The Last Word
Posted: Sat May 16, 2015 8:33 pm
Let me begin here by affirming that this is not a response to Deoxys's recent drama. I've been intending to leave this community slowly and subtly for a while, hence my slowly decreasing activity. I've been in this community for years and I've managed to get involved in more or less every single argument along the way. So I'm going to end off this one giant argument with my last words here. Disagree if you will, these are my final thoughts on the matter.
So what's wrong with this community? Let's start by focusing on the people. The forums seem to be a constant warzone, with users and the staff constantly arguing with each other and polarizing themselves into either group. There's your first problem: the staff aren't an elite group. The staff should be your friendly neighborhood police officers, trusted to clear up evident problems when they arise, but still a part of the community. Staff/userbase arguments shouldn't be possible because the line between the two shouldn't be distinguishable. That is EVIDENTLY not the case here though. And at the head of the problem, is the first and most obvious person I must individually target: Joey. I don't know about everyone else, but I've found the Featured Episode each month downright laughable when it comes up. Every month the featured episode comes up with a description that touches on nothing but a vague description of how the graphics appear. Come to find out, this is because Joey doesn't even play the episodes he features. Doesn't have time. Does this not strike anyone else as a problem? That Joey doesn't play the game he is head admin of the community for? I'd even say fair enough if he still displayed activity with the community, but no. System updates and new features take months if they ever even happen at all, and he has very limited activity on the forum outside of moderating it. Now I get it. He's a busy guy, fair enough. But if he's too busy, he's too busy. That excuses his shortcomings, but it doesn't solve them. We need administration that is capable of being a part of the community and doing things. Despite my issues with Valtteri (which will be discussed in a bit), I can at the very least say he did this. Which is probably why he was not constantly under fire from the community. He was part of the community, not just a mysterious Big Brother at the top who would come in and change things at random. I use Joey as the icon of the problem, but it exists in more mild forms throughout the staff. This needs to stop if the community vs. staff drama is to end.
On the other end, we have people like Deoxys. People who are exacerbating the issue with pointless drama. Let me ask you something: what in the world makes you think Deoxys is going to do any better? May I remind you how before this it was all about how Knux is a tyrant and Joey will do so much better? Is it perhaps time to acknowledge that the problem lies in the community itself and not in its leadership? I don't want to delve too much into this again because I know it upsets Danny and I'd prefer to leave him out of this, but need I remind people of the incidents that took place with Deoxys running the survival games? Need I point out how passive aggressive and rude his topic is despite trying to affirm the opposite? This is not the solution. Making a new forum claiming to be a safe-haven from the other forum and then posting a big dramatic topic about the evils of the first forum has never, is not going to, and will never work. This is not a new thing. The users feel disrespected by the staff, but this is how people react to the staff making decisions they disapprove of. And don't give me that, "the staff don't respond if we ask nicely". Most of the "asking nicely" I've seen has been short of polite or lacking in any concrete reasons against decisions. And even when those are present, sometimes the staff does just have to make executive decisions. If you can not accept someone with more authority over you making a decision you do not agree with then you are going to have a hard time surviving in the world. It's sad but true to say that you can never please anyone.
The next problem ties in with this. The next problem is the severe factionism. Everyone here makes a couple friends and they forum a small group that do things together. This is great, and contributes to community. The problem here is that these smaller factions all seem to think that this forum is their personal community. It's not. This is a community for Super Mario Brothers X. Anything else that stems from it is great, but at its core this is a community for all fans of SMBX. The community should not and will not shape itself to what will make it most suited to you and your friends. This is where the aformentioned "executive decisions" have to come in. If you and your friends want your own personal hangout where you can play by your own rules, then make a small forum for just yourselves. It's free, easy, and quick. But this doesn't happen. Every time a faction wants their hangout, they decide to try and make it the new big official smbx forum, and then try to sap all of the existing SMBX users over to it. Honestly, I don't understand why. If these people weren't your friends to begin with, then what, you just want power over them? Or you just want to try and remake the same community except with the things you want changed? Either way, the former is ignoble and the latter is unrealistic. Make your own forum, meet on a social service like Steam/Skype, or generally just do anything else. Stop trying to turn this community into you and your friends personal stomping grounds because that's not what it's for.
