Feedback

This is a feedback thread. I made a list as a few people have requested, you can find it in the suggestions forum here: http://sythe.org/showthread.php?p=11192191#post11192191

I wonder what it is that is making the Admins want to avoid this thread so hastily. To me it seems as though you realize what I am saying is true, and you don't want to accept it, so you just wait and hope I'll go away. Perhaps I am wrong, but we'll never know until you voice your opinions.

Unfortunately my last thread was closed by FireZ due to the fact that he believed that it was a "waste of time" and that it was "going in circles", which is of course because the staff refuse to participate. I can debate with other members all day, but it's the staff participation that matters. Instead of closing the thread to try and silence it, I wish that you would engage in the discussion. I do not wish to hurt feelings, and I do not wish to put people down. I hope that I am not silenced any further. So here I will repost my thread, and if you want to read any replies to this thread please look at my original post: http://sythe.org/showthread.php?t=1428326

Hello everyone, it’s me again. Yea yea I know, “l0l noob I new u’d be back”, and yes I am, but only for my last little hoo-rah. Since I’ve left I have been lurking on other sites similair to sythe such as, d2jsp, ownedcore, and powerbot, and my biggest fears for sythe were realized. Sythe is lightyears behind in forum tech and activity. It made me realize that not only was I right about sythe never growing, but we are falling behind as well. How can we expect to compete with forums that have double, or even triple our activity? I am going to do my best to outline every problem I can think of, and hopefully people will finally open their minds instead of continuing to block out everything negative they hear. Please do not post until you have read everything I have to say, and only if it is constructive.

I. Admins
My last thread was mainly concerned with the Admins. I believe I outlined my main feelings about them, and unfortunatley it did not end well. Not only did only 2 of them even acknowledge the feedback, but they completely refused to even take it into consideration. That is the first main problem, threads such as mine are all handled the same way. Instead of talking to the OP, the accused will point out the smallest flaw and blow it up. Even if has almost nothing to do with the main idea, the flaw will be taken and stretched to the point where the accused can then say that everything the OP says is stupid and wrong. For example in my thread (http://sythe.org/showthread.php?t=1423659) I put across a majority of main ideas, and then somehow I was being brought down by the fact that I don’t know every little detail about how plugins effect the vulnerability of Sythe. Pretty specific huh? It’s kind of funny considering that was such a small part of my topic. Well that’s how things work, which leads to the next step of the process.

After a flaw has been found, that’s when all the lackies come on board. Once that flaw has been found, every single member who wants to prove themselves to the staff will instantly be against the OP. Essentially, the OP is bullied to the point where they are forced to give up. An example of this (http://sythe.org/showthread.php?t=1409487) . Perhaps the OP was wrong in how he approached the subject, and that can be expected considering it takes a while to become an expert in sythe policies, but his general idea was based on his experience. His post was based on what he had experienced, and what he had felt, yet the people who responded to him, insisted that he was wrong. Wrong. Apparently, people’s opinions can be wrong. I’ve noticed that’s not how things work around here. Unless you are a high ranking, well known member of the community, you’re opinion is wrong, and the staff’s opinion is right. This leads to what we have now, a staff feedback thread full of virtual high-fives, and pats on the back, and absolutley nothing negative is tolerated, which opens up all of the other problems I am going to get into.

One of these problems, as I talked about in my other thread is admin activity. Other than Finn, no other admin has been overwhelmingly active. I have heard the excuses a million times over, “admins have jobs”, “admins have to work”, “Sythe is no-ones first priority”, well that’s all well and good, but it’s not helping anyone. Countless times I have heard that admin’s aren’t required to be very active, but why not? Maybe that’s Richard’s fault for instilling that policy. Inactive admin’s may do the job, but really, are they helping anything? Sure they can do the job, but I guarantee there are plenty of people who can do the same exact things, and would be active at it as well. If you have a full time job, and don’t have the time to give to sythe, or don’t feel the need to give time to sythe, then you shouldn’t be an admin. Plain and simple. Admin’s are the highest of authorities, and yet they think they don’t need to do anything outside of the listed requirements. I also find it ironic that the general admins are stripped of many admin permissions because Matthew and/or Richard feel that they will “break” things. That is just ridiculous, if you don’t trust someone in the position, then why are they there? Richard, Matthew, and Govind are the “tech experts”, so they get all the permissions. Why? I may not know the extent of it, but if someone is an admin, they should atleast have the ability to do things admins do, such as give out a rank. This is especially important considering the “tech experts” do not feel they need to be present at all. That leaves us with 3 admins, who may put some activity forward, but what are they really other than some less active, glorified globals.

