Mobile-Friendly Update

## Belligerents

* **Sensible Haircut**†
* **Ulysses**
* **Legownz**
* **A Fucking Idiot**
* Relk\_Cehi
* Makin' Bacon
* CP†

* **Dr. Dos**

The **Mobile-Friendly Update** (also known by some as **Taggergate**) was an extremely controversial TF2Tags update implemented late at night on August 16th, 2015. This site update did a lot of things, (all of which turned out to be negative), and is mostly remembered for Dr. Dos's short-lived and ill-fated removal of the Miss Button, which resulted in one of the site's first major mass uprisings against him.

## The Background

Bar a few changes here and there, TF2Tags had not received a major site update since March of 2013, and as time went on Dos had a shortlist of various things he wanted to do to improve the site for himself and everyone else, mainly the way the site appeared on mobile browsers (which was terrible at the time). It is unknown when Dos began to work on this update, but general estimates believe him to have worked on it for around a month. On August 16th, 2015, at 10:08 PM, Dos made a tag announcing that he was "probably gonna break the site hard" and told the userbase to expect technical difficulties the following the day. He implemented the Mobile-Friendly Update at 11:25 PM that night.

## The Update

The new update was announced via an announcement over in the news section of the site, titled "Now Mobile Friendly!" which gave the update its most commonly used name. In it, Dos explained everything he changed and added.

### Mobile-Friendly

The namesake of the update was a change to the website's layout in order to make the site easier to view on mobile devices and low-resolution monitors. While this would *eventually* go on to be appreciated, it was initially plagued with bugs and complaints on first launch, such as the inability to edit item qualities or see unusual effects and not being able to view a person's items on their profile unless you performed a workaround. The changes also ended up adversely affecting display on *other* devices as well, such as higher-resolution desktops and tablets, resulting in utter monstrosities like the image displayed to the right. These bugs were largely fixed later in the same month, and overall the Mobile-Friendly Update did do what it advertised on the tin.

### New Items and Particles

Firstly, Dos *finally* added the new Unusual effects that were introduced back in *October of 2014*. This was good. However, the main aspect of this part of the update was the way Dos was going to add new items in the future. Dos did some heavy maintenance to the site's backend, which tied it to the item database of the TF2 Wiki. This meant that any new items and unusual effects, as well as changes to existing items (becoming paintable, becoming multi-class, gaining a new quality, etc.), would be automatically implemented onto TF2Tags without Dos lifting a finger. This system would remain in place until March of 2016, where it was removed due to... malfunctions. But at the time, at least, it was a pretty neat feature.

### Social Media

Dos also announced that the site's Twitter and Tumblr accounts (which is now under control of Tags.tf and deleted, respectively) would now be used more in an attempt to promote the site and grow its userbase. He even implemented a feature where these social media accounts would automatically generate posts that shared high-scoring items (that is, items scoring 50 or more crits that were submitted within the last four months). These posts were selected randomly and could not be sets. The item authors would be credited. This was a neat feature, but at some point these posts would stop being made, either through the code that caused them not being updated or the fact that items with over 50 points would become rarities over time. As of mid-2016, both accounts laid dormant until the site's death.

### Removal of Misses

And this is why this update has a wiki page. In a very questionable move, Dr. Dos decided to completely remove misses, meaning that posts could *only* be voted up and not down. Dos had several reasons for doing this. First was the issue of missbombers, which had become increasingly common following the Racist Anon Incident back in May. Since Dos was the only one with any administrative power on the site at the time, this meant that every time there was a missbomber, he had to come step in, ban them, and erase their vote history. This was becoming annoying so he decided to remove misses partly to eliminate missbombings altogether. Second were items that were in clear violation of site rules that were missed to hell, but never reported to him. This meant that such tags, while unpopular and looked down upon by the userbase, would never have their authors punished. Dos removed misses as a way to force people to start reporting again. Thirdly were posts that were directly related to misses, particularly items that were specifically aiming for misses (such as A Fucking Idiot's posts) or Tweet Tags complaining about why someone was getting so many misses. Dos removed misses to end such trends. In all truth, Dos had wanted to get rid of Misses for years, but never had enough excuses until now, which was later revealed in a post by Ulysses.

