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Rivalry's (almost) 4 Year Feedback!



Rivalry's Feedback Thread



[img]http://i.minus.com/i9cIZqVrv9d3E.png[/img]

Hi! As you may have figured out by now, I’m Rivalry, and it’s only a few months until my 4th HF birthday. This seems like a good enough excuse to do a feedback thread, so here we go. I won’t bore the vast majority of you who don’t care about my HF history with it, but if you do care then you can find it in the spoiler.

Spoiler (Click to View)



[img]http://i.minus.com/ir078M1zZTOaa.png[/img]

In general, obviously, HF is fun. If it wasn’t, then I wouldn’t be here. I’m also reasonably invested in it, otherwise I wouldn’t care enough to make this feedback thread. I won’t spend my time in this feedback thread praising all that is good about HF, because I don’t see the point of telling you what you already know (or, if you’re new here, will discover soon enough). There is lots of great stuff on HF and it’s a really fun place to be; this feedback thread will concern itself mainly with my opinions and a few ideas on how to make it even better. There are one or two points of general feedback that I couldn’t shoehorn into anywhere else, though.

Firstly, I’d like to address the theme. I know that this is being worked on, but I think it’s very important that this is updated as fast as possible. Now that many (if not most) big sites have clean, material, responsive websites, it just looks like HF’s being slowly left behind. I’m not suggesting that Omni devotes his time to doing this, because in my opinion there’s a better way; get a design/development team going on HF (or even outsource). If you remember the OMC website, that was designed and coded by Designer seemingly in about 3 minutes in his spare time, and it was really rather swish. I see no reason why HF’s top-level designers and web devs couldn’t be engaged with to build a new theme for HF. Perhaps it’s technically impossible, or Omni has some neat ideas for the new theme that he wants to personally implement.

This does lead into my second point of general feedback, though, which concerns more delegation but with particular regard to the Mentor group. Maybe I’m blind, or maybe they do loads in the background, but it seems sometimes like I can count the number of active Mentors on the fingers of one hand. I’m possibly being presumptuous here, but the group may require a clear out to remove old members that do little for the site, and add new members who have shown a willingness to help bear the burden of reporting and cleaning up all of HF’s garbage. Responsibility could be delegated to individual Mentors; each could be given a sub-forum or two to moderate, perhaps, thus increasing the quality of the site. Mentors could be assigned to scout out potential stickies or those who possibly deserve certain awards, thus providing a more efficient conduit for high quality tutorials to be turned into stickies and for high quality members to get the recognition they deserve. Those are just a couple of ideas, but my point is that the Mentors group at the moment seems like a vast waste of potential.




[img]http://i.minus.com/iRl11942IhlPh.png[/img]

Some background music for reading, if you'd like some.





[img]http://i.minus.com/ighvsnxAGeQ9a.png[/img]

Generally, I think that the groups scene on HF waxes and wanes with the seasons. Sometimes it’s amazing, and then at other times it’s a sea of beige and cloying inadequacy. At the moment, I feel like it’s close to being really good once more. Groups like Red Lions and Null are finally emerging from their metaphorical slumbers and seem ready to begin contributing to the site, whilst start-ups like Titans and Archive are doing really interesting things of massive benefit to the whole community. Sadly, the whole scene isn’t pulling its weight.

There are still leaders determined to try the concept of marketing groups, which in my experience has never been a successful idea and is doomed to fail. This is because they tend to be cash-grabs from leaders determined to make a profit; different owners do this in different ways, but it’s a universal constant across all marketing groups I’ve encountered thus far. Some of them sell membership spots. Others sell leadership spots. Others recruit developers and designers under the semblance of having a section for these people inside the group. This is never true; actually they just want to use these designers’ talents and services for free or for a massively reduced rate, which doesn’t actually benefit anyone because the good designers on the forum know that this tactic is used by marketing groups and so don’t apply, and thus the group just ends up with loads of beginners who really shouldn’t be making advanced designs yet. After a few months of trying (and almost invariably failing) to make a product line, the group is either sold for a profit, or the high-ups in the group who’ve all bought in (and so are ‘trustworthy’ because of an arbitrary 136x42 pixel image displayed under their name) exit scam and the group collapses. I’d love for Divine or Royalty to prove me wrong, but I’ve seen way too many similar groups fail in the past to hold out much hope.