What do I propose to do about this? Make Govind/Matthew soley the tech experts, having them in the admin position just makes the admin group more crowded, which leaves people with the feeling that there are too many admins. That is of course unless they decide to start become more active. I understand your skills are necessary, and very beneficial, but unless you’re going to fill the entire role, don’t bother. Next, require the current general admins to be a part of the community. If you can’t do things the other admins can do, then what is your role? Handing out bans, closing threads? Sounds like a global’s job to me. If you’re not going to have the power to do other things, then what’s the point of having you? It would be very good for everyone if the admins were more involved. Participate in contests, post around more, do your best to support and grow the community. That’s what you need to do. Don’t sit back and just do the minimum requirements, you’re not helping anyone by doing that, there are plenty of people who can do that. If you have a job and can’t do that, then resign, you’re not helping anyone by doing what you’re doing. As I have said a million and one times, the admin role is a huge role to fill on a forum, so if you can’t fill it, you’re not doing anyone a favor by doing only what’s required of you.

I’d like to hope that instead of just doing the bully-until-it-dies tactic you will take this all into consideration.

II. Forum Tech
Lately, as I stated in my opening paragraph, I have been browsing other forums similair to sythe such as powerbot and ownedcore. I can honestly say I was blown away by how much sythe is lacking, and how far it is behind other forums. One can compare powerbot to Sythe and see how horribly behind Sythe is. (Please don’t bring up the people on powerbot because that is not what we are discussing, and I know it’s going to be one of those nitpicky points that people will try to use to make me out to be “wrong” in my opinion). The overall styles and features far surpass sythe. For example, a simple feature such as the bump timer:



Think about how big of a problem bumping is on Sythe, and think of how a majority, maybe not all, but a majority of those problems could be avoided by using something as simple as that feature.

Another feature we could talk about is the feedback system. It always confounds me as to why everyone is so against it. I think it’s probably because at some point someone said no, and so from now on everyone will defend to their grave that descision. Why? Well because a staff member said so. Why do ebay, amazon, and many other big market websites use a feedback system? Because it works. It keeps things organized an proffesional. So why is Sythe so against it? It goes back to my point from before, it has been denied at some point, and so it will never happen. Everyone is convinced that our system works, and so it doesn’t need to be changed. These are just a few of the features that sythe is lacking on. There are plenty more things that could be added to make things run better.
On my previous thread I was told:

You know what that is? Lazy. Lazy, and ridiculous. This is directed towards the “tech admins”, if you think something is going to be a vulernability, then you work to protect it. Avoiding adding new things because you don’t want to put the time and effort into protecting it is just plain ridiculous. How can you expect to grow without change or adding things? There are plenty of features that the site could benefit from, and if you want to avoid those because it could open up a vulnerability that you should be protecting, because that is your sole job after all, then why are you on Sythe? If you don’t care, and you don’t want to help it grow, then why are you here? WHY is Sythe being run by people who simply don’t care! It’s mind boggling, and extremely frustrating.

You can look at the VB4 upgrade as another example. VB4 brings many changes that are highly beneficial to the forum, and why don’t we have it yet? Because no one wants to put in the effort to making it happen. 3-4 months ago we heard “it’s almost done”, yeah well, that’s all well and good, but where is it? If you want to continue growing and flourshing, you have to put the effort in, or atleast put someone in charge who will.

