If you've been poking around the web, you know that today's an important day for Sonic Team. News came out that they were developing something absolutely crazy and that we'd get it on February 6th. The fateful day has come, and surely enough, crazy has come with it!
Behold, Sonic Team's latest game!Oh, and I guess
this exists too. Don't cry too hard.
Moving on, let's talk about the last few days here. I hit a breaking point on Sunday with a large group of people on TSC and stepped away from the site, as I've considered doing for quite a while due to that group. I left my resignation in the staff forum that night along with some thoughts of mine put into writing. I figured the staff would get in touch, we'd talk things through, somebody would take my place, and that'd be the end of it. Instead, the staff didn't even notice the topic. Two days later, people noticed that my user group had changed, and panic ensued as people thought I was hacked. Parax linked my resignation letter in the chat, and the IRC chat that had barely said a word in months suddenly started getting very concerned. I got blasted with messages in Skype about how utterly wrong I was, with some of those messages actually contradictory while all arguing the same point. Despite all of this, there was no reaction from the site owner and no indication that somebody would step up to fill my spot.
If the site largely disagrees with many of my points, then it means the IRC chat is an extremely quiet majority while TSC-related Skype groups have become an extremely vocal minority. While I didn't say it outright in my letter out of respect, the main reason I left was because the things I did hear vocalized made the user base seem like a bunch of total asshats, constantly insulting each other, making arguments based on fallacies, and speaking in a language that can only be described as "Twitchese". However, with the sudden revelation of people on IRC actually caring, I feel that I need to reverse course, but I do still feel that my knowledge isn't up to par. I am constantly checking with other people I trust, then taking their opinion and making sure it makes sense before enacting it myself as an admin. With that said, I spoke to Umbreon about how we progress from here, and we both agreed that we need somebody closer to the competition to have authority around here. While we both respected each other's thoughts on who to choose, we really only agreed 100% on one person.
As of the time of this post, flying fox is a Global Moderator on the forums. We will be talking with her about who else can be trusted with authority as we assemble a group of people that know the competition well for efficient handling of BS calls, rule changes, and forum discipline. Parax and I want to do what administrators do — administrate — and thus we need to delegate some tasks to those that care instead of making those that care report to us for every trivial thing. Beyond the staffing changes, be aware that the shelter of "well, I said it on Skype, not TSC" will no longer work. If you are participating in a group built for a TSC event and/or speaking about issues on TSC with other TSCers, then you are still involved in the TSC community and assholery will not be tolerated. Some rude people have hung around for far too long by hiding just out of TSC's "reach", and it comes to an end starting now for the sake of the entire community.
Parax and GerbilSoft have been discussing the site's functionality or lack thereof this week, so that we can use the chart structure for more than just individual level charts. Given this, I expect that we can bring tournaments, Race Nights, and the like to TSC's charts to get some activity into the IRC and forums. The lack of a social scene here besides the occasional 13-year-old halfwit that joins the site is very depressing and needs to be reversed.
I want to hear some thoughts on what the site can be and should be. Consider who is here, who is silent and who talks, who we want to be here, what Sonic's becoming (you really should have clicked that second link in this post), and where TSC stands in the grand scheme of competition sites and Sonic sites. It's clear that leaving the status quo here will simply continue the site's decline, but we can't abandon our infrastructure either.
Oh, and SonicAD, when you see this next week, I need to be re-added to the SOp list. :P
