Category: the Rant Board
Well, here's my rant.
Suggestions havebeen made and not followed through. 3 CL'S have gotten fed up and are no longer CL'S. There have been virtually no site updates in months. I feel like I've wasted $25 this year because my reason for paying was not only for myown enjoyment of thesite, but so that the site can be updated and new features can be added.I love the Zone. I love the friendships I've made, the fun I have when I'm bored and have a little time to kill and I love the help and support I've received.However, I don't love the fact that it seems to me like this site is "dying a slow death," as many have said recently. It just doesn't seem right or fair to me that all of a sudden the Admins just disappearon us. There was no notice or warning to let us know that they needed a break or maybethey were quitting altogether. That to me shows a lack of respect to the peoplewho enjoy this site and especially to those who have Premium memberships and pay in to this site. I know the feeis certainly not much, but as I've said previously, I pay because I want to see the site improve and grow both in membership and functionality. If the admins don't want anything to do with the site, then they need to find someone who does or they need to let us know what's going on so we can either continue coming on in hopes of site improvement or discontinue. I personally feel that as long as we have members, we have the Zone, and I will stay on as long as that's happening. But... What if thesite dies quicker than we thought? Will there ever be an awesomecommunity like the Zone? I say no.
I think the main factors are laziness and preoccupation. I don't think it's about being burnt out or just not caring - perhaps they've just outgrown the zone and so aren't putting the time into it which it needs to prosper. I agree that it may be dying a slow death, but I'm also of the opinion that it doesn't necessarily depend on the admins to hold the community together - apart from keeping the server running and the domain registered, ovbiously. As someone suggested on some other topic, we may not have the power to add features to the site but we do have the power to keep it interesting. It's the members that make up the community, after all. I will say one thing though: If the admins aren't going to give the zone the time it needs, then they really should appoint a new admin or two to chip in.
it is unfair to blaim on the admins themselves, as far as things should be concern. its overall is a community, i guess, the zone is slowly dying down cause the users simply aint interested ito stay on zone for longer period of time compare to what it use to be.
what is the reason, perhaps they find better companion on other social site such as facebook or tweeter, or simply because, the site offer to little as the pointn of interest for members to log in.
we have two admins here, and dare i say, one simply occupite himself with something, and don't care about zone as long as premium members keep paying to his account, and another one, well, perhaps little burn out with it all.
This site has been around forabout 6 or 7 years now, and as was said on other topics, sometimes websites just run a course. I wouldn't say the zone is in danger of dying out in the near future, but I think there needs to be more involvement both from the admins and the members of the site if there's going to be improvements. I think they're both connected in that the general disinterest displayed by the admins gives some of the users a negative attitude, making them not want to log on as often and contribute to the community. i can understand how a premium member would be frustrated by this because they feel like they're not getting their money's worth. One circumstance has to improve before the other one will, in my opinion, but to say one or the other is totally at fault would be wrong.
Thing is, no new admins will get appointed, because the old ones never get on here to do something about appointing new ones.
I definitely agree that the admins need to get more involved in the site. The admins do come on here (especially chris), but most of the time they login invisibly. I think they need to show themselves a lot more by coming on visibly for a start.
As for implementing features: I haven't really seen any updates since January of this year (with the exception of the twitter user listing and the user profiles update). I think the admins at least need to post in the suggestions board and tell us if the suggestions are good or not and if they're good, whether they'll be implemented or not. If I had my own web server, the coding knowledge required and a bit of dosh lying around, i'd happily take up the admin position (unfortunately, at this time I have none of the 3 things I just mentioned so I wouldn't be suitable, but a CL position is still possible). I think part of the reason why the zone is slowly dying is because there are no new features being added. Yes, we could all just stop renewing our premium memberships, but the danger with that is that the zone may run out of money and simply be taken offline. For the most part, I really enjoy this site and would hate to see it go, but I do think it's time for some new features.