## The Backlash

*Main article: Bring Back Misses*

The removal of misses had very obvious immediate effects: Firstly, tags could no longer have a negative score, meaning that worst tags on the site could no longer be viewed because all of their misses were removed, throwing them somewhere into the aether and leaving new submissions or underperforming submissions with a score of 0 as the new "worst tags". It also completely destroyed AFI's goal of achieving Negative Hale's Own. Further, all negative points being removed meant that the majority of taggers saw their scores increase by hundreds, sometimes *thousands* or points in the blink of an eye (such as Ulysses suddenly becoming Hale's Own, Legownz hitting a similar number of points as Ulysses prior to the update, and Relk\_Cehi gaining a massive 4000 points). Most taggers believed these points to be completely undeserved and did not want them. Further, it led to bad submissions no longer being able to be punished.

That last part in particular irked the majority of veteran taggers, particularly Ulysses and Sensible Haircut. The two had a Steam chat regarding the update, with Sensible pointing out that there was no reason not to spam submissions now. There was entirely no risk or backlash to churning out garbage tags, promoting an "everybody's a winner" mentality that does not reflect reality. To try and prove this point, Sensible began to spam purposefully bad submissions on the site to prove his point, which most taggers agreed with. This got Sensible banned for 24 hours by Dos. Following this, Ulysses reached out to Dr. Dos on Steam and began to make his case for why removing misses probably wasn't the best idea. He brought up the point Sensible was trying to make, but Dos dismissed it saying that it wasn't dissuading AFI from seeking actively seeking downvotes. Having gone nowhere, Ulysses then decided to reach out to various other taggers and asked if they agreed with what Sensible was saying. Sensible's argument was supported by Yahiamice, Player 1 + Player 2, Crimson Blitz, Lt. Col. Problem, Makin' Bacon, and Legownz. All of this information, from his chat with Sensible to the displaying of support for the pro-miss argument, was put into a set by Ulysses, as well as a simple solution to Dos's problem: hire site moderators to deal with these tags for him, even recommending three moderators in Relk, Sensible, and Legownz. He criticized Dos for essentially moving all the power to himself and not the userbase and guaranteed that the majority of taggers would leave the site if things remained this way. The comments of this set held support from various taggers, including those mentioned by Ulysses and those who weren't (such as TheOnlyGuyEver and Blast).

Shortly after this, Ulysses, Sensible, and Legownz came together and formed the first faction on TF2Tags: Bring Back Misses, who argued for the complete and immediate restoration of the Miss Button and all negative points that were removed in this update. This movement was joined by the majority of taggers on TF2Tags, who argued their points in various ways, such pointing out examples of tags that should be missed but couldn't be (done by those such as Legownz and Makin' Bacon), those who attempted to militantly prove their point by spamming bad submissions (like Sensible Haircut and CP), and those who actively spoke with Dr. Dos in an attempt to change his mind (such as Ulysses). They began to refer to the removal of misses as Taggergate.

Soon, AFI himself would log on to TF2Tags for the first time that day and find his work in ruins, with all his misses gone and a profile rank of Gore-Spattered. He would then become one of the most vocal representatives of Bring Back Misses, as well as the movement's posterchild, as he was effected by the update more than anybody else.

## The Restoration

Dos evidently did not expect people to care so much about downvotes. Just four hours after implementing the update, he would make a tag using the Miss Button April Fools' Week item described "Well, this is going poorly!" (to which the BBM founders responded: "Damn right, it went poorly." (Ulysses); "I'd miss this but OOOOH WAIT." (Sensible); "Pardon my French, but YA FUCKIN' THINK!?" (Legownz).). Dos then commented that if people were truly so upset, he would put the Miss Button back. Though he wanted it gone, he ultimately did not want to anger the entire userbase. He just warned that it would not be an overnight immediate process. He also tried to get people to just calm down and wait a few days to get used to a missless TF2Tags, but no one was ever going to listen to that. He admitted that some communication and discussion would have prevented this debacle, and promised to communicate with the community before doing something like this again, and promised to perhaps hiring some more admins.

