My two cents on the state of Sythe.org

I'll go point by point with my opinions:

Staff:
I completely agree. I see Roary, -Ryan, Superman all being extremely active and trying to improve the site. I don't know what happens behind the scenes, but I look at someone like Malakadang. He hasn't been active since October 4th (as of like a day or two ago). He may fill his mod quota at the end of the month, but he's not doing any good for the site. There are plenty of people who'd make great mods if there were an overhaul. Support there.

Updates:
I agree and disagree. I like the simplicity of Sythe as it is now, but I can see as other forums are becoming more modern, so are the people. Change can be good, and I think running either a trial, or testing some new themes / udpates couldn't hurt.

New games:
YES. I moved on from RS about 3 years ago, and so have most of the people I know. The games dying, and only a fraction of the people still play. League of Legends is one of, if not THE most popular game online. Why not move towards that?

Spam forum:
I only started looking at the spam forum a few days ago, and in the spam forum it's fine, however, i'll see links to troll Report a scammer threads, or spam on Staff feedback. This shouldn't be tolerated. Sythe is not a spam forum, the spam forum is the spam forum.

Great idea Dial. Hope some more people comment on this.

there are very good staff members, especialy roary, superman and some others. but there are also staff i think they don't really put to much effort enough to help out the community and do other work on this website.

spam forums is a bit of a disease, maybe always been like that i guess

I think the most unfortunate thing about Sythe right now is lack of people who truly care. I was hopeful a long time ago, but I don't think anything can be done anymore. The "Wait for VB4" situation and the x339 Witch-hunt were probably the last nails in the slowly burying coffin.

I think our biggest problem is with the staff.

There are amazing people who used to be staff for no personal gain, but genuinely cared about the site, but in the past year and a half have become exceedingly inactive and/or made surprising resignations and no longer come here. I strongly believe that these people are some of the best members of Sythe ever, and have given up trying to care: Verts, SuF, MohtasaUnique, Blupig, etc.

The Staff turnover rate is HUGE. It was never like this. There isn't really any desire or charm or value in being staff anymore. It has turned into a job of busy work for no value. Which is why no one seems to care about their positions anymore. Amethyst, Rsprod, Wulfspade1, Yaroow, etc.

Many current staff members used to be great members of the community who I respect greatly but are now inactive. The fact that these people used to be such great leaders but are now inactive used to bother me, but I honestly have no reason to blame them. I understand, ans I did the same thing when I was on staff: Corey, Malakadang, Superman, Djweasel, Video, Shoop.

Some Staff are becoming inactive but who I think care too much to realize it. N4N0 and FireZ have been good contributers to the site. While I wouldn't call them inactive, I am definitely seeing them around less.

Frenzy still doesn't post, but I have never had any good words for her. Matthew and Govind I won't say much about because I'll just get the whole "we do a lot behind the scenes" routine, which I believe is very far from true. -Ryan, Quatakai, and Dave still post around but are nowhere near what they used to be.

Roary, you are a fantastic admin. I hope you keep up your spirit.

The biggest problem is, this list of people are the best we can get. There are next to zero people qualified or wanting a position of the Sythe staff. This means you end up with people like Ziggily or those who will turnover like Amesthyst. The community (I'm looking at you spam forum. Not staff at all.) has shrunken into a large group of immature idiots, and everyone else has completely lost their spark or left. This includes a lot of our greatest non-staff members who have either been banned, bullied into leaving, or just up and packed. There are too many to mention.

In 2011 people said they missed the old community. I don't think they ever could have imagine this.

Why do people have high hopes for the spam section? It is as it's titled.

I think if sythe were to change it's image now it would fail drastically.

I would like a more active staff due to the cut in moderators and such. The site is branching out to new games, it's just that we don't have much members to show for that because they all focus on runescape.

Only time will tell.

BGlave said:

Why do people have high hopes for the spam section? It is as it's titled.
.

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Mostly because the SF is and has always been the core of the Sythe Community. It's difficult to explain unless you've been there for long enough.

Dialatic said:

Sythe is going into the shitter. From a quick lookup (although not 100% accurate, it still depicts a lot), I can see that Sythe has dropped by half of their daily pageviews since 180 days ago. It's no secret that Runescape is dying, and from that, comes Sythe's drop of activity. It saddens me honestly, because this used to be a great community, and even more than that, a great marketplace.

