Boycott McM

[NovaLegion]

I have yet to see a full and complete argument.

 

[Desert]

oh really? ok 2018 member

ok 2017 member

 

[Kuzni]

Ajdin How would you say the site could be improved?

 

[Violet]

ok 2017 member

ok 2017 member

 

[Desert]

ok 2017 member

ok hentai character

 

[Violet]

ok hentai character

okay ChangingProfilePicutreEvery10Minutes.

 

[Desert]

okay ChangingProfilePicutreEvery10Minutes.

okay color

 

[Ajdin]

Unfortunately, that would be very hard to accomplish, since a decent amount of people regularly buy ads here and wouldn’t want to lose business. But if it was done well and the end result was expenses outweighing revenue, it would be a matter of changing or closing down eventually.

The permanent fix to this site’s problems would be for it to be owned by someone like BeBosny who prioritizes the forum and views it as a living community rather than a source of passive income. Or at least for someone to be appointed and paid a liveable wage to manage the site. Everyone could see how great of an owner BeBosny was. One thing that specifically sticks out to me is when the entire staff team back in the day (me included) wrote a letter about how BeBosny should retain forum ownership and for the agreed upon deal of the purchase to go through still. Looking back at that, Justis R was the most passionate about this of us all, writing a massive wall of text on why BeBosny should retain ownership and being most critical of the deal being reversed. Nobody was happy about it, I remember the huge shitshow on MCM and the whole staff team being surprised and upset. But then it was just forgotten about and now most of the active users didn’t even have an account back then when all those events went down.

The way the forum was when BeBosny was owner shuts down all the excuses for why the site is having so many issues. Things would get done swiftly and efficiently, such backlogs were a very rare occurance and only happened when a large portion of the staff team was busy irl, things just got done and users actually respected the site and all/most staff members. It wasn’t perfect, and people hated on staff members still, but the big difference was, it was never as frequent, most users sided with the staff members when users made angry threads, and people had more respect for them in general. Reminds me of when MTG said something along the lines of “Back then, I had issues with Doge and thebaum64, but at least I still had respect for them.”

MCM users aren’t being critical about this website/staff/leadership because they hate the site, but quite the opposite, because they love the site, it’s their internet home and they want to put out the massive fire that is the way it is currently being run.

And I’m sure most of us would make suggestions, but we see no point since they won’t be looked at for years and won’t be considered.

I'm not going to lie, I do get a little emotional when reading posts like these. It was really unfortunate that things ended that way.

It still amazes me that according to many members, mostly staff, there are not enough competent members to become staff member. It also amazes me that staff applications were necessary with extremely stupid requirements (I couldn't apply even if I wanted to and I do think I'd be a reasonable candidate). Perhaps you should think about this and realize that you've lost many great people in the last years and you should question if it's actually you instead of the community.

People have this thought that it's extremely hard and time intensive to run this forum. I'll be honest, it isn't super easy but after some time you start to understand people, expectations, organizational needs,... You start learning yourself things from people management to community interaction. These are all things I've discovered myself at one point in my life and I feel like Mick is making 0 effort in trying this. If you know how to structure things, communicate well within your team and have a healthy flow of features, fixes and other community & forum related stuff, people will be happy and motivated to help, behave and interact. It's a balance of listening, adapting and acting upon the community needs.


I could start listing all issues and what has been done wrong from the past few years but there's no point. It's crazy to me that Mick managed to get rid of the most important asset of this forum, the team. The team that has been around for years and consistently contributed to MCM's success. He managed to do this without even realizing it. The only person that's still around from back in the day is Justis and from the few times I've spoken to him he's not too happy with MCM or how it's functioning. When something like that happens, how do you expect things to remain functioning properly? Let alone get better...

What I do want to say though is that if you care about MCM enough to want to see change and take the time to make threads in general, if a little more effort can be put in into a thread but in the suggestions section, that’d be something that brings change.

This is literally bullshit. I don't agree with many things you said in this thread but this claim is literally the biggest piece of bullshit I've read. How do you even dare to make claims like this lol.

I realize you have good intentions and all but you're essentially blaming the members for not creating proper suggestion threads therefore it's ok not have any considerable progress in the past few years. It's never staff's fault apparently, it's always the members.

Go read the piece I just quoted from your post and take some time to read through the suggestion section. If you don't notice that you're literally contradicting your own words, there's something seriously wrong with you.

Transparency is and almost always has been a large issue throughout the time that I have managed the site. It is something that I'm always thinking about and considering, but I don't actually know what it is that users would like the staff team to be more open and transparent about. I feel like I am at a stage where it has been so long since I was a regular user (over four years now) that I'm out of touch with what users expect from me with transparency.