III. Effects & Conclusion
I continue to stand by what I said before, Sythe is in a never ending state of limbo. We neither decline, nor grow. People move on, and new people come in, but really, we never grow. Eventually that will end. What happens when the runescape market, or runescape in general, dies? People can say it never will happen, but eventually it will. What will we have left over? People will leave in droves and sythe could collapse. How do we stop that, we grow the community. If we grow a community that is big enough to sustain far more than just runescape, well then we have a much more successful, much more profitable, and much more sustainable forum. Sure we can just stay where we are, and be in the constant state of limbo, but why not grow? I guarantee that when Sythe started, as any other forum does, the staff and the userbase did their best to put time, energy, and effort into making the site grow. I am an administrator on a new, growing forum, and I can see first hand right now all that is put into the site. We, the staff, and the userbase, are doing everything we can to grow, and it’s working. We don’t think “Eh what we have works”, we think “What we have is good, but how can it be better”. The lack of that feeling on Sythe is all to prevalent. We should be doing what we can to grow, so that instead of being like this:



We can be like this:



I want everyone to see that I am not trying to be the bad guy here. Why would I put this much time and effort into this if I just wanted to spite someone. PLEASE just take what I have into consideration, I have no interest in debating why my opinion is right or wrong, I just want to do my best to help the site grow. This is my last little hoo-rah, and maybe this time around it will work.

 

Since you finally gave a little I'm going to leave this open until FireZ comes back. But I'm also going to be a total dick about posts in here so be on topic and be useful or its getting deleted and you're being infracted. That's your warning.

Note: THIS IS A FEEDBACK FORUM, NOT A SUGGESTIONS FORUM.

 

I feel like this has been posted before...

You mean your 3 day absence? Or did you leave for some other large amount of time that I missed out on?..

This truly annoys me, you're stating that if you can't dedicate more time to Sythe (more than what the Staff Code states needs to be put in) you should leave?
I do not agree with Admin's not having most perms. Admin's should have access to nearly everything such as: Ranks. It's quite possible for more techy aspects they should not control simply due to not having the knowledge to do so. It's like giving an English guy a book in German. Sure, he can read, but he can't read that book.
If an admin didn't fill their entire role needed, they'd be thrown on probation or demoted. Different rules don't apply to different staff.

The bumping feature is a great idea and it should be instated in VB4. As for Feedback, I believe the biggest argument for instating a feedback system would be, "What about all of our vouches??" Some users have an excess of a thousand vouches, that would be a blast to transfer into our new feedback system. Unless it was an hybrid system where both feedback + vouches was accepted, it most-likely won't go through.

Lazy! Lazy! I have no idea how much coding would need to take place to be 100% sure a plugin isn't vulnerable. Do you? I'd personally love for our Admin's take the risk to implement a not-so-valuable plugin, not make sure it's 100% secure because "we" want it now, and in turn having a giant shit-storm on Sythe. Do you remember the big fuss a few months ago about or DB being compromised? Imagine that being real. Nonetheless, they also have jobs and such they need to adhere to. As you stated earlier, if they don't have the time they should give up their positions. Would you mind throwing out some other people that could fill the tech admin role?

I do agree we're in a state limbo, and maybe Sythe is fine with that. When someone finds the site they use, they generally stick to it and don't switch. You won't find that many users that use Hack Forums for 2 years and suddenly switch to Sythe, and vice verse. Each site as their pull. Why sites like MMO-Exchange are so crowded is due to the giant forum they already have. They had a bot with tens of thousands of users of course when they opened their market they'd have a giant amount of users.
Also, when you're on a new forum, all you can do is grow.. At-least for a time and then you will most-likely see a decline.

Not the bad guy, perhaps the annoying one. You've been given an answer 2 previous times. Do you honestly think everything single thing has just been gone, "o that's dumb" and no thought is put in? Perhaps it isn't probable at this very instant. Change doesn't take place over-night.

For TL;DR
In conclusion, some of your ideas are great, others not so much. Perhaps you should do what Wolfdog suggested and make a list of what you think should be done.
/holyshitlongpost
/didn'tproofread

 

I know you're going to whine about me only picking out one point, but I don't care.

