Honest question: Why post something like this?
Most of the other posters complaining at least have motives that can be inferred, but your post has me a little stumped. You sound angry, but not because you are pissed off at the sdmb (like some others), it sounds like you are pissed off that there are people that don’t have the same likes and dislikes as you. Am I close?
Not really. (And really, what are THEIR motives for complaining? Seriously?)
It’s more the board with their whole, “no, we cannot do this AT ALL. Sorry!!!” Then it turns out “we CAN do this.”
They said that about the ads – until there was one for a site Tuba didn’t like. Then she wanted a screenshot. They said this about CM – until they figured out a way to make more money off of it.
The inconsistancy is amazing. Combine that with their refusal to treat anyone like paying customers, and I see this new offer as a crock.
Cool beans. I think this is a nice gesture, and I’ll second what bucketybuck said about xash.
For all Seven’s faults, I do trust his professionalism. But as I’ve said, I don’t believe for a moment it was a good faith offer on his part, so maybe you’re right.
Can’t win for losing, sometimes… can you?
It’s a nice gesture in response to the complaints of some lapsed charter members.
My first impression after reading Ed’s post was: “Cool. Good move Ed/ xash”
Followed very shortly afterwords by, “I wonder how many posts it will take for the petulant and ill mannered to complain, find fault, whine and concoct ulterior motives.”
Not many it turns out.
You trust his professionalism, but you don’t think he was making a good faith offer? How do you reconcile these conflicting ideas?
Highlighting mine
+1
If he has a job to do, I’m sure he does his best to do a good job of it, if only because that’s how he builds his reputation. But when he offered to work on improving the technical performance of the SDMB, he wasn’t seriously expecting to be taken up on the offer, and wouldn’t have made the offer if he’d thought there was a chance he’d have to do it. I mean, that’s possibly hundreds of hours of work which he was offering for free! No way. He wanted to make a point about the SDMB’s administration, or attract attention, or something, but not actually help the SDMB.
Of course, if they had actually accepted his offer (we all know the chance of that was nil), he would have done it and done it well. Because he’s a professional.
The big deal is that some people need to whine about everything.
It’s a fair enough deal and looks like there will be a few takers. They get their title back, the board gets a bit of wonga, people get to bitch about it and others bitch about the bitching. Everyone’s a winner!
I guess those “perks” of more PM space don’t qualify as treating you like a paying customer, and yet you continue to be a paying customer.
Emphasis mine.
I seriously doubt that any task or combination of tasks involving a vBulletin board require that much of an investment.
(bolding mine)
Apologies for continuing this hijack, but the bolded part is completely false. Seven offered to use his expertise to help tweak the server settings to improve performance, based on his extensive hands-on experience hosting a variety of websites, including multiple vBulletin sites. Changing settings involves editing a few text files – it’s not a time intensive process. The value in the offer was the knowledge gained through experience, not the labor involved in changing the settings. And since the server settings can be kept completely separate from the message board data, it’s hard to see what nefarious goals he could have had – it’s like someone seeing your car backfiring and spewing black smoke offering to tell you what kind of oil to put in and how to gap your spark plugs so that doesn’t happen.
At the time of the offer, the site’s performance had gotten really bad, so I thought it was a pretty nice thing of him to do. No big deal that TPTB chose to solve the problem on their own, but it’s kind of rude to misrepresent what was offered, IMO.
Aren’t you supposed to be on holiday, Giraffe? Let me guess, raining down South?
Any chance you can use your influence to get them to see fixing the data base errors as a priority?
Not threadshitting, just asking. Somehow, to my mind, that should come before restoring titles, priority wise.
I defer to your greater knowledge. I seem to remember that his offer was quite extensive, and at the time it was said that it could take him a lot of time. If that’s not the case, then I’m sorry.
Oh, I’m definitely not implying this. As I’ve said, he’s a professional.
You know him better than I do. I just wonder what was in it for him, giving free work to improve a board that he wasn’t very active on anymore. And he must have known that all previous similar offers had been refused (or not even commented on) by the administration here.
But you’re right, this is a hijack and I will not pursue it further. My excuses to Seven if I misunderstood or misrepresented his motives.
While I’m on the fence about getting my Charter Member title back, what I’d really like is to get my original join date back. I joined this board back in 1999, and had to re-join again in 2001 for some reason. I even had the same username.
Is getting my join date back a possibility?
I’ve asked an administrator to take a look.
I was seriously warned for an opinion which has been reinforced. I insulted no one except those willing to be insulted.