Subject: Site Design

Quote by: ziti
that is a copyrighted photograph. please remove it immediatly

Quote by: Sloppy Sally


more to your liking?

Quote by: jiguma

Definitely a helpful idea!
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B)

Quote by: TEXASFEEL


I would like to know how Neil managed to split up his songs into Albums?

Quote by: VicDiesel
The flags regularly stick into the next box. This is due to bad handling of long names such as "henrirogersolanandbands".

Victor.

Quote by: Rebsie
I completely agree, Mason. A lot of people have no concept of how time-consuming it is to run a website, or how demoralising it is when the efforts you put in seem unappreciated and the feedback is demanding and critical.

It's not just websites either ... any voluntary work seems to be blighted with this negativity. For years I was on a committee which ran a full size theatre on a voluntary basis. Nobody ever said "thank you for donating hundreds of hours of your time to run this place unpaid". It was always "hey, I just went to the toilet and there was no paper. Get it sorted!"

Frankly, if I was Simon I would have pulled the plug on this place years ago. It's a testament to what a lovely easy-going and good-natured bloke he is that he continues to work on maintaining and improving the site while continually being moaned at by the very people who benefit from it.

He's a superstar as far as I'm concerned. Thanks Simon!

Quote by: Tiny_Man_Inside
I just wanted to jump in with some support for Simon. I think I have some perspective on what he's going through right now and I'd like to share that.

Going back in time to 2000... when I was a graduate student at Syracuse University, I used to go and observe the basketball team practice. Just on a lark, I started a website to post some of my observations - what a practice was like, which players stood out or had improved, what type of drills they ran, etc.

At the time there really weren't many SU basketball sites, so I got a lot of very positive feedback early on. This positive feedback led me to bring on someone to take over site design and graphics while I worked on content. Gradually we started to expand the site. People wanted us to provide detailed analysis of upcoming games. So I started scouting out opponents and doing pregame write-ups. Eventually we started doing post-game analysis. We added photos. We got more and more positive feedback as the site was growing.

I started to add records pages and statistics. I started going to the summer camps to watch the high school players that SU was recruiting. We added video to the site. Eventually I learned how to code in php and built up a mysql database with complete player stats for every season from 2000 to 2005. I added the game outcomes of every single game SU played from 1902 to the present.

Through this all I kept it as a free site, donating my own time. I was a grad student through the early years and eventually left Syracuse in 2002 to start a postdoc in Washington DC. Occasionally I would miss posting a pregame or postgame. This wasn't a big deal in the early years.

I added a few extra writers to help me distribute the workload. But even the administration of the site became cumbersome as it grew. After 2003 when Syracuse won the National Championship, the amount of traffic that my site was receiving started to climb even higher.

Now things started to transition. Once the site was well-established, the expectations of visitors started to change.

Instead of getting positive, constructive feedback, I started getting emails like "hey, you forgot to post a pregame for the SU/Colgate game" or "your site should update more frequently with at least one new story per day". This started to take the fun out of running the site for me.

Eventually it got to the point where most of the feedback I was getting was critical and the complainers basically were unwilling to recognize that I was running the site on my own free time without any compensation. That it was a hobby and not my job.

The words of appreciation, that really fueled my excitement about working on the site, started to get drowned out by people who wanted to take, take, take everything they could without giving anything back.

I started getting "what makes you such a basketball expert" comments, etc. etc. But when I would put forth an offer to bring on said person as a writer for the site, they would invariably either ignore my email or give me a writing sample that was commensurate with a 5th grade education.

Eventually I abandoned my own site and entered a contract with a pay-site to provide content there. But the negativity surrounding the comments has tainted this experience for me and I will not be contributing in the upcoming season. A big part of my decision was based on the fact that I have less free time than normal with a 7 month old daughter, plus I'm trying to put more attention into music than sports these days.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is VERY easy to criticize. It is harder to be supportive in the face of negativity.

It is also very easy to feel neglected or underappreciated if you pour your heart and soul into something and the majority of the comments you receive are negative. I think we owe Simon more than just a parade of "this sucks" and "I don't like the new look". If you are going to take the time to be critical, at least have the decency to offer constructive criticism.

The thing is that a vast majority of people are probably happy with the site... but no one calls up customer service and says "hey, you got a great product here, thanks a lot". They call up to say "hey, this crap doesn't work because you're a [fill in expletive here]". Ironically, the people who complain the loudest are often the people the least willing to put in the time to make things better. {I'm not talking about Tobin, just to be clear].

So anyway, I'm extending a heartfelt "THANKS Simon" - I understand what you are going through and I hope that you can receive whatever satisfaction you are looking for in running/designing/owning this site. You've created a great place for people to share music and share in the creative process. There are always going to bumps along the way, but I hope you can overcome them.

Mason