Perhaps I am being too explicit for you, but what I am saying is that it really isn't all that tough. The decisions are pretty easy to make, the execution is pretty easy too. The worrying issue is your technical impossibility to move clans. I think it is a big shame if the execution of the league is restricted by "technical problems". There are lots and lots of competent PHP nerds playing Quake and I'm guessing they could patch your site or build a new one easily enough.


Johnny never said anything about "as soon as someone whines". I've been trying to say the exact opposite in fact. Forget about "whine", it is the JUSTIFIED CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK that should be taken into account. Why do I have to hear about whines whines whines every single time somebody brings something up for the league. Why exactly does it frighten you so much?

Fortunately there is you.

-Yeah i get what you mean

Clearly you don't Zalon It's like a diagnosis, you weigh up a number of the symptoms. Anything can happen on one map in dm2 mate!

You spoil my fun

I do confess it is an impressive screenshot, on the basis of which I am willing to propose that SD get promoted to div -1.

You're slowly but surely starting to get on my nerves to be honest. According to you, being an admin seems like a walk in the park. "Just do this and that, easy peasy!". I hate to say it, especially as you've invested quite some time into writing numerous, lengthy replies, some of which actually contained content worth reading, but: You're coming across as incredibly naive. Most of what you suggested has actually been done. Just to give you some random statistics:
- We looked for a coder for close to 5 months, both to make either a new site or modify the current one. People offering to help out: 0
- We wrote a pretty detailed news post on qwdrama saying we were interested in having new admins. Total amount of applications: 1
- We wrote numerous announcements saying we were still looking for people to help out concerning coverage (articles, columns, live commentary, anything else). Total amount of people to offer to help: 2. That's correct: T-W-O. Out of a several hundred active players as well as all those that don't really play actively but follow the scene, pleuraXeraphim and kryddturken were the only ones to actually do anything. Everything else was written by 3 admins, none of which are unemployed slackers that have nothing better to do.
"Just get someone to patch up the site" - yeah right.

As for the whine that we are "so afraid of" as you put it: If we were afraid of whine, we wouldn't actually be able to run a league. You have no experience in running a (QuakeWorld) league and keep on claiming that dealing with whine is a piece of cake, and that we should merely filter out the constructive criticism. You clearly underestimate how exhausting it is to deal with the same shit over and over again. I'm neither looking for a pat on the shoulder, nor do I expect people to take pity, but it can get pretty frustrating. When you've actually invested a shitload of time into something and people (sometimes bluntly) trash-talk what you are doing, it is pretty hard not to get involved and leave a statement or reaction. And if someone messages me on IRC and says "Man, how could you allow player-XY in clan-XY???", "WTF, why are we in Silver Cup?", "Why can't we add player-XY ffs?", I'm not just gonna ignore the person and not write back just because it's not "justified constructive feedback". I reply, hoping the person is gonna either agree with me eventually or at least see the decision made from an admin perspective. After all, you try to disappoint as few people as possible. Multiply that times x for every day and you'll come to the conclusion that you'd rather devote your time to something more fun.

In case you are wondering about the "technical restrictions": Already in previous seasons the fixtures were generated automatically once you hit the "generate fixtures!" button in the admin panel. Once those were done they couldn't be undone, only deleted completely. So if that were to be done, all games that had already been played would actually have to be submitted again and admins would have to enter player frags for every person again. This season the "generate fixtures!" button didn't actually create any fixtures at all. We get no error message or anything, and since none of the current admins are really into php or mysql, we couldn't come up with a solution. As a consequence of this I had to create the fixtures by hand and enter clan IDs, battle IDs, week IDs and division IDs into the table manually, which took an entire sleepless 8 1/2 hours of night-time. It's not like we're using "technical restrictions" as an excuse for being too lazy to find a solution...

So yeah, heres some admin-whine.

Heh I was waiting for one of these "nobody appreciates us" explosions from an admin. Some aspects of being an admin are very easy, one of them is identifying the misplaced clans after a week in a division and asking if they want to get bumped up a division. Soma, you very quickly got on my nerves with all the crybaby replies I've seen so far. A lot of people think they are immune to constructive criticism and explode when somebody offers some commentary.

I'll probably get a lot of flak now from people who like to tiptoe around you trying not to upset the sensitive admins, but I feel obliged to reply now so anyone who reads this THINK TWICE IT IS NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE. True that I am a bit too blunt at times but this is not an attack on the league it is just a collection of thoughts that I have rolled up into a ball and am bouncing off Soma's head.