Brandi, the three of us are still fed up with the way things are, quite honestly, but we did choose to come back as CL's. Long story short, we saw that the only people our resignation harmed were the users, who are why we are CL's in the first place. Waking up JJ, which is what we were trying to accomplish, was, and is, just not going to happen, so we figured we'd come back and do the best we could by the users we're here to help.
Personally, I think it's a combo of two things. I'm inclined to say J is just being lazy about the site. He has abandoned that which he created in the first place. with Chris, I think it's a matter of having a full life off-line, and burn-out. He works full time, in a tech position, I believe, and so probably the last thing he feels like doing when he gets home is being at a computer. He's pretty much the sole admin at this point, and there is far too much for him to do alone. Yet, few people know the code the site is written in, so even if he were inclined to give admin capabilities to someone else, we're not sure who that would be.
The biggest power the community has is to keep things interesting, yes, but also in their purchasing, or not purhcasing, premium memberships. Money makes the world go round, and I imagine that's true in the case of this site as well.
hmm, i won't spend ages on this, because it would take ages to write all what i think about it.
i think who ever pointed out that the users don't log in, i think that's because they just sign up, get bored of the same old features and leave.
as for suggestions, it saddens me to think that the admins don't respond to our posts, i'm sure there's a part of the website that says if you have any suggestions or find a bug, let us know. clearly that's being abused.
as for major updates, the last update i saw was probably alternate universe coming back, though saying that there's been really no thought put in to it yet again, and sorry to sound harsh, but i think it's a waste of site band with. j does not even log in to make the rooms like he says somewhere, if you want a room just send jay the points... oh well. suppose it will always be that way.
as for alicia's point, sure. chris n does have a job, but you've got to remember he has a website to run, too. when was the last time you actually heard him anounce a new feature or respond to a suggestion?.
as for jay, i really don't see him much at all. this year, i'd be surprised if i even saw him, hmm, 3 or 4 times maybe. again it's a case of looking at the suggestions, seeing what's possible, working on the code, then releasing it to the users. not just sitting back and let the users do all the work, which really is not paying off.
as for involvement, i'm surprised that there's really been no major events in forever. you would have thought a christmas event, if we get a certain amount of users logged in, you'll get this feature... something along those lines.
as for renewing my premium, i'm not sure if i am going to do it yet. as it stands, i have nothing to renew it for, and yes, that does sound harsh, but when you look at how rarely the admins introduce new features nowadays, there is some truth in it.
i think the zone will eventually die out, sad to say. firstly with all the new social networking websites, like klango and blink nation who are trying to constantly get better features and keep them coming, not just sit back in there little studio or what ever. also i think the users will stop logging in eventually, sure there will be ones that will try to keep it going with the boards etc, but if nothing's aded anytime soon, it's just going to die out.
The problem with appointing a new admin is that it will take a lot of effort to use the current code to its full potential. PHP has evolved a lot in the past 6 years since this site was coded. In fact, the php is so old that it would probably be quicker to rewrite it. That is the situation as I understand it.
it is sad to see zone become what it is right now. i guess for zone to back to it's glory, there're major construction need to make for this site.
in a new user prospective, you might get interested in a game or two for few weeks, before you grown up on it. the public chat line, well, not active at all. i don't know the stats, but i doubt that in it's current stage, the public quicknotes per day might fall under 1000, or sadly, might fall under 100. this is a bad news, considering we have around 5500 members here, (again, that stats are kind of inaccurate somehow i think), and perhaps 2000 to 3000 members amoung that 5500 users are still consider active? if we only have around 10 to 20 user log in, even in the most pick hours of the site, that consider nothing, when ones we have the record of 184 users log in at a given time.
besides all these, the chatting is certainly not active, beside sending fake quicknotes, and jokes, there's no real conversation going on.
as far as the board goes, well, what the board have become, deal to the dedication of game parler and some other few user, it have become a messy port of shit. browsing thru the board now, is like, going thru this messy port of shit, and hopefully you'll find some gold and silver in between that pal of shit.
