XeNo

If you remove the forums I won't be able to necro threads like this to voice my disappointment at everyone in it.

Double posting but I'm on my phone so I don't want to edit this in. This post is a very long way to, in what seems to me, type "I told you so". While people may have seen writing on the wall or noticed the community was dwindling and had ideas or ways to fix them that went unheard, this entire post is unhelpful. My assumption to you sticking around and posting something so long winded and filled with animosity, is that you still care. I think you should lead with that part of your emotions next time you post, so that it can constructively build a solution to the current situation. Whether you saw it coming years ago or not, the present cannot be fixed with anger for past events. That being said, I've been away for many years and have no knowledge of what all transpired to leave SG in the state it is in now. However, your sarcastic retelling of events points to signs I remember well, and caution I hope also recognizes. Stagnation in positions of power leading to inactive leadership. It's not easy to entrust people with leading your beloved community that you've been part of forever. In times of activity and population, it's easy to go years without promoting a BD since the decisions have been made to make things successful, so relish in the success and take some time away from the community while popping in to give input on direction and decisions. However in times like now, aggressive expansion and removal of cogs not running should be heavily considered, emotions, friendships, and seniority aside. I have demoted people who I used to be lower rank than, and I've demoted people who have been here years longer than me. When we realized the trouble the community was in, it was down to harsh decisions for the betterment of the community. You lose many friends, and gain even more enemies. People should work towards the common goal, improving the community, or their positions should be replaced with people willing to do so. In a population that is dwindling, you need the people still around and active to all be leaders and decision makers, and not shy away from giving newcomers a chance to help where they can. Revenga was a regular when he went straight to TA because we needed it, not because he had earned the favor of the community. He did earn it though, and absolutely one of the best gamble decisions I feel I've ever made. He helped us tremendously then, and continued to do so years after. I just had to go for it and give him his chance.

It's been many years, but one of the most effective ways I got information of how the community is feeling and hearing feedback from players, was just playing in servers. Obviously, servers being dormant appears to be a problem, but just sitting idly in an open discord channel would be good too. The idea of weekly BD open door sounds nice, but also comes across a bit "gracing you with their presence". Just chill more in public channels and make the policy that discord dms are welcome and stuff will flow to you. The BD that is most active in the discord and servers will always know more about what's going on. Ask questions to players, I used to ask for players feedback all the time and get good results. Just asking if people are having fun gets the conversation going, ask questions to why they feel a certain way. It helps inform faster than meetings and forum threads.

What an L for the community bro. This is not very cash money of you at all. I told myself I wouldn't sign in here anymore, but I wanted to say I hope life is good to you. The memories of this place are always going to be a wave of mixed emotions, but hopefully the new ones you make in life will be just as good as the ones you've left here. This place was my escape from life several times over the years, whenever things got bad in my life I would come back here for comfort and familiarity that I could escape my thoughts into. I'm an old boomer now, but my most memorable teenage years were right here, in this community, and you were always there, playing a part of it with me. The laughs we shared and the shenanigans we got into together are core memories of my youth that I sometimes retell to irl friends and family that have no idea how much they matter to me. You were once a great friend to me despite our many differences, and I will remember our friendship and the things we did here together for my entire life. This post is the only one here for as far back as I can remember that is making me tear up. I hope you go far and try to always find happiness in life, old friend.

Interesting. A feeling of nostalgia to this. Thinking on it more, I did like the decision to separate the role into two parts. While there's certainly people who can do both with maturity and capability, it limits upward growth in the community to a requirement for both. Many people fall into the two categories to varying degrees, but you limit yourself the possibility of having good mature management by forcing responsibility of servers, and you also limit your quantity of valid individuals by how many servers you have. While simpler in terms of ranks, it stunts growth of a mature/capable leadership team. I think many other ranks warrant squishing down into one rank, but I rather liked the decision to have this role into two equal ranks, with differences that allow more people to qualify and fulfill leadership positions.