I've heard absolutely enough about Admin activity to be honest. Each and everyone of our admins, as said, have jobs. Nobody ever said they don't have time for Sythe, they just don't have time to do the silly things like post and have fun in the community (which after all is not part of being an admin).

I'd like to question why it is so important to you that Admins post around, are they celebrities or something to you? They're the same as each and every other person on this forum, except they have the responsibility of Administrating the site, NOT SOCIALIZING ON IT. I don't know what part of Administrating you don't understand, but it has nothing to do with talking to people. Its strictly a workload of different things such as applying TwC's, doing promotions, keeping staff in order, etc.

What they do in their free time is their own business, and I'd like to point out that posting on the forums for fun to talk to people is strictly done in everybodys free time, not just an Admins.

It extremely irritates me when people complain that Admins are not active in the community, when in reality it is not their job here, or on any other online forum that I've ever been a part of. I'm not entirely sure why you think it is so important that they do post, but it's definitely beyond me.

Without trying to sound rude, I'd like to tell you that I will not be responding to you when you reply to this message, simply because every post I ever see belonging to you regarding these threads is simply a boat load of excuses and a way to make everybody else look bad except yourself.

Nobody is trying to make you look like an idiot for your suggestions, some of them are perfectly valid, but you simply go about discussing them the wrong way. Instead of accepting that you are wrong when someone constructively points out a flaw, you try to defend it, and then when human nature kicks in and people tell you that you are infact wrong, you accuse everyone of sucking up to staff.

Sorry if I sound like an ass in this post, I'm just absolutely fed up with the recent events leading up to this thread, and am simply voicing my opinion.

 

I have to contest the argument about not being active in the community as part of admin duty. I am and have been active in numerous online communities and it has never been the philosophy in any of them that the admins sit behind the shadows like some kind of high council. They're usually active, and some very active in the community itself while actively working to recruit and progressively improve the boards. I am not saying the admins are lazy or anything like that because I know they work hard, but it is their job to be part of the community. As you said they are normal members like you and me, but they have admin responsibilities. Admins not being a part of the community makes it seem like they're not interested in the community at all. How does it look when an admin has enough time to past in a sales thread but not post at least once a day in the community?

 

Firstly, you directly imply that there is no set admin guideline on those other sites that force them to be active in the community, they do it with their own free will. If they like to be active in the community, thats great, more power to them. However, what admins do on other sites does not carry over here, as everyone is different and has different priorities. Regardless, you fail to respond to why it is so important that they post and talk to you guys. I have yet to see anybody complain that certain sectionals don't post, or even globals, when infact, many of them pulled out of the community long ago.

 

Yes, but you should by now be aware that feedback and its consequential discussion often results in suggestions being made. It is through communal discussion, as in the thread x339 posted in a bid to prompt discourse both between staff & members and among the wider community, that, collectively, solutions can be found to problems.

I can't help but feel that x339's thread has been handled very unprofessionally. Rather than engaging x339, the staff have simply sought to berate him and attempt to make him look like an idiot, when in fact he has many valid points. If the staff cannot go into the Feedback section with an open mind and the ability to make concessions where they should be made, they should not go into the section at all. It is the staff, not x339, that made the thread redundant by demanding simplified lists and then eventually locking the thread because, presumably, they were growing tired of seeing it.

Perhaps if the staff vested as much time in responding to constructive feedback as x339 did in presenting it and responding to comments throughout the thread the site could move forward. It's not the end of the world if a feedback thread is half feedback and half suggestions. Petty insistence on everything being in the right place, here and there, when discussion was occurring, is frankly embarrassing and immature. If the users are discussing forwarding the site, allow them to do so. Even better - try and engage them and get involved, as opposed to sitting cynically on the sidelines looking down your nose at normal users trying to help out.

 

Then the admins at Sythe must just be an idiosyncratic bunch then because admins are active in every other community (in fact Basil over at FFX used to hang out in the shoutbox all of the time and talk and joke with people, I guess he just had pride in his community or something silly like that.) and if it isn't obvious why admins should post then I am not sure why you are even trying to argue. Admins are the leaders of the community, and as I used the analogy before, they shouldn't be some sort of shadowed high council that shouts command through their lackeys. Then you mention globals and sectionals which is completely irrelevant to the discussion.

