TheHelper Site History - 1st Official Blizzard Battle.net Forums MVP Story

He's taking his time to write the Seth story more completely. :p
 
Sorry for the lack of updates on this but I have been real busy in Real Life. I will get back to the story as soon as things settle down here. Being really busy has had an impact on much time I have been able to devote to the site the last couple of months.
 
Oh, don't sweat. Take your time, you do not have to worry! :D
 
I am editor in the Open Directory Project. dmoz.org - and Editall/Catmv to be exact. One step away from Meta Editor. I have been editing the dmoz since around 2000 or possibly even earlier.

http://www.dmoz.org/public/profile?editor=thehelper

Anyway, in order to get where I am at dmoz I had to devote alot of time and I have made well over 10000 edits on that directory. If you look at the profile link above you will notice that I am a Top Level Games Editor. Top Level Editor is an accomplishment in itself.

Anyhow, since dmoz used to be a huge factor before google took off and in the early days Google gave alot of ranking to Dmoz pages. And the dmoz pages had links to the editors profiles. The editor profiles could have links to the editors personal sites.

That link from my dmoz.org profile to thehelper.net gave this site a Page Rank 7 - and a high 7 at that.

It took alot of time and dedication to building the dmoz directory but my efforts paid off when I got Top Level Games.

This was not planned. It just happened. The next thing I know thehelper.net is blowing up on World Editor on the Search Engines because of the link from my dmoz.org profile.

More on this later.... Remember, this is back in 2001.
 
Are you still contributing to the Open Directory Project? As of August 2006, there are 7000+ volunteers, I'm not sure if the numbers are dwindling. Source.
 
tom_mai78101 said:
Are you still contributing to the Open Directory Project? As of August 2006, there are 7000+ volunteers, I'm not sure if the numbers are dwindling. Source.
Click to expand...

Tom, yes I still edit in the Open Directory though nowhere near my previous levels of activity. The Open Directory Project has lost a large number of editors over the years but people still edit and it is still running. It is not nearly the resource it was back in 2002 though. Nobody really uses Directories to search and the traffic to the ODP directory from the public has gone way down.
 
Acehart has left the Building

This is one of the hardest sections I have had to write.

Acehart is gone.

He first graced us as scmaker on the Starcraft Help Forums when we barely had any posts at all. scmaker answered them all, whatever posts we had he answered. We still have a StarEdit forum archive from the original StarCraft based on his answers. He was the MVP of the StarEdit Forums.

Rapmaster and T'kron were the MVPs of the TH Tech Support Forums, back in the day.

After StarCraft map editing died scmaker left. I remember the goodbye letter. I did not blame scmaker for leaving, StarCraft was dead and the forum had not been posted in for months but I remember feeling sad I was losing a friend.

Then the website came back in Warcraft 3 after my Dmoz.org promotions to top level editor suddenly triggered a bunch of the Help Zone Forums questions to show up on Google. The Warcraft 3 forum was born.

I was called back in. I started paying attention to the site and broke loose of the dmoz.org addiction. I was editing the dmoz like I used to monitor the Blizzard Forums. I racked up like 10000 edits in like 2 years.

I met SD_Ryoko, Darg, and ran into an old friend... scmaker as Acehart!

He was soon moderator, then, after the great crash, through great personal sacrifice took over TH.net to bring us back from the brink. He navigated us through the technical waters of servers and hosts and kept us up. He became the sole saviour of the site in charge of all things technical.

Wargy and SD_Ryoko did what they could to get us back up but Acehart made sure we stayed up. He was there and took over the day to Admin duties of the website.

This was great all the way up until I started focusing on the site again. Personalities clashed. Never did Personalities clash and align more than Acehart we were the perfect balance. We managed this for a while until I tipped to the edge. I tried bringing in a bunch of new people too fast.

When I say focusing on the site I mean obsessing like I used to on the Blizzard Forums and Dmoz.org site, I used to spend all day on the site. I started to get real involved in the site and made some promotions that were questionable. In the end, those promotions in the site staff were meaningless but Ace left over them.

I did not get a goodbye letter this time. I was at a real low time in Personal Life as well.

Ace came back. Tried to comeback just like in War3 as another alias but I scared him away. He never admitted to me he was who I thought he was. So I do not know for sure but I sure do miss Acehart, scmaker, or whoever you are! I bet you are still helping out there anonymously .

You are the ultimate Helper my friend and you are missed! Your contributions to this site will never be forgotten.

Thank God we had Ghan when you left, but somehow, I don't think you would have left unless we did.... you would have never left us hanging. That is just how you are.
 
In 2006, tom_mai78101 joined the forums. Made everyone else well known about his personality, and unimaginable thinking skills. Even tried persuading Acehart and others that being genderless has its advantages and disadvantages. (Of course, Acehart closed the topic, as it was way too unusual.)
 
Greetings Helper!

Just a friendly hello from the son of an old friend. T'kron's #2 son, you might remember me as Dragon or TheHairyOne from Diablo and Starcraft days. I was just thinking about you and did a little search...and here I am.

Hope all is well with you and yours!

Sincerely,
TheHairyOne
 
Good to hear from old friends TheHairyOne! Hope you are doing ok and just to let you know your dad is very much missed!
 
