The Big Talk
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2019 12:25 pm
This is mostly a copy/paste from my announcement on discord. I probably won't reply much to this announcement due to how busy I am, but everyone is free to discuss their thoughts here too.
Edit: This topic is also a direct response to this: viewtopic.php?f=79&t=23674
Hello everyone. I've made this announcement strictly tor discuss what happened Thursday in regards to the idea that the admins thought about moving everything to Reddit, and the community basically going absolutely mad about the idea. This might be a little lengthy and all over the place, so bear with me. I hope you'll take the time to read this.
Firstly, I want to thank all of you guys so much for keeping this community alive and well (for the most part). There have been several rocky instances that have taken place since I've become a mod, an admin, and then webmaster. This recent disaster might be one for the books. I know I'm not perfect, and I'm not looking for you guys to feel sorry for me, but I truly do want to apologize because I know I've never been the one to speak up most of the time whenever anything was going down. I know I have directly or indirectly caused resentment due to my inactivity as the website leader. That's my fault, and no one else's. When Joey had announced to the staff team that he basically needed to give up the forum, I jumped on the idea. He had way too much going on in his life, and it was only a matter of time before he had to say goodbye. Boy, I had no idea what I was actually in for.
Being webmaster isn't hard, but it isn't easy either. For the most part, my duty is to make sure the website stays up by paying for it, making backups, fixing internal issues, etc. I think you get the idea. What I'm getting at is that since I take care of all the boring stuff that no one else really wants to do, my biggest responsibility is to make sure I have a strong staff team that can be a good face for the community. I really don't want to get into this part too much, but I think you all know where I'm coming from when I say that there have been some really concerning things in regards to the staff. This is where I feel like I've let everyone down the most. You know, it can pretty tough finding people who are active, willing, and fit enough to represent the community as a whole. The staff team works very hard to try to satisfy the majority, and to make sure this place is warm and welcoming to old and new members.
You may have noticed that over time, the admins have slowly been less and less active and engaging with the community. This might sound crazy to some of you guys, but we all have a lot of things going on in our personal lives. It was becoming harder and harder to keep up with our administrative duties as times went on. Eventually, some even lost the will to do anything entirely. It happens. No one stays mod/admin forever. People grow up or move on to other things. Life happens, and you need to get your priorities straight. This is something I've been personally battling for the past several months. So many new, scary, and amazing opportunities have come into my life, and SMBX was slowly starting to fall by the wayside. This was starting to take a huge toll on my conscience because I am supposed to be leading a community, but I just didn't have a drive to do anything anymore. I felt stuck.
This was when an idea that Aristo had thrown at me months ago had surfaced in my head again. What if we simply archived the forums, and shift everything over to an SMBX subreddit? The idea sounded great to me... on paper. The community would basically run itself! We could make flairs for different topics, people could upvote/downvote, and the minimalist nature of reddit would make moderation so much easier! The more I thought about it, the more I was pretty cool with the idea, given that my drive to continue on with this community had plummeted. How could this possibly go wrong? Boy lemme tell you how.
The most foolish mistake I made was that this idea was discussed amongst the admins, and only the admins. There was absolutely no transparency in this what-so-ever, not even with the mods. We didn't even think twice to ask the mods how they felt about something like this. We didn't even want to consider the ideas of asking the community how they felt about it. It was what we were going to do, and that was it. In my eyes, and the other admins' eyes, we figured "Who even cares. the community would probably like the idea, and there's only 50 sum active users anyways. What could possibly go wrong?" What we had initially thought was a great idea, ended up being the worst idea ever and I've realized that, whether the other former admins agree with me on that or not. I was looking for a quick and easy way to just set myself free from a problem that I had been running away from. That was so stupid of me, and probably the absolute worst thing a leader can do.
When the idea was impulsively presented, it was the storm of the century. There were heated arguments, strong provocations, and disheartened reactions on discord and the global announcement. The community's reaction truly spoke volumes to me. I had thought that no one truly cared about this community, and I was completely wrong. The announcement actually proved otherwise!
What I want to happily announce is that We're not moving to reddit, end of story. What I also want to say, is that there are going to be some changes around here within the staff team, along with how it operates. People are going to be shifted around, people are being hired, and some people have been let go. It sucks to have to let some people go, but it is what it is. I don't know if you'll be happy to hear me say this, but I've decided to keep my role as webmaster, and just that. I don't have too much of a desire to much administrating, nor do I have the time. I will however happily continue to keep the website up and running so long as the community remains active, and I can get a good working staff team to help me keep it going. Voice your opinions here! Know that I care about each and every one of you!