 

Many of the admins are in the IRC quite a lot. Matthew also pops by now and then for a couple hours. We are different than other forums. We don't promote admins willy nilly as we have had far too many admin issues over the years. We want admins we can trust and count on so if they have real life stuff that is taking up their time we allow that. I know it's nice to be able to get in touch with an admin but 99% of the time a global will be just fine.

 

I'm not one to stir up controversy, but I've been monitoring this fiasco and I feel the need to chime in here.

What is accomplished by all the hostility from staff I've been seeing here? Are suggestions not feedback? When you leave negative feedback about something, you're indicating it should be changed, and you'd like your appeal to be considered. By taking this route you fail to recognize (or remain willfully ignorant) that, if the OP were to instead just post a list of complaints without solutions, we would be far less productive in here. Sythe.org is not an old couple bickering; it is capable of changing for the better.

Plugging your ears, shouting "lalalala" and shutting down people who are trying to improve the forums is completely moronic. It needs to stop.

 

If using globals and sectionals as an example is irrelevant (comparing, as their too are leaders), then so is using Admins on another site as an example for comparison.

You obviously cannot point out why it is so obvious that Admins should post, or you would have done so already.

When it comes to them "shouting commands through their lackeys", I'm not even sure what you're referring to. I'm not sure how you THINK the staff tiers work, but everybody has a different job, and I have yet to see an Admin tell a global or sectional to do something rather than do it themselves.

Sectionals moderate spam and do scam reports, Globals do spam reports, scam reports, handle bans, vote, and handle situations through the staff lounge. Admins actually respond to the requests of globals and sectionals, which is directly related to each of their tasks listed above, such as applying TwC's, IP bans, and having a final say in some voting predicaments. Before you ask me where I am going with this, I am simply disproving your theory that admins simply sit there and shout commands at their "lackeys".

EDIT:

For Tgump: Please do not generalize the staff as a whole, each staff member has their own opinion and will voice it as such. Theres a reason they use polls, they are all different people with different views.

As far as I have seen, no staff member has turned down his whole suggestion, except picked out reasons why certain ones cannot be implemented, such as the plugin suggestion being subject to malicious abuse. If someone being able to harm the site though a plugin is such a small thing and no reason to say "not right now" to a suggestion, I suggest you rethink. Harming the site will not change it for the better, and its idiotic to think that.

 

My 'generalization' applies to anyone that's engaged in this closing drama. In the interest of productivity you need to keep the thread open for discussion, not censor it. If anyone on staff closes feedback threads when they don't like the feedback (i.e. it's stupid) then frankly they need to stop going into the feedback forum and let people that are more emotionally stable handle it.

 

Again, you're generalizing the actions of one staff member as if the whole team did it. Its about time you go look and see that some staff members actually raised some concerns that he could not settle.

 

Actually I saw one or two posts from staff in total, that I responded too, and was told that I don't listen. There is hardly any staff participation happen, and honestly thats the only way things are going to happen.

 

I suggest you reread my post! It was specifically catered toward anyone who engaged in the censorship (or whatever you may wish to call it) and not the staff as a whole. As x339 pointed out perhaps more staff members should be active here. Currently the opinions of a few (that do not make the entirety of the staff look very good) are skewing the debate.

 

Has the idea ever occured to you that maybe someone asked the question they wanted to ask, and to abide by the rules they simply sat out and waited for it to be answered?

Assuming that they are ignoring it is completely ridiculous, because I guarantee you that they are not.

 

Tread carefully gentlemen, this thread is starting to wane off the topic of feedback.

 

Or a lot of free time; something that's been made clear our admins don't have too much of. But if we had admins with a lot of free time irl, what would that say about their character? Do they not work or have other responsibilities?
x339, I know you aren't asking that the staff devote their lives to Sythe, but you're certainly treating the matter with (at least from my perspective) a startling vigor that I can help but interpret as plea for the Sythe staff to make the forum their priority.