The other general issue with the current group scene is the prevalence of lounge/dormant groups. It’s great that Null and Red Lions seem ready to start doing things, but others should follow suit. Pirates was really good fun to start with, but now it’s basically just an empty lounge supposedly with 230 people in it, none of whom post or do anything for the site. Echo is another lounge group. Axiom seems to be heading in that direction (but I’m aware that it’s new and so could be finding its feet). I haven’t seen anything at all from Crypto since it started. The Brotherhood is sitting pretty on top of an impressive legacy but has an uncertain future. In my opinion, groups should exist to do two things: to help people have fun, and to help people learn something. Dormant/lounge groups only really help those inside them to have fun, and they usually don’t even make an attempt at teaching people things. Previous lounge groups like The Empire have at least enforced public tutorial ‘waves’, whereby members would be obliged to write a detailed tutorial for something that would then be scrutinised by the leaders before being released. Such a system would justify a lounge group’s existence, in my eyes. As they are now, they simply take up room on the showgroups page without adding any value to the site whatsoever.

Also, I’m totally biased but we need an arts group. Seriously. The really high level creative scene has almost completely left HF since the whole drama surrounding Fly by Night’s leaders’ closures. It got even worse after the Sir drama. People like Unreputed, Sai, Sasori, Aired, Baghead, +Aether, Agitator, and Invisus were amongst the most talented creatives that HF had to offer. Their presence attracted other designers in a massive snowball effect that saw HF’s design scene blossom. Their absence has had the opposite effect, virtually killing off the advanced tier of designers on the forum. This is a shame. A carefully run group in a similar vein to Fly by Night would help to revive the flagging design sections.

I think I’ll do some specific group feedback in spoilers for those who are bothered.


Null
Spoiler (Click to View)

Echo
Spoiler (Click to View)

Specialists
Spoiler (Click to View)

Red Lions
Spoiler (Click to View)

Axiom
Spoiler (Click to View)

Archive
Spoiler (Click to View)

Crypto
Spoiler (Click to View)

AnimeFAN!
Spoiler (Click to View)

L'appel du vide
Spoiler (Click to View)

Pirates
Spoiler (Click to View)

Divine
Spoiler (Click to View)

Titans
Spoiler (Click to View)

The Brotherhood
Spoiler (Click to View)

Royalty
Spoiler (Click to View)


[Image: HMHpl76.gif]
[img]http://i.minus.com/iWOm25FStGD77.png[/img]

To break the thread up, I thought I’d do a list…

Most of the community I interact with are decent people. HF has its share of galactically enormous imbeciles, trolls, and arses, but that’s true of any site, and thankfully I don’t run into them much. I’d like to pay special mention to a few members, though (woo thinly veiled shoutout section):


Freddy Krueger
Without you, I wouldn’t be on here! Thanks.

Hexicidal
The best group leader around. Also, thanks for agreeing (for a reason I literally cannot comprehend) to invite an unknown random with barely any posts or reputation to your exclusive SRPP discussion group. That was nice of you.

iHydra
You don’t get enough thanks for basically single-handedly running the site at this point (kidding @staff). Keep going with the HF News- you’ve got some great ideas and readers will come back to it, don’t worry!

Happeh
A genuinely nice guy doing his best to help other people have fun on HF. We love ya, Ollie.

Realizm
You’re an up-and-coming leader on here. Already you’re vastly better than 90% of the clowns who shell out ludicrous amounts of money for groups that they do nothing with. Keep it up.

