Thanks for the help!

Today I asked someone to help me out with something. There was a pretty big mess that I needed help cleaning up. What was the response I got? No help, whatsoever. The person simply told me what to do. I became quickly enraged at this. Then I began to realize how selfish people are.

If you ask someone for help, you would expect that they would be willing to help you out, right? After all, you asked them. You have some trust in them, obviously. The fact that they are willing to stand there and do absolutely nothing though, that irks me. Why would someone decide to be so, well, rotten. It bothers me that you can’t find good help these days.

Since I want to extend this post a little bit, I’ll relate it to a news story I saw today, regarding jobs. Part-time jobs seem to be becoming more common. Is this necesarily a good thing though? Personally, I don’t like the idea of having so many people working for you. I never understood why someone would work two jobs. If one pays more, wouldn’t you just stay with them? As I grew older, I realized that there are more things that contribute to the job atmosphere. Not only that, but you have to realize that employers may only have you employed for, say, four hours a day. This could be disasterous for you, but it could also be beneficial. A decent job that I can walk to would be nice. If it only was for four hours though, I would look for a second job (if I could). Perhaps I’ll be able to get a job this summer and make some additional money. That would be great. Wish me luck!

Think Tank & Photoshop Skin

Today I logged back into forums after being out this week due to school work. The first forum I visited with SigResource.com. On April Fools Day, it is hard to take everything you see and hear seriously. However, members of SigResource had to do exactly that when they found that the forum had moved on to its second version. A new Photoshop Skin, that is extremely close to photoshop, was applied. When I visited, I thought I had found a photoshop program online. It was scary to see it was only a skin. Surprising indeed.

I then checked in to Zathyus Support. I had applied to become a member of the community think tank a few days ago, when I found that I seemed to be rather active (for my standard) in the community. I was approved, and I’m looking forward to influencing the community. Holding a leadership role, however large or small, is fun when you get to influence things that happen. Maybe this is an indication I should go into politics? Only time will tell.

The End of It

I’m glad that a new week has finally begun. Last week was horrible for me, on multiple levels. It seemed like it would be fine. I even went to see a movie, but apparently I just had a bad week. Every day I was angered for some reason or other, and I ended up become extremely annoyed multiple times during the week.

The worst part of it though? I’ve been unproductive. I got nothing done to help further what I need to get done. everything has taken so long, and it has become quite annoying. This sunday is going to be extremely rough on me. Hopefully it ends well though.

New Staff Position

I recently decided I would get back into reviewing. Since Open Eyes was seeking new staff members, I decided to apply. As you can tell by the title, I’m the newest review staff member at that forum. Now, I want to dispell a comment made by someone else.

I was not stolen from the Theme Zone. I retired there for two reasons. First was my work ethic. I could not handle the reviews at that moment in time. In addition, I felt as though I was unable to continue filling reviews at a good pace. I thought I needed a break, which I did. The second reason was a resolution I made, which was to leave all the staff positions I held on a forum before the year ended. I retired the last day of 2008, which was great. It allowed me to keep my resolution.

Here’s the thing though – I am not back in the staff circuit. Since joining back to Open Eyes, I’ve been offered two staff positions, in addition to being bugged about taking a staff position a few times. I refused. It’s hard for me to say no, but I kept going back to my original thought. So, if you want to offer me a staff position, here’s the answer: No. I only plan on staffing at forums where I am interested or apply.

Forums Are Changing

Every time I visit any forum I have bookmarked, it seems so hard to find a bit of joy. I like the math side of things. If you give me something with numbers, I look at it and take those numbers into consideration for something. This can be a place of joy if you are successful, or like many things I consistently see from the forums I visit, a hurtful statistic. The prime example I see is the posts made today. We all can agree that the Theme Zone makes around 300 posts per day. I saw another forum, GameRenders, the same size (statistically half the number of members but the same number of posts) make around half of that. I also visited ZBCode, the coding forum Choco and HolySavior run. It had around 100-200 posts per day. In comparing the sizes, there is that amount of posts that makes a big impact on my decision to be active or not. I see this as a big negative. Now, I don’t consider myself influential, so I really hope that we can form a community out of these scraps. The second thing that I consistently see is common features. Almost any forum I visit has an announcements forum, a feedback forum, and a general chat area. However, these areas need to be there for a reason. While I am influenced by an article written by Bluezone at Zathyus New Broadcast, I still feel as though, in re-evaluating it, that the Feedback forums tend to receive no activity. When suggestions and ideas are brought up, it seems as though only a contest to see who can stay calm and not become annoyed. I tend to lose easily if I stick to a train-of-thought and don’t allow myself to think outside the bun. We really need to utilize feedback forums for what they are. Rarely do I see members’ input into ideas that affect the forum. I do see it, but I think it must occur more often here on the Theme Zone. I see things that bother me because it seems like we keep a closed mind. There is not trust between staff and members. Staff don’t trust members, members don’t trust staff. We are both at fault here because we treat each other like we do not care about this forum. In reality though, a staff member should love their job. A member who is active should love the community. A member who has been gone for a while should have the feeling of being welcomed to the community if they return. A new member should be able to feel like he/she fits right in with the rest of the crowd. It’s hard to say I see that here. If I had a loaded gun pointed at me and was forced to give my opinion on this board, I would say no. It doesn’t have it. Now, don’t think I hate this forum. I have over 3,600 posts on this forum and I do not regret a single one. (Ok, perhaps maybe the one where I chose to retire, but none other than that.) It has been fun and I think it will continue to be fun. As long as we members can have an input into the forum and the staff choose to take our suggestions into deep consideration, it will allow us to benefit the forum and to get it back to its old place.

