[G Man]

This has been coming for a while, but i thought i'd post this now seeing as i've had enough.

I've seen a lot on this site, i've been through thick and thin, seen old member's go and new one's arrive. Ever since i've been active here, the thing that i was always impressed with was the maturity of members, their willingness to help out and their general friendliness in general. This is conjunction with good post quality was the things that attracted me to the site and kept me active. Now though everything which i thought this site stood for is out the window, post quality is bad, there is little to no interesting and relevant discussion and member maturity and overall behavior is at a low.

This isn't an instantaneous thing that's happened overnight, it's gradually happened over a period of time. It's something that's frustrated me for months now, and while i've tried to embrace the change of things and get on with things, it's came to the point where i don't even want to post here anymore. The only things that are keeping me coming on here is Horizon and some of the people i still talk to.

Dale posted a thread the other day regarding member's attitude towards staff, the problem is however is that it's not only staff that are on the receiving end of things but everyone. All i see now is constant arguing, flaming or trolling. You all need to take a good hard look at yourselves and grow up. Yeah, sure this is the internet and it's not serious, but some of us are here to try and make the best of the community and we can't while idiots roam around without a care. I may not be the perfect member but i must have done something right to be in the positions i've been in. Most of you need a reality check, you condemn members for not contributing anything then next thing you condemn them for trying too hard. Nearly every thread i see posted always has some idiot posting something irrelevant or two words long.

Staff do a great job here and while some of you will disagree with that, you have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. I've seen things from a staff perspective and i can say it was eye opening. You can blame staff for things at the end of the day, but if you actually abided by the rules in the first place you wouldn't be complaining. Seeing members trying to argue that they never broke rules and infractions that are "unjustified" is just pathetic in my eyes. Staff don't give out infractions for no reason, offenses may seem harsh in some instances but at the end of the day if you break the rules you will be punished for it. Anyway, Dales thread covers most of what i'm saying here..

I'm going to give some of you a bit of advice;

Grow up and try to be a bit more mature.
Stop the god damn arguing, it's not helping anything..
Take an extra 20 seconds to make your post a bit more detailed rather than the generic one liners i'm constantly seeing.
Only post when relevant and when it adds something to the topic.
Disregard post count, thanks and badges. I sure as hell didn't join this site to get any of these or to increase them. If you did, then i have no respect for you. Concentrate on making this site a better place and helping others rather than focusing on menial things like the latter.

It's time for things to change here or it'll just get worse, i've seen it happen with other communities and it really is a downward slope. If you have any thought for this site and it's members then you should be doing your best not to act an idiot and trying to make this site thrive as it should be. To the members who do that, you have my respect.

If i'm the only person seeing these things then maybe it's maybe me that's changed, however i do believe there's others who will share similar perspectives to mine. If you want to leave your feedback, feel free i'd like to see your opinions regardless of whether you agree or disagree. If you have nothing relevant to add, please don't post..

/rant

[Dutch OG]

Finally, I've been waiting for someone to make a post like this. Everyone needs to grow up a bit.

[Haunted Mare]

G-Man I totally agree with this...

[Travis]

G Man, you didn't capitalize your "I"s

Seriously though, I am glad you posted this. I realized the same thing after I couldn't use my computer for a long time and I was gone from last February until August.
When I came back so much had changed.
There are members that don't care at all about any rules or any sort of "morals" because they say it's the internet and it doesn't matter.
Well what people need to realize is that in this highly technological age we are living in, we need to start using the internet as if it is real life. Because the same rules apply online as they do in the real world. People just get into the mind set that the distance and screen can protect them from people.
Either way, I think too many members think like this and they are often "praised" for it by the community with thanks and things like that. Then it starts spreading and becoming contagious. Although thanks do not mean much, some people apparently think they do. I have heard of members basically begging for thanks from other members and it makes me lose 100% of any sort of respect I had for them.
Don't judge yourself simply by a number below your name. You should know if you are doing a good job. Nobody else needs to prove it to you.

There is one thing I don't understand. It seems like a lot of people are worried about their image online. I have noticed when people make up lies so that they sound "cool" or something. I am not sure of their motives, but if you want to have a good image online, why wouldn't you be a contributing member and make high quality posts?
To me, that seems like the best way to improve your "image".