I thought BJ came back from retirement and we were throwing a party for him. This is cool too!

Congrats to all of you!

I can see the admin section now. Thank you Liam!

I think they said that doesn't work because Primary and Secondary ranks on the new forums are wonky.

Can you create a hidden Legend rank that has permissions to see the Admin sections so I don't have to accept 'Senior Administrator' as my rank to view them? If not I'll just chill at my rank for now.

Is the main forum page supposed to look like it's zoomed in to 150%? It seems like my mother's browser defaults.

I like the new forums, it looks sleek. Where are my rep buttons at, tho?

I don't think Dom will take it to heart. He knows full well what I think of his time at SG, after numerous years of knowing him over time. I was being light hearted, if it's offensive to Dom I apologize. I was not trying to deter from his time at SG or demean what he said. Edit: I will simply delete the post as to not offend anyone. I did not have ill intentions towards Dom or his time at SG. He is one of few people I had high hopes of doing great things, and I think he achieved that in his short time of being BD. I could not be more proud of him and his journey through the community, and I can only hope he inspired more people to follow in his path.

That's a dumb fucking idea.

If they've integrated Sourcebans to ULX that's pretty baller, but even if they didn't, there's plugins that enable sourcebans connectivity. That's what Nishok and I had to do on our Gmod servers, and it worked fine, just is a bit of extra work to do.

Unlucky.

Nearly 9 years ago I signed up to this community the same way as everyone else here. I picked a username, I chose a password, verified the stupid captcha, and the username XeNo was forever taken. While I sit here thinking of what to say, I feel an odd reminiscence of what events lead up to today. How it began and the person I was the day I first clicked "Register" and today, the day I honestly feel may be the first time in the history of my time here where I click "Log Out". Reflecting on how I've changed over the years as I've grown with this community is a tough pill of pride to swallow. I was 18 when I joined, and I felt I had life figured out. Looking back at my posts and my early time here I realize how wrong I was, and I feel that it's a humbling experience to look back and notice the journey my life has taken up to this point. SG has been a huge part of my life, nearly one-third of my time alive has been spent off and on right here, within this very community. As the community has grown, died, and been reborn, I like to feel I followed a similar trend of growing through my own life. As I matured and grew with SG, I realized how important this place was to me. For me it was always the people within this community, the good and the bad. Both good people and bad people can show you who you are as a person. Good people can help you get back on track when you fall off the path, but bad people test who you are at your core. How you deal with situations and people will define who you are, and you can't understand what type of person you are unless you experience both good and bad. It is even harder to learn how to appreciate the good in your life without something to give you a taste of how bad it can get. In my time here I have experienced a lot, I've met people that have quite literally changed my life. I've had a lot of laughs, a lot of fights, arguments and debates that seem to last hours or days. I've found love, happiness, heartache, and sadness with people from this community. It's through these experiences that have helped shape me into the person I am today. People often underrate the effect they can have on others, and especially online where people tend to believe it's easier or more entertaining to be cruel than kind. I won't pretend to say I am not a victim of this myself, as I look back on my past here I can confidently say I was definitely an asshole. It was kind people that I met here and in my real life that helped me change for the better, to grow into the much better person that I'd like to say I am now. This community attracts people from all walks of life, and that's something I have always been fascinated by. I have always enjoyed meeting new personalities and people from different cultures, learning what things in their lives made them so different from one another and from myself. It has always been the people, the players, that really kept me invested in SG my entire time here. No matter what rank I was, my focus was always in making the community a better place. What does it mean to make it a better place? For me it was for the players, the regulars. Make it not only popular with amazing servers, but a place where people would enjoy not only the servers, but the people who they're playing with every day that they're in one of our servers. Creating a community where people didn't join just to play the servers, but joined for the people. This has been my passion ever since I started taking my time here more seriously, and one that every step of the way I worked to make more and more reality. Every rank I went up I thought of how I could push that rank to the limits to build a better community. I took every rank as not a promotion but a challenge, to see what I could do with it that would improve the community as a whole. No matter what rank you are, you can influence the community, you can do something with your rank to make the community a better place. With powers or no power at all, you can help improve the community just by personality alone. Make new players feel welcomed, make the servers filled with laughter instead of racism, and above all try to make them fun to play in for hours on end. I appreciate the opportunities I was given here at SG, by everyone who was in power at the given time, to do my best to make this place a better community to game with. I am grateful to everyone in this community for helping it become what it is today. Lastly, I am thankful to everyone I've met along the way, who helped me get to where I am now. Whether they know who they are or not, I am thankful for them. I may never get the opportunity to manage something as big as SG ever again, and that's a hard thought to think about. This place has been a huge part of my life, and now that I've took the time to reflect on my time here, I can say that I will never forget it. This community has been such a unique experience for me, there's a good chance I will never experience being part of something as wonderful as this community has been for me. This has been a long crazy ride, and if given the chance to click that Register button again, I would not hesitate to do it all over again. I can't say for sure I'll never be back here again, but for now this is goodbye. Thank you all for everything you've done for me. Whether you know it or not.

