Announcement regarding recent forum changes

[The Eva Monkey]

Greetings, dear forum users,

I hope you’re healthy, safe, and coping with this crazy, weird world we live in. You may have noticed some peculiar changes to forum settings, and some shuffling of user roles within the site staff. I can’t comment on specifics, because the full story involves private discussions, as well as some personal history that’s best left private. There was also a site hack that has been patched up, and we’ve been working behind the scenes to prevent further intrusions in the future.

Suffice to say that Eva Geeks as a whole is at what I like to think of as an inflection point. There were some long-standing issues that coalesced to the point where we needed to step back, talk amongst ourselves, and reassess some things. A lot has changed in the last thirteen years since Eva Geeks was formed. Some of us have grown closer, some of us have grown apart. Some have come, some have gone. And generally speaking, what we want out of Eva Geeks, and what some of us are able to put into Eva Geeks has changed.

I was away, on and off, for years. I regret not being more involved, and I’m looking forward to helping guide Eva Geeks into what I hope will be another period of prosperity. We’re going to be looking at a variety of things between now and when Evangelion 3.0+1.0 finally comes out. Internal procedures, site maintenance, resources we want to develop, and possible partnerships and associations with other fixtures in the greater community, like communities on Reddit and Discord.

Not many fan sites manage to exist and be active for as long a time as Eva Geeks has. I’m proud that it’s still around, but I also acknowledge that it could use some work, there are some things I hope to address to make it a more productive and inclusive community. I hope you’ll stick around and lend a hand in seeing that happen.

Cheers.

[TheFriskyIan]

Suffice to say that Eva Geeks as a whole is at what I like to think of as an inflection point. There were some long-standing issues that coalesced to the point where we needed to step back, talk amongst ourselves, and reassess some things.

Is what exactly that needed to be discussed also private? Even if it's small tiny changes, if it changes how we regularly post it'd be nice to know what needed to be discussed since it would then affect everyone.

[pwhodges]

He meant exactly what he wrote:

the full story involves private discussions, as well as some personal history that’s best left private.

There are matters which would only be a distraction from the subject of this site if discussed in public, quite apart from their being, you know, private.

[silvermoonlight]

When you say it was hacked was this user accounts? Just curious in case people need to create new passwords.

[kuribo-04]

Yeah, what silvermoonlight said.
I would like to know if my password is in danger. The word "hacking" is just a little scary.

Don't wanna go into private matters, but I'd like just a little bit of info if this hacking attack will be negative for us users or if it's resolved. Thanks!

Hope whatever bad stuff happened is in the past.

[The Eva Monkey]

When you say it was hacked was this user accounts? Just curious in case people need to create new passwords.

Specifically, my account was hacked to gain access and make board configuration changes. Everyone else's accounts are fine, however if you haven't updated your password in a while, it's worth doing.

[silvermoonlight]

Specifically, my account was hacked to gain access and make board configuration changes. Everyone else's accounts are fine, however if you haven't updated your password in a while, it's worth doing.

Thank you it might be worth sending off a note to every user regarding this as not everyone reads the Announcement feeds.

[Zusuchan]

The Eva Monkey wrote:
possible partnerships and associations with other fixtures in the greater community, like communities on Reddit and Discord.

If it's possible, could you please say exactly what you mean under that? I'm deeply interested in the idea of a kind of cross-community.

And on a completely unrelated matter, does your wish to breathe some more life into EvaGeeks mean there's potential for the Commentary Project to get going once again? It's interesting to read, but it's updated at such a slow pace and only the first 7 episodes have been done. Now with Shin being released sometime next year at the earliest, this could be a good time to get it going once again.

[FelipeFritschF]

And on a completely unrelated matter, does your wish to breathe some more life into EvaGeeks mean there's potential for the Commentary Project to get going once again? It's interesting to read, but it's updated at such a slow pace and only the first 7 episodes have been done. Now with Shin being released sometime next year at the earliest, this could be a good time to get it going once again.

Nobody is stopping that from happen. We just need interested folks to organise themselves and start editing. Hopefully the community will come out of this more open and engaged and we can have old and new voices contributing.

[The Eva Monkey]

And on a completely unrelated matter, does your wish to breathe some more life into EvaGeeks mean there's potential for the Commentary Project to get going once again?

That is probably going to boil down to Reichu's availability. It's her baby, and has always been the guiding force behind that project.