Firstly, all of this except for the coder part is absotely nothing to do with what I said so far, but since you're obviously on a crusade I will reply. If it takes you 5 months to attempt to find a coder among a group of a thousand nerds, and _still not_ find one, what does that tell you? If you "write a post" looking for admins and get 1 application. You wrote a bunch of annoucements looking for people. Dude, _this_ is incredibly naive. 5 months looking for a coder... wow that is impressive. In those 5 months I could have tought an army of toddlers how to write PHP and got them to build you a site. Oh ya, and when I offered to help with the site code at the start of the season I did not even get a reply from anyone, which tells me this: you are taking the completely wrong approach to tackling some of the problems in the league. In light of this, you should be open to suggestions.

I have to put in a disclaimer here so that I don't get a load of people misunderstanding me and launching another misdirected crusade that I have to reply to. I think the league is pretty good, it is good fun, the admins are doing a good job. The issue is something I have seen before a million times in other games - you give an inch of constructive criticism and the organisers blow up in tears "but it's not our fault, you DONT KNOW HOW HARD IT IS!!" Seriously soma, if I counted the number of times admins used the word "whine" as part of their reasons for something, it is sickening. I really appreciate the NQR - I only played a couple of games in EQL and now I am looking forward to a full season NQR.


Whine is the same all over the world. You deal with it once, you can deal with it anywhere. The fact that I don't have experience running a QuakeWorld league means absolutely nothing. This is the classic defense of league organisers "ya I'd like to see YOU run a league". My advice - if you're waking up in a cold sweat at night haunted by what evil_donkey said to you on IRC, it is time for you to stop running the league.


If you want to reply to the trolls and whines from people who aren't even in the league, that's your own business. If you're scurrying around answering genuine concerns with justified constructive feedback, then well done on doing your job. Running a league takes a lot of time and input... but if you're finding it really hard then I fully understand if you give it up. I'm asking you now not to give it up because otherwise people will blame me if the league dies


OK, seriously you should have called me when I posted offering to help with your technical error. I might have found out what is wrong with your script and fixed it. I think it is amazing that you spent 8.5 hours trawling through that stuff. I don't want to go back to the naivety thing because I would feel really bad if I took the piss out of you over that. [....must...not....laugh. sorry, please dont take that the wrong way]

See, this was my original point on the last thread. This is NOT admin-whine, this is admin-response. It is (for the most part) justified, slightly misdirected, but it is active communication with a purpose and cannot be dismissed as whine. In the last thread the discussion that got on your nerves I was just pointing out about why it is stupid to dismiss a lot of genuine constructive feedback as whining.

Even when soma explains the issues in a long post, you cant seem to understand the decisions made.

Willghurt, I think my problem is that my own posts are too long and they confuse people like yourself who are reading and make the wrong conclusions. It is my fault for not being snappy and clear and writing one line responses to everything.

Okay, So You say you understands what he says.

Then I don't know what to say. Most of your constructive criticism as on the level of "We need to have qizmo cams on every server 24h/day".

Hedgepig say: do this instead of this, do that instead of that and you should have done this other thing in this way.
Soma explains what they have done and why.
Hedgepig replys: Yeah but you should have put in more time.

but soma already explained the relation between quality of a project and time spent in his post. If someone had the time they could have created the group improve-the-nqr-site on facebook. But noone did it.

Hey that's a good suggestion. I haven't logged in to my Facebook account in a long time but if you set up that group then I will join it. As regards to your other points, as I said a minute ago, you didn't quite catch what I was saying. That is my fault for taking on too many issues at once when Soma forked the conversation. As regards qizmo cams on every server, I dunno... I think that it would be a bit of an overkill, don't you? If nothing else it is a spec slot wasted!

Hedgepig: Enough Crap now.

How about a: "I can help with PHP/MySQL-coding. Just contact me!"

Just give some f*ng constructive tips if you can instead of 500 lines with "This is how much you suck: ****, Oh this is so bad, please quit instead"-bullshit.

Fog you totally missed the points. I knew that a lot of people would think I'm attacking the league saying that they suck, but you didn't read my disclaimer! I praised the league, I am just put off by the instant reaction that when you say anything that could be interpreted as negative, then everyone is up in arms. I'm not saying Soma should quit, unless he is genuinely stressed by what's happening... and I certainly am not saying that he sucks.

Lads... Willghurt, fog, and whoever is coming next - please reply to something that I actually did say, instead of putting words in my mouth.

