and that's pretty weak, I admit that. On the other hand, at some point or another, we all behaved similarly to how they behave right now. I kind of hope that I can help mold them into better writers in the same way that the community molded me into a better writer when I joined back in 2005.

I totally get that that isn't your thing or anybody's thing though, I would definitely rather have a more mature community full of great writers with dissenting opinions that always lead to phenomenal conversation and logical/orderly debate but I still have a soft spot in my heart for the community over there. I'm not sure why, exactly.

DEP tried that by himself once, but all his posts got deleted rather quickly. That was back when they had about 50 mods though. (And when IS and CYS were hated enemies of each other for no particular reason)

On the plus side they can't actually ban anyone there so Usoki could go around and be a sarcastic bastard to everyone, Chubby could flood the boards with random drunkenness, DEP could talk about everyone's mother, Locke could put on the blackface and I'll just kick it into full blown creepy mode and post nightmare fuel inducing pics and text.

All of this would undoubtedly incite the rest of the peeps on there to either join in the chaos or argue/complain about us.

So with a concentrated effort we MIGHT be able to harass poor JJJ until he finally gives up on deleting everything, but he's pretty stubborn and we're pretty lazy and we'd end up just getting bored, so it's probably not worth it.

I dunno, for most part I get along with everyone on the CYS forums. I've only ever gotten into a heated argument there once with someone years ago and they don't even post there anymore.

I dunno how much deleting I'd have to do. I think you're so revered over there, End, that if you started posting creepy shit, you'd get a lot of: "Endmaster, you're so brilliant, how did you conjure that up! Teach me! Teach me! Please, teach me. Give me some attention. I want your babies. Teach me!"

Which user was it that you argued with?

[End Master]

Which user was it that you argued with?

I got into it with Corinthian.

I don't know exactly what his problem was, since before he started attacking me, he was asking me for advice on a story in a PM.

Later someone asked how come I didn't have my own trophy and before anyone could answer he said "Let Infinite Story give him their own fucking trophy!" then he started claiming DEP and I had some unholy alliance and were verbally attacking CYS on your forums, which didn't make a whole lot of sense since DEP barely even visited the place and I wasn't even doing any of that especially since I had been posting a bunch of stories there at the time and was getting along with everyone.

So I started calling him a whiner, fucktard, etc and he started calling me a bastard and similar names. Seth attempted to break it up, but failed. Then Seth literally said fuck it and didn't bother modding us and disappeared. Eventually you stepped in and deleted the entire thread and you told Corinthian to calm down.

After that incident Corinthian spoke to me in some thread in a civilized manner like nothing happened and I haven't seen him on there since, though I just checked his profile and it says he's been on as recent as last May so I guess he still lurks.

[mizal]

battle plans

I bet that actually would make things a lot more interesting however it turned out, but nah, I could never do that to poor 3J, he's our bro. We just need to keep working on him in our special IS way until he's doing all of the above, blackface and all, on his own initiative, that's all. :P

As for the community, there's no one in particular over there who really annoys me anymore because I've basically stopped paying attention to 90% of what's posted, and the rest of the time I cut them slack because they're mostly just dumb kids. Like Usoki said, the forum software kind of sucks, and the problem is compounded by the general style of low content posting. Not only is it a pain in the ass to follow most conversations, it's also generally not worth it.

We may get six posts in a month here, but at least they're interesting and/or entertaining. Not saying there aren't exceptions, but most of the time over there it's like I'm following a particularly inane twitter feed.

Contrary to what Locke believes, I LIKE long, well thought-out posts, but then again I enjoyed writing essays in highschool too so maybe I'm just weird like that.

[End Master]

Ves was bitching

Mizal is basically Ves' replacement. Sadly though, Mizal isn't really enough of a drama queen to provide the non-stop entertainment of joining cults, complaining about life and getting into adventures with sexually unsatisfying farm boys.

It's sort of like when you have Curly for years and then have to substitute him for Shemp. He's okay, but it's just not the same...

[donteatpoop]

Locke, you forgot one detail. When Severenz game me god-like powers he also mentioned that he was making progress on the new IS.

[Dragavan]

It's sort of like when you have Curly for years and then have to substitute him for Shemp. He's okay, but it's just not the same...

Actually, Shemp was an original Stooge. Curley replaced him and then he returned when Curley left.

At least she's no Joe Besser or Curly-Joe.

[End Master]

Yeah I know, but Curly was still the best "3rd stooge"

This reminds me of the whole 3 stooges theory. An overly simplistic and silly, but fun theory which divides people into the various stooges.

The concept is that most of society consist Larrys. Larrys are dull and not very interesting in the scheme of things. They go about their lives not really questioning the status quo. Basically the "sheep" of society.

Moes are the leaders. The movers and shakers and the people that control everything. They know the hierarchy and take advantage of it and manipulate it. Now you've got several Moes and they're all fighting each other for control of the Larrys.

You then have the Curlys who also realize there is a hierarchy but they're utterly powerless to do anything about it. They're very creative people, but ultimately hated by the Moes for being free-thinkers. Moes will do everything in their power to destroy them and this is usually done by turning the Larrys against them who will often find Curlys to be weird and not normal.

However even Moes can't live in a boring all Larry world and they do realize the need for the illusion of free-thought, so they'll take some of the Curlys and attempt to turn him into a Shemp usually by getting them to sell out to the system in some way.

The other option is to take a Larry and try to change him, but the result is usually a Joe or Curly-Joe, and NOBODY likes that.

[mizal]

I...I don't even know who Shemp is. I don't even think I could tell the Stooges apart if I looked at a picture of them. And I don't know any farm boys except for a couple of my cousins so, uh, let's not go there. Can't we just get back to complaining about other people, it's the only thing I'm really good at.