The need for Change

[VPR3]

I can volunteer some time or service if HTS needs it.

[Vulpine]

I can volunteer some time or service if HTS needs it.

If you know any PHP, I'm sure Bren or Kage would welcome any help that you can offer. Beyond that... /shrug

[mShred]

In my opinion it is not solely a lack of activity, leadership or whatever that keeps the active user count low. A far more important issue is in my eyes who you want to adress with this site. I mean the "constant stream of noobs" as I think it was referred to is still steady, but those users won't stay because everyone around here is tired of repeating the what-to-learns and beginner tips.
What would get users to stay is more coding discussions, more theoretical stuff about security topics and so on. A decent security expert won't stay on HTS very long as also pointed out by others because it has nothing to offer, besides the missions that might be fun. But again, more technical content and people might hang out. And that's exactly what Goatboy delivered. I know you all remember that recent thread where somebody asked to check his website and then, OH here's a picture of me with admin rights on your website. that was fun and had some practical aspects we are all looking for.

This.

With so many people wanting to be uber hax0rz, why should they choose HTS over HackForums or the IRC channels for groups like Anonymous? After all, we offer learning and links to Google. HF and AntiSec groups offer LOIC and other point-and-click solutions.

This is true, but you said it yourself.We offer learning. If only people realized how crucial that is.

We can all see that there's many defining factors to all of this, but what we have to ask ourselves is what can we do? Kage should see the opinion of the community. And i feel if he took our input into consideration, then it could start to help to better the site.

[Kage]

This is beyond the analogy.. This is a horse's buried corpse, bones dug up to be beaten yet again. But fine, I'll play ball since no one wants to search or even read old threads in this very sub-forum that are on the first page.

As i know most of us here do, i feel HTS needs Goatboy.
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Monica is _gone_
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here, you'll see what i mean.

Goatboy has some personal things he is attending to, and is gone indefinitely. I have no way to contact him beyond him appearing on HTS. Monica quit due to her little game company something-or-other. And you do realize, those site analytics are mostly wrong. They guess based on what is reported to them. By our logs, we fare MUCH higher than those estimates.

Kage is missing over half the time, barely visits the forums and there is nobody to supervise this site.

What the fuck are you talking about? You are absolutely terrible with observation. Not only am I on HTS over 2+ hours per day, almost every day, but I also have systems in place to monitor and alert me in under 5 minutes of any problem erupting. Just because I don't post daily or speak constantly in IRC doesn't mean I'm inactive. You are assuming based on insubstantial "facts."

Pretty much with everyone on this one. Maybe instead of one more mod to replace goatboy, how about 2 to offset the others down time?
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.. and have people meet in the lecture room on irc, then someone can host a ventrilo so you can have comms. That's basically what the lectures were anyways.

You do know we have a very active comms setup going on? (Ventrillo/Mumble, Radio, PBX, BBS, not to mention the IRC as a whole).

I'd no idea how this was carried out prior to this. And it's not the easiest thing to organize when you have practically no support from the staff. The only reason I wished to carry out that lecture was to bring part of HTS back to life. Have a look at my post count, feedback and compare it to my time of registration. Relative to most members, I have attempted desperately to bring life back into HTS and like always, it usually ended up in a pointless IRC session with the staff who are not even informed of what is going on with HTS. I've seriously made my best attempts to contribute to this community, but you can't help if you're not allowed to.

irc.hackthissite.org #lecture -- Get on IRC, and throw some ideas out. Anyone is allowed to help, but the key problem no one understands is no one wants to or is capable of it. Ask our biggest critic, Wells. He was super gung-ho about reviving RTB, wrote half the code, then fucked off. When asked if he would continue, "Nah, idgaf, I'm lazy." That sums up about 90% of former HTS staff. 5% were deemed incapable, and the remaining 5% were successful and moved on after a lengthy stint of great assistance. It's not that we don't want help, it's just we want capable people who aren't recalcitrant assholes.

With so many people wanting to be uber hax0rz, why should they choose HTS over HackForums or the IRC channels for groups like Anonymous? After all, we offer learning and links to Google. HF and AntiSec groups offer LOIC and other point-and-click solutions.