Might as well make a CSS Scrim server event if we're wanting to go to easymode Counter-Strike. Or an event on Classic Offensive, since that game is all about babying the players into having an easier time playing instead of competitive.

Caution, I'm going to be honest and say that I think it has a lot to do with rank as well. I can join any server and never have many problems simply because people know who I am. When I join PB on my alts, I see the problems Admins are complaining about. An Admin can join PB and then get complained about a freekill, not do anything because they didn't see it and say "I didn't see it, sorry" and try to continue playing. But it won't work like that for SAs. The players harass them further with "What a shit admin just check the logs" or the next time something sketchy happens, "Nah admin won't do shit about freekills cause they don't know how to play" or what have you. When a PB reg Admin logs on, everyone shapes up and plays better, also they don't berate the Admins as much. Literally no Admin who has a basic understanding of how PB works can join that server without the regs there giving them shit for ignoring them. I have seen Admins do as you suggest to them, telling the regs they didn't see it but they'll be on the look out, and they still get berated for it. They ignore the fact Admins can't punish for what they didn't see and just call them a shit Admin. Admins that aren't as keen on all the fine gray areas and PB rules may try to avoid punishing for something since they're not sure. That leads to them getting berated as well. If they mute a player berating them, more regs join in on giving the Admin shit for muting "a reg just trying to tell you how to play" and if you mute all you're hated by everyone. You then start having to ban people you incited, and you're on PB's shit list for the remainder of eternity. Any regular SA that does as you suggest is on PB's shit list, because they have messaged me and asked what to do and I have told them similar to what you're suggesting they do. It in turn makes a lot of PB regs hate them for punishing everyone/another reg and every time they get on its "Oh hey looks its x better watch out guys they don't know how to play and will punish you for it" or "nah that's x they don't know shit about how to admin, they won't do anything". The player-base themselves scare off the people they want to help them.

It's unfortunate that you will never get Admin to understand why your philosophy on how Admins should act is fucking ridiculous. The people who become Admins sign up to help the community, and their favorite servers, the best they can. If an Admin willingly allows someone to break the rules and cross the line of our community's expectations, that's one thing, not willing to join the server is another. If an Admin does not like Admining PB, we are not going to MAKE them join it. Many of our Admins out of being good people will join a server they dislike to ensure players play by the rules, but that is not a requirement. The only thing we require from our Admins is that they handle their powers responsibly, act as role models, and help the best they can. If an Admin doesn't like playing in one of our servers, that is fine with us, we have other Admins. How about before you go spouting more bullshit expectations, as you have before, I tell you that I expect you to be grateful for what our Admins do here. If you can't, then I will remove you from the community just as you'd like to see our Admins removed for not living up to your expectations. Only difference is that my expectation for you to have some shred of decency and respect for our Admins as fellow human beings, not your personal robotic labor workers, isn't fucking unrealistic.