The final major problem is just the general attitude this community has towards people. Everyone seems to have some prejudice that certain people are "good" or "bad" or "important" or "a noob". People are judged based on this rather than based on their actions. This no doubt applies to the staff too. Note the various accusations that multiple people were Knux. Because Knux is bad and must be causing problems at all times. There is an entire topic in the staff forums devoted to whether or not Danny should be banned where Joey was pushing to ban him for a very long time of off oftentimes shoddy reasoning. Because Danny is bad. Meanwhile when Valtteri nearly destroyed our affiliation with the Talkhaus, and managed to successfully be permabanned from one of our affiliates for inappropriately childish and hypocritical behavior, he didn't get so much as a reprimanding. Because Valtteri is good. Also note the bias given towards community "veterans" in staff choices. Note the promotion of Kley and Darkmatt who both had little going for them except their veterency. And who the long-run both turned out to be poor choices with Kley needing a demotion and Darkmatt having been despised by a large chunk of the community since his promotion, acting against alone against the wishes of the rest of the staff, and employing an overall disrespectful attitude in general.
This issue is not exclusive to the staff however. Here's an excert from the PM Deoxys sent out in his silly smbx civil-war enlistment.
Overall, the one easy step that needs to be taken is that the pointless drama needs to end. I can assure you right now that massive reactions like making new forums and making massive walls of text about how wrong people are isn't going to solve any problems. And yes, I'm aware that it's entirely hypocritical for me to say that given what I posted. However, let's close this with bookends by repeating what I once said in a big-drama argument long ago: being a hypocrite doesn't make me wrong.
With that, bid you adieu. Good luck, SMBX community.
So what's wrong with this community? Let's start by focusing on the people. The forums seem to be a constant warzone, with users and the staff constantly arguing with each other and polarizing themselves into either group. There's your first problem: the staff aren't an elite group. The staff should be your friendly neighborhood police officers, trusted to clear up evident problems when they arise, but still a part of the community. Staff/userbase arguments shouldn't be possible because the line between the two shouldn't be distinguishable. That is EVIDENTLY not the case here though. And at the head of the problem, is the first and most obvious person I must individually target: Joey. I don't know about everyone else, but I've found the Featured Episode each month downright laughable when it comes up. Every month the featured episode comes up with a description that touches on nothing but a vague description of how the graphics appear. Come to find out, this is because Joey doesn't even play the episodes he features. Doesn't have time. Does this not strike anyone else as a problem? That Joey doesn't play the game he is head admin of the community for? I'd even say fair enough if he still displayed activity with the community, but no. System updates and new features take months if they ever even happen at all, and he has very limited activity on the forum outside of moderating it. Now I get it. He's a busy guy, fair enough. But if he's too busy, he's too busy. That excuses his shortcomings, but it doesn't solve them. We need administration that is capable of being a part of the community and doing things. Despite my issues with Valtteri (which will be discussed in a bit), I can at the very least say he did this. Which is probably why he was not constantly under fire from the community. He was part of the community, not just a mysterious Big Brother at the top who would come in and change things at random. I use Joey as the icon of the problem, but it exists in more mild forms throughout the staff. This needs to stop if the community vs. staff drama is to end.
On the other end, we have people like Deoxys. People who are exacerbating the issue with pointless drama. Let me ask you something: what in the world makes you think Deoxys is going to do any better? May I remind you how before this it was all about how Knux is a tyrant and Joey will do so much better? Is it perhaps time to acknowledge that the problem lies in the community itself and not in its leadership? I don't want to delve too much into this again because I know it upsets Danny and I'd prefer to leave him out of this, but need I remind people of the incidents that took place with Deoxys running the survival games? Need I point out how passive aggressive and rude his topic is despite trying to affirm the opposite? This is not the solution. Making a new forum claiming to be a safe-haven from the other forum and then posting a big dramatic topic about the evils of the first forum has never, is not going to, and will never work. This is not a new thing. The users feel disrespected by the staff, but this is how people react to the staff making decisions they disapprove of. And don't give me that, "the staff don't respond if we ask nicely". Most of the "asking nicely" I've seen has been short of polite or lacking in any concrete reasons against decisions. And even when those are present, sometimes the staff does just have to make executive decisions. If you can not accept someone with more authority over you making a decision you do not agree with then you are going to have a hard time surviving in the world. It's sad but true to say that you can never please anyone.