HackThisSite is not and never will be Anonymous nor LulzSec. We do not promote illegal activities, nor do we immediately provide the means to accomplish such. We are an educational website that caters to learning and instructing users how to further teach themselves (ie. providing "links to Google"). If you want blackhat hacking, join Lulz or something; this is not the place for that.

[mShred]

irc.hackthissite.org #lecture -- Get on IRC, and throw some ideas out. Anyone is allowed to help, but the key problem no one understands is no one wants to or is capable of it. Ask our biggest critic, Wells. He was super gung-ho about reviving RTB, wrote half the code, then fucked off. When asked if he would continue, "Nah, idgaf, I'm lazy." That sums up about 90% of former HTS staff. 5% were deemed incapable, and the remaining 5% were successful and moved on after a lengthy stint of great assistance. It's not that we don't want help, it's just we want capable people who aren't recalcitrant assholes.

This is what I'm trying to get at, HackThisSite needs more of the "5%" people. To get what needs to be done, done. To keep HTS going the way it's supposed to go.

[Kage]

irc.hackthissite.org #lecture -- Get on IRC, and throw some ideas out. Anyone is allowed to help, but the key problem no one understands is no one wants to or is capable of it. Ask our biggest critic, Wells. He was super gung-ho about reviving RTB, wrote half the code, then fucked off. When asked if he would continue, "Nah, idgaf, I'm lazy." That sums up about 90% of former HTS staff. 5% were deemed incapable, and the remaining 5% were successful and moved on after a lengthy stint of great assistance. It's not that we don't want help, it's just we want capable people who aren't recalcitrant assholes.

This is what I'm trying to get at, HackThisSite needs more of the "5%" people. To get what needs to be done, done. To keep HTS going the way it's supposed to go.

Depends on which 5% you're referring to. And as I've said before: If someone is capable, competent, consistent, reliable, and not a recalcitrant dick, then I'd be more than happy to integrate them.

[Vulpine]

HackThisSite is not and never will be Anonymous nor LulzSec. We do not promote illegal activities, nor do we immediately provide the means to accomplish such. We are an educational website that caters to learning and instructing users how to further teach themselves (ie. providing "links to Google"). If you want blackhat hacking, join Lulz or something; this is not the place for that.

I was playing devil's advocate, not actually complaining. That's essentially the point that I was attempting to make, though. Teaching people to self-educate is far more difficult than simply handing them what they want and it discourages the vast majority of people (see: idiots) from ever coming back. Consequently, the active user-base will likely remain subpar to some peoples' standards. Whether or not that's a bad thing is entirely a matter of taste.

If the community, collectively, wants more activity and content, then the community, collectively, already has the power to make it happen. Getting more Mods won't necessarily fix that.

[acevic]

Kage is missing over half the time, barely visits the forums and there is nobody to supervise this site.

What the fuck are you talking about? You are absolutely terrible with observation. Not only am I on HTS over 2+ hours per day, almost every day, but I also have systems in place to monitor and alert me in under 5 minutes of any problem erupting. Just because I don't post daily or speak constantly in IRC doesn't mean I'm inactive. You are assuming based on insubstantial "facts."

Activity means getting involved. Heavy staff involvement in the forums encourages better activity. Monitoring the systems does not count much in this case. It's either you or someone else of similar authority who should be regular on the forum creating and encouraging activity. You really should take an example from Goatboy.

I'd no idea how this was carried out prior to this. And it's not the easiest thing to organize when you have practically no support from the staff. The only reason I wished to carry out that lecture was to bring part of HTS back to life. Have a look at my post count, feedback and compare it to my time of registration. Relative to most members, I have attempted desperately to bring life back into HTS and like always, it usually ended up in a pointless IRC session with the staff who are not even informed of what is going on with HTS. I've seriously made my best attempts to contribute to this community, but you can't help if you're not allowed to.

irc.hackthissite.org #lecture -- Get on IRC, and throw some ideas out. Anyone is allowed to help, but the key problem no one understands is no one wants to or is capable of it. Ask our biggest critic, Wells. He was super gung-ho about reviving RTB, wrote half the code, then fucked off. When asked if he would continue, "Nah, idgaf, I'm lazy." That sums up about 90% of former HTS staff. 5% were deemed incapable, and the remaining 5% were successful and moved on after a lengthy stint of great assistance. It's not that we don't want help, it's just we want capable people who aren't recalcitrant assholes.

