3rd times the charm

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.

 

Support.

 

I support with the Forum Tech, we really need to upgrade to vB 4.

With the Admin part, they do their best. They try to come on as much as they can, but most admins have full time jobs. Sythe is only a secondary activity, not a full time job.

And with the Effects, I believe we have the most amount of people we can get for now. Unless there is another major update with RS, (like Free Trade), we can't really expect a mass amount of new members.

 

Support X I think that are some great things to implement.
I'd love the bumping problem 'fixed'..

 

You seriously need to quit with the attention seeking. If the last thread is closed, then it was done for a reason (I imagine because it turned into a pissing contest between you and a few others). I suspect that this thread will be closed as well. If you are genuinely making these threads out of actual concern for the well being of the site (which I doubt), you should really change your method of approaching the issue and your attitude towards those who disagree with you.

 

Support. A bumping tool would be the servers best friend. It will cut down on 1000s of weekly bumping posts.

 

If you want others to work with you you need to be able to work with others. The reason the last thread was going no where is your inability to accept criticism. Perhaps if you actually allowed yourself to work with people rather than arguing your way out of every single point that anyone made (especially those who support(ed) your views), you would get somewhere.

 

The reason the last thread was going nowhere is because I was arguing with people like SuF and Wolfdog the whole time. They aren't the ones this post is addressed towards, and just doing what they say because they said to isn't going to help anything. It's the admins involvement that is going to change things, not theirs. So of course as I continue to have these endless arguments with the people who will not listen to me as much as I will not listen to them, it appears as though things are going in circles. Just because they are criticizing me, doesn't mean I should just bow down and accept what they are saying, I disagree, and so I defend myself. I don't see why that's being held against me.

 

You want him to quit this when all he wants is to make sure Sythe has a successful future with a larger amount of people and active admins? I don't even.

x339, I have read the thread in full and agree 100%. I have known about your thread(s) for awhile and never really had an obligation to read them as I knew it was most likely a losing battle, and my support would probably mean very little, but I think this time has hope for BIG and GOOD change. After taking a look at what you have to say, you have my absolute support. I have just registered to powerbot and personally can agree with on forum tech. Also I've read a post and have learned that their admins are rather active with the community look: http://www.powerbot.org/community/t...-vs-homsu-achieve-attendee-rank/#entry8169609, the admins are working on an event! We really do need our admins to be a bigger part of the community, if we have any hopes of growing. And of course stepping up in forum tech is extremely advisable.

I think the ideas you have are definitely plausible, and with everyone's support we CAN achieve it. I would just like to know how many other people would like to help out, I have plenty of ideas on how to make Sythe grow, I can step up and help.

 

Support, he's clearly not going to stop posting these threads, so we might as well sit around and discuss it. I agree with most if not all of his points, and I feel something should be done about it.

 

Yes, but you are incredibly adamant on every single idea you have. Room must be left to develop.
Anyhow, I would say I agree with many of your ideas.

 

support many ideas are very well thought out. I agree with all that he is saying, we need chang

 

You want the entire community to be active and involved, yet you only want a select few to debate about your ideas on your thread?

 

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 want the people who this is directed at to get involved instead of this arguing with others that, as many have said, is going in circles.

 

I agree, especially with your conclusion.
Thank you for your thoughtful post on such a serious matter.

I honestly don't see anything wrong with Sythe. The Market's doing pretty good, and I'm making more money than ever, so something is obviously clicking.

Isn't it directed toward the community as a whole, though? Or are you directing it at the select few who you think can force the community to magically grow?

 

Precisely, this is directed at the ones who have the power to make it grow. I know your just going to use this statement against me, but it's the truth, and I hardly see a problem with that.

Edit: @Tmoe thank you for posting some well-thought out criticism instead of the typical rage inspired posts ive come to expect

 

Everyone has the power to make it grow.. Tell your friends, put it in your signature, do whatever. The community is already big.. against perhaps Sythe is fine with that.

 

You may take our membership, but you'll never take our FREEDOM!

​

 

Well then perhaps my next thread will be about that.