Sep 12, 2015 03:11 AM
(This post was last modified: Sep 12, 2015 04:42 PM by Premortal.)
Hello! In this thread I'm going to give my feedback on different groups that I've interacted with or been a part of while here on Hack Forums. In a few days I'll have been registered on this forum for four years, so I figured this was one way of marking that. If I don't give feedback on a group it's because I don't really know much about it and never really developed an opinion on it.
The Alliance: I feel like when I joined this group everything about Hack Forums seemed to kind of click. Members would join this group either with knowledge in a specific area with the intention of sharing that knowledge with others for free or without any knowledge but a a strong desire to learn and set time aside to dedicate to an area of specialty. When I joined it and saw from the inside the members and the goals I felt like the missing piece of the puzzle of Hack Forums was put into place. Members join the forum with little to no knowledge of a subject, learn the basics from stickies and general threads, eventually join The Alliance and get a more focused tutelage on a specific subject, and then help others outside of the group learn more on a subject and solve their problems involving that subject. This group honestly felt like it was of this forum and knew how to combine good intentions with consistent results. If its leaders and members hadn't gone inactive I could only imagine seeing this group and its impact on the Hack Forums community grow more and more. The fact that a group this well run with great intentions once existed is one of the pillars that keeps me returning to Hack Forums.
Logic/Void/L'appel du vide: This was the first group I joined on Hack Forums and the group that showed me that genuine friendships and learning can be achieved on Hack Forums. I joined this group with a closed mouth and open ears trying not to look stupid among such members as malichi and Apathy, who were so well versed in the topics that they argued. I think it was this trickle down mentality that lead the original Logic to be so great. The fact that you had to have knowledge and sources on a topic if you wanted to have any sort of face in the subforum without being a laughingstock forced all the members to continually research and study topics as they came up in the subforum. Differing opinions were mostly present, but all of those differing opinions were deeply rooted in research and knowledge on a topic. What eventually ended up happening as I saw it was the group changed its focus to science following the group's change from Logic to Void. Along with this focus on science came the fact that so many of our smart, sharp members were either becoming inactive or having their accounts closed. Apathy went inactive, Mr. Anderson went mostly inactive once the Reviewers were gone, malichi had his account closed, Strokes tried to sell his account, -Analog- went inactive, I have no idea what the status was on thought+inquiry=truth, JonathonN went inactive, and hardly any new sincere members started showing up in the SRPP. For the few times I've seen the subforum since then I can't say that there have been as many threads where members honestly cared about learning whatever it was they were arguing about. I think selling the group is the best thing Hexicidal can do right now.
Red Lions: This group has good intentions. The leaders have good intentions, its members have generally good intentions, and our good intentions are sometimes the only thing that we share in common. We want to see the members of this forum happy, and we try to make it our job to clean where we stay. The Red Lions have worked to shape its members to be the best sort of members that they can be without having to excessively intrude on their personal lives. The fact that this group is never going to be sold is never something I doubt. If I doubted it for a second I would have left a long time ago. When I first joined this group it was fairly active, but then went inactive for a while because of leaders juggling leadership with their outside lives. This group may not have the coordination or knowledge that was found in The Alliance, but its dedication to this forum is something else completely. I can't give too much feedback because I can't share what's in the subforum, but I can say that if I could it would be close to 100% positive.
Null: I've looked upon this group in the past as a spiritual successor to The Alliance. The members in here are smart and know their way around in their respective areas of technology. The only thing that I did not like about this group was that you had to pay them to learn from them. If you read my feedback on The Alliance and see my description for how they fit the inquisitive demographic of Hack Forums you'll see how much I value the sharing of knowledge amongst members. Putting a price on this knowledge feels like putting a chokehold on it, slowing its flow to the community. I never paid for any of the classes offered by Null, so I have no idea whether or not they were so much better than the teachings of The Alliance that they required payment, but I guess I'll never know. What else I don't know is the status of the intentions of the leaders of this group. I've spoken with Nobility and I've spoken with Dubitus on many occasions and know that they are more than qualified to teach others and spread knowledge, but I don't know whether or not they care so much about this community to lower their prices or adjust their teachings. I really would like to see this group fill the shoes of The Alliance and help propel the knowledge of our community forward, but right now it's hard to see that as a reality. In spite of this, I still maintain a solid respect for its members and its leaders.