The only users on #lecture are IRC bots...
I'm not sure about Wells's issue but I really think you need to manage your resources better. There are many users on this forum who are capable and willing to help out and I'm not talking about the oldies. Maybe if you bothered to improve your own observation and reading skills you would have known. The users on the forum need more encouragement regarding this. I am sure you can work out programs to provide incentives that will not place a financial burden you or HTS.

With so many people wanting to be uber hax0rz, why should they choose HTS over HackForums or the IRC channels for groups like Anonymous? After all, we offer learning and links to Google. HF and AntiSec groups offer LOIC and other point-and-click solutions.

HackThisSite is not and never will be Anonymous nor LulzSec. We do not promote illegal activities, nor do we immediately provide the means to accomplish such. We are an educational website that caters to learning and instructing users how to further teach themselves (ie. providing "links to Google"). If you want blackhat hacking, join Lulz or something; this is not the place for that.

+1 to that. The very reason I like HTS.


Apart from everything Kage, I have read the post by Fashizzlepop (which you locked) and all other posts involving problems related to HTS and its management. Take these seriously as constructive criticism and not personal insults. I have seen your activity on the forums and it does say a lot about how involved you are. You signed up for this responsibility knowing the issues involved and this is not a time to go about bitching on how hard your job is. As a user, anyone who has been regular on HTS will vouch for me on terms of contribution to this site. No amount of money or advertising is capable of bringing back a site that is dead due to the inactivity of the management. On top of everything, the most disappointing part is that I am forced to tell you what your duties are on behalf of everyone else on HTS. I am not interested in any of the BS HTS politics has to offer. I am here to learn and share my knowledge and that is how it should be with everyone else.

[mShred]

Guys, let's not be hostile. Kage is probably doing what he can for HTS right now. Like he said, it's hard to manage site without reliable people, right? Give him some credit. Despite all the shit he gets from everyone, he still does his best for the site.

[sanddbox]

Sanddy on the other hand seems to be trolling the forums rather than moderating them recently... In the end I agree with everyone that HTS lacks staff, at least in the forums. I remember acevic wanted to give a lecture about social eng. and seeing as there wasn't any official notice about it I bet it never aired (correct me if I'm wrong) which is ironic as staff urged that if you want a lecture make one yourself and when acevic takes the initiative nobody's there to make it happen (again correct me if I'm wrong).

I'm not sure exactly where this sentiment stems from. Am I typing out page-long explanations to people asking how to hack their ex-girlfriend's emails in what being a hacker really is and how we don't support illegal activities? No, I warn them, lock the topic, post in it saying that it violates the rules, and moves on.

In fact, the latest post that could even really be considered trolling was the thread with that guy that thought he was a 1337 h4x0r for DDOSing, and then after sarcastically congratulating him on his skills I typed up a several paragraph response answering his questions and explaining why I wasn't impressed.

It's pretty easy to point fingers over inactivity, but I don't really see what you want me to be doing besides moderating topics and trying to contribute to discussion. I've been working a lot at a new job recently so I haven't been spending as much time on HTS as I used to, but I've been doing my best to keep the spammers and skiddies banned and the bad threads locked.

I feel like you're trying to blame HTS staff structure for what is primarily a problem of a dwindling and inactive community. We do our best to breathe life into the community, but at a certain point we can't do anything more. Acevic can't give a lecture if nobody posts wanting to hear about it; regardless, I'm sure you can understand the circumstances we're under right now would allow for a little disorganization. We're still trying to sort things out, and I'm still doing my best to moderate in the little free time I have.

As to Goatboy, he's very secretive (as am I) with his contact information so it's not easy to get a hold of him. I think I have a phone number that belongs to him, but I'm not sure; I plan to call it in a few days. Still, Goatboy's personal life is his personal life, and I'm planning to, for the most part, let it be and decide himself if he wants to come back.

If you expected forums to run smoothly with our lead moderator gone, I'm sorry we've disappointed you, but I feel you're placing the blame unfairly.

Another one of these threads pops up every week, and I love hearing feedback, but at a certain point the community has to step up themselves.