What's happening in here?

[Xiz]

Re: What's happening in here?

Unless someone gets ownership from tass, or pulls some uber leet hacks to take it away from him, nothing is gonna change.

Most of these problems everyone keeps pissing on each other about wont be fixed unless the biggest problem is dealt with. Simple as that.
People have his number. You got in contact with him before. Take it from him.

[noname219]

Re: What's happening in here?

Unless someone gets ownership from tass, or pulls some uber leet hacks to take it away from him, nothing is gonna change.

Most of these problems everyone keeps pissing on each other about wont be fixed unless the biggest problem is dealt with. Simple as that.
People have his number. You got in contact with him before. Take it from him.

Synth?

[justin_ator]

Re: What's happening in here?

Unless someone gets ownership from tass, or pulls some uber leet hacks to take it away from him, nothing is gonna change.

Most of these problems everyone keeps pissing on each other about wont be fixed unless the biggest problem is dealt with. Simple as that.
People have his number. You got in contact with him before. Take it from him.

???

If this is in reference to Tass, I'm lost.
If it's in reference to Synthlight, I'm also lost.

Don't we have decent communication with Synth now, just not regular presence from him?

[Trumpet63]

Re: What's happening in here?

Don't we have decent communication with Synth now, just not regular presence from him?

Staff has contact with Synth though, all they have to do is shoot a text to him. I've talked to him through text a few times. Yes he's not a huge presence on the site anymore, but things can still get done without him.

A select few individuals can contact him with mixed results. I would describe him as aloof. I wouldn't call it 'decent communication', just from what I've heard second hand, but that's semantics.

[Untimely Friction]

Re: What's happening in here?

mfw reading thread and I see synth online. This always seems to happen.

[-JiZ53-]

Re: What's happening in here?

Everybody, stop complaining and make me moderator. Also, synth, i think it is time we brought back the downvote.

[MosaicMan3]

Re: What's happening in here?

I think this is a really unfair statement, there has been a lot of stuff that has been done. I wouldn't say that the site is worse than it was, but there is a lot of things that can be improved on.

Normally I wouldn't make such harsh statements, however when a year ago there was 300-500 people on at any given time. Now there's 250 people on during peak gaming hours.

Not matter what anybodies opinion is, when you face the facts, less people are playing meaning that this game is either worse OR falling behind other games. I.e. not enough updates, not enough comminity, or whatever draws someone here. Clearly people are migrating to other games, and less new members are coming on board.

A bit of advertising wouldn't hurt, if you ran a "donation" year round and potentially offered forum icons, and the donated songs. That could be enough to pay for advertisements. But when in comes to this, I'm taking out of my ass, I haven't crunched the numbers. But just a good hearted suggestion.

[Synthlight]

Re: What's happening in here?

The problem is that giving the site to anyone isn't going to solve anything on a significant scale. The access that is needed is out there. In my eyes there are a few problems.

1) The site grew immensely from somewhere around 2005 until 2008. It grew so much that when the commercial aspect went away, everyone was left with a tremendous amount of custom code and a very large site in general. This meant that any sort of management required a large team. As we know, large volunteer teams are notoriously difficult to organize.

2) I know Zageron has lead the charge with others for years to head this site up. He knows first hand the tremendous effort involved. Believe me, many of you will never fully realize the amount of time and effort he put behind his tenure here. The stress level is monumental. But like any of us, he has to balance life + his volunteer efforts here. This is not his fault, it's the reality of the situation. Undeniably, this scenario means it makes for difficult forward momentum.

4) Me.. This is going to sound conceited but I am very aware of the general marketing and brand recognition needed to make a product succeed. I have not been part of that for some time now and have been busy building my career and caring for my family. Hate me or not, that stuff always needs be a priority in my life. I dumped my soul into this site and game between 2001 and 2008 and risked everything I had, even my house. There were always groups that were critical of when it was small and then being a "sellout" when I made the staff lots of money. Eventually I chose to save my family and move into a career. If you think you wouldn't do the same thing, you wouldn't be telling the truth.

5) If someone were to "take the site" what would you do with it that cannot be done right now? How would you change things? How would you accomplish those goals and will people respond to those goals? Have you done it before? Who would lead?

Yes, I have been available for serious emergencies and I pay hundreds of dollars each month to keep the server online. Beyond that, aloof is a good description of my involvement. I have gone through a major job change in the past year and moved into a COO position. I have been incredibly busy acclimating to the new position. People can be upset with me and I completely get it. I don't blame them. Of course, this comes back around to what would anyone else reading this do? Would they be willing to commit themselves to serious change around here? Especially considering we operate on a volunteer basis.

Throw questions my way if you like, I would be happy to answer any and all questions you guys might have. I am an open book!


Cheers,

Synthlight

[psychoangel691]

Re: What's happening in here?

The problem is that giving the site to anyone isn't going to solve anything on a significant scale. The access that is needed is out there. In my eyes there are a few problems.

1) The site grew immensely from somewhere around 2005 until 2008. It grew so much that when the commercial aspect went away, everyone was left with a tremendous amount of custom code and a very large site in general. This meant that any sort of management required a large team. As we know, large volunteer teams are notoriously difficult to organize.

2) I know Zageron has lead the charge with others for years to head this site up. He knows first hand the tremendous effort involved. Believe me, many of you will never fully realize the amount of time and effort he put behind his tenure here. The stress level is monumental. But like any of us, he has to balance life + his volunteer efforts here. This is not his fault, it's the reality of the situation. Undeniably, this scenario means it makes for difficult forward momentum.

