Shacknews

Shacknews

Type of site	Gaming
Owner	Shacknews
Created by	Steve Gibson and Maarten Goldstein
URL	http://www.shacknews.com/
Commercial	Yes

Shacknews, commonly referred to as "The Shack", is a website offering news, features, editorial content, and forums relating to computer games and console games. The Shack and its sister site, FileShack, are owned by Steve Gibson (not to be confused with computer journalist Steve Gibson) and Maarten Goldstein. The site's Editor-in-Chief is Chris Remo, and its editorial staff includes Chris Faylor and Nick Breckon. Sander Pilon did much of the programming for the Shack, including its ja.zz comments system.

Site history

Shacknews was founded in 1996 by Steve "sCary" Gibson, 20 years old at the time, as a website dedicated to following news about the then-upcoming Quake from id Software. The original name of the website was "Quakeholio." Through the years the website evolved to cover more than just Quake and the name was changed. "Shugashack" was chosen after a discussion with friends about the general direction of the page and content. After a few years of frequent spelling confusion and interpreting the name as that of a pornographic website, the site was renamed "Shacknews."

FileShack.com, a site dedicated to providing game demos, patches, videos, and miscellaneous game-related files for Shacknews users and others, was launched in August of 2002.

Shacknews and FileShack currently reach millions of gamers each month with the daily work of five full time employees. Shacknews, Ltd. is privately owned by Steve Gibson and Maarten Goldstein.

The news

The news on the front page of the site is normally separated into several categories for organizational purposes. While for much of the site's history, little original research was involved in Shacknews content, in recent years main news items have steered away from the "link-and-quote" news method. Currently, Shacknews relies heavily on internally researched news, in-house feature content, and industry event coverage. Regular content includes:

• Gaming news that covers the gaming community as a whole, as well as occasional industry rumors.
• Feature content including interviews, previews, and editorials.
• Late Night Consoling, a large news item posted around 10:00 CST each evening that covers console news and rumors. This was initially the responsibility of Jason "loonyboi" Bergman who moved from Blues News where he updated a similar section; Alec Matias maintained LNC after Bergman's departure. The column was taken over by Chris Remo, formerly of IdleThumbs.net, in mid-2005 and is now occasionally handled by other Shacknews writers as well. However, as of June 6, 2007, LNC has been retired, as console news items are now included on the main front page as separate entries alongside PC gaming news articles.
• Boxed Up Briefs replaces Late Night Consoling as a summary of short newsworthy items though includes both short news bits on PC and console gaming. This feature was introduced on June 6, 2007.
• Category-specific news, such as RPG- or FPS-specific news items.
• Hardware and software review lists, which contain links to other sites' reviews PC products that have been reviewed around the web.
• Sunday Afternoon New Releases & ShackReviews highlights the week's upcoming game releases, which are added to the site's ShackReview database. (This column is currently on hiatus.)
• Evening Reading is a "chatty post" that contains various technological and humorous news items from the day, as well as a small sounding board for Steve Gibson.
• First Post is a "chatty post" that contains all the files that have been added to FileShack that did not warrant their own news post the previous day. This may include videos, maps, small utilities, and more. It also serves as a sounding board of Maarten Goldstein and may include a movie quote at the end, to be identified by Shackers in a spirit of friendly competition.

The contributors

The following people have posted news and articles since the inception of the site.

• Dan Beimborn (created the first comments system used on Shacknews; later replaced by funk.y)
• Jason Bergman (responsible for console news; left Shacknews in 2004)
• Nick Breckon
• David Craddock
• Chris Faylor
• Steve Gibson (site founder)
• Maarten Goldstein
• Andy Hanson (created the funk.y comments system; later replaced by ja.zz)
• Alec Matias
• Jack Mathews
• Clay Mitchell
• Sander Pilon (created the currently used ja.zz comments system)
• Chris Remo
• Marcus Yam

The comments

The gaming news on the front page is what draws most hits to Shacknews, but the comments system comprises a large part of the Shacknews community. In summary:

• Every news post has the ability for readers to reply and add comments, as opposed to the nested nature of many internet message boards. For instance, a story about a game demo will usually have comments summing up readers' impressions of the demo, whereas a story with screenshots will usually prompt discussion over the screenshots, etc. A post, once submitted, cannot be edited.
• Twice a day a non-gaming "chatty post" story is created. In the mornings, this story is given the title werd or First Post!. The nightly story falls under the title Evening Reading and is usually accompanied by several links to interesting or humorous news events and information. Every once in a while posts from other Shacknews associates will be put in place of the normal Chatty threads; these have seen titles such as Nighthawking, Sup!, and Evening Remo. The user comments in reply to chatty posts are generally accepted as being off-topic. These comment sections are what Shackers use as their message board.
• The comments section of Shacknews is monitored and maintained by a group of volunteer moderators, or "Shackmods" as they are known on the Shack. As Shacknews is an open community with open registrations, the moderation rules are designed to prevent behavior that can drive people away from a forum and discourage other users from participating. To this end, the moderation team attempts to make the moderation for comments on the site as fair and balanced as possible.