Following this post, things largely calmed down. Misses were confirmed to be coming back, so the anger and protesting had largely subsided. People continued to make jokes about the lack of misses, and even AFI continued making his own signature tags. It was during this period of calm that users began to report various bugs to Dr. Dos regarding the other aspects of the update. M3Lucas and Le Tryhard Hunter were at the forefront of these bug reports, the most important issue being item qualities not working and unusual effects not displaying.

When Dos began to restore misses, he first started by restoring all the negative points that he removed, bringing everybody's profile scores back to what they were prior to the update. The way this worked also meant that any tag made during the Mobile-Friendly Update had their scores reverted back to 0 crits, though notably their crit:miss ratios were untouched. This caused a bug on some submissions where some had 0 crits but a negative crit:miss ratio.

The Miss Button was finally restored at 7:37 PM on August 18th, 2015, marked by Dos making a tag of the Bonk! Atomic Punch named / described "What do you see / When you shoot a scout who just drank this?" This post was missed to hell, which was probably the intention. The taggers cheered at the restoration of the Miss Button, especially AFI who had his previous negative rank restored, his journey to Negative Hale's alive once again. BBM disbanded shortly after, their goals being met.

## The Legacy

M3Lucas pointed out a new feature Dos added alongside the restored Miss Button, called the Vote Log. The Vote Log allowed people to see who was voting what on whose tags. This rudimentary version of the vote log was entirely anonymous, displaying 13-digit strings of characters instead of someone's username, and while it didn't directly say who a missbomber was, it made missbombs much easier to identify and report. Shortly after its implementation, it was used by Legownz to report someone who missbombed him.

In addition, the backend part of the update used to integrate new items automatically was shown to be functional, as it automatically added the new Finder's Fee hat, which quickly had several tags made about it (the best-performing being made by Walumancer). While this was an exciting demonstration of the new script, it would eventually go on to bite Dos, causing a series of bugs in early 2016 that messed with item qualities that would become known as the Colorless Times.

The Mobile Friendly Update also demonstrated for the first time taggers rallying against a move made by Dr. Dos, while at the same time showing that such rallies can work and undo an unpopular decision he made. It was also the first time people rallied behind A Fucking Idiot, and is perhaps the origin of the "cult of personality" AFI mentioned forming around him when he was banned later that month.

The Mobile-Friendly Update was also the first emergence of a TF2Tags faction, in the form of Bring Back Misses. This would lead to the establishment of more long-running factions such as the Wahfia, Herald of Dos, and CTBB.

Finally, the Mobile-Friendly Update was the first time the community called for TF2Tags to have site moderators other than Dr. Dos. This cry for more moderators would become an increasingly demanded addition with time that would not be granted until February of 2017, when Dr. Dos removed misses once again, sparking a Bring Back Misses revival.