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I couldn't agree with you more. Activity has decreased tremendously site-wide - both in the market and in the community, and anyone that's been here for over a year would know this. One of primary causes for the dwindling activity is Runescape. Once a popular game, Fagex has slowly ruined their game over time with shitty updates and killed off most of their player base, and since we are RS-based forum, why we are struggling comes as no surprise. We seriously need to move past Runescape because it's at the point of no return and start looking into other games.

As for the updates: Don't get me wrong, the site has come a long way in that aspect, but the majority of the updates that have been implemented are fun and everything, but completely useless such as miniranks and that whole market seller/trader thing (I don't even remember what it's called because I've never seen anyone use it) to name a few. Miniranks for example, were suppose to give people an incentive in post in certain sections. These days you don't see anyone making 10 posts a week in attempts to obtain a minirank. Instead, they have become a market where they are being tossed around like candy and being sold/flipped for profit.

Also, another point you forgot to address is the site's lack of advertising. I'm just baffled... every suggestion regarding advertising Sythe to help promote activity is either struck down or ignored. You see these Chinese gold-trader sites and their ads literally all over the Internet, and as a result they're still going strong. These referral contests where the winner is awarded a lame minirank or get a ribbon above their post count isn't doing shit to attract new members.

So many great points brought up, and Sypherz I most agree with your views on mods.


tl;dr, promote johng1208 to increase sythe activity and get a mod that actually will imporve/care for the community.

Things come and go, and Sythe is still heavily a Runescape community. This thread won't help, because you offer no specific solutions. If we turn Sythe into something it's not, will that really be a continuation or just the shell?

Though I'm still a "newfag" as everyone in the SF will say, I agree with most everything here. But I believe I've seen another or multiple threads like this. But nothing happens, this is just feedback as is.. There's no solution the problem as of now, and from past experience it seems without having a set-stone solution that people can work with, this will get nowhere. Maybe I'm wrong though.

@JohnG -I'll support the cause, as long as you're promoted directly to admin.

As for the Sythe Staff Team, I completely agree. Most of the work is being done by people like Roary, Ryan, Superman and that Nub Dave. A overhaul would be great, as it's pointless having useless staff.

Chloecat said:

I agree with Grave, Sythe is still and I think will always be somewhat of a Runescape black market, Runescape isn't dead yet and it's still thriving but while keeping the Runescape market happy we should open more of a variety to other markets and make them just as big as the Runescape market, such as the LoL Market it's one little section as Runescape has about 5 sections on the front page when according to Sellerman LoL has 500k+ players.

I also agree with Sypherz, we need a total revamp of 50% of the staff, no offence to the current ones, but we need activity not people who come on once a month to achieve quota.

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Commonly used graphic:



You can get all the sources at the bottom, but you'd have to google... but for instance:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngau...lly-becomes-most-played-pc-game-in-the-world/

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/10/12/l...layers-is-now-bigger-than-starcraft-in-korea/

Yes, I know that was a bit off topic =]. There isn't much to LoL in terms of a black market, though... other than some skin trades, RP, and ELO boosting... the first two can easily be obtained directly so... market-wise -shrug-

All the suggestions presented so far have been: "get a new theme", "get new forum software", "make other games more active", "advertise sythe".

Ok, in order of the mentioned suggestions:

• We have a new theme. I've heard multiple times that rounded corners are out and flat solid colour is in. Well guess what? Flat solid colour looks like butt. This isn't about fashion it's about aesthetics. Steve Jobs is dead two years and already everything is fluorescent pink and orange with sharp unappealing edges and incorrect use of whitespace. I don't subscribe to this nonsense.
  
• We don't feel getting new forum software will make any difference whatever. If anything it will hurt our existing members who are familiar with the system we already have.
  
• We don't control what games people play. We respond to the games which are popular by putting them toward the top of the forum in order of their popularity. When LoL becomes more popular here than runescape then it will be at the top of the forum.
  
• I've spent thousands advertising sythe.org on google adwords over the past 6 months to nil effect. Exactly as I predicted. We're not going to advertise the site anymore because it doesn't work. People have to spread sythe.org by word of mouth. If you want the site's membership to increase then refer your friends.

