Bad Guy Fauna is obsolete, webslave = coward

[alex bleas]

I complain about idiots on fauna a lot but I still love it.

 

[WebSlave]

It's definitely changed a lot from the first attempt at something like this that I remember. I don't even think there really was a website, basically just a plain white spreadsheet looking page where people could write their name in a column, who they were talking about in another column, and a short comment about them in another column and not much more to it than that...and there was no replying to anything on it. That was when colubrids ruled the market and you could count the number of ball python morphs on one hand.

I believe I set up the very first Board of Inquiry forum of this type 15 years ago (January, 2000) on my HerpWantAds.com website I had active at the time. But no it was never in the format you are describing. It was a forum, but of a more linear style that was popular back at that time, written by a guy named Matt Wright. Sort of what you see on KS still to this day. I switched to another style of forum sometime in 2002, and then finally settled on the vBulletin format we are now using. In all cases it was open to posting by registered members, replies and everything.

I actually believe I still have the original Board Of Inquiry stuff around here somewhere, first in the html/text style I used originally, and then in a format based on a Perl script for version 2 before going to a PHP/MySQL based system. So no, there never was a spreadsheet based Board Of Inquiry at all such as you are describing. And for the record, before choosing the name "Board Of Inquiry", I researched for a while to determine that there was nothing using that label that my use would conflict with.

"FaunaClassifieds", of course, was originally used by Bill Gillingham for the paper publications he would mail out on a monthly basis. Before choosing to move from HerpWantAds to FaunaClassifieds, I contacted Bill to make certain that he was not using that label any longer, and had no intentions to do so. Once that was cleared, everything from HerpWantAds was moved over to FaunaClassifieds.

So that's some history in a nutshell.

 

[Charlie Redmon]

Keep thinking and see if you remember something else prior to that...it wasn't really a spreadsheet, it just had kind of that look to it is the best I can describe it. It definitely wasn't labeled as being fauna or even boi I don't think really, but it would have been the first incarnation of what turned into it and just a few more years prior to when you're talking about. It could have possibly just been a page of the serpenco site at the time. Wayback isn't being very friendly with me at the moment so I can't see old images to see if herpwantads is what I'm remembering, but I'm really thinking it's just a bit older than that. No worries, it's fun trying to think of what all really started back then and how everything has evolved and changed...until the thinking starts causing headaches anyways...lol

I believe I set up the very first Board of Inquiry forum of this type 15 years ago (January, 2000) on my HerpWantAds.com website I had active at the time. But no it was never in the format you are describing. It was a forum, but of a more linear style that was popular back at that time, written by a guy named Matt Wright. Sort of what you see on KS still to this day. I switched to another style of forum sometime in 2002, and then finally settled on the vBulletin format we are now using. In all cases it was open to posting by registered members, replies and everything.

I actually believe I still have the original Board Of Inquiry stuff around here somewhere, first in the html/text style I used originally, and then in a format based on a Perl script for version 2 before going to a PHP/MySQL based system. So no, there never was a spreadsheet based Board Of Inquiry at all such as you are describing. And for the record, before choosing the name "Board Of Inquiry", I researched for a while to determine that there was nothing using that label that my use would conflict with.

"FaunaClassifieds", of course, was originally used by Bill Gillingham for the paper publications he would mail out on a monthly basis. Before choosing to move from HerpWantAds to FaunaClassifieds, I contacted Bill to make certain that he was not using that label any longer, and had no intentions to do so. Once that was cleared, everything from HerpWantAds was moved over to FaunaClassifieds.

So that's some history in a nutshell.

 

[Snake-Queen]

Awesome detective work!! Y'all ROCK in my book!