New hope?

I’ve heard that Open Eyes is a new ray of hope for the resource niche. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that one forum can have a major impact on a forum category that has been growing for an extended period of time. While I fully support the forum, here is why I don’t think that it really can be called a new ray of hope for the resource niche.

First is that the resource niche has constantly changed. It has never, in my time as a staff member at any forum, really stayed the same. Some forums were active while others lost activity. There has been less interest in pre-made themes and skins recently, however, it has provided a great loss to the community side. The community isn’t as active as it once may have been. Now it seems even more inactive that ever. While there may be much more to it than that, the community changes. I think Open Eyes has simply adapted at a much better rate than forums in the past. Staff on Open Eyes are fairly mainstream and also fairly unknown that it provides a group of staff members who can simply connect with everything that is happening on the foruming community and in turn provide a forum that is better capable at modernizing as time progresses.

Another reason is that the Theme Zone is considered the guiding forum. Open Eyes hasn’t done much that is innovative. Innovation is key to establishing yourself as a big part of an even larger community, in my honest opinion. By allowing yourself to become more innovative – by allowing your forum to grow as the rest of the entire network grows – while also creating a multitude of new things for the network, you are going to end up with a fairly successful board.

Don’t get me wrong though. I am fully supportive of the forum. I think it has a long way to go and that it can reach some great heights. It has done fairly well since it has reopened. I think corpora has a great sense of what he is doing on the forum. He runs it through the eyes of a member, which provides the best  for the forum. It can achieve quite a lot with the right attitude, which I think it has.

A relaxed forum

I’ve said it before – I really like this round of Friction. It has a pretty active community and has been really interesting. One thing that I find great, for me personally, if that I’m a Supreme Member. I don’t mean to brag, but it’s a pretty nice perk. I was previously a staff member here, so it is a nice little addition, you know?

One of the reasons I like Friction is that the forum is active, but it isn’t too active. Like many people, I like things that are slow but not too slow. I don’t like things that are too fast either. For example, on Friction Friday, the chat thread – I can only stand there for a little while. I don’t like it entirely, because I can’t stand the speed at which the posts are made. It’s too fast for me. the rest of the forum though is active, but it isn’t too fast. It’s a nice, leisurely pace. It’s a great atmosphere so I hope everyone enjoys it. ^_^

Friction Friday #2

Well, the second one was great as well. To be honest, I’m impressed with it. We achieved our goal, yet again. Hey, I even won some competitions. The graphics contests, for example. I haven’t designed in a while, so it was a great feeling. Congrats to all this week’s winners, and I’m looking forward to the thing that Numark mentioned will be coming this weekend.

Let’s try this again…

After two unsuccessful attempts to revive ZetaStyles, we have moved on to the third attempt. Or, should I say, I have moved on to the third attempt. As you might know, Lance was going to be an administrator of ZetaStyles once the forum had opened. However, he lost interest in the forum. This left me as the sole administrator.

Now, I have some things in plan for ZetaStyles. I won’t say anything, so don’t ask for any details unless you would like to be blocked from my messenger. I will say, however, that a focus has shifted from all services to simply skins and themes. Design needs to blossom, in addition to the need for ZetaStyles to allow itself time to grow. I will be spending two weeks to one month with the staff only posting on the forum, before it opens. Content is key to the success of a forum. With content, you build a community interest and desire to take part in the forum. By doing this, it prevents a lack of content at the opening. It will also us to have a stronger, I suppose you could say, life. We won’t have to worry about trying to form decent discussions. That will be the start from before the forum even opens.

That is all I intend to say, as Administrators have a habit of slipping too much and not pulling through with their promises. There is another thing I would like to say though.

When I asked andg93 for the root account, I hadn’t had much experience in that helm. I hadn’t had much managerial experience either, but that didn’t prevent me from trying. I created a forum, called Outpost, which I closed quickly. In the past, ZetaStyles was prevented from opening due to its staff and theme. Neither should be a factor this time around. Also, I have to say that I hope I can be compared to those greats, such as Brian and Steve Machol, as far as administrators go. I cite Brian from RyanF’s post here. Steve, on the other hand, has provided a lot of support and is the face of an active member. He is extremely dedicated to what he does, from what I can see. It is impressive.

E-Mail Address

It is hard to say that I am impressed with the number of e-mail addresses that I’ve held over the long span of time I’ve been an “active forumer.” I started back in 2005, and in either late 2005 or early 2006, I created my first gmail account, with Google. I asked a friend to invite me. At this point in time, it was very exclusive, due to the size of the inbox compared to other services. My friend used one of his two (2 – that’s right) invites on me, and I really appreciated it. Now though, gmail has become a free for all and lost the exclusive sense to it.

I realized that I’ve probably gone through 40 e-mail accounts, with approximately half of them (or more) being gmail accounts. I really am both pissed and disappointed. Why am I pissed? My first gmail account was cracked after I ended up receing over 7,000 e-mails. I was unaware that you could transfer them to another account at this point in time. I may have done that at some point though, because a remember a transfer taking a few days to complete. Well, now I’ve finally decided upon a single new account which I will probably be focusing most of the e-mails I receive via forum notifications to. It makes me happy to think I may rebuild that.