Now that the same four suggestions everyone has got have been addressed, lets have some real suggestions...

Chloecat said:

I agree with Grave, Sythe is still and I think will always be somewhat of a Runescape black market, Runescape isn't dead yet and it's still thriving but while keeping the Runescape market happy we should open more of a variety to other markets and make them just as big as the Runescape market, such as the LoL Market it's one little section as Runescape has about 5 sections on the front page when according to Sellerman LoL has 500k+ players.

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This is 1.5 years old aswell. So the figures for LoL have increased significantly.

Chloecat said:

I agree with Grave, Sythe is still and I think will always be somewhat of a Runescape black market, Runescape isn't dead yet and it's still thriving but while keeping the Runescape market happy we should open more of a variety to other markets and make them just as big as the Runescape market, such as the LoL Market it's one little section as Runescape has about 5 sections on the front page when according to Sellerman LoL has 500k+ players.

I also agree with Sypherz, we need a total revamp of 50% of the staff, no offence to the current ones, but we need activity not people who come on once a month to achieve quota.

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League of Legends takes a huge dump on Runescape, this is still one of the biggest RS blackmarkets, however with the game dying I too agree we should try and move onto other games. Staff did a decent job of this when we implemented the new star wars MMORPG but that game is pretty much dead now too.



I agree that the staff are very lax, I for one can't speak for much since when I was on staff, the last month or two I was on board I too was guilty of grazing the minimum modscore. To be honest though there isn't all that much to moderate anymore with much less activity on the boards.

I think a new design would definitely help attract new users. We've retained a respectable amount of old users, but I don't think more new ones are coming in. All the "newcomers" nowadays are 90% ban evaders looking to make a quick buck.

If someone wants to propose more sections for LoL, then by all means.

Rename thread to LoL boner thread. It's a popular game, but that doesn't mean we should just change Sythe. Making more sections for LoL won't increase the LoL activity unless we spam the absolute shit of the section with threads that will attract new users through search engines. Maybe introduce the game to already-Sythe members and they'll tell their friends, and have them join the community.

I might as well make this my first point, since it's the most important really. The Sythe staff team in general has really gone downhill. There are some great staff members here, but a large majority of them just simply either (a) don't care or (b) are too busy in real life to be of any help. There's people like Roary who do everything trying to improve the site, whereas on the opposite side of the spectrum you have those who have been inactive for months, or worse, are active and still do nothing to improve the site. There should definitely be a major staff overhaul, and you should determine who really wants to help the site grow, and who just uses the rank as a way to earn trust and sales.

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absolutely agree with a major staff overhaul, there are so much hyperactive members on this forum who could help Sythe so much more on the staff team.

Some of the current staff members are doing an excellent job and some are useless. Two examples

Example 1: It took 1 week for my reported post in the sandbox to get answered by yaroow, If ryan could answer reports in that section then they would have been answered within 1 day.

Example 2: My UI was first denied by Matthew, i`ve uploaded a corrected version of that UI right after it was denied because I couldn`t wait to see it active. Now Its almost one week later and Matthew still didn`t look at my UI. Is that how $200 donors should get treated?

The pool of candidates for new staff is significantly less than say, a year ago. It makes it very difficult to envision an overhauled team if we just out everyone who's perhaps not extremely active.

Regarding activity though, we're not completely oblivious to the fact that staff could spend more time posting around than just doing the quota work. We're hopefully going to push through bi-weekly quotas to ensure activity is consistent throughout the month and to reduce required workloads in order for staff who have limited time frames on Sythe to be able to relax and just post around - making being staff less of a chore. Superman has put a lot of thought and energy in to this initiative and I'll be the first to admit if I'd been more forward with it, we could have had it implemented by now - I'll definitely make this priority for now because I think it solves a number of issues regarding activity.

Thanks for the kind words folks, too.

Although I probably haven't been on the site long enough to tell many years back, I'm going to say I have to agree with Sypherz on this one, some of the staff rarely post, maybe they were once active, but the ones I see in the dispute section is mainly Superman, -Ryan and Roary, I don't know how Sythe staff runs, but I'll assume they're supposed to be trying to help the site improve and I would say to be more active in the RaSC and dispute sections, once again if I got several things wrong in this paragraph, I apologize. I probably haven't been long enough here to judge most of the staff members.