Hi,

Before I start I'm hoping that this doesn't break any forum violations. I'm d11wtq, an ex-moderator at Devnetwork Forums:: http://forums.devnetwork.net/ -- a very active PHP forum also (you'll see why "ex" in a minute).

This is floating around the internet in many places so you may already know what I'm about to say.

Devnetwork Forums have been hijacked -- yes hijacked!

During the night (UK Time) of 11th November 2005 the site was closed for maintenance without warning, with nobody quite sure what was going on. Former admin "feyd" with 13,500+ posts on the forum and a true community builder has been forcably removed from the forum along with his entire team of moderators (myself included), less one or two. That's a lot of moderators. They were not simply removed from the moderators list but were given a full permanent ban (IP Address, Cookie, Username). These community building, level headed moderators are no longer able to offer help to the many members they previously helped and have been stripped from a community which are entirely disgusted at what's happened.

What's the worst bit?

The person responsible for this was supposed to be part of a team of admins and moderators -- McGruff (Co-admin of feyd).

What's it all about?

Put simply: a difference of opinion. We do not belive that forum members should be directly attacked and insulted in public so when McGruff started to do this in a heated debate about OOP/Procedural (Yes that's always a heated debate in any case) he was quickly called on it by his team of moderators.

We've been speaking with many members since this, and members have been talking amongst themselves -- nobody can quite believe the extreme that McGruff has gone to here. let me make clear that McGruff does not own that domain. Jason Lotito, the Devnetwork Founder does.

I'm not going to go into great detail here in the interest of not having this thread removed so if you do post at Devnetwork, please be aware that the forum has been taken over in a very hostile manner by McGruff.

Of the articles spreading across the internet on this matter I suggest you take a read of these:

The Hitleresque Rogue General -- Sami
The (quiet) takeover of PHP Devnet -- iamsure
The hostile takeover of the PHPDN Forums --enygma
the shitih hath hitith the fan-ith -- feyd
DevNetwork is Dead, long live DevNetwork -- timvw
The Adolph Hitler of the internet -- trukfixer
The Hostile DevNetwork Takeover -- Burrito

I can assure you that we are doing all we can to get our Devnetwork Forum back to it's former community-strong status. We have been trying very very hard to get in touch with the domain name owner Jason Lotito to try and get this resolved as smoothly as possible.

If you wish to join us (the ex-moderators of Devnetwork Forums, along with some very active forum members) to chat about this you can meet us all in an IRC channel: irc.freenode.net /#phpdn

If you think you may be able to offer some support for Devnetwork please join us in the IRC channel.

Many thanks,

d11wtq -- ex-moderator: Devnetwork Forums

    Wow... that really sucks. I'm sorry to hear about that. Wish you and your team the best of luck in recovering what you can.

    If you haven't thought of it, just move the domain to a different server, and start a new one. Loses all information, but if it's as bad as you say, it'd be worth it.

    Best of luck.

    ~Brett

      let me make clear that McGruff does not own that domain. Jason Lotito, the Devnetwork Founder does.

      Surely Jason Lotito has been approached for help in rectifying the situation? After all, having sole full administrator access to a messageboard is one thing, having control over the server that hosts the messageboard is another.

        laserlight wrote:

        Surely Jason Lotito has been approached for help in rectifying the situation? After all, having sole full administrator access to a messageboard is one thing, having control over the server that hosts the messageboard is another.

        Jason put his trust in two admins in his absence. He gave them full server access. One of those people has seriously abbused that trust.

        We are trying to get hold of jason but it's not easy... his old contact details are out of date though we may have tracked him down.

        FYI: Here's the new start from a march backup. No posts have been kept for legal reasons BUT... if you wish to copy any threads from the corrupted devnet over to the new one you are perfectly allowed. They are yours... you can delete threads and post where you please 😉

        Here's D2 (Devnetwork 2). It's not ideal. Who knows... we may resolve this in the end. We'd really love any help promoting this given the status of the original devnet.

        http://www.devnetwork2.net/

        (Any members regsitered before March 2005 should be able to log in as normal)

        Many Thanks,

        d11wtq

          This is akin to somebody 'going postal' on the place. I can't get into devnetwork right now so perhaps it is be wrestled away. I simply can't see one person pulling this off...

          Good luck...

            Just to back d11wtq's play, it's been an interesting weekend. From the moment the board went off the air, I had a sinking feeling that Noel (McGruff) had lost one of his oars. At first, I thought only I was banned (for publicly telling him to ease up on his inflammatory tone), but then when I got on irc and found out that 98% of the mod team got the axe I was stunned. It was so shoking, I just sat in my chair and laughed out of control.

            Anyway, if any of you have blogs, it would be great if you made an entry about this. The more people who know and post some rant about how ridiculous this is, the better. I too have some squawks about this at http://bdkr.blogspot.com. It would be a great help if any of you could mention this and post links to any of the blogs mentioned.

            Thanx!

              I saw this on enygma's blog and I was dumbfounded. WTF?!?

              Hey, if you guys need someone with a really nasty pink fuzzy LART over there, you know who to call 😉 - and it's even a bonus if you catch me during THAT WEEK of the month.

              Here's to devnetwork2!

                Well guys 😃

                In the space of time between these events and this very moment we managed to track down Jason.

                Evidently, Jason was lets say "a little unhappy" at not being able to access his own server since McGruff changed the password but after a quick phone call to IMHosted and a pleasant discussion with the former moderators (and some old admins who came back from the mist) on IRC to get the full lowdown he was able to reset the server password.

                McGruff, needless to say no longer has any admin rights over at DevNetwork Forums and former Admin feyd & all moderators who were banned have now been reinstated.

                This was the best way we hoped things could work out -- starting up a new forum was going to be long shot. Thanks for everyone's support both here and at Devnetworks! We had a massive amount of support from everyone and it's very much appreaciated 🙂

                Reagrds,

                d11wtq

                (Not sure what we're doing with the other site as yet 😕 )

                  There is a McGruff posting on the Sitepoint PHP forum quite a bit, who has a well respected point of view too. Not sure if it's the same guy but I'd be dissapointed if it was.

                    Shrike wrote:

                    There is a McGruff posting on the Sitepoint PHP forum quite a bit, who has a well respected point of view too. Not sure if it's the same guy but I'd be dissapointed if it was.

                    That's the guy I'm afraid. He'll probably just hang around sitepoint now since I doubt he'll be coming back to Devnet after the overwhelming response he got from all the members.

                    We've even had Chris Shifflet's support over this.

                    Draw your own conclusions, I'm going to simply draw a line under this whole thing and move on.

                    One good thing has come out of this too.... twigletmac (a former admin) came back after over a year and she's having a baby in ~4 weeks 🙂

                      Weed... you do post a lot....

                      ~Brett

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