How to give the community itself a boost?

[[SE]Dr_Pepper27]

We need more Kojaks.

[Squeak]

Want to really know why I made 121344 accoutns in the past? Because of YOUR respect towards ME. No one deserves that.

The fact that you attempted to make this topic about yourself is a true testament to your issues, and no one elses.

I agree, the community need stronger leadership. Where would we be without Kojak at the moment?

Kojak has always been a great administrator and addition to the community. If I'm not mistaken, he used to handle the community e-mail, handling complaints and reports. But, one man cannot do it alone.

[Leon.]

Kojak's been here from the very first moments of Argonath.. he was playing together with RON and Ronnel on a previous community they used to play at. Mostly known today as a rival of Argonath.

Err... what I meant to say was, when did he return?

[Julio.]

How about some points regarding the game itself...

First, attitude towards new players.
When new players first join they're mostly ignored. If they ask for help, they're just dismissed with only mentioning a related command (if answered at all). For example, if a new player joins and asks how to be a cop - no regular will pick him up and explain him basic rules how should cop work be done. Yet even if a player manages to go on /duty and shoot someone (not knowing the rules, because no one explained to him), he will instantly be called an "abuser", as if he's breaking the rules on purpose. Most players are just ignorant and will blame the cops or admins for not teaching players, though they are first to moan about abusers.

Uh, you're guilty of that too, new players post ideas and you rant at hem like they've killed the pope.

All they're doing is stating ideas.

[Ben.]

Cring the forum to IG here:

IG, people dismiss new players with commands related to the question.
On the forum people dismiss new players with comments like "search it" or "suggested before".
What's the difference?
I'm a fan of a patient attitude. We may have had 100 new players ask the same question, but that player has only asked once...that's why we should be patient and help them.

I was recently patrolling and came across a new guy "Axel_Rover" looking lost, or rather...standing on his own. I didn't do much...just picked him up, and had a chat as we travelled to LSPD. An hour later, I was RPing someone dying in a car crash, and it isn't hard to guess who did a good RP with me...he came over because he recognised me and wanted to RP with me!
All goes to show, we play for fun and friendship, not money and statistics.

[EliteTerm]

Just because Gandalf and Aragorn is inactive doesn't mean the Community can't handle it. If everybody paid attention and listen to the Administration, nobody would be complaining about the direction Argonath is heading.

The problem lies with the members of the Community, NOT the Administration. Good example is that topic Que posted about a new player introducing himself, that's just downright insulting. Every members need to be outgiving, friendly, supportive.

We cannot keep relying on the Owners all the time. We need to learn to take care of ourselves, by supporting the Administration AND the new players that will soon take our spots as we grow old.

[Squeak]

The problem lies with the members of the Community, NOT the Administration.

You cannot put all of the blame on the players and completely disregard the influence of administrators that might've negatively affected the community's disposition.

[Gird3r]

Err... what I meant to say was, when did he return?

He returned some time ago. About a month or so, not really sure.

It's awesome having Kojak back, we who have seen him play and so on in the past "Dark age" (2005 era of MTA:VC) knows just how good he is.
I actually did not know when he was appointed his status, but it was not particulary suprised upon seeing his status. Mainly because he's an good guy and know's what he's doing.

And looking on the huge cleanup of "Ban-addicted kids" he has started in the unban section... oh man. Kojak rocks.





Eliteterm is actually speaking truth in what he's saying. But! Yes there are rotten eggs in the admin history of Argonath. And yes. Personally, I am suprised at how some sa:mp admins were trained in thier duty back in 2007. Some have improved. Some have not. Some took the turn for the worse because of thier ego getting the better of them.
Eliteterm knows what i'm talking about if I put the past actions of the sa:mp admin team like this:

"Swoop the dust under the rug".

The situation has improved. But it's far from over. There's still things that needs to be fixed.

