XJ Weekly Reloaded: Thought of the week

XJ WEEKLY RELOADED #2
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK : ADMIN AND USER RELATIONSHIP

This week we have a topic that has been in discussion from times immemorial. There have been controversies, there were pointless flaming and there were grievances; both from the members as well from the admins. But still, the definite conclusion to this topic has been ever-elusive. We have tried to summarize the discussions so far and also incorporate a few more angles to the discussion, in an interesting manner. Here is an hypothetical conversation between the XJ Admin Staff and the normal users/ members, where both have been personified:

Members : How did you become admins in the first place ?? Was there a definite criteria ?? What are your responsibilities ?? Does rejecting the applications for the post of new admins form an integral part of your job ?? [with a hint of sarcasm]
Admins : There are no definite rules or a set of definite criteria for becoming an admin. But yes, we do have something in common. Either our contributions were pretty much significant in the kreedz community [It doesn’t matter whether we contributed in kreedzing, movie-making, mapping or coding] or we were over-enthusiastic lunatics who embraced kreedzing as an un-detachable part of our lives and wanted to work for the community with complete dedication and no personal motives.
Our responsibilities include the smooth running of the community as a whole. We are allotted in various departments like site-management, coding, mapping, movie-making, etc. We are responsible for our own departments and take care of the situations accordingly.
And no, rejecting applications for the post of new admins is not an integral part of our job. We have far better jobs to take care of. With the increasing number of members in the community, we require new admins from time to time and we hire new admins accordingly. The applications are rejected mostly because of immature behavior and a track of trolling/ spamming/ flaming in the community. At other times, we do not consider you to be competent enough for the respective post. But this decision is not taken by a single person; instead it is discussed in the admin forums and a collective decision is taken. Another reason for the rejection of applications is the lack of vacancy, as we believe “Too many cooks spoil the broth”.
Members : Don’t you think it’s a sheer misuse of power and position when you warn or ban members indiscriminately ?? Whenever we express our personal views and opinions which go against the interests of you, we end up getiing warned or banned. What do you have to say regarding that ??
Admins : None of the warning or bans are without a reason. This is why we include the reason beside the each member in the “Warnings” section. The reasons vary from trolling/ spamming/ flaming in the forums and chatbox to using provocative avatars in the profile pictures.
And we don’t agree with the view that when you express your reasonable and meaningful views in a decent way, no matter how critical it is to us, you get warned or banned. It is only when you cross the thin line of respect and simply post something un-reasonable with no supporting facts that you get warned or banned.
Members : Then what about the indiscriminate warning and banning by Vee in context to his infamous newspost ?? And also regarding the removal of avatars and warning members like akkord ??
Admins : Vee committed an honest mistake by publishing the newspost. Like every admin, he tried to present something new to the community. He made a joke, but ironically it was a sheer disrespect shown to one of our legends in the community. But everyone did agree that although he made such an insulting newspost he did not intend to show disrespect to puppetz. And he did apologize both publicly and via pm to the concerned person. But taking advantage of this situation, some immature members started flaming him beyond the line of respect. The bans and warnings were issued to control the commotion. In this context we would like to point out that the warn/ ban period were both for nominal amount of time. None of the sensible users who expressed their opinion (even dislikes) in a decent manner got warned or banned.
About the avatar issue, akkord was personally approached by Vee to change/ modify his avatar as it was sexually provocative. Although akkord also was not on fault as he had no such intentions. But there was a sort of misunderstanding between the two, which led akkord to take advantage of his double-meaning avatar to prove his legality and Vee to mistake his arrogance (so-called). But his matter is soon going to be solved peacefully. In this context, we would like to request you to use appropriate avatars as this community has a lot of young teenagers and using provocative avatars might result to a group of teenagers with twisted mind-set. There are probably hundreds of “pun” avatars which could be used, but isn’t it our moral obligation to the community to refrain from such avatars ??
Members : Umm…[Pause and thinks for an appropriate answer]Anyways, we would also like to point out that everytime an admin commits a mistake he gets away just by saying “It was an honest mistake”. What do you have to say about this matter ??
Admins : In this regard, I would like to say, depending on his nature of mistake, even admins get warned/ banned. Rules are rules and even admins have to abide by that. As for example you can consider faker and thopa.
Most of the admins are in their early 20’s which is a high time we should concentrate on our real lives and build careers. Instead we devote hours after hours working for the community, collecting sponsors, checking demos, holding cups, etc. Why do you think we do that ??
Members : Umm...
Admins : We are admins of a prestigious community which has almost 58000 members and we feel proud of that. But at the end of the day, we are still normal human beings. Even we get tired, we make mistakes, we get biased at times. But we do rectify them as soon as we realize our mistakes. Every single time we make a mistake all the members break upon us with lots of name-calling and abuses. But can you say, when we work for the community how many times you just drop by to say a simple “Good Job” as a note of appreciation ?? Can you answer why our previous hard work gets demeaning in front of a minor mistake ??
Members : Umm…May be because we consider you people to be way more responsible than us and be perfect.
Admins : We are sorry to say but no one is perfect in this world
Members : Why is that our suggestions are overlooked ?? Why is it that most of the times our pm’s don’t get answered back ??
Admins : None of the suggestions are overlooked and none of the pm’s go un-noticed. Every single suggestion is considered with utmost importance. Either it is replied by an admin right in the respective forum itself or a thread is made in the “Admin Discussion” forum to discuss further amongst the XJ Admin Staff. But you should have the patience to see your suggestion getting implemented, as there are hundreds of suggestions every day and each one of them takes time to get implemented. Its just that we have to arrange the suggestions in an order of importance.
Regarding pm’s, we would like to point out that the ratio of the admins to members is almost 1: 2000. So you can very well imagine how many pm’s we get each day and how many we can answer back besides carrying out our other responsibilities as admins. We hope you kindly understand our problems and have some patience.
Members : Thanks for clearing out our queries and satisfying our grievances.
Admins : No problem. It’s a part of our job. Also we would like to quote a few words of ndR on behalf of all the admins, to give you an idea of what we feel about normal members of the community.
ndR : There are two ways to rule a community:

