Administrators · Legacy archive
The backyard of admin fury!
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#241Me too!
I INVOKE THE WRATH OF THE SHADOW OF STALIN!
A NEW ADMIN, THE SHADOW OF STALIN, MUST COME FORTH AND WREAK HAVOC AMONG THE PIPSQUEAKS THAT HAUNT THIS PLACE!
WITH THE LAW OF ZE HAMMER!
:inquisition4: :inquisition4: :inquisition4: :inquisition4: -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#242Hammertime -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#243What the actual fuck, where the fuck is everyone.
No one is posting, no one is commenting, the forums are almost dead.
Jesus fucking Christ on a cracker -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#244Not a clue, I've been busy with some real life problems lately, and likely going to be forced to take a lengthy leave of absence for health reasons in the near future. (In which case I will pass Carly my account info and have her take over my forum rp chars until such time as I return.)
In a way I'm glad it's been quiet since it means I haven't missed out on anything fun, but disappointed since this place it my favorite online hang out spot and I love seeing it humming with activity when I can drop by.
That aside I'd guess spring weather has people outside and away from their computers, once the hot summer months hit that'll likely change.
Or, it's because Muro's not around much right now? He's kinda like the Howard Stern of the Citadel, people love hanging out here to be entertained by him, and sometimes just to see what he's going to say next? :P -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#245Yes, the Muro effect is considerable.
The great thing about that guy is how he asks everyone else how they are, and engages everyone in conversation. Other GMs, like me, are more centered on the self. The navel gazers of the Citadel. And that is when I am around, which I most often am not.
Oh well. -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#246Indeed.
For me, work has picked up a lot- I'm not sitting watching graphs and progress bars tick by, but doing lots of very clicky-clicky work. So, less time to slack off, and less energy when I have the time.
I will say my energy level improves when there is real activity here too, so the slowdown has been a vicious cycle for me.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#247I am being weened off of 15 hour days and working Saturdays for the past 6 months. It is hard to come down from that but almost done with the big push. I have started Citadel version 6.0 and have a frontpage put together more or less. Heavy use of Jack Holiday's art and portions thereof. :) Each post will be able to pic a picture from the ones available (I will chop and crop and mess with the pictures so that we have dozens of different portions of what he gave us to use in a bunch of different ways) or upload your own.
Have a bunch of ideas I am messing with that will be revealed in good time. I need to email val and see if he is still game on doing the laravel database modification for me on a test server. (Val, I am going to email you on that.) As I plan on doing the rewrite to get back to the core of what the site does and dump a lot of the errata that made its way in.
Additionally, my Grandma has taken a turn so I will going to Chicago to visit the family next Wednesday for a week. That will probably get me posting and commenting again since I won't be able to code.
But, for the past bit, trying to slowly sneak away from work at under 12 hours and use the time I am getting to get something accomplished. Once it settles some more, I can spend more time here as well. And I will definitely make time as we get closer to StrolenCon to push the event. There are some really cool pieces of it that are going to be especially awesome (as opposed to the daily awesome of the Con) and I can't wait! -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#2486.0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
:wizard: -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#249The great thing about that guy is how he asks everyone else how they are, and engages everyone in conversation
Sooooo, how is everyone?
:D -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#250I am certainly game. :) -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#251My absence has been due to major life changes. The kind that involve packing up an entire house, shoving it in a moving truck, driving 4 hours away, and then squeezing it all into an apartment 1/4th the size of the original house. I'm also quitting my day job and starting a business, but that only explains my silence in a near-future sense, not the past 2 months. -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#252The spirit of this thread has gone to shit. :P
(Congrats Cmark!) -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#253I want to know why Moonlake is the only one posting. WTF.
And I am talking to you Strolen. You lazy son of a bitch.
Chaos. Congrats on the new job. Since you are your own boss, your excuse of vacation time is bullshit. And if you need more money. Give yourself a raise. Hell, McDonalds workers will be making $15.00 soon. Won't have to work but a day to afford a plane ticket out here. We can give you a home office to work in as well. Offices are for office workers.
You better think long and hard about your StrolenCon decision.
Oh, by the way. What kind of pro bono coding do you do? I know a nonprofit Citadel that could use a code infusion. Call my office. Thanks. Cheers.
(and Val....what the hell?)
Not sure that is in the spirit of the thread either but, hey, I'm buzzing.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#254Ahem, in spirit of the thread, I bbq in my backyard, and post pictures of what I grill/smoke/bbq.
Insert family in law bitching about that fact that we never invite them over for fire meat.
We don't invite anyone over, ever.
We're not inviting you over because our house is tiny, cluttered, and full of cats.