On November 16, 2006, a copy of the moderator-only message board was posted anonymously on an external website. The site contained almost all of the private moderation discussion posted between June 18th, 2002 and October 26th, 2006. The modboard contained personal opinions of the moderators about Shackers, particularly those who had violated Shacknews rules and guidelines. The website was taken down within a day and was replaced with the message, "Taken down with respect to privacy." Since then, the page has been mirrored numerous times, and is usually taken down soon after it is posted. Discussing the archive in the Shacknews comments has gained a negative stigma and is considered by many to be in bad taste.

funk.y

File:Shacknews funky.jpg

funk.y comments system

funk.y was a comments system built by Andy Hanson that was used on the Shack. Comments could be viewed in flat mode or threaded mode depending on user options. The comments could also be tagged by moderators and "nuked" if they went against the guidelines. A nuked comment would be replaced by the words "* N U K E D *" and the original poster's name would be replaced by an admin account called Duke Nuked.

As the website grew in popularity and the user base increased, funk.y was unable to adequately handle thousands of users browsing articles with comments also numbering in the thousands. Furthermore, the funk.y comments system was hacked a few times as some users found and exploited several vulnerabilities (Screenshots: 1, 2). All comments on ShackES, a now defunct sister-site to Shacknews that dealt with professional gaming only, were once deleted by Shacknews users due to a bug found in the funk.y system. These problems were fixed immediately, but with the website's continued growth, it was evident that a new and faster comments system was requried.

The ja.zz comments system was tested on the website for a trial period before it completely replaced the funk.y system.

ja.zz

File:Shacknews jazz.png

ja.zz comments system

The comments on the Shack are currently powered by ja.zz, a unique message board written by Sander Pilon for the Shack. Some facts about ja.zz:

• ja.zz is essentially a threaded message board. As such, the comments on the Shack go remarkably quickly compared to UBB style posting. Given the twice-a-day nature of the chatty news posts, there is a fresh start every 12 hours or so.
• Posts are moderated into categories. The default options are for all posts marked with a category to be filtered out.
  • Interesting or Informative are for posts than generally the entire reader base will find informative, like important gaming news or tips on improving computer performance.
  • NWS stands for Not Work Safe, and as such these posts usually contain links to pictures that are unsafe for viewing at work.
  • Posts may also be marked random (formerly called stupid).
  • Political or Religion based posts are marked Political / Religious
  • Anything not relating to games or any of the above topics are marked as tangent.
• There are several ways to view the comments:
  • Flat mode shows all comments in the order they were posted.
  • Threaded mode order comments as root posts and replies to that post showing only previews. There are two types of threaded mode:
    • Thread mode opens each comment you click on by itself in the browser window.
    • DThread is more advanced; the main page stays open but the reply you click on replaces the root post.

laryn.x

File:Shacknews larynx.jpg

laryn.x comments system

The next version of shacknews comments was released at approximately 1:30AM CST, June 18th, 2007, and had been previously unveiled to the shackers in the preceding week. The new CMS system is said to be a mix of PHP & MySQL running on the popular Apache webserver. The new system goes by the name "Laryn.x," clearly a play on larynx, commonly known has the human voicebox.

The new comment system has made numerous changes on the former design, these include:

• When clicking on a reply to a thread, it no longer loads the reply in the top box, it opens it in a box in the thread.
• Post numbers have been removed in favor of thin dotted lines showing relationships of posts.
• Only one comments system is offered.
• Reply Box is now directly below the post being replied to.
• No longer an option to view nuked posts.
• Users own posts are designated by their username being highlighted blue.