 

[WebSlave]

Keep thinking and see if you remember something else prior to that...it wasn't really a spreadsheet, it just had kind of that look to it is the best I can describe it. It definitely wasn't labeled as being fauna or even boi I don't think really, but it would have been the first incarnation of what turned into it and just a few more years prior to when you're talking about. It could have possibly just been a page of the serpenco site at the time. Wayback isn't being very friendly with me at the moment so I can't see old images to see if herpwantads is what I'm remembering, but I'm really thinking it's just a bit older than that. No worries, it's fun trying to think of what all really started back then and how everything has evolved and changed...until the thinking starts causing headaches anyways...lol

Well, no, sorry but I do not think that is the case at all. I can remember exactly my thoughts when I set up the Board Of Inquiry. A guy out of California by the name of "John Smith" (yeah, I know....) stiffed me on a few bad checks he sent me in payment for animals I had shipped to him (from SerpenCo, of course) and all my efforts to get ANYONE in law enforcement to help me were fruitless efforts. So I decided that even if I could not get restitution, then perhaps I could warn others about the guy, to perhaps save them from some grief and hopefully in the process starve the guy out of this business when word gets around about him. But I didn't want to just do something rather crass looking like putting a page up detailing this issue. I decided that I wanted to set it up wrapped within a message board forum so there could be interaction between everyone viewing the issue and perhaps some with experience with the same guy could chime in. Plus I figured this was not a singular incident, and other people had gotten scammed by other people as well. So the message board concept seemed the best path to take. The entire idea of the Board Of Inquiry started out with this concept of a forum in mind. There was no earlier version of it in a different format.

Now I had had a message board system on my SerpenCo.com website for a few years at that point (since 1997, I believe), but honestly what was supposed to be a discussion site about herptiles (cornsnakes in particular) was being used more and more by people as an advertising avenue to offer their own animals for sale. I tolerated this, but honestly, I was making my living off of selling animals from that site, and here people were using my resources to directly compete with me. So, that's when I decided to create HerpWantAds.com. And this was a two-fold decision. I could off load the competing advertising showing up on my SerpenCo websites, and also publicly introduce the new Board Of Inquiry concept I had thought of. And around the same time, I decided to just off load the message board stuff completely from my SerpenCo website and registered the domain name CornSnakes.com to move the rest of the discussion material over to that site.

So there was never any other rendition of the Board Of Inquiry before being a message board forum format. There was a transition period when HerpWantAds became FaunaClassifieds, and during this time a guy (wish I could remember his name) who offered to host the site because it was growing in leaps and bounds, with the attendant webhosting requirements and costs growing in step. His offer was that he would host the site for free, take care of marketing advertising, and split the advertising income between myself, him, and the guy (Danni) who was actually doing the server maintenance work. So this was when FaunaClassifieds was in a custom forum format written by Danni in the Perl programming language. We had several advertisers, and things seemed to be going along pretty well, but I never saw a dime out of that advertising revenue. And neither did Danni. And one day I found my site was just gone. Best I could determine from Danni was that the other guy just stopped paying the bills on the server and stopped responding to attempted contacts. There is a hint of this panic mode time in this initial thread created on this site -> http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1.

Anyway, that is when I went to the vBulletin format, and it's been that way ever since.

Which brings me to the "dinosaur" label that this site has been accused of. Yes, this is an old version of vBulletin. I understand this. But it's not by accident. My programmer has recommended this as the newer versions of vBulletin were not to be trusted because they had some severe security holes and reliability issues. At some point, the developers of vBulletin were bought out by an internet marketing company, and from what I understand, the programming staff left, en masse, leaving the product with a severe lack of expertise. Apparently version 5 was not well received by anyone that tried to use it as a result. Maybe things have improved over the last year or two, but so far my programmer hasn't suggested an upgrade. I've looked around briefly but did not find any other message board product that I would feel comfortable with, and certainly am not interested in moving to any product that would make this site a mini-Facebook clone.

Maybe one of these days I'll remember that guy in Texas who screwed me over with that server hosting deal and I'll post it as a followup. I can feel the name flitting around in my head just out of reach, so it's just a matter of time before it comes to me.

So there you have it. That's the history of the Board of Inquiry and FaunaClassifieds, and no there was no prior version before the forum structure I started it out as.

 

[Snake-Queen]

I do not adapt well to change, so I am pleased that in the years I have been a member that the "dinosaur" has remained the same.

It took me forever to figure out my email when it switched.