Squeak, you are also right. But there is blame to be placed at some players. Who constantly feed this community crap upon crap.
Some players even have an asthonishing 10 "perm" bans and are still playing. I'm all up for Aragorns and Gandalfs ideology of "giving a chance". But this many times? It just sets an bad example to let players who have way to many bans roaming around. Especially if they despite all warns they got. Still feeds bullcrap and rotten smell to the community.

People who constantly tries to find loopholes in the rules, who try to talk bullshit to members here and there. Who spread this "troll" bullshit. Should be perm banned. And by Perm, I of course mean for a life-time, there's no sense in talking to immature kids who get's thier high-kick buzz from fapping on the keyboard typing "UMAD BRO LOL TROLL PROBLEM? HAHAHA" every single day. They want to stay? Then they can start by following the rules. And also try to grow up an bit in the process. Being 12 years old is no reason to be given 5+ chances all the time. If they cannot follow some simple rules it only suggsests thier parents are ethier teaching thier kids it's awwright to act like an dick. Or they are simply failures as parents..

I propose that the limit be changed to 4 "permbans". With an increasing timeout between each one (On the fourth, the timeout should be atleast 4 months). On the 5th, the ports to Argonath should close for said player...

Forever.

EDIT:

As for the admin team, that is up to the managers to take of the gloves and start introducing some real balance...

[Kojak]

This has been an interesting thread; I saw it when Que first posted it and began writing a reply but I stopped part way through because I wanted to see what the community's perspective was first.

Although Que has separated the problems into distinct categories, they are really all the same problem; this is the issue of how we all interact with one another. It is true that there are some rude and obnoxious things said in the forums and in-game, and it is also true that many genuine friendships have formed and often real displays of affection are shown. We do have a tendency to focus on the negative and that is to be expected, but I do feel that there is a lot of negativity being displayed regularly; this is shown in anything from players suggesting ideas, discussions between gangs and even when a new player says hello!

I can tell you that this attitude will not change with leadership, strong or otherwise. What everyone needs to remember is that this community does not belong to the owners or the leaders; it does not belong to anyone. All of us are the community and all of us are responsible for shaping its future. Attempting to divert responsibility does not help; every time we react angrily to someone's opinion, every time we summarily dismiss an idea and every time we treat a new player with suspicion, we are creating and maintaining this problem.

So how do we fix this problem? Well, we don't. Humanity is confrontational by nature, we will fight and argue, and we will dislike some people and like others. You can't fix that with some new forum moderators and a heavy hand. So instead of trying to enforce peace, we should instead find peace with the problem itself; accept that bad things are said, accept that people get angry and frustrated, in other words we should all toughen up. The next time you want to report someone for making a derogatory remark, ask yourself if you even care; if you do, ask yourself why. The next time you get angry with that guy who said, "UMAD" in your forum post, ask yourself why you even give a shit. Toughen Up.

If you want to stop your thread from being locked, don't allow it to turn into a shitstorm. It's easy to do, just don't react badly when someone shits all over your idea or posts an off-topic remark, it always takes more than one person to derail a thread and that other person is you. Be tougher, not with others but with yourselves. Don't try to change other people, that is their job not yours and certainly not ours; but that doesn't mean you have to let their actions impact heavily on you. We could be tough for you, we could ban and kick but we've been doing that too long and it changes nothing, because ultimately it is up to all of us to play our part.

Change can be positive; but instead of looking for someone else to be responsible, become the change you want to see.


A note on spambots: we have seen a recent influx of bots because a large amount of forum accounts were approved recently. Expect this to die down a bit over time, but if you see them just report them and they'll all get deleted eventually. If in the meantime you have to look at an advert for Viagra for five seconds, it really doesn't matter that much does it?

Personally I think they're useful, my wife wants Ugg boots for Christmas so the spam provides a reminder that will help me stay out of trouble.

[JayL]

Its such a devastating fact that most of the community judge a player and stick to that judgement, without any possibility of giving another player a chance.

