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Used to see this guy posting all over the site.  Seems he hasn't been active since 2017. I remember seeing someone comment about it in some post somewhere.  Does anyone know what happened to the guy?

We never heard from him after he went on that hiking trip...


To be honest, he just vanished much to the annoyance of us all since he was our only "can do programming sheisse" guy. (He probably got killed by drinking too much maple syrup or whatever Canadians do.)

As a general rule, we just figure anyone that stops being active on this site for long periods of time to be dead or locked up/trapped somewhere until further notice.

Tbh I was a bit curious about this as well :) Maybe if all the site members wander their current countries calling out "3J" and "Where are you mighty Banisher" we could locate him :D

Nah, I think we'd just need the Canadians last time I heard.

I think he was working in California last I remember. Had some sort of computer related job there or something.

Huh, I suppose he got killed by a wildfire, drought, or a surfing accident then. :)

IIRC netsec

He had just started a new job right before he disappeared so at the time I'm sure that was related, but no idea what's happened in the meantime. And honestly, he just kind of does this. He has uncanny timing on his returns, usually swoops in when things get pretty dire to straighten stuff out, but just can't seem to maintain interest in the long term.

Was hoping being the Chosen One who could update the site would change that, he seemed pretty excited about the whole thing and was just on the verge of pushing a redesign through. But then he just kind of disengaged, and right in the middle of one of the worst spam attacks the forum ever had so idk.

I mean the site is mostly doing fine, the current admin situation is great, and for all we know he could very well glance in one and awhile to make sure nothing has exploded, but logging in once a month even if he didn't post every time would make threads like this not happen. Mostly I just wish he would fix the new storygame glitch that locks out the category since that's the main thing that's NOT fine, I'm sure casual browsers run into that all the time and assume the site is just broken.

When he does come back Berka and End really ought to pester him for an email or something, although I guess as long as it's still theoretically possible to contact Alexp if something goes wrong with the server we're as good as we've ever been.

Berka gave me ThreeJay's account email. I was going to ask him to come back to judge some contests, but it's basically his username, so I never actually bothered to try it because I know how embarrassed he is of the name and doubt it's been utilized this decade.

Maybe I'll give it a shot anyway when my schedule clears up in two weeks.

I completely missed out on the politics with regards to this (and the reasoning behind it etc), but could triple-J be upset that his story The Order of the Midnight Sun is no longer featured?

When he returns he's going to smite us all and delete every story on the site, in accordance with the ancient prophecies.

Don't forget, 3J has connections.

e: omg that squirrel

That thread is just disgusting

Nah, he disliked the storygame. He even changed around the way rating are counted here to make its average rating decrease.

Wow. And it's still tied for #1?!

I am really curious what the "recent" ratings of it are (if there is such a thing). That seems more relevant to me (with respect to this site) than even JJJ's personal opinion of his work. 

OMS used one of the easiest ways to secure high rating, make it friggen' hard to read an end game link. From what I can tell from the site's past (which I was not a part of but picked up a bunch in the past two years), the early site had very few decent storygames (especially compared to the past year's output). This shifted the earlier rating as much more friendly.

I'd guess that the more recent rating average out somewhere between 6 and 6.9 based off of how the site rates the newly published ones (and that CYS seems to have positive bias towards anything generic fantasy). (But, I could be wrong.)

The REST of the top ten stories for 2009...

Games designed to not be rated at all except by people who like them enough to play them for a very long time....while technically there's nothing wrong with that, it's also a recognized tactic for ratings inflation.

Anyway, OMS is good, it's one of the better fantasy games on the site, but, it was also the weakest link in that particular featured list and good games getting knocked off to make way for newer good games is something that should be happening all the time. Featured list slots SHOULD be a challenge to hang on to in the long term, because people are publishing great stories all the time, right?

...right?

How a couple of those stories made it to the top storygames of 2009 is beyond me.  Can't imagine what the lesser ones were like.

 

Oh for fuck's sake. I literally just added a couple early endings to my game (at WIBN's nefarious insistence). There go my future rating points. :-(

I'm too new here to be sick of the old gems; but, yeah, I think the new blood should have a chance to shine in the spotlight. It's a good way to encourage us writers/prospective writers.

Just do you sometimes.

Well, some members of the site (myself included sometimes) automatically subtract a point from the rating if we could tell the author made it hard to find any end game links. The members that do so also tend to have more points which makes their rating's have a higher value in how it's calculated.
Also, I'm nefarious. :)

If I’m forced to start over, I give it a one on principle. CYOA is about choice.

Long paths are good in theory, except if I'm detecting a lot of issues with a story it's tiresome not to be able to reach an ending to say so, and a story I'm not enjoying is not one I want to have to spend forever reading. But that's how they guarantee mostly high ratings for themselves. Same goes for parts in a series.

Forced restarts are another matter. I won't go to quite the same extreme as Bucky, but let's just say that the longer a game has me clicking around in circles the more disgruntled I get.

There are going to be some natural break/save points in the game. I suppose I could throw in a couple of pure "end game and leave comments" links for convenience/to counteract rating-inflation...

Well maybe if we make a thread and each post:

JJJ

It will summon him back to the site.

Faded into oblivion, he has.