4) Me.. This is going to sound conceited but I am very aware of the general marketing and brand recognition needed to make a product succeed. I have not been part of that for some time now and have been busy building my career and caring for my family. Hate me or not, that stuff always needs be a priority in my life. I dumped my soul into this site and game between 2001 and 2008 and risked everything I had, even my house. There were always groups that were critical of when it was small and then being a "sellout" when I made the staff lots of money. Eventually I chose to save my family and move into a career. If you think you wouldn't do the same thing, you wouldn't be telling the truth.

5) If someone were to "take the site" what would you do with it that cannot be done right now? How would you change things? How would you accomplish those goals and will people respond to those goals? Have you done it before? Who would lead?

Yes, I have been available for serious emergencies and I pay hundreds of dollars each month to keep the server online. Beyond that, aloof is a good description of my involvement. I have gone through a major job change in the past year and moved into a COO position. I have been incredibly busy acclimating to the new position. People can be upset with me and I completely get it. I don't blame them. Of course, this comes back around to what would anyone else reading this do? Would they be willing to commit themselves to serious change around here? Especially considering we operate on a volunteer basis.

Throw questions my way if you like, I would be happy to answer any and all questions you guys might have. I am an open book!


Cheers,

Synthlight

But there are people who have offered to put extra time in to do various things to help out but the people at the top of the chain have this refusal to allow other people have some of the power it seems. I'm a stay at home mom, I offered a million times to head up various things and always got rejected.


Of course I don't mean to be offending anyone, a lot of people have volunteered a lot of time into the site and that's always super appreciated. I've pulled plenty of all nighters trying to get events together and such. But when people at the top of the chain are getting busy and there's no on there to help keep things rolling, everything falls apart.

[Synthlight]

Re: What's happening in here?

worse[/I] OR falling behind other games. I.e. not enough updates, not enough comminity, or whatever draws someone here. Clearly people are migrating to other games, and less new members are coming on board.

This site succeeded not because FFR had superior features or software in general but because of the community that was rallied around it. I treated this site like a BBS from the 1980's. Like albums before people could by or stream single songs. It's a sense of experience. There was a common interest fortified by many avenues of communication. The game itself was just the flower on top of a long ass sunflower.

[justin_ator]

Re: What's happening in here?

A bit of advertising wouldn't hurt, if you ran a "donation" year round and potentially offered forum icons, and the donated songs. That could be enough to pay for advertisements.

I get where you're coming from but I feel like this is a whole different topic altogether. Stagnant site dev and event holding =/= userbase growth. They are related, yes, but are different things to be addressed. (and no I'm not saying the event team is failing at hosting things, just including that in the statement)

[Synthlight]

Re: What's happening in here?

Of course I don't mean to be offending anyone, a lot of people have volunteered a lot of time into the site and that's always super appreciated. I've pulled plenty of all nighters trying to get events together and such. But when people at the top of the chain are getting busy and there's no on there to help keep things rolling, everything falls apart.

I don't think you are offending anyone. I know from Zag and others the amount of time you have spent here at FFR and believe me, people are grateful for it. But I think you kept on running into the same problem with getting everyone on board long term at the same time. Regarding being rejected, I would love to hear more about this but maybe through PM or Skype.

[TC_Halogen]

Re: What's happening in here?

I just want to hear an actual solution as to how problems with transparency are going to be solved in the first place. I have no issues with you Synth, and honestly, thank you for bringing yourself in here and thank you additionally for keeping this place alive when you don't need to.

...however, I'm not particularly impressed with Zageron's job personally and I have no problem calling him out on that, as someone who was reasonably high up on the staff chain. His response earlier in this thread stating that "he tried" to do things is far from satisfying, considering that while I was on staff handling both game management and events management and almost never heard from him. As mentioned earlier, the area where everyone was supposed to communicate, Slack, fell empty and inactive. A member of the dev team felt like he resonated with parts of my points that I extremely aggressively pointed out, all leading back towards the same thing: a lack of transparency. Zageron, I'm sorry if this comes to you as a shock, but from what I can see, and obviously from what other users can see considering threads like this have come up in the past and only then did you make an appearance to handle damage control: people are not happy.

This isn't intended to be narcissistic at all, but for christ's sake: look at the user that is drilling you right now. I have music in game, I have content in game, I've hosted numerous user tournaments, two official tournaments, various events, judged simfiles -- hell, the only parts of the site that I have not seen are the ones that are being chastised as being closed off in the first place. Look at the previous threads that have been made about this same problem that I came in and tried to drill into everyone in this thread, and other users in previous threads. What is going to be done to fix things? Considering that users have made these threads of concern in the past, I think it's safe to say that even users are desperate at this point and want to find ways to bring life back into the site.

I apologize if I continue to be brash and seem like I'm deranged, but when a 10+ year user who was on a bunch of areas of staff has to leave because of frustration with the lack of communication, responsibility, and accountability for issues, there's something that needs to be looked at.

[_Zenith_]

Re: What's happening in here?

I'm not sure we are discrediting how stressful the entire situation is, but more that we are noticing little to no transparency from various staffed members where the community is left in a void of "when's the last day?" and "is there even work being done?".

Having Psychoangel doing FPPs again is one of the right steps in creating more of the lost transparency that the community is looking for.

[psychoangel691]

Re: What's happening in here?

I don't think you are offending anyone. I know from Zag and others the amount of time you have spent here at FFR and believe me, people are grateful for it. But I think you kept on running into the same problem with getting everyone on board long term at the same time. Regarding being rejected, I would love to hear more about this but maybe through PM or Skype.

With the events team I've had people who have been with me since the day I started it that are still on board, and I've added people as needed. I don't expect people to stay on a volunteer position forever, but that's not what I'm going on about, it's that there's nobody that's taking the initiative to keep things rolling, remove people who are no long active staff and find others that are willing. There are some really super talented people on this site with coding and such.