You're an asshole and would spend the whole time calling me an asshole, insulting my tiny house, and likely being super critical of how I light my coals, how cluttered, how tiny, and how whatever anything is.
And sweet baby Jesus no one likes you. -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#255Bitching family members, demanding respect, invitations and general fawning while not ever giving anything in return?
Those disappeared from the invite list 20 years ago. ;) -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#256A certain individual, whose name rhymes with Crackle Noes, is starting to annoy me. Hypocrite. Naysayer. Pedantic. Deflating.
Scras - don't give him air by caring what he thinks. Write another damn movie review and ignore him.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#257
A certain individual, whose name rhymes with Crackle Noes, is starting to annoy me. Hypocrite. Naysayer. Pedantic. Deflating.
Scras - don't give him air by caring what he thinks. Write another damn movie review and ignore him.
I hate to admit this, but he is part of the reason I've hit such a dry spell writing. I will start to write something, or even just brainstorm on it, and I can still autofilling in his response, do we need this, is it important, does it matter, shouldn't this be a blog and not a submission, etc.
And the muse flees, her dress in tatters. -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#258And sadly, he's so intermixed with the fledgling amazon epub that to do something would kill that in the process, and likely send others away.
That said, I'd rather have you here than him.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#259And fuck it, I'm calling a spade a spade.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#260The Amazon ePub discourages me, because it was an idea I threw out, from watching what was going on over at a erotic fiction group that I am part of. I don't have ideas, I don't have anything to throw into the ring, but I am watching them finish stuff, get it edited and get cover art done and they are getting published. They are doing it, they are doing the literature thing with gusto.
Fantasy is fantasy, so I threw the idea out here, and it bogged down.
It always bogs down.
So when it comes up free time to do something, looking at my fantasy football leagues or pinterest, or the bane of my existence, idle click games, are suddenly way more appealing than writing. -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#261I hear you. It takes people with both enthusiasm, and time, to get this crap done, or a shit load of enthusiasm.
Look at me, the fucking horror epub has been bogged down for more than a year. Why? Because by myself I can't raise enough gumption to finish something. I need feedback, acknowledgement that what i'm working on is cared about. Lacking that, I'm the rider trying to whip the elephant into getting something done, while the elephant is happily smashing something in TF2.
Back when a sub could get 3-4 votes within an hour or so of clicking submit, and so you sat there clicking refresh to see if anything changed, that was my most productive.
Now, less so.
It's hard to push rope. Someone needs to pull.
Ah well, I'm still around. Stick-to-it-ivness is one of my strengths. Getting it done, not so much :)
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#262I also hate the ghost-town this place has largely become, and I think part of the problem is me not taking my Admin role seriously (or just being non-confrontational) and not directly dealing with trolls who have occasionally emerged. There are other mods, but I am pretty certain of all of us, I have been logged on the most frequently these last few years, and have been entirely too passive.
That can change, however. Let me know if I need to dial it back.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#263Strolen's Ghost Town is a more accurate name for this site, though it is invaluable as a repository of ubercool roleplaying material.
***
As for Crackle Noes, he is the most active member at the moment.
I think he is pretty easy to decipher. He is a GM, he has a huge ego, he has gotten rather low ratings, yet he feels that his material is the standard that others should strive to achieve.
Thus he "returns the favor" by voting low and reprimanding other Strolenites.
It is a bit like a rock band that got poor reviews, and then had the chance to review their reviewers. ;)
I pay him no heed, and I honestly don't care about reviews much anymore...
No... That is a filthy lie!
I don't care if I get a 3 or a 5.
I DO care about whether I get any reviews at all. Posting stuff and then watching it hang there, forgotten, neglected and unloved... That sucks big time.
I love roleplaying and I write down plots and whatnot for my crew, either in advance of a game, or after - to remember what transpired.
Not so much trying for Hemingwayesque standards anymore.
Of course, I admit that this affects the quality of my posts. -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#264I can live with the voting low - the reprimending I am not going to let slide without comment any more.
This place is billed as a Friendly place for submitting content. You may note that barring the most extreme topographical errors I no longer comment on spelling and grammar - much.
And paraphrasing Strolen. Fuck quality - give me the Idea! Something like that :)
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#265Yes, you are right.
Is there a way to encourage positivity and friendliness in reviews?
Something more constructive than telling people to go fuck themselves?
Or perhaps something along the lines of:
(Where X is the offensive remark)
"But... X... Isn't that rather harsh? To me it stings a bit to read that remark, and it makes me a bit sad. It even discourages me from writing. I realize that may be how you honestly feel, but for the sake of the spirit of the community... Could you pull your punches somewhat?" -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#266and yes, I know that it is ironic that I say these things.