game parler have dominate at least half of the latest post session, by any given time. and some user keep reposting and reposting to their own topic, with the most useless point of interest. of course, we can say that this is a free site that user are free to post whatever they want, how many post they like, but, again, something need to be done.
as much as we say staffs and admins needing to blaim for not getting the site going, we need to look at the conchousness of users as well. if users simply log in to make a mess on the board, other user like me, and lots more, simply won't be interested. and, if theree's no one log in who really wanting to get a conversation going, i don't see any reason to log in as for to chat either.
as far as the game goes, well, after being the member of zone for nearly 6 years, i simply over the stage of playing boring games on zone, or playing with bunch of cheeters (in the case of anagrams)
ah, and a full overhall of the sight would be quite time consumeing. but still, I agree with everything here to quite a degree.
they're just on vacation.
...a long, long, loooooong vacation.
I get fed up too, but I do find myself having to defend the admins a bit. I'm sure when they started this site in 2003 it was great fun for them as well as for the users. But they are now six years older,and with age comes more responsibilities in life. I know Chris works, and I believe JJ has other websites and projects that he runs. However, I do agree that we need to have new admins, and that getting them up to date with how to run the site would be time consuming, and we've already established that JJ and Chris have no spare time.
To whoever said something about people signing up and then not coming back being because of how things are run now, I disagree. Ever since I joined back in 2004, I've noticed people signing up and then you never see them logged on again. They probably sign up to see what it's all about and then determine it's not what they want. I don't think it has anything to do with current events on here. People do grow and change, and former members who did used to spend more time on here could be staying away for reasons other than the lack of change, the silly games in game parlor, etc. Maybe they are attending school, getting jobs, and just generally getting involved with life outside of the computer.
The thing is, a host provider costs what? $10 a year? If everyone stopped paying for premiums, it wouldn't really be the end at all. J.J. still would have the money to pay for the hosting fees pretty easily. As for everything else, if this site wants to get really back on its feet, I think a major overhaul is needed. Most of the site, for what I've seen is written in PHP. I'm pretty sure that some little bits and pieces of it have been updated here and their, but for the most part this PHP code is what. six years old now?
Also, I just noticed this too. Look up at the top of the site. When their isn't an ad up their, theirs a message saying that for $10 a month, you can get it hosted. Their is the hosting fee right their. Now a second thing I forgot is what services he's also paying for along with the hosting plan. But still, $10 a month, for one month theirs your webhosting fee, then the rest keep it for when you need to renew the services that you included with the rest of the hosting plan.
Uh, no. Zone By Phone require's an Asterisk server, which costs a bit more than $10 a month to have. Check www.singlehop.com for an idea of how much such a thing would cost.
I can't speak for JJ, but burnout is an issue for me. At the end of a day of code and sql, working on the zone is not always at the top of my list--that is if I'm at home and not taking care of another activity. The community is what I enjoy most about the site--well that and the ability to make new things and see what you all do with them. Stay tuned.
OOOOH!
Well Chris, I appreciate your honesty. I'm sure others do as well. It probably seems like I'm ungrateful, but all I'm saying is I love the site and would hate to see it die. Again, thanks for not being a coward and coming on to speak your peace. Not saying that JJ's a coward, just saying it's nice to hear your side of things. It helps. And, yes I will stay tuned!
Your right nick, I forgot about ZBP. Now we also have teamtalk to use.
music master 91, i'm wondering if chris n set up the teamtalk server.
refer to the part of chris post where it says stay tuned.
How much time the admins spend developing the site is up to them. If they kept adding features, there would eventually be too many features.
There are other sites with just as many features if not less features than this that are more active. Okay they are used by sighted people and there are more sighted people than blind people, but with any online community, what the community gets out of it depends on what it puts into it.
By adding interesting content to the site, you can make other people want to come back to see if there is any more for them to read and react to. That is how the community grew in the first place.
