Update From JackinChat Moderator Rod
Submitted by Rod
Editors Note: This post was originally a reply on the “Is JackinChat Dead?” post. Due to its usefulness and detail I decided to make it a post.
Hey there! Last mod standing from the old JackinChat site here. Very fair post. Thought I’d leave a comment to give a peek behind the curtain. All of this has been told in our live chat, so no spilled tea…no Dark Secrets of JackinChat. Just…what happened.
JackinChat began as a live chat some 25+ years ago, as part of the JackinWorld site, before Adiemus, who’d established the live chat for them, spun it off on its own and created the JackinChat web site. In the early 2000s, he handed the site off to its current owner, who created new forum software using 100% custom code that he wrote himself (this will become important later).
I joined the mod staff about 15 years ago, and we had a pretty solid group of mods for the site and the live IRC chat. As it tends to do for all of us, life continued on and added new layers for the site owner, so the li’l masturbation forum understandably took a back seat. Updates were few and far between, and that 100% custom code not only began to show its age, but allowed for malicious exploits. In addition, while the mod staff could make sure the guidelines for using the live chat were updated to reduce and eliminate sketchy content, we couldn’t update the site’s Terms of Service, just make posts to try to keep the guidelines between the two halves of JackinChat consistent. But, because of these limitations, most of the staff walked away from the site/forum half due to the growing toxicity of so many of the users.
As we moved the live chat from IRC to Discord (to give us stronger moderation tools and add features people had been requesting for years, like integrated video and voice capabilities) with the owner’s blessing, users of the forum got worse and worse – revenge porn, exposing women’s personal social media content (which was easy enough to backtrack to the women in the pics), misogyny, illegal content…it just kept getting worse. Meanwhile, having seen the rules and guidelines we had in place for the live chat, and how effective they were, the owner stated his intention to update the forum rules to more closely mirror the live chat’s. But, never did.
As I tried to stuff some of that toothpaste back into the tube, some posters…let’s say they took strong exception to it. One in particular, who began spamming and trolling the site with increasing frequency. And those limited moderation tools available just weren’t stemming the tide. Ultimately, the owner told me to stop wasting my time, cleaning up after the troll.
While all this was going on, Adiemus – who was now one of my co-admins on the live Discord chat – and I both separately and together, offered to take over day-to-day operations of the forum, wiping the slate clean (a necessary move due to that 100% custom code) and starting fresh with an “off-the-shelf” forum software until such time as the owner could come up with his own top-to-bottom update. We put together a proof-of-concept site, gave him the link…and heard crickets. Between the damage to the JackinChat “brand” that had been done in the last few years with the growing toxicity on the site, the troll, and the outdated board software, the staff of the Discord chat discussed just severing ties with the web site, and launching our proof-of-concept site as its own thing. After registering the domain, and during the closing stages of the setup process, the old JackinChat site went completely down. (The owner let us know that someone – probably one of the unhappy campers – had filed false claims to his web host about the site distributing underage content, and the host pulled the site down.) So, a few days earlier than planned, we “went loud” with our new site. When the old one came back up, the owner initially had it redirecting to our site, but within a few days, stopped the redirect and put the site in its current read-only state.
And, that story – longer than I meant it to be – is how we got to where we are today, with the original site read-only (and, not to sound like I’m talking crap about the owner, but if his years of saying he had plans for updates that never happened are any indication, I’m not expecting it to open again), our site up and running with some light use, and the live Discord chat thriving with a positive vibe that hadn’t been seen in our IRC chat for years.
Thanks for the detailed reply to the post, Rod. It’s great to have your perspective here.
It really is a shame that such an iconic forum has been lost in this way, but we’re glad to know the community still exists.
Readers can visit the new Jackin.Chat by clicking here.
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