Behind the scenes there is always work being done with bug fixes, announcement planning, custom development, discussions, debates, and so much more. For example, over this past month, I have been focused a lot on preparing documentation for custom development and organising that all a lot better with Justis. I've also been looking into expanding our developer team, and we now have Lyphiard developing for us on a case-by-case basis to get our development backlog down a little bit more and release updates more for you all. We're looking to also get another developer or two so that we can improve the site as quickly as our users would like. My question for you is do you care to hear about these behind-the-scenes changes? What sort of information would you like to receive from me, and how would you like to receive it? I want to be the best administrator I can be for you all.

In saying that, I feel like users need to be more understanding and accepting of the decisions that the staff team makes, especially in terms of rule enforcement. We are fairly strict about our enforcement of rules and I don't intend on changing that. We are a marketplace first, and if you are not able to abide by our rules then you do not have a place dealing in our market, and if there are any particular rules you feel need to be amended then all suggestions made are reviewed. Tonight I plan to go through all of our pending suggestions to deny ones we're no longer going ahead with, accept suggestions we have already implemented and give an update if there are any suggestions we are still planning to implement soon.

I don't try to manage the site poorly, and I apologise for the times that I have. If you have any feedback about anything I have said or any issues I've missed, let me know and I'll respond.

You've shown how incompetent you are many times. You've done some good stuff too but your incompetency overrides that fairly easily. Most people don't notice it because they don't know where to look but I do. Some other long-time members do too as they've explained in this thread.

People (including you) think anyone can run something like MCM. It's simply not the case. You need a very specific set of skills and you need to be able to combine those. I realize your intentions are good but it's simply not that easy.

I honestly get slightly frustrated just typing this so I'll just abruptly end here.

 

[Aekalix]

I honestly get slightly frustrated just typing this so I'll just abruptly end here.

It's really something to see a forum rise to the top and then works itself twice as fast into the gutter. But then it's a complete other thing to work it to the top, getting it taken off you and seeing itself dive head-first into absolute shit. I really wish things went differently for you and also for us.

 

[Kram]

I'm not going to lie, I do get a little emotional when reading posts like these. It was really unfortunate that things ended that way.

It still amazes me that according to many members, mostly staff, there are not enough competent members to become staff member. It also amazes me that staff applications were necessary with extremely stupid requirements (I couldn't apply even if I wanted to and I do think I'd be a reasonable candidate). Perhaps you should think about this and realize that you've lost many great people in the last years and you should question if it's actually you instead of the community.

People have this thought that it's extremely hard and time intensive to run this forum. I'll be honest, it isn't super easy but after some time you start to understand people, expectations, organizational needs,... You start learning yourself things from people management to community interaction. These are all things I've discovered myself at one point in my life and I feel like Mick is making 0 effort in trying this. If you know how to structure things, communicate well within your team and have a healthy flow of features, fixes and other community & forum related stuff, people will be happy and motivated to help, behave and interact. It's a balance of listening, adapting and acting upon the community needs.


I could start listing all issues and what has been done wrong from the past few years but there's no point. It's crazy to me that Mick managed to get rid of the most important asset of this forum, the team. The team that has been around for years and consistently contributed to MCM's success. He managed to do this without even realizing it. The only person that's still around from back in the day is Justis and from the few times I've spoken to him he's not too happy with MCM or how it's functioning. When something like that happens, how do you expect things to remain functioning properly? Let alone get better...


This is literally bullshit. I don't agree with many things you said in this thread but this claim is literally the biggest piece of bullshit I've read. How do you even dare to make claims like this lol.

I realize you have good intentions and all but you're essentially blaming the members for not creating proper suggestion threads therefore it's ok not have any considerable progress in the past few years. It's never staff's fault apparently, it's always the members.

Go read the piece I just quoted from your post and take some time to read through the suggestion section. If you don't notice that you're literally contradicting your own words, there's something seriously wrong with you.


You've shown how incompetent you are many times. You've done some good stuff too but your incompetency overrides that fairly easily. Most people don't notice it because they don't know where to look but I do. Some other long-time members do too as they've explained in this thread.

People (including you) think anyone can run something like MCM. It's simply not the case. You need a very specific set of skills and you need to be able to combine those. I realize your intentions are good but it's simply not that easy.

I honestly get slightly frustrated just typing this so I'll just abruptly end here.