## The Gallery

Dos's prelude to the storm he was about to bring unto the site.The full news post about the Mobile-Friendly Update.M3Lucas wondering what the hell is going on with the site.Relk erects the Miss Button's tombstone.This tag is unrelated to this event itself, but pretty much summarized how things were going in that moment.Relk praises AFI's galaxy-level brain move by now having the rarest submissions on the site. Dr. Dos shoots that dream down.Ulysses erects AFI's tombstone. AFI is still alive but depressed.Relk makes a joke at the old version of the site's expense.TheOnlyGuyEver gives his condolences to the Miss Button.Because of the removal of misses, Ulysses hit Hale's Own. He decides to leave before things start to blow up hard.M3Lucas describes the Mobile-Friendly Update for what it really was.A tagger comments on the removal of misses.Ulysses never really left at all. Surprise!Legownz enters the site to find himself at the rank of Epic on a broken website.Ulysses relays messages between him and Sensible, Dr. Dos, and everyone else, trying to convince Dos to #BringBackMisses. This post can be seen as the origin of this faction.A key example of why misses need to exist.Sensible, who was currently banned and had this message relayed to the site through Ulysses, is thankful for all the support BBM was receiving.This tagger in particular proves BBM's entire point.Makin' Bacon believes AFI would be a better site overlord than Dr. Dos. AFI later lays out his plan.Another post from the tagger who deserves misses.Legownz brings up an old glitch that now seems like a sick joke. Dr. Dos confirms that Missbombs were a reason he wanted to get rid of misses.This is most certainly a tag made during this period of TF2Tags history.AFI comes onto the site to find his kingdom in ruins.AFI joins BBM.AFI shows his support for BBM.AFI is angered by his disgusting rank of Gore-Spattered.Ulysses relays Dos's surprise to the site.Sqwid gives the update another name and then offers practical solutions that Dos never implemented.Dos admits he fucked up and states that he will undo the removal of the Miss Button.Ulysses addressing post Dos made directly before this.Oops, all crits!Another tagger complaining about the removal of misses.Dos reveals he also changed the server time of the website, and is glad nobody is upset about that, at least.Now that things have started to calm down, Ulysses awaits the next shitstorm. He wouldn't have to wait very long.Another post regarding the removal of misses.M3Lucas returns to the site following the initial chaos.The Mobile-Friendly Update isn't very mobile-friendly.Le Tryhard Hunter has the same issue as M3Lucas.Despite it all, AFI soldiers on in his signature style.This post displays a rare occurrence that came about due to Dos's restoration of the negative points. The points on every tag following the update were reset, but the crit:miss ratios were not. Thus, this tag has a green score but red ratio.A tagger attempts to use this lack of misses to mess with Ulysses. It didn't work.A show of rare support of the removal of misses from a tagger that wasn't Frapple.AFI continues on.The struggles of Yahiamice.Yahiamice ignores the current drama to post on the then-hot meme trend of John Cena tags.Dos slowly fixes his mistakes. Le Tryhard Hunter celebrates.M3Lucas celebrates.Le Tryhard Hunter spits facts.Crimson watching as the chaos continues into its second day.M3Lucas lamenting that he cannot undo an unintentional crit.Dos restores the negative points, but not yet the Miss Button.Balance is restored. The negative points are back.PsychKlown makes a clever joke about the Removal of Misses.With the drama bringing about a call for moderators, Ulysses asks who the community would choose.M3Lucas notices a change in the scores of recent posts.This tag was made before the Miss Button was restored.Danjin has a prophetic dream.Timberwoof is late to this party.Fancytag threatens to leave over the removal of misses.And thus, the Miss Button is restored.TOGE missed misses.Ulysses attempts to name this event.Relk is pumped at the return of the Miss Button.BBM succeeded, and shortly thereafter disbanded.M3Lucas points out that Dos implemented a new vote log feature to show the voting habits of users, making it easier to identify who missbombers are. However, these users would be anonymous until a later update.AFI's power is restored.PsychKlown makes a joke about the restoration of misses.Legownz uses the new vote log feature to identify the first identifiable missbomber.The vote log of the user who missbombed Legownz.Yes, misses are back.The automatic site updater in action, adding a new hat to the site without Dos lifting a finger.
## The Trivia

* Despite the intense backlash, not every tagger disliked the removal of misses. Frapple and Floro Sapiens were both in favor of their removal. TGRobert is also known to have received a glimmer of hope with the removal of misses, which is what got him into tagging again.
* Another change implemented in this update was Dos changing the server timezone from Eastern Standard Time (EST) to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), causing the site's clock to jump ahead 5 hours.
* This entire event is popularly represented by the Bonk! Atomic Punch item, which is ironic considering that the in-game effect of the Bonk! causes every attack made against Scout to Miss! (which is where TF2Tags's Miss! button came from). The Crit-a-Cola would be a more appropriate representative item, as it causes every attack to mini-crit, much like the Mobile-Friendly Update.