Personally I'm not bored of the current features, but I suppose people who spend most of the time on here could get bored, but that's their fault for not finding enough to do so they aren't on here all the time. Think about it this way. You may like a TV show, but if you watched it and it had the same features from when you woke up until you went to bed on most days, wouldn't you get bored of that show? Most normal people would.
Thing is what about our people who use a mac, or linux? Maybe linux might have a teamtalk client, but I know that the mac users are stuck.
Yes, Chris was the one who set up the TeamTalk thing. He rocks.
Well i'm pleased that the admins are starting to show some interest in the zone again; let's just hope that they stay active *smile*
Yeah, something got J's attention last night, and I am glad. And Chris is the one responsible for the new voice chat server.
wait, I thought there was a Mac client.
guess not.
Unfortunately there isn't a mac client, though they could run it with fusion I assume?
getting fusion running isn't exactly easy, and fusion costs a great deal of money in the first place. mac users have to pay i tink about 80 bucks i think it is to get a vm, while windows users just slap the program on and away they go.
I think it is as much about the aditude of the users as it is about the activity of the staff. Think about when they do log in and look at some of these boards: They see a few funny ones, a few light hearted ones, a few suggestions, many of which are met with insults to the original poster for creating it, lots of really random posts, and a few really constructive conversations that are just as interesting to read as they are to post to. Now, while it's good to see those, you have to attempt to get around the bashing and the insulting to get there. I know this site emphasizes freedom of speech, and I'm all for it, but it would be nice if you could give a constructive reason for why you don't like someone's post, rather than just saying they need to go away, go back to mommy and daddy, and all the other things many of us have read. I'm not proud of every post I've made either, so I won't bash what I've done myself on a few occasions, but my general opinion is that some of these people seem to thrive on the drama. That being said, there are a lot of really good things happening here as well, and I would like to see these things grow further.
Do we know what happens behind the sceens? No sir! So why do we critisize? If you don't like it, why don't you try to be admin for a day.
I feel the staff does a fine job. I could be wrong, for all I know they could be sitting around with thier thumbs up thier asses but I don't think that's the case.
Re: free speech
OceanDream the CLs intended it to be that way.
I agree with Margorp about the quality of the site. If it was rubbish I wouldn't visit it. There are billions of other websites on the net.
My point was that we do not know what the admins have to juggle.
Yes. If the site was rubbish, I would not have come back.
Honestly, if it wasn't for the zone, I would have missed out on loads of friends ...
and I would not be happy in the UK right now. Yes, it might have happened another way, but my point is, that I have to thank this site for a lot.
And when I came back, I realized that there were a few new things. Okay, granted, not many, but hey, the randomizer for example has become even funnier, just to put an example. There is a broader choice of boards, and the new chat server (which I have yet to use).
So I don't think the zone is dying a slow death.
Since I came back I already made about four or five new friends, and got in contact again with old ones.
So, as long as we log on and make it fun, and tell our friends about it, I don't see why it would die.
And BTW, this is one of the few sites which is not blocked by colleges and schools because nobody knows it apart from blind people. Lol
Isn't this all kind of moot? Since this and other similar topics were created, J has seen the light. lol. We've seen some really neat new stuff on the site lately.
True. Just wanted to give my opinion though because it is so easy to see the bad things and forget the good.
I do agree that there are a lot of good things happening on the site, and of course, not all of our suggestions can be implamented. Sure, maybe some things are happening a little slower than many of us would like, but the admins and CL's alike have lives offline. A lot of it has to do with the aditude of the community. As long as we have the general aditude that this is a good and positive site, then it mostly will be.
Personally, I don't particularly appreciate some oe the more just plain bashing posts/quicknotes, not backed up with any support of their claims, but no site is perfect.
ditto to the last poster; that's the very reason I have public qn's turned off. just a thought, though: maybe if the admins see we appreciate their work, they'll feel more inclined to take us up on suggestions.
Chelsea, I totally agree. It is definitely a much better aproach than moaning and complaining.
And I like quicknotes but turn them off when there's too much drama.