 

[WebSlave]

Aha! I found the name of the guy who screwed me over with advertising revenue and pulled the plug on my site without warning way back then. The guy's name is James Thornton (in Texas) and there is actually a very old thread about him here on the BOI: http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1198

And for the record, the message forum software I went with between the custom code written by Danni and going to vBulletin was called "Ikonboard". If I remember correctly, I chose that platform because it was written in Perl, so Danni could modify and maintain it for me. But honestly, vBulletin was just a much better platform, as I had set up CornSnakes.com with vBulletin and could directly compare the two on a daily basis.

 

[TeguBuzz]

Awesome work.

 

[John Apple]

man....the memories

 

[Dennis Hultman]

Keep thinking and see if you remember something else prior to that...it wasn't really a spreadsheet, it just had kind of that look to it is the best I can describe it.

???

Attached

 

[Robert Walker]

Dennis can find anything
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[Charlie Redmon]

Thanks Dennis, but what I'm remembering would be a lot more primitive looking than that...I'll know it if I see it. Plain white page lined off in rows/columns, the first column you wrote someones name, the second one you wrote the transaction, the third one you put your own name...or something like that anyways, I probably don't have the columns listed correctly and what went in each one just right. (and for some reason I'm remembering it having either four or five columns to fill in, although I don't remember what went in the others, second column may have been what you were buying and third column transaction details)

Rich, interesting reading of how this dinosaur got started, I'd have sworn that the page I'm remembering was done by you but if you're that sure of things then it makes me think someone else had actually attempted a boi type page before you. Newer versions of things don't always mean better, sometimes dino's are a good thing.

 

[JumpSpidersInc]

Robert, Great work!

Kinda disappointed that Spide... I mean... Sam.... got banned tho... I really want to see what he has to say about being caught (again).

Then again, glad he got caught and banned, since his silly agenda(s) against his "perceived enemies" has no place here - or ANYwhere, for that matter.

Words of advice to Sam: The only winning move is not to play.

 

[SoCalAce]

Although I don't agree with the verdict 100% of the time (and fortunately at the end of each thread, we are still allowed to make our own decisions), there is no doubt that this site does a lot of good in the community. The habitual scammers are constantly creating new and false identities around the industry, and the members here sniff them out in minutes. It's an amazing collaboration of reptile lovers and tech geeks, so anyone that has nothing to hide would favor this site.

 

[Robert Walker]

Sam.... got banned tho... I really want to see what he has to say about being caught (again).

Though SpidersOhMy got banned, Sam has an active account here if he wanted to comment. In less than 24hrs, both LLL & TRR had posted responses here regarding the thread.
I wanted to make one correction here too, Maggie actually is the owner of TarantulasUS.com, not ATS like previously mentioned. That was a copy and paste error earlier.

Although I don't agree with the verdict 100% of the time (and fortunately at the end of each thread, we are still allowed to make our own decisions), there is no doubt that this site does a lot of good in the community. The habitual scammers are constantly creating new and false identities around the industry, and the members here sniff them out in minutes. It's an amazing collaboration of reptile lovers and tech geeks, so anyone that has nothing to hide would favor this site.

Agreed on all accounts.

 

[WebSlave]

Robert, Great work!

Kinda disappointed that Spide... I mean... Sam.... got banned tho... I really want to see what he has to say about being caught (again).

Then again, glad he got caught and banned, since his silly agenda(s) against his "perceived enemies" has no place here - or ANYwhere, for that matter.

Words of advice to Sam: The only winning move is not to play.

And just a bit of clarification here. The originator of this thread's account got banned by one of my moderators because of the strong suspicion based on provided evidence that the person creating it already has an account here, and this one was created solely to try to obscure his true identity during his diatribe about this site. Having duplicate accounts here is just not allowed, regardless of the reason for such an account, and can result in banning of any duplicate accounts whether a false or true identity is used.

The content of the diatribe had nothing at all to do with the decision to ban the account. It's not against the rules to have a diatribe about me and/or this site. Creating an account based on falsely provided information, is, however.

 

[JumpSpidersInc]

Robert Walker & Webslave, thank you both.