Illuminati
You're welcome for the shoutout! He's kinda a big deal

Prada
Doing many good things in many places. S/O

Ren, Ben D, Agi, Planky, cortz, Obli, Invisus, works, Sasori, PhehnoM, Jesse, BME, Buzz, Isaac Newton, Echoes, Riggs, Damn, or any other sporadically active ex-fbn standard designers who remain here
Please don’t go anywhere whilst I leech your skills

BlueSlidePark, Feynman, Goodies, Autocorrect, Odin, Chieftain, Intelligent Sin, Revolution, oGyro, Rhythm, Voltaire, cortz (again), Galileo Galilei, g4b3n, Keylogged or any other sporadically active frequently intelligent posters in SRPP.
Please don’t go anywhere; we need you

Anyone who’s got this far down the thread
Please don’t go anywhere; I have more stuff to rant about




[img]http://i.minus.com/ibxz58bNmAltv7.png[/img]

A little more music, if you'd like some.





[img]http://i.minus.com/iVmhvHieCvxDv.png[/img]

I don’t know and have never properly interacted with any of you. I’ll thus just give feedback on Omni, since he’s the most visible.

You’re a great systems administrator, pretty evidently. You know exactly what you’re doing; it’s such a rarity to have a forum that barely ever goes down or has a security problem. Even if a problem/downtime does occur, you deal with it seemingly almost immediately and you’re very transparent; you tell us what the problem was, why it happened, and what you did to fix it. If we need to take action for some reason (to secure our account or whatever), then you tell us exactly what to do too. I really can’t fault that aspect of running the site, and nor can I fault your tireless effort to find ways to push the site forwards. 2FA is nice, as is the Country Lock. I can’t wait to see what you have planned vis a vis this API that I hear is coming, the new awards, and the new theme.

The feedback turns a little bit critical here, because in my opinion there are aspects of community management that could do with touching up on. The Mentors I’ve already talked about, but the problem I want to address here is hasty action. 99% of the time you’re as responsible and mature an admin as I’ve ever encountered, and that’s great. However, sometimes you seem to lose your cool, and with it, your reason. For example, the whole Snorlax debacle with his awards was unnecessary and a bit mean- what he asked for was a pretty reasonable request, in my view (for the unaware- he asked for deletion of a few of his awards, which by my understanding happens fairly often).

The banning of anyone connected with Sir in the wake of his attempt to start the unofficial HF Wiki was a bit over-the-top in my view; I know that they were account sharing, but by my understanding (correct me if I’m wrong, please) it had been an ongoing thing for months previously and had been overlooked until Sir was banned and then it was used as a pretext to remove them from the site as some kind of guilty-by-association deal.

The same fate was suffered by Unreputed; banned for a ‘homophobic comment’ because he didn’t want to view porn – gay porn or straight porn, it’s irrelevant – in someone’s signature (the displaying of which breaks site rules anyway). What he basically did was report a user for a Profile Violation, but instead it was him - the reporter - that ended up being banned. I’m aware that you and Fly by Night had your run-ins, and I’m aware that you didn’t like much of that group’s leadership (they could often come across as arrogant, but based on experience I know that they were very concerned about the group being perceived as such and actually took steps to mitigate such a perception), but it was disappointing to me that almost the entire arts scene on HF should be obliterated for the sake of a falling out.

I totally get that your job is stressful, and I totally get that when one's been sitting at a screen all day trying to figure something out a badly worded message or comment from some idiotic teenager on the internet can rub one up the wrong way, but perhaps it might be prudent to breathe and take stock before casting a potentially disastrous blow to part of the community.




[img]http://i.minus.com/isnzEK9g6l60Z.png[/img]

I’ll just talk about the few sections I actually visit or post in.

Rate My Graphic
I think this section is as it always has been. The work in here is important, because it represents a collective effort to improve HF’s graphics scene and learn from one another. This is especially vital for beginners getting started with graphics. Sadly, these beginners are completely let down by much of the rest of the community who just post things like ‘holy shit that’s dope as fuck bro, shitting fuck fuck me fuck that’s fucking dope as dope shit bro dope’, or worse still give an entirely arbitrary rating like ‘10/10’. How can a design be ‘x/10’? One doesn’t walk into The Louvre and proceed to inform those around you that the Mona Lisa is a perfect ten, because it’s totally subjective and art is about how you interpret it rather than an objective method of ranks and ratings. I think that this section needs to be renamed as argued for by many, many users (the latest of whom is Buzz Lightyear- you can view his thread on the matter here.) After that the section then needs some serious moderation; posts that don’t adhere to the constructive guidelines for feedback outlined in the RMG sticky should be junked and the poster given a warning in my opinion, because the section is just used as a spam breeding ground for users to shamelessly boost their post counts away from the prying eyes of moderators. With better feedback would come a better work ethic amongst designers and a faster rate of improvement for everyone, so it’s in the community’s interest (faster improvement leads to better designers and that can only be good, right?) to promote moderation in the RMG section.

