Here's a history of Sam's alfresco coffeeshop forum, from delphi to vbulletin as i recall it. Please feel free to correct inaccuracies.
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I was mostly a lurker in sam's old delphi forum., posting like, a few times a month only, and not on political issues.
Back in 2007, Samleong surprised forummers by floating the idea of shifting his delphi forum to a private sever. He started a thread on it, in an attempt to "solicit feedback".
Sam gave two specific reasons for moving the forum: (a) complete autonomy with regard to forum management like blocking spammers, control of content, use of reputation point system, etc, and (b) control over the advertisements that appear. In those days, Sam spent his time governing the forum, but all ads that appeared were delphi ads, which gave delphi revenue.
Feedback as I recall was mixed. Some were in favour of moving but many others had grown used to the delphi platform and did not want to change. After a few hundred postings, the issue was not raised again.
Looking back, I realized Sam was "testing water" in preparation for an eventual departure. I feel that back in 2007, he had actually already made up his mind to move.
At that time, it was also the time of the "warring states". A few factions were fighting each other. Some claimed to be from WP, some claimed to be SDP supporters.
People were attacking each other, and TOC/Remy Choo/Andrew Loh was dragged in as well. Most people regarded it as part and parcel of forum experience, but genuine harm came out of that mudslinging.
One harm that materialized was the mudslinging directed at Goh Meng Seng which resulted in the New Paper printing an article on his alleged "adultery". That article was pointless, baseless, and wholly unnecessary, but one side effect was that it gave the attackers much more incentive to continue their antics.
Another harm that emerged was the exposing of Yaw Shin Leong's voting for PAP in the last GE. The exposure of this was orchestrated by some of the nicks involved in the "warring states" conflict. It was not easy on Yaw. His article on voting Teo Ho Pin appeared several times in New Paper and Straits Times, and his online detractors grew. Yaw's political career sank to the bottom of the ocean.
A third harm that came out of the mudslinging was the banning of nicks. Some nicks were banned, including nicks from the SDP side as well as a few neutral nicks. After that, people started become paying members and retaliated by banning other nicks.
The first tipping point I believe came from an infamous moniker "leetahbar" who bragged online that he beat up his father and took money from his younger sister. Leetahbar also made many personal attacks on forummers and was avidly anti-SDP.
Leetahbar's detractors attacked him for this, posting screenshots of his blog, and picture of pigs, and unfortunately this drew in all the "warring states" factions into the mess. In the end, it was a free for all war, escalated by none other than leetahbar.
After leetahbar become the centre of attention, the banning of nicks escalated and eventually grew out of control.
For example, group A will ban group B's nicks, and group B will then retaliate by banning group A's nicks. It was absolute mayhem.
Other people (notably Kojakbt who now heads the 3in1kopitiam) became paying nicks also in order to avoid being banned.
If I can blame one person for the closure of delphi, it would be leetahbar, as he seemed to be most notorious trouble-maker.
The second tipping point was people like leetahbar posting pictures of anuses which caused Sam's delphi site to be classified as an adult site. Once that happen, searching for old forum posts became impossible because posts are no longer indexed. Traffic also decreased over time.
It also did not help that people like Robox were threatening to make police reports over racist remarks in the forum.
In the end, the choice was obvious. Samleong chose to move the forum to a vbulletin hosted on his private server, and never looked back.
***************
I was mostly a lurker in sam's old delphi forum., posting like, a few times a month only, and not on political issues.
Back in 2007, Samleong surprised forummers by floating the idea of shifting his delphi forum to a private sever. He started a thread on it, in an attempt to "solicit feedback".
Sam gave two specific reasons for moving the forum: (a) complete autonomy with regard to forum management like blocking spammers, control of content, use of reputation point system, etc, and (b) control over the advertisements that appear. In those days, Sam spent his time governing the forum, but all ads that appeared were delphi ads, which gave delphi revenue.
Feedback as I recall was mixed. Some were in favour of moving but many others had grown used to the delphi platform and did not want to change. After a few hundred postings, the issue was not raised again.
Looking back, I realized Sam was "testing water" in preparation for an eventual departure. I feel that back in 2007, he had actually already made up his mind to move.
At that time, it was also the time of the "warring states". A few factions were fighting each other. Some claimed to be from WP, some claimed to be SDP supporters.
People were attacking each other, and TOC/Remy Choo/Andrew Loh was dragged in as well. Most people regarded it as part and parcel of forum experience, but genuine harm came out of that mudslinging.
One harm that materialized was the mudslinging directed at Goh Meng Seng which resulted in the New Paper printing an article on his alleged "adultery". That article was pointless, baseless, and wholly unnecessary, but one side effect was that it gave the attackers much more incentive to continue their antics.
Another harm that emerged was the exposing of Yaw Shin Leong's voting for PAP in the last GE. The exposure of this was orchestrated by some of the nicks involved in the "warring states" conflict. It was not easy on Yaw. His article on voting Teo Ho Pin appeared several times in New Paper and Straits Times, and his online detractors grew. Yaw's political career sank to the bottom of the ocean.
A third harm that came out of the mudslinging was the banning of nicks. Some nicks were banned, including nicks from the SDP side as well as a few neutral nicks. After that, people started become paying members and retaliated by banning other nicks.
The first tipping point I believe came from an infamous moniker "leetahbar" who bragged online that he beat up his father and took money from his younger sister. Leetahbar also made many personal attacks on forummers and was avidly anti-SDP.
Leetahbar's detractors attacked him for this, posting screenshots of his blog, and picture of pigs, and unfortunately this drew in all the "warring states" factions into the mess. In the end, it was a free for all war, escalated by none other than leetahbar.
After leetahbar become the centre of attention, the banning of nicks escalated and eventually grew out of control.
For example, group A will ban group B's nicks, and group B will then retaliate by banning group A's nicks. It was absolute mayhem.
Other people (notably Kojakbt who now heads the 3in1kopitiam) became paying nicks also in order to avoid being banned.
If I can blame one person for the closure of delphi, it would be leetahbar, as he seemed to be most notorious trouble-maker.
The second tipping point was people like leetahbar posting pictures of anuses which caused Sam's delphi site to be classified as an adult site. Once that happen, searching for old forum posts became impossible because posts are no longer indexed. Traffic also decreased over time.
It also did not help that people like Robox were threatening to make police reports over racist remarks in the forum.
In the end, the choice was obvious. Samleong chose to move the forum to a vbulletin hosted on his private server, and never looked back.