I was really debating on responding but you quoted my post and I want to make this clear if I haven’t already, I don’t want to blame the community, I didn’t mean to, that wasn’t the point of saying that. I don’t believe the community is at fault for things not happening, I really don’t. The part you quoted was meant to say if people want to make a difference, which I assume people do when I see these threads, they should create suggestions and not general discussion threads. I’m not saying people don’t create good suggestions, but I’m saying that if the passion that goes into these threads was put into a suggestion thread then it is more likely that something will come out of it. The staff team has made mistakes, I never said we don’t or meant to imply that. I do check the suggestion forum often and I’ve talked to Mick about suggestions as well, but I also read all these sorts of threads, and I can say with ease that these threads almost never accomplish anything while suggestions threads do.

People can give whatever reasons they want for my motivation for writing this part but, to be frank, I just feel like your response to Mick is disrespectful. His message was to address some of the points that were brought up in the thread, to apologize, and to ask the community what they would like to see from him.
Your response to that is just that he is incompetent. His goal is to improve, and your response to that is just to belittle him. Someone tagged you to see what you thought are the issues regarding MCM, you've given 2 things for him from my point of view one being that staff applications weren't good and that he is incompetent. That's all you've given him. I agree with the first, but I strongly disagree with the second. I see your post as helpful as "just be good"

Both Kayn and Chearful gave their suggestions on what Mick can do to improve the forum, what they want to see as community members. Your whole post is just frustrating to me because it sounds like the forum is just gone to nothing, which is something I don't believe at all.

 

[Aekalix]

I was really debating on responding but you quoted my post and I want to make this clear if I haven’t already, I don’t want to blame the community, I didn’t mean to, that wasn’t the point of saying that. I don’t believe the community is at fault for things not happening, I really don’t. The part you quoted was meant to say if people want to make a difference, which I assume people do when I see these threads, they should create suggestions and not general discussion threads. I’m not saying people don’t create good suggestions, but I’m saying that if the passion that goes into these threads was put into a suggestion thread then it is more likely that something will come out of it. The staff team has made mistakes, I never said we don’t or meant to imply that. I do check the suggestion forum often and I’ve talked to Mick about suggestions as well, but I also read all these sorts of threads, and I can say with ease that these threads almost never accomplish anything while suggestions threads do.

People can give whatever reasons they want for my motivation for writing this part but, to be frank, I just feel like your response to Mick is disrespectful. His message was to address some of the points that were brought up in the thread, to apologize, and to ask the community what they would like to see from him.
Your response to that is just that he is incompetent. His goal is to improve, and your response to that is just to belittle him. Someone tagged you to see what you thought are the issues regarding MCM, you've given 2 things for him from my point of view one being that staff applications weren't good and that he is incompetent. That's all you've given him. I agree with the first, but I strongly disagree with the second. I see your post as helpful as "just be good"

Both Kayn and Chearful gave their suggestions on what Mick can do to improve the forum, what they want to see as community members. Your whole post is just frustrating to me because it sounds like the forum is just gone to nothing, which is something I don't believe at all.

Maybe you don't believe it but we do. Again you're pointing the finger at us. Or BeBosny for not spoonfeeding Mick what to do. If the staff team is so competent as you believe, then they should have no problems telling Mick how to improve.

Note: Some staffs are great, others are not and some I don't even know who they are.

 

[Kram]

Maybe you don't believe it but we do. Again you're pointing the finger at us. Or BeBosny for not spoonfeeding Mick what to do. If the staff team is so competent as you believe, then they should have no problems telling Mick how to improve.

Note: Some staffs are great, others are not and some I don't even know who they are.

You say that like we don't talk to Mick. I can't speak for every staff member but I've talked to Mick about going through suggestions, about the staff team, about what I think he should do in general, my opinions on the site and how to make it better. But, those are my opinions, and clearly those can differ from other members of the community.
My problem with Bosny's post wasn't that he didn't give anything helpful, but more so that he just insulted Mick instead of giving something helpful. He 1) Could've not responded 2) Given something helpful 3) Not even add the last part. If he didn't have that last part I wouldn't have bothered commenting on the rest of his post and would've only attempted to make clear what my message was supposed to mean.

 

[Ajdin]

I was really debating on responding but you quoted my post and I want to make this clear if I haven’t already, I don’t want to blame the community, I didn’t mean to, that wasn’t the point of saying that. I don’t believe the community is at fault for things not happening, I really don’t. The part you quoted was meant to say if people want to make a difference, which I assume people do when I see these threads, they should create suggestions and not general discussion threads. I’m not saying people don’t create good suggestions, but I’m saying that if the passion that goes into these threads was put into a suggestion thread then it is more likely that something will come out of it. The staff team has made mistakes, I never said we don’t or meant to imply that. I do check the suggestion forum often and I’ve talked to Mick about suggestions as well, but I also read all these sorts of threads, and I can say with ease that these threads almost never accomplish anything while suggestions threads do.