Lingo

• Shacker - One who posts to the Shacknews forums.
• Shackbattle - A gaming event sponsored by the Shack, most often run on servers ran by a Shacker named themelon. As of late many Shackbattles have also occurred via Xbox Live. Games often played in Shackbattles are Battlefield 2 (PC), Counter-Strike: Source (PC) and various titles on Xbox Live.
• Shackmeet - Refers to a gathering of Shackers who know each other through the forums. They are generally organized by region (ie, Atlanta, Houston, NYC etc.) and are organized by individual Shackers not Shacknews itself. Sometimes purposely misspelled shackmeat.
• Shackmessage - Refers to the E-mail-like messaging system used on the forums of the Shack.
• Shacktagged - The Shack's forums have special formatting tags which users periodically fail to close correctly. The result is brackets or curly-braces in the text instead of the intending formatting, showing the error. This is called being shacktagged.
• Chatty Post - A post to the front page of the Shack to which Shackers can respond with on-topic or off-topic posts in a chatty fashion.
• Comedy Gold - This phrase may have originated on Something Awful, but became a mini-fad on the Shack, especially with parodies (ex. "Comedy Platinum").
• Duke Nuked - The fictional character who sends a shackmessage to a user when a post has been nuked for a violation of the rules. This is a play on Duke Nukem, a fictional gaming character. A nuked post is not deleted, but rather is filtered from the other posts (so that it does not appear on the page) and can no longer be replied to.
• Phil Sized - Very large :)
• Genjuro Sized - Unsatisfyingly small
• Lurker - Someone who has a shack account, reads the shack comments and enters shack contests, but never posts to the forums.
• Catchphrase - A word or phrase which is or has been part of a linguistic fad. Notable examples are "hoorj", "I ate a cat", "sax goes off", "lamp", "sand", and "lime". Posts containing catchphrases may be nuked at the discretion of the moderators; however, their judicious use is not unlike a pleasant "lollercoaster" ride.
• FAGATRON3000 - A way to describe a male suitor who refuses to quit pursuing you. Demographically relevant to San Francisco.

External links

Official pages

• Shacknews site
  • WAP version
  • PDA version
  • RSS feed
  • RSS feed for headlines
• Who's online at the Shack and where did they come from?
• Forum Posting Guidelines
• Latest chatty thread
• UTF8 characters for use in the chat threads
• Fileshack

Community-based pages

• Shack Battles
• Shack Book
• Shack Earth Google Earth showing where are shackers are that have registered with this site created and maintained by Thom W.
• Shack FAQ A frequently asked questions site about the shacknews comments community created and maintained by shack user Portax.
• Shack Food A wiki for recipes from shackers.
• Shack Maps A Google Map showing where are shackers are that have registered with this site created and maintained by Thom W.
• Shack Maps (old)
• Shack Rank A page that tracks a users post count.
• Shack RSS - Chatty Informative posts - By Thomw
• Shack RSS - Chatty Not Work Safe posts - By Thomw
• Shack RSS - Chatty Vanity posts Change user name to a particular user - By Thomw
• Shack Stuff
• Shackifieds An online marketplace for members of both the Shacknews and StooFoo communities.
• Shack Super Search A modified chatty search engine.

• Giant Censored Robots, the unofficial Shacknews World of WarCraft clan. Formerly known as 'Giant Communist Robots' until the World of Warcraft admins deemed the term Communist inappropriate for a guild name. There is also a smaller branch, titled Giant Capitalist Robots, that is composed of Alliance Characters.

GreaseMonkey scripts

These Greasemonkey scripts add to, or change, the functionality of Shacknews or its comment system.

• Comment Bookmark
• Comment Filter
• Comment Preview
• DThread Collapse
• Safe for Work
• DThread Message Popup
• Disable Ctrl+Enter Submissions

Spawned Sites

A couple of sites have come into existence related to Shacknews, often used as a refuge for banned Shackers.

• Squabble Created by Clay Mitchell, it was perceived as a place of anarchy and spite but it was conceived as an attempt to retain the small community feel of the original Shacknews community without what some users perceived as "heavy moderation", and for a long time was the home of Klerck, perhaps Shacknews' most famous banned Shacker. Clay shut it all down and a lot of Squabblers shifted to StooFoo with some small percentage of Squabble users returning to Shacknews.
• StooFoo Created by skold. It is similar to Squabble as a place for people who want something similar to Shacknews, but has more relaxed moderation and more comment features.
• ShackBattles A website created by the Shackers boolean, Ashkie, Haiku and verbatim, which allows you to enlist in ShackBattles so that you can play online with other Shackers, create ShackBattles and create reminders so you will be sent a Shackmessage when a ShackBattle is created. ashkie shut down the site on May 4th, 2005, but it has since been revived, though not yet to the same level of functionality as before.
• Xbox Live Gamertag List An Xbox Live gamertag list for Shackers to keep track of each other.
• GameWith.Us (previously Shackmap) A site for people to trade online console usernames and identification, including for Xbox Live, Nintendo DS, and Wii titles. The original Shackmap site was geared towards users of Shacknews but was expanded in December 2006 to allow numerous groups to use the same tools. Developed by Thom Wetzel.
• KOCK Radio This website, set up by SKI242 and basketofkittens, contains information on the online radio station run by shackers and for shackers. KOCK is a purposeful misspelling of cock, used most often when one shacker makes a post as another user, typically stating that the user "loves the cock." Prank posts such as this vary from a few sentences to a full diatribe on the user's faux homosexuality.
• Help Me With My Game Problems This website, setup by mancide, is a wiki-based Gamefaq's alternative. The domain name and site name are derived from a common emo thread title for girl related posts (helpmewithmygirlproblems.com). The site is still in its infancy, but several shackers have been known to contribute to some of the game help sections as it is fast becoming a valuable resource in terms of gaming tips, hints, and information.