For good measure I will put in another disclaimer: the league is great, the NQR is great, soma is great, whatever other admins there are are great. Thank you for putting a lot of time into the NQR. This is my honest opinion, but do I have to keep repeating it? It certainly doesn't mean that I forfeit my right to honest debate or criticism, and anyone who STILL thinks that I'm out to bash Soma et al needs to take a pause, deep breath, put on some sunglasses, and re-read, and if you still have an issue with what I am saying, then quote the section in question and reply to words that I actually wrote. There are perfectly good examples of utter bullshit in what I wrote that could be easily picked apart, instead of having to make up random insults (even putting them in quotation marks!) and attributing them to me.

Hedgepig: Ok. Thing is that I got (and I think I'm not the only one) quite the same feeling after reading your reply as of Sassas (roz) blog: "My team thinks the NQR-admins are retards, but I think you rock (!!) so I put up a NOT.nqr11.silver-tourney just because NQR-admins are doing such a good work. Anyone in??!?"

To make it more clear: Eventhough you might have said something good, it sounded bad (imo).

He stated that they have searched for more people to help, and still no one cares or are willing to help?
He wrote down his point of view and how he feels. You seem to have a lot of ideas for making NQR better. So if what's Soma is doing isn't enough (for the league, not in person) why not do as I just did, tell'em you wanna help.

Ahh fog don't be angry. Foggity fog fog my old pal. I see what you're saying but that is not the case with me. I'm not calling the NQR admins retards at all, even passively like Sassa. But the fact that because I'm not all gung-ho in complete support of everything they do, some people assume that I am in the "Sassa camp" and in complete opposition. Your attitude is pretty much case in point, one of the reasons why I initially got on Soma's nerves was because of my protests against the ultra-sensitivity to "whining". I'm just like um... totally like WHAT_EVER_. I guess I have to refer to my disclaimer again and hope that you give me the benefit of the doubt that my disclaimer is 100% honest, rather than equating me with Sassa just because we might share some views. What is the link to Sassa's blog and I will read Soma's response there.

Hedgepig: I'm not angry, and I don't compare you to Sassa. Just can't see how your post would bring something good, at all, unfortunately. More insults than constructive talk.

To everyone: To whine like hell or to tell admins how bad things are being handled just isn't the way to go. Give constructive feedback or it's completely useless.

Is it only my clan who thinks bronze-cup looks really good? I don't care if Arnette plays in Naim, I don't care if we don't win this season. We started up late 2007, I started playing again in late 2007 and we have improved pretty much since then. We are not favorites for the title, not at all, but we are really practicing to get a top 6 spot. So start playing instead and you will improve! We played Magnum44 yesterday, haven't seen them play as a team since ?. We won 2xdm3 and lost e1m2 and dm2 (pretty tight games), but still there is whine like (Not qoutes!) "Omg you only won by luck!", "You suck and we are a lot better than you". Well we certainly did NOT win by luck. We won because we practice and play the game more than we whine.

In the previous post i tried to summarize what you had said in those long posts. That way you would understand how your posts can and is being interpreted. Mis-interpretation or not, communcation is a two-way-thing.

Fog, I am glad you replied with this, because you are painting the picture that I am having difficulty in conveying. The attitude "Constructive feedback or nothing else" is something I very much disagree with. When people air their honest views, they are pounced upon in this QW scene and declared "whiners". If you think that I am whining at any point, quote the relevant sections. Otherwise you're way off the mark.

The points I make do amount to constructive feedback. There were a few obstacles thrown in my path by some people who misunderstood my points, and I had to explain my way around these obstacles and in doing so I may have wallowed through some flat negativity and there is no law against that. I'm not going to apologise for it, because of that whole freedom of speech thing (yak yak yak). I don't believe I've been disrespectful or personally insulted anyone so I'll just continue until I got banned unless you can find me an actual concrete example of something I said that I should not have said. Honestly, there are probably quite a few of these examples if you read back... by now I must have written over 1000 words and guaranteed there are some weak points in there you could easily use to support your argument, but until then I will not apologise for anything.

To everyone: "whine like hell" if it is justified. Give constructive feedback, or give flat commentary interspersed with flecks of constructive feedback, or go ahead and give negative feedback. What exactly is the problem? If you don't want to read it, then don't read it. If it is justified, then why do you want to silence it? If it is not justified, then reply to it and point out that it is not justified. If you don't have time to reply to it and point out that it is not justified, then give me a nudge on IRC and I'll reply to it for you! If it is a blatant unjustified troll or a non-genuine concern (a REAL whine) then it is worth ignoring. The problem is that if you start dismissing lots of constructive criticism as whine, simply because it doesn't agree with you, then the league and QW overall loses out.

