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    1. #1
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      How XERQ Started v.storytime ngas

      I've been meaning to write this out for a year and figured today would be the right time. I hate writing blog posts, so bear with me.

      Background on the name: I've been a member of OT since 2006 and during my time went through a number of screennames. In 2007 I was working at an ISP with a unique FreeBSD email environment serving over a hundred thousand accounts. My job at the time was to improve their email system, so I decided to run my own BSD email environment at home on a shitty SBC business account with static IPs. I needed a domain. After spending a few days of searching I came across the perfect one that hadn't been taken: it was short, succinct, easily pronounceable, and not specific to a popular culture trend. That domain was XERQ.NET

      In 2009 I started THE LULZ PROJECT after archiving a 200 page lulz thread by @brah pitt. A member called me out for not producing the archives, so I put them up and found that it got a tremendous amount of traffic, and decided to keep doing the monthly archives of funny images on OT every month as a way to experiment with having a semi-production high traffic site. I already owned the domain, xerq.net, and this project took the subdomain http://lulz.xerq.net. I bought monthly stickies for a few years for THE LULZ PROJECT as a way to support OT.

      12/12/12: Last December the page load times on OT became abysmally slow, taking anywhere from 30-90 seconds for an average page load. The entire front page was of people complaining about shitty load times, and at the time nothing else interesting was happening. On 12/11/12 @we took yer jerbs made a thread titled "If XERQ created a forum, how many of you would switch tomorrow?" Originally thinking it was a joke, I glanced at the thread and went on with my day, which involved studying for exams I didn't want to take. That day I received numerous PMs from people asking me to set it up, so having an owned VB 3.5 license I thought "what the hell" and put it up on a server within an hour, along with making a post around 3am in WTYJ's thread "Here's a forum I set up, send me a PM and I'll transfer your stats over." I named it XERQ since that was my username on OT, and I already owned the domain xerq.net.

      Around 5am my phone starts going crazy with people sending me their stats (screenshot below)



      At that moment I knew we had something amazing, and there was no way I'd go to sleep missing this opportunity, so I stayed up 36 hours that day to set up everyone's accounts, and went to an exam at 5pm after. After taking a nap, @Cthalupa graciously donated his VB4 license and we switched over to a less poverty message board that evening.

      2 days later, on 12/14 I was perma'd from OT, and this is what I wrote to TankRizzo in an email:





      I don't think it's polite to publish other people's private emails, but since this is what I wrote (without any quotes) it seems appropriate to post to give you guys an insight into my mindset at the time.


      Fuck ups

      We fucked up a few times with moderation, and I've learned a lot the past year in running a community. When you're thrown into running a community like this, you're bound to make absolutely terrible decisions, and unfortunately there are a few cringey ones. Switching between prefixes to subforums to prefixes to subforums was completely asinine. I wish I understood that this forum needed SubXERQs earlier, a way to have great moderators run their own communities however the fuck they wanted. Spending so much time focusing on features, when at one point it was just seeing what could be improved without understanding WHY it needed to be improved, and so many changes that were made while the site was live that negatively affected users. Also poz... yeah I'll just leave it at that.

      At one point the firewall was scrubbing packets a certain way that ONLY affected AT&T LTE users and caused them timeouts and horrible load times. Over-optimizing was just a horrible decision.

      And of course both of these still make me using an arbitrary definition of "good fellowship" and applying it inconsistently to a user
      https://www.xerq.net/showthread.php?...ecent-Bannings
      https://www.xerq.net/showthread.php?...re-Bannings-v2

      What is experience without learning from stupid boneheaded decisions? Nothing, so I take all of these knowing we have a strong community with amazing people. I've met great friends on here I never would've met otherwise, some of whom I text on a regularly basis. If you don't already have my number, send me a PM

      I'm always open to feedback and never take it personally: if you think the site absolutely sucks, I want to hear about it and discuss how we can make it better. If you think this is the best site ever created, tell me what we're doing right.


      A full year of activity (because graphs)




      The future

      We have a new version coming out soon (don't ask when, it'll be released when it's ready) that will be the basis for how we want to improve the way people interact on here. We've done some amazing things, having a vote-less "Hot Threads" makes it impossible for content to be gamed or hidden when people disagree with them. We have a lot more in the works, and as I've learned from the previous rounds of shooting from the hip and making changes without thought, I've decided to build an experience before releasing it and making sure it's polished. So expect to hear some announcements soon.

      If you're interested in volunteering for dev crew, we're looking for designers and coders/developers (php/mysql). There's no obligation, put in as little or as much time as you want, and be exposed to lots of cool shit and an awesome team. You can even put it on your resume and use me as a professional reference.

      Thanks for an amazing year, here's looking to many more.
      Last edited by XERQ; 12-12-2013 at 11:36 AM.

    2. #2
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      TL;DR I like penis

    3. #3
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      I fuckin love you doge

    4. #4

    5. #5

    6. #6
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      pink dick lover fag

    7. #7
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    8. #8
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      ifl

    9. #9
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    10. #10
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      Originally posted by Member
      ifl

      oh shit

    11. #11
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    12. #12
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      all that shit by you

    13. #13
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      read it all, awesome. permad from ot over that night. #11 fo lyf, please dont ban or become a magic carpert rider too

    14. #14
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    15. #15
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    16. #16

    17. #17
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      ifl

    18. #18
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    19. #19
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    20. #20
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    21. #21
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      Originally posted by Member
      And then I got here and it was amazing, THE END

    22. #22
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    23. #23
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    24. #24
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    25. #25
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