The Empire: I didn't like this group. Not at all. I feel like its widespread lounging and prolific posting set a standard for mediocrity and insincerity that many groups following it have shared. The worst part about this group was the fact that it had members who were smart and gave back to the community. The actions of a few lead to the pride of many, many Empire members who would look at themselves as being on the same level of quality and work ethic as those who contributed. Their annoying camaraderie outside of their subforum went to show the lack of maturity that was inherent in many of their members. This group was a group that successfully integrated quality contributions with excessive shitposting. The only thing I can really compare the atmosphere of this group to is that of an arrogant, shit talking football team that only wins one game a season. Its members would place themselves head and shoulders above other members solely because they were members of The Empire and others weren't. I really did not like this group one bit, which makes it funny to say that I was on okay terms with Tibit and Aeon <3. They even bought me my Ub3r upgrade. I guess they just wanted people to talk with? I'll never have any idea the reasoning as to why this group developed the way that it did. All I can really say is that I've enjoyed the group being gone.
143: I was offered an Ub3r upgrade by Daisy, the owner of this group, but I declined it because I was already getting it from Aeon <3. Giveaways and contests are the first things that come to mind when I think of this group. I know that Yellows and other members would rave on and on about how good this group was and I really never bought it. They were probably really good friends with one another, but the group's actual, long term impact on Hack Forums has appeared to be minimal. I know they ran innuendo and emotional support type threads, but I never really saw the need for that type of stuff here on a technology based forum. I feel like this group only cared about their image outside the subforum, but at the same time I think that they valued their own friendships and relationships with each other more than the community. At its best I thought of this group as a bunch of members with good intentions and at its worst I thought of this group as a bunch of members riding a gimmick of innuendo for attention. There isn't too much else I can say about this group since I was never a part of it.
The Brotherhood: I feel like this group is a kind of lackluster attempt at achieving what The Alliance did. I definitely have seen good contributions and good members come from this group, but I feel like it doesn't have the organization or dedication that was found in The Alliance or even Null. I was in the group, albeit for not very long, and while I was in the group it felt like the leaders of the sectors were looking for activity for activity's sake, not really to try and help out the forum. I feel like every month this group is cleaning out excess members and promising to deliver something new, but that's probably just my skewed perception of time. In any case, I'm not sure if the lack of activity just trickles down from the leaders and owners or if they just aren't very good at recruiting reliable members. It would be nice to see this group take off and build a legacy for themselves based on helping the community, but it's been around so long that I doubt it'll happen if it hasn't by now. I really do like a solid amount of this group's members and past members. I really don't like the userbar, but that doesn't really matter.
Titans: When this group first started I had zero intentions of applying or ever joining. Then one day out of the blue I got a PM from Froggy asking if I would be interested in joining. I said sure and things took off from there. What I initially liked about Titans was the promise from the owner that the group would never be sold. While I knew that this probably wasn't true, it at least showed to me that the owner and leaders had some sort of dedication to the group. I liked the fact that this group always had something fun going on and was always planning for the next fun thing we would do with the Hack Forums community. Things were pretty great, but after a few recruitments it felt like the group was getting further and further inhabited by members who didn't have a sincere desire to host activities for the community; members who would much rather lounge around in Skype than try and come up with something interesting to do with the members of Hack Forums. It felt as if the group was slowly becoming a lite version of The Empire, but without as many of the quality contributions. After a few less than enthusiastically delivered events I figured I was just wasting my time in the group. It didn't really feel as if the leaders or the owner cared as much about the forum, at least not enough to try and make sure that the group's members were sincere with their intentions and their desire to have fun with the Hack Forums community. I ended up leaving. It'd be nice to see a genuinely unique and popular activity come out of the group sometime in the future, but I'm not holding my breath.
HF Writers: I have had a very mixed relationship with this group. When I joined this forum and saw this group without any context behind what they did or why they were called Writers I wanted to join. Slowly but surely I began to see more and more members of the group around the forum and I slowly developed a negative opinion of them. It seemed like they were arrogant and pretentious because of the userbar they wore, a userbar that really didn't require that much work to keep. I slowly learned more and more about its members and its leader, to the point where I imagined I was just being unfair in my mind with them and that, within the subforum, they were much better people. When I eventually applied for the Writers and got accepted, I learned that they weren't. If anything, they were worse than I'd expected. I had thought beforehand that they posted childishly for the sake of comedy, but to my horror I learned that they were genuinely really childish members who were capable of writing a proper sentence. Most of this changed once the majority of the childish members who inhabited the group got their accounts closed and iHydra took over the news, but a certain level of pompousness still reigns supreme among the older members in the group who preferred the old leader and the old system. I guess pride will always be an issue when it comes to site-sanctioned usergroups, but things are definitely a lot better for the HF Writers now than when I first joined.