[Reichu]

I detached myself from the commentary project many years ago. I've done absolutely nothing -- not even provided comments -- ever since the planning stages for episode 5. I have no idea what's going on with it anymore.

To preempt the possibility of similar such posts, the community should probably know that I won't be making any further contributions under the "EvaGeeks" banner. That's all I'm going to say about that.

[Zusuchan]

FelipeFritschF wrote:
We just need interested folks to organise themselves and start editing.

You mean as in ''More people need to contribute to the commentary'' or ''People need to work on getting the project forward''? Because if it's the latter, then I'm open to helping in whatever way I can.

[FelipeFritschF]

You mean as in ''More people need to contribute to the commentary'' or ''People need to work on getting the project forward''? Because if it's the latter, then I'm open to helping in whatever way I can.

Both, I suppose. At the moment these projects are just kinda frozen. If you want you, I can send PM you the Discord invite to the EGF server, which is currently hidden.

EDIT: Nevermind, it's still closed lmao. I'll see if it can be made public again.

[Zusuchan]

FelipeFritschF:
Yeah, I'd like you to send the invitation to me whenever it gets public again.

[orcot]

Sad to see you go Reichu. I enjoyed reading some of your work your translations and fan fics where excellent .
Thanks to all that maintain the forum

[Joseki]

and possible partnerships and associations with other fixtures in the greater community, like communities on Reddit and Discord.

r/evangelion and r/evangelionmemes are smelly garbage so I personally hope this doesn't happen. The level of discussion there is "ELI5 NGE/EoE"/"reposted fanart"/"ShE's 14" at best.

[pwhodges]

Remember that Eva Monkey is the moderator of r/evangelion...

In other news, Sachi has been raised to the administrator role to help with the rejuvenation of the site; he will continue with this work in the background rather than prominently, and his work in the Discord will continue unaffected.

[Joseki]

Remember that Eva Monkey is the moderator of r/evangelion...

Maybe it needs more/better moderation then. That place is bad, I don't want it to infect this forum.

[LordGlazedDonut]

Maybe it needs more/better moderation then. That place is bad, I don't want it to infect this forum.

My opinion (admittedly as a new member, and a lurker more than a contributor) is that the perceived crumminess of r/evangelion stems from the low barrier to entry. Stuff that accrues lots of upvotes will naturally be the content that has the most mass appeal, but that isn't to say that all 150,000 members have a "shallow" relationship with the series.
What I'm trying to say is that if Evageeks and the subreddit formed a closer relationship, I think it would encourage reddit users who are genuinely interested in the discussions here to join, but we would experience very little bleeding of low-brow content into the forums. And hell, even if I'm wrong, we already have Evangelion Chit-chat. You don't have to interact with those threads if you don't want.

[Sachi]

I could certainly foresee ways in which the reddit community could develop a symbiotic relationship with this place. As has been pointed out, good moderation makes all the difference in certain areas. In a similar way that the discord was created and filled with mostly members from here that adapted to the discord style, a possible solution would be encouraging the members of this forum community to participate more in the reddit community as well and engage in the reddit style. Eva Monkey is already the admin there, so theoretically the expected guidelines should be mostly the same; forum members here already more or less have an intuitive understanding of these expected guidelines, and could ideally encourage better behavior by example. Then there is always the solution Eva Monkey himself took with the Reddit; the moderation wasn't sufficient before him, so he became the new moderation. Now we as a community have an opportunity to use Eva Monkey's example to put even more of our moderators in. If the reddit community is moderated by a group of people with a shared investment in this place, we can start seeing the outcomes being idealized in this thread.

Anyways, as for another topic that was mentioned here earlier: a lot of you probably already know me, but to anybody else, hello there! I'm Sachi and I'm newest community administrator. I know that I don't actually post here much anymore, but trust that I haven't actually left. Much of my focus these last couple years has simply shifted toward developing the discord community, and I'm proud to say that it's doing pretty good. I invite everybody to come say hello sometime (the link is in my signature). Now that I've been promoted to a community administrator, I hope to engage more with the forums and to discuss anything we can do to improve our shared experience here. I want to hear more from you guys, and I want to promote more voices to get involved with the affairs here. I know that my time is sometimes limited, but it's for that reason that I want to enable others to act on their own and be the change they want to see in this community we've all built together over a shared love of Evangelion. So once again, hello, and feel free to reach out to me in private messages over any concerns about anything at all; I will do my best to get back to all messages in a timely manner.