Edit: This topic is also a direct response to this: viewtopic.php?f=79&t=23674
Hello everyone. I've made this announcement strictly tor discuss what happened Thursday in regards to the idea that the admins thought about moving everything to Reddit, and the community basically going absolutely mad about the idea. This might be a little lengthy and all over the place, so bear with me. I hope you'll take the time to read this.
Firstly, I want to thank all of you guys so much for keeping this community alive and well (for the most part). There have been several rocky instances that have taken place since I've become a mod, an admin, and then webmaster. This recent disaster might be one for the books. I know I'm not perfect, and I'm not looking for you guys to feel sorry for me, but I truly do want to apologize because I know I've never been the one to speak up most of the time whenever anything was going down. I know I have directly or indirectly caused resentment due to my inactivity as the website leader. That's my fault, and no one else's. When Joey had announced to the staff team that he basically needed to give up the forum, I jumped on the idea. He had way too much going on in his life, and it was only a matter of time before he had to say goodbye. Boy, I had no idea what I was actually in for.
Being webmaster isn't hard, but it isn't easy either. For the most part, my duty is to make sure the website stays up by paying for it, making backups, fixing internal issues, etc. I think you get the idea. What I'm getting at is that since I take care of all the boring stuff that no one else really wants to do, my biggest responsibility is to make sure I have a strong staff team that can be a good face for the community. I really don't want to get into this part too much, but I think you all know where I'm coming from when I say that there have been some really concerning things in regards to the staff. This is where I feel like I've let everyone down the most. You know, it can pretty tough finding people who are active, willing, and fit enough to represent the community as a whole. The staff team works very hard to try to satisfy the majority, and to make sure this place is warm and welcoming to old and new members.
You may have noticed that over time, the admins have slowly been less and less active and engaging with the community. This might sound crazy to some of you guys, but we all have a lot of things going on in our personal lives. It was becoming harder and harder to keep up with our administrative duties as times went on. Eventually, some even lost the will to do anything entirely. It happens. No one stays mod/admin forever. People grow up or move on to other things. Life happens, and you need to get your priorities straight. This is something I've been personally battling for the past several months. So many new, scary, and amazing opportunities have come into my life, and SMBX was slowly starting to fall by the wayside. This was starting to take a huge toll on my conscience because I am supposed to be leading a community, but I just didn't have a drive to do anything anymore. I felt stuck.
This was when an idea that Aristo had thrown at me months ago had surfaced in my head again. What if we simply archived the forums, and shift everything over to an SMBX subreddit? The idea sounded great to me... on paper. The community would basically run itself! We could make flairs for different topics, people could upvote/downvote, and the minimalist nature of reddit would make moderation so much easier! The more I thought about it, the more I was pretty cool with the idea, given that my drive to continue on with this community had plummeted. How could this possibly go wrong? Boy lemme tell you how.
The most foolish mistake I made was that this idea was discussed amongst the admins, and only the admins. There was absolutely no transparency in this what-so-ever, not even with the mods. We didn't even think twice to ask the mods how they felt about something like this. We didn't even want to consider the ideas of asking the community how they felt about it. It was what we were going to do, and that was it. In my eyes, and the other admins' eyes, we figured "Who even cares. the community would probably like the idea, and there's only 50 sum active users anyways. What could possibly go wrong?" What we had initially thought was a great idea, ended up being the worst idea ever and I've realized that, whether the other former admins agree with me on that or not. I was looking for a quick and easy way to just set myself free from a problem that I had been running away from. That was so stupid of me, and probably the absolute worst thing a leader can do.
When the idea was impulsively presented, it was the storm of the century. There were heated arguments, strong provocations, and disheartened reactions on discord and the global announcement. The community's reaction truly spoke volumes to me. I had thought that no one truly cared about this community, and I was completely wrong. The announcement actually proved otherwise!
What I want to happily announce is that We're not moving to reddit, end of story. What I also want to say, is that there are going to be some changes around here within the staff team, along with how it operates. People are going to be shifted around, people are being hired, and some people have been let go. It sucks to have to let some people go, but it is what it is. I don't know if you'll be happy to hear me say this, but I've decided to keep my role as webmaster, and just that. I don't have too much of a desire to much administrating, nor do I have the time. I will however happily continue to keep the website up and running so long as the community remains active, and I can get a good working staff team to help me keep it going. Voice your opinions here! Know that I care about each and every one of you!
I think that greatly contributed to settling things. I can imagine that administrative work takes quite some time, while interests may shift and real live keeps interfering - that's the reason why I'm online here only once or twice a week, but then regularly.