The Alliance: I feel like when I joined this group everything about Hack Forums seemed to kind of click. Members would join this group either with knowledge in a specific area with the intention of sharing that knowledge with others for free or without any knowledge but a a strong desire to learn and set time aside to dedicate to an area of specialty. When I joined it and saw from the inside the members and the goals I felt like the missing piece of the puzzle of Hack Forums was put into place. Members join the forum with little to no knowledge of a subject, learn the basics from stickies and general threads, eventually join The Alliance and get a more focused tutelage on a specific subject, and then help others outside of the group learn more on a subject and solve their problems involving that subject. This group honestly felt like it was of this forum and knew how to combine good intentions with consistent results. If its leaders and members hadn't gone inactive I could only imagine seeing this group and its impact on the Hack Forums community grow more and more. The fact that a group this well run with great intentions once existed is one of the pillars that keeps me returning to Hack Forums.
Logic/Void/L'appel du vide: This was the first group I joined on Hack Forums and the group that showed me that genuine friendships and learning can be achieved on Hack Forums. I joined this group with a closed mouth and open ears trying not to look stupid among such members as malichi and Apathy, who were so well versed in the topics that they argued. I think it was this trickle down mentality that lead the original Logic to be so great. The fact that you had to have knowledge and sources on a topic if you wanted to have any sort of face in the subforum without being a laughingstock forced all the members to continually research and study topics as they came up in the subforum. Differing opinions were mostly present, but all of those differing opinions were deeply rooted in research and knowledge on a topic. What eventually ended up happening as I saw it was the group changed its focus to science following the group's change from Logic to Void. Along with this focus on science came the fact that so many of our smart, sharp members were either becoming inactive or having their accounts closed. Apathy went inactive, Mr. Anderson went mostly inactive once the Reviewers were gone, malichi had his account closed, Strokes tried to sell his account, -Analog- went inactive, I have no idea what the status was on thought+inquiry=truth, JonathonN went inactive, and hardly any new sincere members started showing up in the SRPP. For the few times I've seen the subforum since then I can't say that there have been as many threads where members honestly cared about learning whatever it was they were arguing about. I think selling the group is the best thing Hexicidal can do right now.
Red Lions: This group has good intentions. The leaders have good intentions, its members have generally good intentions, and our good intentions are sometimes the only thing that we share in common. We want to see the members of this forum happy, and we try to make it our job to clean where we stay. The Red Lions have worked to shape its members to be the best sort of members that they can be without having to excessively intrude on their personal lives. The fact that this group is never going to be sold is never something I doubt. If I doubted it for a second I would have left a long time ago. When I first joined this group it was fairly active, but then went inactive for a while because of leaders juggling leadership with their outside lives. This group may not have the coordination or knowledge that was found in The Alliance, but its dedication to this forum is something else completely. I can't give too much feedback because I can't share what's in the subforum, but I can say that if I could it would be close to 100% positive.
Null: I've looked upon this group in the past as a spiritual successor to The Alliance. The members in here are smart and know their way around in their respective areas of technology. The only thing that I did not like about this group was that you had to pay them to learn from them. If you read my feedback on The Alliance and see my description for how they fit the inquisitive demographic of Hack Forums you'll see how much I value the sharing of knowledge amongst members. Putting a price on this knowledge feels like putting a chokehold on it, slowing its flow to the community. I never paid for any of the classes offered by Null, so I have no idea whether or not they were so much better than the teachings of The Alliance that they required payment, but I guess I'll never know. What else I don't know is the status of the intentions of the leaders of this group. I've spoken with Nobility and I've spoken with Dubitus on many occasions and know that they are more than qualified to teach others and spread knowledge, but I don't know whether or not they care so much about this community to lower their prices or adjust their teachings. I really would like to see this group fill the shoes of The Alliance and help propel the knowledge of our community forward, but right now it's hard to see that as a reality. In spite of this, I still maintain a solid respect for its members and its leaders.