Just wanted to drop in and say this was a great read. I began lurking on the forums sometime after they reinstated the original MVP Program (which just consisted of the three of you at the time), but didn't really started posting heavily until around 2004. Regardless, there's so many memories here that come to mind, some bringing me back to things Negafox had told me years ago. It was really cool learning about the history of the forums (and program) that I've been a part of for years now.

<3 Helper.
 
Does not appear that single post views are enabled in xenforo. Don't know how I am going to fix it. Looks like all the other posts like this are going to be screwed too. Frack! BTW, good to see you Sixen! Would love to add your story to the thread even though you were later than we were you are definitely the next gen MVP! Thanks for helping on the Bnet forums in our absence!

Thread with just the story created

http://www.thehelper.net/threads/th...first-battle-net-forums-mvp-this-site.156872/
 
tom_mai78101 said:
OMG! Sixen, from Battle.net? Welcome! :D
Click to expand...
Yessir! I've been lurking this site for years, ;).

The Helper said:
Does not appear that single post views are enabled in xenforo. Don't know how I am going to fix it. Looks like all the other posts like this are going to be screwed too. Frack! BTW, good to see you Sixen! Would love to add your story to the thread even though you were later than we were you are definitely the next gen MVP! Thanks for helping on the Bnet forums in our absence!

Thread with just the story created

http://www.thehelper.net/threads/th...first-battle-net-forums-mvp-this-site.156872/
Click to expand...
Thanks, :). I'd be more than happy to chat with you about it to flesh something out, just shoot me a PM or an e-mail or somethin'.
 
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General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
  • Varine Varine:
    Or even third party. Like if you don't have an original one in a functional condition, you cannot play this game properly. Like yeah the keyboard mods exist, but I think those are BARELY functional
  • Varine Varine:
    And since almost all of my programming experience is with defunct shit now, I figure my best place is helping preserve legacy stuff. Which I don't know how to do necessarily, but I need some kind of a hobby and figuring out how older things worked is the only shit that really interests me. Well soldering and restoration is fun too, but no one is bringing me new stuff to fix and restore, so it's mostly old shit, and I LOVE OG Xbox so much. I want to make sure it can function as long as possible, until someone can effectively emulate it at least. I have like 15 I was going to fix over the winter and didn't get to.
     +1
  • Varine Varine:
    I also have a couple OG gameboys, but idk if I can do that without like, manufacturing new parts that no one makes anymore and I can't do that right now
  • tom_mai78101 tom_mai78101:
    Currently in the middle of getting the probate process going. We're doing the informal probate process.
     +3
  • Varine Varine:
    A probate is usually done with a will, yes? If so I am sorry for your loss
     +1
  • The Helper The Helper:
    Yeah Tom, me too sorry for your loss buddy my mom told me she finds out her olds friend died from Google searching them. She had not talked to one of her old friends in a year and found out she died from Google. Also another one in the same session. RIP all of them my sincere condolences Tom
     +1
  • Varine Varine:
    We have some elderly guests that regularly come hang out at the bar at the end of the night, and every once in a while we don't see someone for a few weeks and then someone shows up with their obituary.
  • Varine Varine:
    We usually let them do their memorials there in the morning if they want to and I'll make them some snacks and drinks. There was one guy named Tom that came in like every night and would sit by himself and get a bunch of soup and a glass of wine. idk why but he LOVED our fucking soup, like he would order a fucking quart of it at a time and would always get so sad when we stop doing it for the summer.
     +1
  • Varine Varine:
    But he also loved our calamari, which is another thing I hate but it sells super well so I can't change it. There was one day he came in and was asking me how to make it, because he tried to at home once in the off season when we stop running it and he really wanted it lol
  • Varine Varine:
    I think he's one of the only people I've made recipes for for free because he really wanted a broccoli cheddar, and it was like dude I don't have a recipe, it's just whatever I have, but here, this is how you do it
  • Varine Varine:
    I don't think he ever figured out how to do the calamari in a pan though, like idk how to do that either. He was afraid of the at home deep fryers though and it's like yeah, that's fair, I am too
  • Varine Varine:
    He was just such a sweet old man, we had two servers pregnant and they held a baby shower together, he was soooooo fucking excited to get to see a baby. Unfortunately he died a month or so before they were born
  • The Helper The Helper:
    So I decided to Google some people that I had not seen or heard from in a while and sure enough one of my old best friends, we had a falling out years ago but whatever, find out he died of Pancreatic Cancer in January. I have also lost a few of my closer acquaintances from growing up the last year. Getting old - people die - I kinda thought it was going to be this way a few years ago....
     +2
  • The Helper The Helper:
    Forum running super slow again
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Not really clear from the stats as to what is causing the slowness.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    We get a lot of guest traffic so it may just be the load is getting too high and not from any particular source.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Looks like the server is maxed out on CPU.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Oh it looks like a lot of the traffic is Silkroad Forums. That domain isn't protected by Cloudflare.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    But the old Silkroad site is still on its own server. I just had a test site set up on this server for it.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    I just disabled that test site. Let's see if that helps the load.
  • Ghan Ghan:
    Looks much better already.
  • The Helper The Helper:
    I had actually forgot about the Silkroad site. I had asked
  • The Helper The Helper:
    SD Ryoko about it and he said the couple of people left on there really like it, that was a few years ago, maybe I should check back
  • jonas jonas:
    I guess when you're getting old, and the last day of soup season draws near, you start wondering
  • jonas jonas:
    will I make it to the start of the next season? or was this the last time I'll ever have my favorite dish?

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