The next problem ties in with this. The next problem is the severe factionism. Everyone here makes a couple friends and they forum a small group that do things together. This is great, and contributes to community. The problem here is that these smaller factions all seem to think that this forum is their personal community. It's not. This is a community for Super Mario Brothers X. Anything else that stems from it is great, but at its core this is a community for all fans of SMBX. The community should not and will not shape itself to what will make it most suited to you and your friends. This is where the aformentioned "executive decisions" have to come in. If you and your friends want your own personal hangout where you can play by your own rules, then make a small forum for just yourselves. It's free, easy, and quick. But this doesn't happen. Every time a faction wants their hangout, they decide to try and make it the new big official smbx forum, and then try to sap all of the existing SMBX users over to it. Honestly, I don't understand why. If these people weren't your friends to begin with, then what, you just want power over them? Or you just want to try and remake the same community except with the things you want changed? Either way, the former is ignoble and the latter is unrealistic. Make your own forum, meet on a social service like Steam/Skype, or generally just do anything else. Stop trying to turn this community into you and your friends personal stomping grounds because that's not what it's for.
The final major problem is just the general attitude this community has towards people. Everyone seems to have some prejudice that certain people are "good" or "bad" or "important" or "a noob". People are judged based on this rather than based on their actions. This no doubt applies to the staff too. Note the various accusations that multiple people were Knux. Because Knux is bad and must be causing problems at all times. There is an entire topic in the staff forums devoted to whether or not Danny should be banned where Joey was pushing to ban him for a very long time of off oftentimes shoddy reasoning. Because Danny is bad. Meanwhile when Valtteri nearly destroyed our affiliation with the Talkhaus, and managed to successfully be permabanned from one of our affiliates for inappropriately childish and hypocritical behavior, he didn't get so much as a reprimanding. Because Valtteri is good. Also note the bias given towards community "veterans" in staff choices. Note the promotion of Kley and Darkmatt who both had little going for them except their veterency. And who the long-run both turned out to be poor choices with Kley needing a demotion and Darkmatt having been despised by a large chunk of the community since his promotion, acting against alone against the wishes of the rest of the staff, and employing an overall disrespectful attitude in general.
This issue is not exclusive to the staff however. Here's an excert from the PM Deoxys sent out in his silly smbx civil-war enlistment.
The upsetting part is that he's not entirely wrong. He needed to be involved with a big important topic, because that's how this community operates. We prejudice people on how "important" they are. It's funny how nobody really respected bossedit until he started making incredibly impressive SMBX content. Suddenly, he was an important and respected community member. Making good levels is cool. It makes you a good level maker. Not a good user. Making a cool server is cool. It makes you a good server host. Not a good user. That's something that needs to be understood by this community. Just because a user is new, or doesn't have good english, or has any other silly prejudicing factor, doesn't mean they should be ignored. On the other hand, people need to stop subscribing to this system. People need to not freak out about silly stuff like their topic having less posts.Here's the scariest part, thought: this incident isn't as far from home as you originally thought it might be. I love Minecraft's server capabilities, I really do. This forum has an official server for it too. But when it reaches 100 pages? Oh, no! Nobody cares anymore because it has hardly any posts again! Welp! And guess what, too? IT ACTUALLY HAPPENED!
http://www.smbxgame.com/forums/v ... 70#p141897
This server I've played on for months--nobody will join anymore because nobody cares about this weird "new" topic anymore! I feel really hurt. Do you understand how I feel because of what these cumulative posts have done to me? Actually, no. Let me rephrase that. Do you understand how I feel because of the dogma that the staff team has relentlessly enforced and will never back away from?
Overall, the one easy step that needs to be taken is that the pointless drama needs to end. I can assure you right now that massive reactions like making new forums and making massive walls of text about how wrong people are isn't going to solve any problems. And yes, I'm aware that it's entirely hypocritical for me to say that given what I posted. However, let's close this with bookends by repeating what I once said in a big-drama argument long ago: being a hypocrite doesn't make me wrong.
With that, bid you adieu. Good luck, SMBX community.