I got a huge temper and when people are dicks, I fly into a fit of rage.
"Do what AG says, don't do as AG does" ;P -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#267Use of the word Butthurt tends to blunt the effectiveness of ones apologies. -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#268Use of the word butthurt negates the apology and makes it an insult instead. :)
Not sure who said butthurt here though. Isn't that word reserved for trolls in comment sections, as an alternative to an insulting meme? -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#269Oooooooh! That reminds me!
I am a member of a Norwegian subculture forum. It has been troll infested at a point, and the admins came up with the "Troll Beard".
Strolen, read this:
The troll beard gave the admins the option to "gag" a member for 24 hours with a so called "Troll Beard", which warped everything he said into silly text instead.
That would be so cool!
Strolen, can you create such a feature, so a member thus flagged will spew humoristic nonsense for 24 hours after an admin gagged him?
Imagine how it would deflate most, if not all, dispute!
Example:
Ancient Gamer:
"Mmmmmfff, Mmmmfffff, nargles and gurgles and seagulls and churgles!"
- Ancient Gamer has been rewarded with a Troll Beard for his past actions
The Troll beard will wear off in 11 hours
I am not a funny guy, but Strolen is, and he could create a small database of silly texts that are picked at random.
A gag would be in effect in the forums, in private messages and on the main site.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#270AG per your troll beard (which is hilarious): https://strolen.com/guild/index.php/topic,2033.msg28560.html#msg28560
I have always been confused when crappy sites have so much action and we have been stuck in the doldrums for years. I wish I knew the formula. Maybe the spam kiddies with all their nonsense are what helps drive up a site. I wonder if there is a secret RP group somewhere that talks about the Citadel being a place for great content but crotchety people or something...so we continue to get high traffic but nobody joins. Most that join have said they have been visiting for years and just get around to logging in.
I think if we had more active users, at least voting, then the BS would just be noise. Unfortunately, with the lack of quantity the BS is in your face.
We are a lurker's paradise I think. Super awesome content, still updated fairly consistently with no real reason to join and share.
But that would be counteracted by more votes and more comments...which we can't seem to get....because there is really no incentive I guess?
So do I do a NYTimes and allow 3 views and force registration?
Do I do like Quora who hides shit when you try and read a second article but can search through google and get there all day?
Do I let people read the first 500 words and fade them out till they are members?
Do I force that? Do I care what random leaches think about membership only content? If we forced people to join would we get more people involved? Would that create more interaction? I have lost patience for the lurkers that just use and use and don't contribute. What do we need?
Just thinking out loud. Obviously what we are doing isn't working so maybe it is time for a paradigm shift. The site needs some work to make it more user friendly. Updated version is going to simplify A LOT and is being made the mobile first way so hopefully can be used during games. But even shitty sites can have a ton of users somehow. How the hell does that happen?
Bottom line I guess is we can't fix assholes. We generally don't like banning people but we tend to ostracize or pick until they quit and leave...But banning is so juvenile and I always have faith that people will rise above it. I like the troll beard, that is funny and makes a point. Is there anything we can do? How do other sites you belong to handle it? What are we doing wrong? HBow can I at least make my favorite people happy and to hell with the rest.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#271Do we know how many visits are Google driven? If its high, then a registration wall would be unlikely to damage visits for the long term if the measure does not help. Unless we somehow drop our Google rating somehow.
Perhaps have only a subset of subs available without registration. Maybe HOH but not golden subs.
We need folks to market the site, just like any other. Social networking and the like. I'm not a good one for that - most of my internet friends are here. My other contacts are largely non-rpg types.
Again, its time and effort.
And according to this site, we are a security hazard. The Nerve! http://strolen.com.cutestat.com/
Once the Horror PDF is done, I plan on dropping a link to it on Reddit to see if we can get some traction.
Increasing use of graphics in subs can help too.
I would love to get a graphic comic here too somehow.
Blathering on here I know :)
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#272Probably something AG infected me with. :read:
As far as website checks, I trust this more: https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=strolen.com
The other probable just wants web owners to purchase a package to disinfect website or something.
I will give you a sneak peak of my ABANDONED project just so you can see kinda where I am going with the update.
http://rpgcitadel.com/
Doesn't leave this house of fury.
This is a fat page with a lot of useless crap but I liked the template so put it together to see if I liked it. I did, more or less.
Just a taste of what I am doing anyway to bring your thoughts to fruition. Jack Holliday gave me plenty to work with so I have lots of pics and portions thereof to cover a suite of topics and categories.
