Hey.
I'd hate to start off this blog on a bad note, so I'm going to begin by telling you, Guitarfreak, what a great community you have. I quickly (so don't expect anything great; I didn't even sign up) scanned over your forums, and they look really professional. You have an actual webhost, something I failed to accomplish, and from what I could see with my guest account everyone seemed pleased with the way you ran your server, forums and overall community. I say at least two threads praising your efforts. Good job, Guitarfreak; you've really got a good thing going on up there, and now that I'm one of the leaders in Paradox Roleplay, I can really appreciate what a feat that is to accomplish. I can only just begin to imagine the piles of absolute and utter crap you had to climb over to get to the top of the pile of community support, and what steel struts you had to erect to keep yourself there. In case that last statement is mis-interpreted as a sarcastic comment, I'll clarify; bravo, sir.
Seeing as your blog post was mainly a critique of our (and when I say our, I mean Snaggy and I's portion of the whole deal) community, I think it's fair for me to respond with a defense. I never really played on your server all that much, so I can't exactly formulate an offense, but even if I could, why would I post it? Put-downs that elevate yourself to new heights are far too common in the Garry's Mod universe, and I plan to avoid this as much as possible here. For those of you who'd like to read what he said about Paradox Roleplay (meaning that in as genial a manner as possible) it's right
here.To begin, I'll explain a little about the backstory of ParadoxRP and how it came to be what it is at the moment. To fully explain, you'll have to go back a little bit to when it was alone, without myself or Snaggy as actual leaders in the community. I wasn't in the community as far back asthis, but from what I understand, the two leaders (JerryCougar and Hologram) were in a bit of a financial predicament; they had a script, sure, but they needed something to run it on. They ran through a series of cash-cow server hosters (most of them either being complete and utter dicks/retards or they tried to use the server as their own personal playground and change everything around to suit their own needs) before finally ending up with one suitably named Proximity Mine. Eventually, when people got too close to him and found out that, no offense to "Prox" meant here, that he was a blatant bisexual with a taste for cybering over Garry's Mod and had serious social issues, most of them dealing with the fact that he desperately wanted to have a homosexual relationship with someone and be a character from Watchmen at the same time, he left the whole community. It was around this time that Snaggy, a former administrator for ParadoxRP, approached me and asked if I wanted to start a new community with him, one that wouldn't fall into the rut of cash-cows and other such problems. Obviously, this goal was a lofty one, but we're still trying to reach it, but that was the idea the community was based on. This community was called Pandemic Roleplay; because you're so interested in how these names came to be, I'll tell you that we called the community Pandemic Roleplay because the roleplay's theme centers around global epidemic. It's a sort of a zombie-ish sounding name, and we decided on Pandemic Roleplay instead of Epidemic Roleplay because the former sounded more like a roleplay than an overly-complicated Flash game on the Internet.
It was then that we ran into our first major problem; we didn't have a script. After a few hours looking over garrysmod.org and some unsuccessful attempts to modify CakeScript to our own needs, we approached ParadoxRP with a "business offer" of sorts; we'd merge and give them shared access to limited administrative rights on our server and we'd use one of their old scripts. This worked out well, as Snaggy was good friends with JerryCougar and we all got along just fine with the merger. The only problem I saw and still continue to see with this merger is that we used their forums and thus were tacked on as an afterthought in both the forums and the administrative roster. This accounts for the "constipated" way that our administrative roster is set up; or, rather, JerryCougar's administrative roster, as he was the one who put the whole system together in the first place and added everything. Any similarities to the Taco 'n Banana server administrator list are purely coincidental, he assures me, although you may still have your doubts. To your credit, Guitarfreak, we're in the progress of simplying and slimming down the admin roster into a couple simple ranks that make it very clear to everyone who's in charge and who's lower on the administrative "food chain."
I'm going to make the statement on administrative choices very quick, here; none of the people on that roster "ran" AftermathRP. I don't know what other communities you're referring to, but seeing as you only make references to AftermathRP in your post, I'm going to assume that's the only one you know. Considering that I nor anyone else on that list was anything other than a basic admin (in most cases, not even that) I really don't know where you got the idea about us "recruiting the same admins," as one of the commenters "Naru" puts:
"I think the cause of most branches of failed RP results from recruiting the same admins. People mostly join new RPs because they get “reserved admin” or some form of borderline bribery. It’s like you’re starting a new country after the old one failed, but you’re using the same government officials to run things. Don’t think admins are never the problem."
While it may seem I'm getting a little defensive, here, I'm going to point out that only one of the people on that list actually made it to basic administrator, and he was only one of two people who were administrators on AftermathRP. When you roleplay at a community for years upon years, you're going to have respect for people; you're going to want them, their experience and their behaviors in your community. It's like picking a sorts "dream team." You don't want new guys who don't know what they're doing; you want big names with experience that you know and can rely on to do the right thing as an administrator. Putting your fist down, as you showed us with Matteo, is something that, as an administrator, you will eventually have to do. People aren't going to stop if you ask them "pretty please" and act all "professional" in your posts; people react if you actually put your food down and demand that they quit the nonsense. While I agree that you have to respect the community, when you're dealing with one trolling member and his comrades who decide that trolling and going off-topic is a great idea.. You're going to have to deal with it and make an example for everyone else. Asking the community to "please stop trolling/flaming/going off-topic, guys, please" isn't going to change a thing.
While I got a bit carried away at the end, here, I'm going to add a closing comment; Guitarfreak, we've taken your ideas into consideration, and I agree with you that the server needs more variety. But instead of skimming through the forums and thinking that this is the way it's always been, always has been, and always will be without your "guidance" isn't the way to effectively "rate" a community. Your blog post is the thing that should've been saved for a Steam conversation, not a post to an entire community of people. While you, to your credit, put that you tried to talk to him directly, I think a bit more research could've been done here. You could effectively apply the same logic to my post, and how it could've been a Steam conversation, but I'm just matching with you, here; if you're going to make it public, so am I.
In closing? We've accepted some of your ideas and changed. You didn't have to make a high-profile blog post on our problems, nor did you have to make your closing statements sound like a poorly-veiled death threat. I don't mean to sound like a dick, and I mean this (all of this; the entier blog post) in the most respectful way possible, but if I come off as one.. So be it.
Good day.
Side-Note: The scoreboard was not and never has been removed from the script version. It is easily accessed by pressing F2; a rather cumbersome way to look at someone, yeah, but it's a way nonetheless. You should also be able to see people's titles above their head floating around somewhere, as well as their name. While it may seem that you're jumping through hoops just to get a simple piece of information, that's the way the script is.