[G Man]

Originally Posted by Totally Trav

G Man, you didn't capitalize your "I"s

Seriously though, I am glad you posted this. I realized the same thing after I couldn't use my computer for a long time and I was gone from last February until August.
When I came back so much had changed.
There are members that don't care at all about any rules or any sort of "morals" because they say it's the internet and it doesn't matter.
Well what people need to realize is that in this highly technological age we are living in, we need to start using the internet as if it is real life. Because the same rules apply online as they do in the real world. People just get into the mind set that the distance and screen can protect them from people.
Either way, I think too many members think like this and they are often "praised" for it by the community with thanks and things like that. Then it starts spreading and becoming contagious. Although thanks do not mean much, some people apparently think they do. I have heard of members basically begging for thanks from other members and it makes me lose 100% of any sort of respect I had for them.
Don't judge yourself simply by a number below your name. You should know if you are doing a good job. Nobody else needs to show it.

There is one thing I don't understand. It seems like a lot of people are worried about their image online. I have noticed when people make up lies so that they sound "cool" or something. I am not sure of their motives, but if you want to have a good image online, why wouldn't you be a contributing member and make high quality posts?
To me, that seems like the best way to improve your "image".

Although I never raised the points you've made i meant to, i couldn't have put it better however, you hit the nail on the head. I wish more members had the mind set you have..

Also, i don't capitilise my I's.

[iva1212]

Ok I will try to make my posts more longer because I know i just do some posts with some few words and I also want to try to make this community better but we need to be all like you say the site begins to be a troll zone Im with you

[Uzi]

Glad you decided to make an attempt to put this out there. It's something which I've also seem happen overtime, posting quality is gradually beginning to decrease every day. It's beginning to turn into TheTechGame (no offence intended towards TheTechGame nor XboxMB) but it's true. Members are persisting in spam posting, trolling and whoring for popularity and attention.

Not only is there an issue with whoring for attention, but also whoring when it comes to acquiring special user ranks and post counts. It seems that some users are more-or-so set on achieving a higher post count rather than adding the additional detail to improve their posts' quality. It's also the complaints which personally bother me, the fact that members act like the moderation team are abusive towards others and persist in abusing their powers, which I know for a fact this isn't true. Members receive warnings / infractions for a specific reason, not just out of the blue (trying to say all this without giving users the impression that I'm mini-moderating).

I've received a couple of warnings and infractions during my time spent active on XboxMB, some of which I thought at the time were given for pathetic reasons but as time goes on you'll understand just why you've received the warning / infraction. Back to members and posting quality; to those members who actually make an attempt to bring about high quality threads and replies; props to you and I can respect members for that. As of recently (the past three months or so) I've began to notice a large amount of off-topic replying to threads. Threads which are discussing a subject but a users commenting something idiotic, such as; "Yeah, haha. I like your signature!", then someone quotes their post saying "Yeah, #Swag", etc etc etc. It's very annoying, I tend to report the posts for either; 'Spam posting', 'Off-topic posting', or 'low quality', but a majority of the posts which I report don't get handled, they remain on the thread.

I've pretty much gave my two cents. I'm tired and haven't slept in nearly 48 hours, I'll update this reply later if I've made any mistakes. Once again, I appreciate you posting this topic G Man, hopefully we'll get some intuitive thoughts regarding this subject.

[Sunkist]

I agree with everything you said, and everything Totally Trav said. Seems like TheTechGame is slowly moving here, all "TTG" is, is a bunch of egocentric children.

[GATOR]

There not much at all I can disagree with in your post. But as you stated, members care less and less on here, and the ones who do will look at your post and it won't have any effect on them, and for the ones who do care, we feel the same you do. Thank and post count has never meant much at all IMO, and theres a only a couple members from my perspective who go over the top for stats on here.
The internet is real, but you can only go to an extent as comparing it to real life. "I'm certain you know my reference"

This community is by far IMO the best when it comes to gaming websites. Just some people like to take things a little too far, but at the end of the day, I don't see people sharing any hatred.

[Travis]

I feel the need to add to what I have said. My intentions for posting about this topic and criticizing others is not to imply that I am better or above them in any way.
I am not going to hide and refuse to admit that I was never doing stuff like that.
I did. When I joined I cared a lot about post count and thanks. I soon realized that it isn't what I should be shooting for and I personally believe I have done a pretty good job of changing the quality of what I post and having good morals on the internet as a whole.

I just wanted to say this because I know there are some members/staff that could read my post and see it as hypocritical.