We can use the horror PDF as a "Join and get a free PDF" thing as well. That might entice some folks.
As far as google, I think you still have full rights to the analytics page: http://www.google.com/analytics/
See if you have access once you login.
In the last 30 days.
Sessions
8,057
Users
4,992
Pageviews
29,135
Pages / Session
3.62
Avg. Session Duration
00:04:24
Bounce Rate
58.81%
% New Sessions
58.09%
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#273Sweeet. You and Muro look rather female :)
I could use a No graphics flag so I could be less obvious at work though :P
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#274Why is it abandoned?
It was cool.
Never knew you and Muro looked so hot, by the way. ;)
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#275File size is way too big for what it does. It is bootstrap + another custom framework. I am consolidating to a single, smaller framework.
I picked the Titon Toolkit to build it on. Bootstrap changes too much, this is nice and stable and slowly being worked on: http://titon.io/en/toolkit/2.1.0/support/comparison -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#276How do you even manage to work on stuff alone?
I can't get a single line of code done unless someone is interested and participating in what I am doing.
Well done. -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#277There isn't much fury here.
flips over a table, throws some glass ware against the wall.
That's better. -
Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#278Okay, you want fury? Let's do this shit.
So I'm coding my shit up. I've got tags and variables flying everywhere. I'm managing ten thousand kinds of stuff, working on a project that's been running since last November, and I'm finally getting it to where it's almost done. Just another day or two and it's completed. I'm doing said project as a nicety to my former employer, since it came up last minute and nobody was going to be able to handle it with me leaving.
And boy, do they get a sweetheart rate for it. They're billing out the client $90/hour, and I'm only billing them $40/hour. Since I'm an IC, they don't even have to pay my overhead. That's $50/hr of pure profit.
So I'm sending over my invoices every few weeks, because I hate having half a dozen invoices that are all for a few hundred (a couple of weeks went by where I didn't get much work done in any one week). And they're late on the first check. Okay, no biggie, probably just a small error. I email them, and the CFO replies "Oh yeah, there was an internal problem, we'll cut you a new check today." A week and a half later, still no check. Finally, the day after I email them again, the check arrives. It had been mailed over a week after he'd replied that they'd cut me a new one. But oh well, I got my money, right?
Fast forward to this last week. The previous check had arrived well before it was due (in fact, I received that check before I received the late check for the original invoice), so I was thinking all the problems had been ironed out. NOPE. What sort of fucked up optimism is THAT shit? I left the company for a reason, because they're greedy, incompetent assholes, and lo and behold, my next check comes in juuuuuust under the wire, the day before it's due (who the fuck does that? JFC, you're a $35M company, you can afford to pay a contractor well before the due date!), but strangely, it's about half the size it should be. I look on there, and it shows that it covers two invoices, but not the third. What should have been $2500 was instead $1200. Still a decent haul, but obviously a problem.
So I email them. "Yo, this check is missing the payment for invoice XYZ." No response for two days, then an email from the CEO (who I cc'd on there), which is asking the CFO if those invoices are getting entered into their CRM and being collected from the client. Not, "Oh, sorry about that! We'll get right on it!" Not even a, "I'll look into this for you". No, they're more concerned with whether they're collecting on their end. I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT WHETHER YOU'RE COLLECTING OR NOT! THAT WAS NOT OUR AGREEMENT! I code shit. I charge you. You pay me. How and when you charge the ultimate client is not my fucking concern.
JFC. I've got another invoice coming up due for them, and I'm getting ready to send off my final one as well. I don't expect I'm going to get completely paid until fucking October. What the hell is this shit?!
For just a little bit of contrast, I've been working on a different project through another company (really long and roundabout story short, the end software I'm developing on is the same, I'm just not doing any more of it through my previous employer), and the process has been much different. I gave him Net 30, same as everyone else, but within a week I had a message from him asking for address confirmation so he could send me the check, and less than 2 weeks after I sent the invoice, I had a check in hand. Obviously the company that is paying for the software development is paying rapidly when he gets an invoice. The issue is entirely with my previous employer.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#279Thats some Grade A fury there. Assholes.
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Re: The backyard of admin fury!
#280Always grade your customers
Grade A customers : They are nice, their jobs are sweet, they pay super and they are always on time
Grade B customers: They are bland, their jobs are boring, they pay well and they are always on time
Grade C customers: They are a-holes, their jobs wary and they haggle over every bill. They sometimes pay on time, other times not.
Grade D customers: They are a-holes and they don't pay their bills.
Grade A and B customers get served first, grade C customers gets served when the As and Bs don't have jobs for you, and the grade D customers you blacklist.