Most, if not all, of the community here is capable enough of giving people second chance... Obviously though there aren't many people who have patience to give someone 20 chances a month for same mistake...

Want to really know why I made 121344 accoutns in the past? Because of YOUR respect towards ME. No one deserves that.

Oh so now you blame the community for the shit you did... Yeah no wonder you complain about not being forgiven...

- SA:MP General
This category was the main section of the forum almost a year ago. If you look at it now, the only thing I see is locked topics and random bots spamming our precious forum. It's almost like the Nevada desert. Every topic (almost) is being locked whenever an argument comes up, or whenever any sort of confrontation/disagreement pops up.

Mmmm well I'd just read what Kojak said above... But then again ingame stuff is more fun when it is actually managed also ingame...

- Politics and Religion
Another amusing category that pretty much got removed by racism and arguments. This category was even though the hard words, the best category within this community. Why? Because it was simply about something else than Grand Theft Auto, it was about important and world-wide stuff.

Everyone will voice their opinions like that, be it in a forum or in real life or whatever. Only thing is that you should man up and realise that you won't have your ass kissed when you write shit...

- "Hello" Topics
Nowadays, every hello topic is made by Box3r (yo bro), iMunna or Junaid (yo bro). What happened to all these REAL new players who actually wrote "hello"-topics to get a friendly puff on their shoulder? We frankly embraced these fellow new players whenever they entered the forum in the past, now I see an obnoxious attitude, example: Click me!

I highly doubt /jobcop /jobdriver /jobthis /jobthat scripts teach a player to seek some interaction in forums.

- Unban Requests Section [SA:MP]
In the late past, we were able to post our thoughts in unban requests, comment and discuss whether we had something to say that was important. To be sincere, there was a lot of unnecessary "good lucks" and cross-eyed incidents here as well. But it was also a very good way to express what you had to say. Another alternative could be to ban or obscure just this part of the forum for the people who could not behave properly in this section.

I believe that is because irrelevant goodlucks and opinions hamper the managers when they have to click page to page back and forth all the time when they need to bring the pieces of an unban process together to make their decision... To issue a ''bullshit = mute'' policy would increase admins workload don't you think?

- Trolls
Oh yeah, our fantastic wannabe SA:MP trolls. Wherever you're looking, you will find one. None of them are clever, that's the funny part. It's only a bunch of hard-headed computer dudes with these big glasses somewhere in the dark forest, trying to find themselves. Anyway, this "type" of trolling had its peak almost two years ago, and is nowadays pretty usual to see in each topic. For me, this type of behaviour should not be tolerated, whether it's in-game or on the forum.

If you are being trolled then you are seeking their attention (unintentionally or not)... No troll will bother you if you know how to mind your own business or if you know how to deal with the reactions to your acts and words... The fact that every joke and bad language is likely to labeled as ''trolling'' nowadays is something I'd call a problem rather than this.

[Ben.]

Personally I think they're useful, my wife wants Ugg boots for Christmas so the spam provides a reminder that will help me stay out of trouble.

I find it funny when I see the viagra ones...which reminds me of a joke!

What happened to the man who got viagra stuck in his throat?

[Chris_Knight]

Thats a "human nature" ,the words I repeat always to everyone,nice to see I'm not alone   :roll:

[Ted]

I find it funny when I see the viagra ones...which reminds me of a joke!

What happened to the man who got viagra stuck in his throat?

Do go on.


People not posting hello or topics might not be down to us, it may be down to the person themselves they may simply not be outgoing, confident or basically don't want to tell us little bits about them. Which is understandable, I myself have never posted a Hello or Welcome topic because I'm one of those people. Which is why i don't say much often.

PS. Friendly puff means something else where I'm from I'm afraid to say.

[Ben.]

What happened to the man who got viagra stuck in his throat?

He had a stiff neck for hours 

[Julio.]

loled