In the previous thread, Verts mentioned that admins are selected on the basis of maturity and responsibility. Doesn't having responsibilities (such as work) outside of Sythe exhibit a degree of maturity? Obviously they need to show maturity in the context of the forum as well.

 

As I have said time and time again, I understand the staff have lives outside of sythe, but I also think that they aren't doing enough on sythe. People seem to interpret my suggestion of activity as "Admins need to post more", while that would be nice, it's not precisely what I am getting at. I want the admins to be more involved instead of just the people who sit behind the scenes making some decisions. I 100% get that staff have other priorities, but it shouldn't be an excuse not to give their job here on sythe the attention it needs, and that's what I feel it's become, an excuse.

 

This is utterly untrue. First and foremost, I'd like to establish that despite working full-time, FireZ is more active than any administrator I remember, other than possibly Pen at the beginning his adminship. I have access to Control Panel logs, and I can honestly say that as far as the statement than "other than finn, no other admin has been overwhelmingly active" is absurd.

In addition, my job by definition entails a lot of free time; I am paid simply for being available for help; if nothing comes up, I can use that time to browse Sythe, which I do.

Again, utterly untrue. Whenever a request for something that a general admin does not have access to is forwarded to me, I handle it for them. Likewise, whenever I need something done requiring filesystem or database access, I escalate it as well, and it is handled as fast as possible.

The Admin Control Panel has areas that allow writing arbitrary PHP code, SQL queries, and the ability to edit HTML anywhere on the site, for any style. If you read the vBulletin manual, you'd see that they recommend forum owners against giving these permissions to any other administrators, so the fact that anyone other than Sythe can control these areas is exceptional on its own.

This is another attempt at distorting the way the admin structure works to make it seem like there is a huge problem and a backlog of requests to handle that Sythe, Matthew and myself are too busy to deal with. There isn't. Everything gets dealt with; access control is in place for the same reason that any workplace has clearance levels - some people are more qualified to handle things that are highly technical in nature because used incorrectly, they might not have the intended results.

Again, taking advantage of the fact that most people don't understand technical details about vBulletin. In order to handle technical tasks, you need access to the Admin Control Panel. vBulletin doesn't know the difference between a "Tech admin" and a "General admin"; there is only one usergroup for administrators, and creating a new usergroup won't work either, because the usergroupid is hardcoded into vBulletin files.

IP banning, administering TwC ranks, and posting staff promotion polls are what general admins should be doing (incidentally, this is the same task they had even when Finn was an admin). If previous administrators chose to be outgoing and "post around more", great for them. No one is expected to do that to be a competent administrator.

Custom plugins will wait until vBulletin 4 comes out. The APIs between the two versions are markedly different, and putting in effort now would require fundamental rewrites once the upgrade is made.

Also, powerbot.org's forums opened in 2009, when vBulletin 4 was current. Sythe.org upgraded to vBulletin when vBulletin 3.6 was current.

If you think Sythe.org is the only forum stuck using a dated version of vBulletin, these are the top vBulletin sites according to Big-Boards rankings:

http://rankings.big-boards.com/?filter=vBulletin,all

Try visiting the top sites listed here - NONE of them are on vB4. Hell, SomethingAwful, one of the largest and best-known sites on the Internet, still uses vBulletin 2.2.9.

Of course vBulletin.com will always upgrade to the latest version of their own software, because doing anything else would look bad for business. Aside from them, can you name any sites anywhere near (or larger than) the size of Sythe.org that have upgraded from vB3 to vB4? I don't think you understand the technical consequences associated with upgrading a forum this size. There will certainly be data loss, for one thing. The fact that we are making an effort to upgrade is exceptional on its own. We have a dev site set up, and lots of progress has been made by myself and Matthew. The upgrade is waiting largely on Sythe, who is currently away with patchy internet access - there are aspects of the site that only he can control and which need to be prepared for vBulletin 4.

To close, I'd also like to point out that a replica similar feedback thread was posted last December, to which I posted my own thread responding to on behalf of the administration (http://www.sythe.org/showthread.php?t=1305078), and you, x339, posted this: