SpikedRocker

Not everything is working the way it should, we know this. We are still working on it, however, we've had the site down more than an day and felt we've at least got it functional to where everyone can use it again. Please use this forum to let us know what all needs fixed: http://steam-gamers.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?226-Web-Forum-Fix-Request Known issues: http://steam-gamers.net/forum/showthread.php?t=62933

I'm pretty sure I could have replaced the error messages with custom ones, but the same effect would have still happened. Maybe that will be a little project for me after the move.

I made an event, it should pop up an hour before and then 15 minutes and right before the meeting.

Here is the legal problems behind it. Since we do not have a giant disclaimer that pops up when you first visit the site and even if its marked NSFW and its porn, we could be busted for supplying porn to a minor. With many parts of our website open to the public without registering we've found it simpler and easier for everyone to have a general site wide abstention of such things to further protect ourselves from any potential issues that we would rather not go down. Its a small thing to ask you guys to just accept, if you must be that dude/chick to have to show someone else some porn, do it over steam chats or however you guys communicate that isn't involving the website. I know its what us BD's do take all the fun out of this place...

It has come to the attention of myself and the other BD's that people have been confused and/or concerned by several decisions we've been making or have allowed to been made. I have asked people to send me their thoughts, questions, concerns, and/or gripes about how things have been going. Here are the following questions and responses. This is a wall of text, no there will not be a TL;DR, appreciate the time and effort that was made to make this happen. While we do not have any strict written down formula for demotions on any rank, the AO rank has a bit more complications to it than say SA or CA. For specifically AO's, we typically reach out via PM or meetings in TS. Get an idea of what is going on with said person. Sometimes they know they've been slacking due to personal reasons and stuff but know they are moving on from that and can resume full activity soon after that meeting. Other times they've been so into something else they didn't even notice and just needed the reminder. If said person seems to continue the lack of activity we will then be more direct and saying hey you need to get "such and such" done or moving or we will seek to remove you. We obviously do a more diplomatic route but in the case of explaining it, brevity is necessary. Then after that we will seek a vote to remove if necessary. We typically would like to have a unanimous vote amungst the BD's in this matter as it is kind of a big deal and if its not unanimous there are cases where we will allow small extensions to hopefully correct the matter. It is never good that we have to remove an AO from their position. They do have a vital role to fill and removing someone from it creates a void and many times a tension within the community that we would much rather avoid if we can. We know that this is not at all possible for every scenario but it is a last resort method in dealing with many situations. It is my belief you can have "too many cooks in the kitchen". In the several times of me running a community I have had too many cooks. Someone would go and make a change in a server, maybe forget to document it, something breaks and then the person's responsibility it is for that server has no clue what happened or why and it may be longer than usual to get it fixed. Yes documentation would help in that scenario too but if its not necessary to have I'd rather deal with less. This actually was the case when I was an AO here and there was plugins that I had no clue what they were doing, the guy who put them there did, but I did not want to mess with something that I had no clue of what was going on to where I could make it worse. As far as the ideas part of this, this is where the CA's do become the factor. It kinda is their primary role to give the ideas as well and many ideas that we've put forth do come from the CA meetings. This was actually brought up in the most recent CA meeting. There are a few people who do want TTT to succeed as it was a long standing server for SG. There was a few ideas brought up from within the meeting to give it one last chance. More details will come out on that as they get developed further. I can tell you that we are struggling with that decision and we do want to give people who do enjoy TTT the opportunity to help it. No this is not the case. It is extremely rare, but it has happened in the past. There has been times where the lack of activity of one BD has resulted in their demotion. It may have not looked as such from the view point of members or admins, but it happens. While this may seem to be the case, it really is not. We do reach out feelers to AO's to get opinions on the matter. I guess the point here is that they don't get a strong vote? Well that is the case. There is a ceiling here at SG and at some point there is going to be where a few people get to select a person to a role. The points get made and voting still occurs. We try to make it a fair decision for everyone involved. There is not been any kind of bullying or posturing involved when decisions like this come up and we do take in to many opinions into account. Its kind of like the admin application process, a lot of input is given but ultimately few people actually make the decision. Its what we are comfortable with. From my perspective and I believe others share this, they need to be well rounded both in the servers and the forums. They also need to be really good with working with others and wording their thoughts correctly and in a professional manner. While this hasn't always been the case in the past due to needing more focus in one particular area, it is my belief that the BD needs to be able to handle any type of problem in any given situation. This takes a lot of experience and effort in several areas. The phrase I like to use I've modified to reflect this stance is "Jack of all trades, master of them all." Yes there are things that we aren't going to know or do well with, but that's where the others help teach and support each other. Not everyone can do this role, not everyone is suited to do it, some people need to be trained in some areas. Most of the work we end up doing is managing the AO's making sure they have the tools they need to do their jobs. We organize them so they know where they need to be going and help if needed. There are some things that AO's cannot do and this is the other half of the job. Example being the website stuff. AO's have no access to the website end of things. That is kind of where a ton of my effort recently has been with the domain move. We also do have to manage the subscriber system a little bit (more recently with plugins breaking), which is confirming payments and setting up on the forum and server end of things. There is little difference with PO and BD other than the one who handles the money. They also are the main contact between hosting sites. PO can veto BD decisions, but this is rare and I don't think it has happened since I've been back. This was brought up when we started designing the current system and it was ultimately rejected as we did not want to have popularity to be a factor. We wanted it to be more distinguished by their actions than whether they were well liked or not. This was brought up also in a recent meeting. We are rolling out changes in this method. More details to be released soon. It has been brought up and has been exercised recently. TA role is a deep behind the scenes role where most people will not see what they do. So for you to know they are inactive really cannot be determined. We had asked some TA's to do more and they have said they did not have the time and have stepped down on their own. Again, we don't like to forcibly remove people. There are no major plans that we have coming down the pipe so to speak just as yet. But that's what the community suggestion box is all about. Setting up sections like our Admin Complaints section is a bit of a pain in the ass and does take up room on the forum. Honestly, if someone is not comfortable discussion their suggestions or ideas in public they can schedule meetings on TS if they wish or do it through PM's. It doesn't matter as people may think. It helps us communicate faster and more efficiently. Plus it allows you to participate in community meetings. Which we are going to work on increasing the amount we hold, mainly due to this kind of stuff. Yes. The method we are using is taking everyone's input at once and reading and weighing the opinions of everyone. Yes not everyone's opinion is taken seriously and depending on what is said can be easily skipped over. No. However, if you push the line of harassment then yeah that's when action would occur. We have pretty thick skins, kinda have to, and we don't take everything that seriously. Most of the time when you are an AO you are doing something each day for the community and sometimes you just run out of time to actually play. Could more help make it better? Probably, but some things just do take time to do. Example, me, pan and Retro rebuilt the MC server from scratch and just getting it up took a whole day, but we weren't done for nearly 2 weeks. Most maintenance, takes a few hours depending on what is going on regardless. We want everyone to feel welcomed here at SG. Sometimes other members do this cause they know each other and they aren't offended by it, but with new people it could be a turn off for them. The best thing we are telling people when it comes to this if they are offended they must tell the person directly what offended them. If they continue, then they are being a trollish ass-hat and they will be punished appropriately. Obviously this may only be a tip of the iceberg with questions you may have for us. We are looking to hold a Community-Wide Meeting on TeamSpeak here soon. Date and Time still to be announced. Stay tuned for when that announcement will come down.

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We can look at it again to see what is possible.

I believe the reason we have not done this is due to CSGO having issue with some events that the traps would be running to work right. So a lot of the maps would not work like they used to or are really hard to port over.

See Sir, I have what you call class. So go put the dress on again and I'll teach you.

You would...

Just to toss this out there, one of the good things with not using gray as usernames is that our text is also gray. We should make sure its not the same color and maybe do more of a silver-ish color, if we go that route that is. Just something that not a whole lot was talked about the forum default text, its something I thought of.

I have generously allowed people to poke up to AO's as CA's and AO's have the ability to set up people in TS and it is a good way for people who need setting up getting their attention. Do not abuse this, if you do, you may be banned from TS because of it.

I dunno how many times I got to tell you to quit stepping down lol. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

I got broken donation plugins, broken CMS plugins, broken steam plugins. I kinda want to fix things before customizing things. So I won't be getting to this any time soon.

It typically takes a map change for the stuff to process through. If it isn't there later tonight let us know.

Thats where the PM would work. That is simply not possible.

Problem I have with having a more private section is that its now 2 places I'd have to look for information on the same topic. 1 its a bit of a pain in the ass, 2 it could get confusing going between the 2. One suggestion that I've been brought that I kind of like is that we can have said person post their application, but then all the reply's would be not visible by anyone who wasn't a moderator. This could reduce bandwagoning and people would feel a bit more comfortable posting their problems about said person. However, I do like having people having civil conversations about the applicant. Sometimes someone brings up a good point that some others forget and it can change their perspective. I can recall several times someone brings up a past problem that no one had thought of again to which the problem may not be resolved or fixed on the applicants part. That can be key information for anyone who has weighed in or is about to weigh in on it. I know I really do not want to make major changes to the system right now. We'd confuse a ton of people who do participate in the system. I think one of the best things we can all agree on that more people should be putting their input on these things. More opinions the better, it can be information overload for me but you know I feel better knowing more people have said something than the times where its a dozen or more. Honestly, if you are worried you may offend the applicant or his/her supporters with your opinions feel free to PM it to me and I can use it in my evaluation anonymously and if your point needs to be said to the applicant I won't say "so and so said you did this and I think you need to work on it".

Since I've been handling Admin Apps, I haven't really noticed this happen. I really do want everyone's honest opinions and as long as you articulate them in a professional manner, they will never be deleted. If you are an ass about how you put it, yeah I'll for 1, ignore your post, 2, it will be deleted, 3, if you do it constantly, I will block you from the section. I don't even look at this stuff, so it has no bearing on the process. Again, please do not be afraid to post your thoughts as long as you don't be an ass about it or try to start fights with other people. I do, however, think that its a good place for people to ask questions of the applicant and he applicant can respond to answer any specific questions people may have about him. And they should as long as they aren't dicks and vaginas about it. I've kinda kept the process I've been using mainly due to I don't want people to find a way to abuse my system. My system involves reading between the lines. I generally get a good idea of how people are from the posts but some people that I know really well and work with, they kinda weigh a bit more cause I trust their judgement. Is this a fair system? Maybe not, but I don't see how many yes or no votes one applicant gets. I like to see the kind of support they get and whom they get it from. This is a discussion we are continually having amungst the higher ups and we will take input. For now, if you aren't comfortable posting opinions in an application please send your input via PM and I will take it that way.

It will take some time for DNS servers to update, these things should fix themselves in the next 12 hours. It will be down for now, I have to see who is in control of it and see if they can fix it really quickly for us, otherwise I'll have to set up a new one, I'll hope to have it fixed by the weekend.

There is some discussions on some of the countries TLD suffix's you have to host the server in that country to use it. I do not know those particulars, however, there is a more concern expecially with the Steam community that .rs domains can be more risky for phishing and we may lose people just because of that. We've always owned our servers and content, he has always only had ownership over the domain and web hosting of the main forum. Again, this baffles me that people would buy domains with no assets behind them. Yes someone could buy it but they would be buying it the same way he has with nothing else than a domain name. In addition to that we also plan to send out steam group messages and stuff in advanced.

A lot of people have contacted myself and I'm sure Revenga and Caution over wanting to try to help. Honestly this was the last resort scenario that we wanted to use. It helps neither party and causes a lot of angst and stress to both sides. This whole process has been months in the making and once communications broke down we knew we needed to start making alternate plans. The price he threw at us was derived from what the auditing sale site imagined we made off ads per day, translated over the course of the length the domain has been registered, nearly 8 years. As you all know, we've never had ads on this site, so to use that as a reasonable value is not even possible. Basically if we were to run ads and stuff we would have a value, but we don't. Years ago when the initial sale of SteamGamers was being proposed and made, I tried to stop it. I knew it wasn't going to be good for the community and it wasn't going to be good for the buyer either. Here we are a few years later with this type of result. It isn't pretty for us and yes its not what we wanted. But for us to own everything associated with this community again will only make us stronger and better equipped to do more fantastic things in the future. Like the very eloquent title states, this is a dawn of a new era for us.

[YOUTUBE]yHWt3FaxcPY[/YOUTUBE] After many crazy weeks and many, many rebuilds; We are proud to announce the offical re-opening of our Minecraft Feed The Beast Infinity server! Check out some features in the above video, shot directly from our server. The IP has not changed: 74.91.116.11 You will need to download the mod pack and use 1.7 version (its the latest one). For more information on how to do it check it out here: http://www.steam-gamers.net/forum/showthread.php?t=60981 If you haven't been on our server before, or if no admin is around, you'll need to set yourself to member at our Enjin site: http://minecraft.steam-gamers.net. Go to the store and buy Member, its free. You can also buy Subscriber and donor status's. Please note if you buy subscriber there, it will not transfer to the CS:GO servers. I'd like to give some shout outs to all the people who worked tirelessly over the past few weeks to get this upgrade and relaunch done. @BoM, @Pan32, @R3TROATTACK on all the coding and troubleshooting. @SilentGuns on creating the spawn island area and helping with our Enjin store. @Wooper on creating the Spawn platform, Admin and Subscriber shops and the promo video above. @Zsoki and @Mandeemoo007 for helping us test a few things early. So we'll see you on the server!

How about that, I out Ninja'd the ninja ;-)