People can give whatever reasons they want for my motivation for writing this part but, to be frank, I just feel like your response to Mick is disrespectful. His message was to address some of the points that were brought up in the thread, to apologize, and to ask the community what they would like to see from him.
Your response to that is just that he is incompetent. His goal is to improve, and your response to that is just to belittle him. Someone tagged you to see what you thought are the issues regarding MCM, you've given 2 things for him from my point of view one being that staff applications weren't good and that he is incompetent. That's all you've given him. I agree with the first, but I strongly disagree with the second. I see your post as helpful as "just be good"

Both Kayn and Chearful gave their suggestions on what Mick can do to improve the forum, what they want to see as community members. Your whole post is just frustrating to me because it sounds like the forum is just gone to nothing, which is something I don't believe at all.

I've done enough spoonfeeding in the past years. I've offered my help many times through PM even though Mick has treated me like absolute shit. I don't believe I am being disrespectful, I'm just being direct which is who I am as a person. You don't know me very well which is why you're surprised. It's not disrespectful to call someone incapable or unqualified for doing a certain job or task.

There are certain things Mick had done/said that had the sole purpose of triggering me. If it wasn't for these things, I would have had a completely different attitude in posts like these.

My problem with Bosny's post wasn't that he didn't give anything helpful

If you'd actually read my post, I actually did say what the issues with the site are. Everyone has this misconception that the issues are single tasks which need to be addressed. That's actually not the case: A while ago the staff team made a huge deal of hiring staff members. The issue wasn't hiring the staff members, it was keeping them. They were supposed to address the issue first before going on hiring people. There's no point in hiring staff when you can't keep them.

When Mick goes through suggestions, it just looks like he wants to tackle them asap without actually considering some of them. There's no point going through suggestions if you have no idea how to actually handle them. A full pending forum where the majority of suggestions will never be handled is much worse than putting them in declined.

I like how he's been putting off everything related to development due to lack of resources. Development is one of the things where you can literally throw money at the problem and it will solve itself. It's not hard to document a xenforo plugin/addon and send it out to a few developers. You'll have a bunch of quotes within a few days. Mick's usual response is "our dev is already swamped with work and this suggestion isn't good enough". That is NOT how you deal with issues like that.

Mick has shown weaknesses and inconsistencies in many cases. To me it also looks like he's lost passion and motivation to run this forum considering there were times where he just went inactive for over a month... Things like this seriously demotivate staff to do any kind of decent work even though they will never tell him directly. There were times where I'd go through hundreds of reports myself because the other staff members were busy or didn't have time to do reports at the time just to prevent a report backlog from happening. From what I've seen, Mick feels like he's way too important for that.

All these things come down to management behavior. Mick has shown that he's not capable because he fails to be there as a leader. He doesn't take responsibility for anything and has settled with extremely low standards for this forum.

I feel like I am at a stage where it has been so long since I was a regular user (over four years now) that I'm out of touch with what users expect from me with transparency.

You think that is the issue. Wow you've really lost touch with the site indeed. Well, I've actually never been a regular member before the forum was handed to me yet I was able to recognize the community needs and work along. Let me break it to you, it's your god damn job to know what your community needs are. Sure you can question some things but seriously... You've had so much time to settle in as a site admin yet you manage to make it like you're not even trying.

Here's some corporate governance by Harvey Specter in the series 'Suits'(from 1:40). Enjoy.

 

[Terminated]

You see - this is the first time I (and I assume most others) have even heard there's stuff going on behind the scenes in recent times.

Nobody really looks at pending suggestions nowadays as it's just a backlog really, if anything.

IMO, create a subforum under announcements and call it either 'Weekly Updates' or 'Monthly Updates'. Every week/month, quite literally just post what is coming up/what can be expected/what has been done in the past week[/month]/what is being debated in a quick bullet point format. In the case of what is being debated, then would also be a good opportunity to allow the community to weigh in on the debate where appropriate to make the community feel more valued when it comes to decisions.

Like a dev log as many other sites do.

Mick, a community needs an owner that is seen to be "present", even if you list tiny site improvements or the fact that you had an extremely long shit so forgot to call the developers. You feel distant all the time and "out of touch" is an understatement.