Regarding div5... I said in this very thread that it looks like a good division and is shaping up to be very competitive. I don't think Naim are misplaced. As someone alluded to before, there is a thin line between misplaced and champions, and Naim to me look like Champions. There are a bunch of good teams in div5 though, and it would be a tough battle.

In your attempt to summarise what I said, you got it completely and utterly wrong. I have taken full responsibility for my inability to express my views accurately, I'm not blaming you for misinterpreting them. I get caught up on some tangent and am arguing too many different things at once. However, if you give me a direct quote that I said and take me up on that then I will clarify and explain my position. I object to people making assumptions on my overall stance without using any of my own words to back that up.

Heres some text from you, taken out of context perhaps, but I get the feeling you are trying to say It is a piece of cake to find someone that could make the necessary changes to the site.
The only options nqr-crew has available to find this someone is to ask on forums or perhaps .qw spam on irc.

The suggestion you make is that someone should talk to you and you would teach some undefined toddlers have to design and implement the solution in the php-scripts. Five months ago, how would they have known you could do the job? Think they can't see your 'will-teach-php-army-for-free' shirt.

If you have the time to improve the nqr page, I don't see why you wouldn't be allowed to do that for the next season.

Blogs at QW.NU are unmoderated, personal opinions instead of being stated as a fact or some other thing that should be really dug into.

Besides, they are fun to read sometimes.

Well I wasn't around 5 months ago - I was lost in the land of "real life" and only got back into this Quake thing towards the end of EQL season. The point I'm trying to make is that there are other ways of engaging the community. You're not alone in your ivory tower in adminland - there are a lot of passionate Quake players who will be willing to help out to keep the scene alive. The problem is with updating the NQR website, off season. I would never read it, most players I know wouldn't read it. But even if they did read it, even if all of us read a post explicitly asking "Looking for PHP Developer" it does not connect with the community. I'm not a psychologist, but I have looked into this kind of thing a little bit in the past. I would never respond to a "help wanted" sign in a public library for example, but the librarian (who's name I probably know) asked me to help out a little bit on the weekends, I think it would be pretty cool. I would definitely do it for a month or two at least. I think that it is to do with the fact that most people assume it is covered.

To try and illustrate this point better: Ser posted on the forums saying that he has a problem with his internet connection asking someone to inform Marvel and Batfink. Nobody replied to say they have informed Marvel and Batfink, so how many people actually did pass on the message? The thread has been viewed 84 times, but probably at most 4 or 5 people actually passed on the message. Everyone else assumed either "it's nothing to do with me" or "someone else has it covered". All those of us who did not opt to pass on the message - it's not necessarily because we lack the time or the inclination, it is because did not fall into our lap.

As regards my "will teach PHP for free" - I am not saying that I am the answer to your questions, I was using myself as living proof to the fact that there are lots of competent PHP programmers around, and even some open source scripts that do 95% of what you need out of the box. (I'll give this same advice to whomever is in charge of the Quake Nations - updating results/HTML by hand... ouch). I requested at the start of the season to take a look at the technical difficulties that you were having, and got no reply from anyone, except that I got on Soma's nerves and some people labelled me a whiner (hehehe). Of course the offer still stands for next season, but that is not what this thread is about.

I'd love it if you could solve the problem that 5% of the community does 95% of the work with running websites, administrating tournaments and developing software, i really would. <3

Edit: Make that 1% instead of 5%.

I can't understand why all of you are so much against Hedgepig. He stated clearly he is fine with current NQR and he gave a few tips how to improve things here and there, what could be done differently, what he doesn't agree with. Soma and some others should "take it more easy" imho... This is a discussion... I didn't see any "bad tone" in his posts or anything.

Sorry Ake, but that is the golden rule of community physics and cannot be messed with. Although a good option is to engage the clan leaders/match arrangers and pull them into the 5% because these guys are often like-minded "doers". Some leagues force a clan to provide an admin for the season, and if your admin doesn't show then you get deducted points. Those are leagues that actually require an admin on the server though. Should be much easier to get someone for tasks that are not restricted to a certain time though, like organising some things. It is the "pass the message to Batfink/Marvel" principle though, that I should patent and write a book about, unless there is already some term for it.

we (eql) are looking for admins! If you are interested, msg itsinen on #eql.qw

My blog was NOT mostly to start debating and steer some shit up, but it was mostly written for the laugh.
If it came to use in anyway, Im happy then, since I thought it was an utterly garbage post

Hedgepig would like to apply as EQL-admin.

please talk for yourself, reported your post to the admin, VIVA LA BAM