The Empire: I didn't like this group. Not at all. I feel like its widespread lounging and prolific posting set a standard for mediocrity and insincerity that many groups following it have shared. The worst part about this group was the fact that it had members who were smart and gave back to the community. The actions of a few lead to the pride of many, many Empire members who would look at themselves as being on the same level of quality and work ethic as those who contributed. Their annoying camaraderie outside of their subforum went to show the lack of maturity that was inherent in many of their members. This group was a group that successfully integrated quality contributions with excessive shitposting. The only thing I can really compare the atmosphere of this group to is that of an arrogant, shit talking football team that only wins one game a season. Its members would place themselves head and shoulders above other members solely because they were members of The Empire and others weren't. I really did not like this group one bit, which makes it funny to say that I was on okay terms with Tibit and Aeon <3. They even bought me my Ub3r upgrade. I guess they just wanted people to talk with? I'll never have any idea the reasoning as to why this group developed the way that it did. All I can really say is that I've enjoyed the group being gone.
143: I was offered an Ub3r upgrade by Daisy, the owner of this group, but I declined it because I was already getting it from Aeon <3. Giveaways and contests are the first things that come to mind when I think of this group. I know that Yellows and other members would rave on and on about how good this group was and I really never bought it. They were probably really good friends with one another, but the group's actual, long term impact on Hack Forums has appeared to be minimal. I know they ran innuendo and emotional support type threads, but I never really saw the need for that type of stuff here on a technology based forum. I feel like this group only cared about their image outside the subforum, but at the same time I think that they valued their own friendships and relationships with each other more than the community. At its best I thought of this group as a bunch of members with good intentions and at its worst I thought of this group as a bunch of members riding a gimmick of innuendo for attention. There isn't too much else I can say about this group since I was never a part of it.
The Brotherhood: I feel like this group is a kind of lackluster attempt at achieving what The Alliance did. I definitely have seen good contributions and good members come from this group, but I feel like it doesn't have the organization or dedication that was found in The Alliance or even Null. I was in the group, albeit for not very long, and while I was in the group it felt like the leaders of the sectors were looking for activity for activity's sake, not really to try and help out the forum. I feel like every month this group is cleaning out excess members and promising to deliver something new, but that's probably just my skewed perception of time. In any case, I'm not sure if the lack of activity just trickles down from the leaders and owners or if they just aren't very good at recruiting reliable members. It would be nice to see this group take off and build a legacy for themselves based on helping the community, but it's been around so long that I doubt it'll happen if it hasn't by now. I really do like a solid amount of this group's members and past members. I really don't like the userbar, but that doesn't really matter.
Titans: When this group first started I had zero intentions of applying or ever joining. Then one day out of the blue I got a PM from Froggy asking if I would be interested in joining. I said sure and things took off from there. What I initially liked about Titans was the promise from the owner that the group would never be sold. While I knew that this probably wasn't true, it at least showed to me that the owner and leaders had some sort of dedication to the group. I liked the fact that this group always had something fun going on and was always planning for the next fun thing we would do with the Hack Forums community. Things were pretty great, but after a few recruitments it felt like the group was getting further and further inhabited by members who didn't have a sincere desire to host activities for the community; members who would much rather lounge around in Skype than try and come up with something interesting to do with the members of Hack Forums. It felt as if the group was slowly becoming a lite version of The Empire, but without as many of the quality contributions. After a few less than enthusiastically delivered events I figured I was just wasting my time in the group. It didn't really feel as if the leaders or the owner cared as much about the forum, at least not enough to try and make sure that the group's members were sincere with their intentions and their desire to have fun with the Hack Forums community. I ended up leaving. It'd be nice to see a genuinely unique and popular activity come out of the group sometime in the future, but I'm not holding my breath.
HF Writers: I have had a very mixed relationship with this group. When I joined this forum and saw this group without any context behind what they did or why they were called Writers I wanted to join. Slowly but surely I began to see more and more members of the group around the forum and I slowly developed a negative opinion of them. It seemed like they were arrogant and pretentious because of the userbar they wore, a userbar that really didn't require that much work to keep. I slowly learned more and more about its members and its leader, to the point where I imagined I was just being unfair in my mind with them and that, within the subforum, they were much better people. When I eventually applied for the Writers and got accepted, I learned that they weren't. If anything, they were worse than I'd expected. I had thought beforehand that they posted childishly for the sake of comedy, but to my horror I learned that they were genuinely really childish members who were capable of writing a proper sentence. Most of this changed once the majority of the childish members who inhabited the group got their accounts closed and iHydra took over the news, but a certain level of pompousness still reigns supreme among the older members in the group who preferred the old leader and the old system. I guess pride will always be an issue when it comes to site-sanctioned usergroups, but things are definitely a lot better for the HF Writers now than when I first joined.
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