Science, Religion, Philosophy, and Politics
Again, this section is much as I always remember it being. There are a few quality members who always argue their points well, clearly, and concisely. Unfortunately, they don’t post often. I assume this is because they have better things to be doing, and that's fair enough. Then there is another tier of people who are more active but of a lower debating calibre. I also like seeing these people around, because at least they can be relied upon to inject some reason into otherwise awful discussions. Then we arrive at the bottom tier of posters. I’m frequently unable to deduce whether these people are drunk, high, mentally disabled, trolling, or all four at once, but the section has a lot of them. They make posts that are often apparently completely random in their choice of words to the point that I leave the thread feeling less informed on the issue that the thread was concerned with than I was when I went in. I don’t really have a problem with these users, though. They make the section more interesting with the wide spectrum of rhetorical bombast they post, and it’s actually quite entertaining. The sub-forum has been cleaned up a lot since this time last year, too. There was a core of extremely stubborn, unpleasant users on the far-right of the political compass who would post literally dozens of threads per week that were essentially racist, but who couldn’t be banned because apparently SRPP was immune to site rules about hate speech because of ‘freedom of speech’. Fortunately, the far-right circlejerk is now mostly gone. Circlejerks still exist in SRPP, but this is the nature of the section, and so long as they’re not posting racist content every 4 seconds I don’t mind. I’ve called for moderation in this section before, and I still feel as though it could use a dedicated Mentor to keep the peace, but it’s definitely not as bleak a sub-forum as it was this time last year.

Graphics Marketplace
If I ever had a design request, the number of people I would trust with it in here is astronomically tiny. 95% of people in this section have absolutely no idea what they’re doing, and they should keep well away until they’ve learned the rudiments of design more thoroughly. That way they’ll design better and thus accrue a far better reputation for themselves and their store, rather than jumping in now and churning out appalling work, overcharging clients for that work, and never improving. This section is filled with inept designers out to make a profit rather than a piece of art that they can be proud of, and it’s a shame.

Ebook Bazaar/Marketplace in general
Almost everyone in here actively wants to lie to you and steal your money. Fortunately for me, some of them will pay me to help them do that. This puts me in the awkward position of feeling a bit disgusted with the whole marketplace here on HF whilst also being a beneficiary of said market because I design graphics for it. If you’re new to HF and you’re reading to this: almost every review, piece of payment proof, or vouch in the marketplace is artificial. Some ebooks do work, but most do not. It is possible to discover the red herrings, but in general I would advise that you don’t buy any of them and instead stick to the rather excellent free money making sub-forums for ideas and support in the field of online monetisation.

Innuendo/Education Nation
I really like these forums. They’re genuine, which can be a nice break from other sections that are mainly concerned with deceiving people for personal gain. People in these forums ask for help, and most of the time, they get help. The forums are well moderated, too. No complaints.

HF News
Read it. Not enough people do. It’s good!



[img]http://i.minus.com/iRLrHbH8196PU.png[/img]

If you’ve got this far then you deserve some kind of medal. If you don’t agree with something I’ve said, or think that I’ve been harsh, remember that everything herein is just my opinion, and as such it has as much (or as little) value as your opinion, so don’t take any of this too seriously if you think differently to me. As stated at the top of the thread, I really like a lot of this site and think that it’s going to get even better than it’s ever been over the next year or so. I think that the new awards are intriguing, the new staff are more visible than their ancestors, some of the new groups are building awesome legacies, and Omni is doing magical things behind the scenes. It’s a good time to be on HF, and I hope that I can stay active enough to share in it!

