I find it odd that you say I am absent when I have been working towards the site day and night. Most of the time this is behind the scenes. If there is something that is needed, please let me know. You claim I am not here, yet I check the site all the time. My role changed from communicating a lot to making sure things always work. For example, you are probably not aware that there is an e-mail problem that I have been looking into all day. I will also be having a very serious surgery next week, but I will still check the forums. On the topic of "whoosh", I believe this has gone on long enough and will close the thread since it is straying off topic. The matter at hand is that the site has outgrown its original clothes and I am looking into ways to improve that situation.
The reason for the "Valued Contributor" award is true -- people who make this many posts to the site are valid contributors. Whether or not you dislike what they are saying is subjective, but the very fact that they have made X amount of posts indicates that they are contributors nonetheless, and valued by this site nonetheless. (If they had made 500 or 1000 useless posts they would likely have been banned, thus not earning the title.)
I was hoping this would not turn into a flame/complaint fest. Can we focus on constructive criticism? I am willing to answer anyone. Right now I am testing our e-mail system for registrations and PMs, but a lot of the work I do is unfortunately alone. I have reached out in the past for people to contact me via IM or phone but never has one staff member done so. I continue to manage many tasks at once and this may not be as simple as you think. A site that gets this many hits becomes more difficult to manage every day.
"Behind the scenes" Whilst you may regard your role as mainly as "making sure things work", they did not, from around April the site suffered severe slowdowns. I am intelligent enough to realise there could have been a server problem, but your communication was sparse. I feel quite a lot of the aggravation felt would have been stopped in it's tracks by such. As a very recent instance, why would you post this in the "Staff" forum an hour ago. With basically, at the moment, only three, rarely four, contributors there, it is hardly reaching out!
:quote
"Anyone who is pissed about the latest changes can vent here. So far the server hasn't become sluggish, but then again we haven't hit the 1000 user mark in awhile.... I'm looking to still host @ home (crazy) or upgrade the server. I am sorry the awards system is still gone it just eats up too many resources right now.
Thanks,
Mike"
The exchanges in the "Forum announcements" , regarding an Email problem, did not escape my attention, in fact, you may not have noticed, but I did respond and remark on my own feeling toward the facility.
I am in total agreement about the Whoosh" thing. The only person who could sort this out now would be himself.
P.S. With sincerity. I am sorry about your surgery, and I hope it all goes well.