- The "Invisible" way: admins don't talk to members, they just do their job and they have 0 contact with the members.
Admins are never being bothered, just do their jobs - members either enjoy the community or leave it if it's not the case. Most of the big e-gaming websites work this way and I don't see complaints.

- The other way is how XJ works: we try to be as closer as possible to members, and the rest doesn't need to be described, you guys know how this community works.

[blockquote]We want to build a relationship with our users, but first you should know that we all think you are sarcastic, sardonic, null-informed idiots that are always wrong. Anyway, here's a patronising role play interview me and some other admins put together, hope it makes you like us, even though again, we think you're idiots!
[/blockquote]

Anonymous user requested I post this on his/her behalf;

[blockquote]So, the admins want to clear the air and create a relationship with their users, honestly, that's great. The way you went about it, not so much. Relationships are build upon mutual respect, and from that 'interview'; I wasn't seeing a lot of respect from the admins to the users. It was just you guys dumbing down the opinions of users, and manipulating their questions and issues so that you had answers to make it look like everything they said was wrong. You were great in the suggestions thread, honestly, however this interview seems to have nullified the positive impact that thread had, it seems as though you're just covering your tracks... Don't get me wrong, like that one of your main focuses is on the relationship of the admins/users, but the way you attempt to improve this relationship is with a ridiculously biased, self-indulgent, patronising staged interview? I don't think that will do the trick.
[/blockquote]

I honestly don't agree with this interview at all.

^ spot on lol.

[blockquote]I have to say I don't understand the whole conversation and the point of it. What was all this for? What was the goal?[/blockquote]

Damage control.

XJ WEEKLY RELOADED #3
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK : THE PROMOTION OF KZ

Time and again, I am sure - The singular idea that might have popped out of your mind is to how to make the whole Kreedzing concept as good and as large as one of the eSports communities worldwide, like that of the Counter Strike 1.6 shooting communities. Have you ever thought about that? If NO, then it's time to get your stances right, and do something about it. If YES, then what were the inhibition factors that apparently were your hardest obstacles to transform this dream into reality? Well, to have a deeper look, and to have a greater understanding of the associated concept, we need to open up our eyes a bit and need to do a restudy of the following points:

Firstly, the visual interpretations always has more an effect on the human mind, and for the same reason, the ROTW's were a major hit across several websites, and though probably they need to be finer-tuned somewhat more, their popularity across several websites already speaks volumes about their wide spread acceptance. In addition to that, we could probably go for an Official Moviemakin Competition, where moviemakers from all genres of the gale could come and ably participate. We are sure that would give this branch of the game more global acceptance and a uniform spread out, even among non-kz playing players and even nations.

Secondly, what definitely makes Counter Strike 1.6 shooting still the primary offshoot of counter-strike is the huge amount of the Money involved, and whether we like it or not, that is the "Primary Aspect" that is holding us back. We need more money inputs in the game, across several fields, from various sources to get this beautiful game growing to its fullest form, and to take a respectable position along the other counterparts. Who knows, maybe someday we may even see eSports Companies come forward and host it as a seperate event on big platforms.

But, to make that happen- You, Me and Everyone of us has to do his/her part. I believe sitting in a dark room with your LCD monitor lit up, getting yourself up and arguing on forums, or even geeking hardcore on maps wouldn't do the said part. We have to go out, talk to friends, talk to sponsors and have to convey our expressions and feelings to take this game to the Next Higher Level.