Peace :)
[Image: HMHpl76.gif]
Posting because Rivalry asked but I didn't post in time before somebody else helped him so now I'm posting because I can and nobody can stop me. Muahahahaha!
[Image: e5PuZa4.png]
(Sep 14, 2015 10:16 AM)Realizm Wrote:  Posting because Rivalry asked but I didn't post in time before somebody else helped him so now I'm posting because I can and nobody can stop me. Muahahahaha!

You're a wanker.
I hope you know that. XD
I only deal onsite fam
[Image: I36qJLM.png]
(Sep 14, 2015 10:06 AM)Rivalry Wrote:  but it seems sometimes like I can count the number of active Mentors on the fingers of one hand.

Totally with you on this part. In fact...
(Aug 10, 2015 12:18 AM)Odus Wrote:  I'm disappointed with the number of active Mentors, could count them with 1 hand.

You made plenty of valid points but there's only 1 thing I really disagree with and that's pushing for one of those material, responsive themes. It's one of my favorite things about HF. Otherwise, great read!
(Sep 14, 2015 10:26 AM)illuminati▲ Wrote:  You're a wanker.
I hope you know that. XD
Hey we're all wankers. (Except me, seriously)
Thanks for your opinion on my group, "why should a slot be taken by a lounge group when we have lounge section!?//" heres why:
1. none of us give a shit about your retarded views
2. it's more of a group of friends doing whatever we want, sorry we arent like null / instinct selling buyins to fucking nothing, it's not hard to pretend to have some major schemes going on behind the scene when its clearly nothing rofl
[Image: f46ecea14f6fbad233ed4828e1aa68e4.png]
you're contributing to a hacking / technology site in a very big way thank u
Actually, being in Echo has made HF much more fun. It's like a lounge but without all fucktards and flamers. Not unnecessary at all imo.
Whoah.. That is some awesome feedback. Damn!
Nice shit right there and one if the best feedbacks I've read.
Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night.
I can see paradise by the dashboard light.
Though it's cold and lonely in the deep dark night.
Paradise by the dashboard light.
I got a shout out! Fuck everyone else, I'm popular. 🤭
Remember Me as you go by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so shall you be,
Prepare yourself to follow me
Thanks for the shoutout man. Nice feedback :)
[Image: e5PuZa4.png]
(Sep 14, 2015 12:26 PM)Vitani's Mate Wrote:  Whoah.. That is some awesome feedback. Damn!
Nice shit right there and one if the best feedbacks I've read.

Thanks! That means a lot.

(Sep 14, 2015 01:23 PM)ZerFallen Wrote:  I got a shout out! Fuck everyone else, I'm popular. 🤭

Well, wouldn't go so far as to say popular, but...
;)

(Sep 14, 2015 12:15 PM)morph Wrote:  Actually, being in Echo has made HF much more fun. It's like a lounge but without all fucktards and flamers. Not unnecessary at all imo.

Fair enough. As I said, everything in the OP is just my opinion. I don't mind much if people disagree; that's part of the point :)

(Sep 14, 2015 11:57 AM)Odus Wrote:  Totally with you on this part. In fact...

You made plenty of valid points but there's only 1 thing I really disagree with and that's pushing for one of those material, responsive themes. It's one of my favorite things about HF. Otherwise, great read!

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

(Sep 14, 2015 01:37 PM)Realizm Wrote:  Thanks for the shoutout man. Nice feedback :)

Wouldn't be complete without it. Thanks!
[Image: HMHpl76.gif]
(Sep 14, 2015 01:39 PM)Rivalry Wrote:  Well, wouldn't go so far as to say popular, but...
;)

Let me have my moment damn it...

Honestly, I enjoyed the feedback. I'm going to wait till I've been here for 10 years to do mine.
Remember Me as you go by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now so shall you be,
Prepare yourself to follow me
Spoiler (Click to View)
(Sep 14, 2015 02:14 PM)Sasori Wrote:  Spoiler (Click to View)

https://youtu.be/NM92O-DWm8c

(Sep 14, 2015 02:16 PM)Nick Drake Wrote:  I've always seen you as a pretentious leftist twat

I guess I'm just going to have to live with that #anotherfriendlyface
[Image: HMHpl76.gif]


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