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Sad to see you go, I did read your post in detail, there are a few things that you posted that are ill-informed which I'm happy to break down a little bit just out of respect for you as you leave. Decisions do not have to be unanimous, many times higher ups who do not agree with a decision will usually say "I'm not for it, but if you guys want X to happen, that's fine". That being said, there are times where one higher up has the most experience with a certain individual which is why we will go with their reasoning, since we respect their views over our uninformed ones. There are some decisions we don't fully explain to the public due to the fact it causes unnecessary drama, for example in the past Rabid was discussed to be DM of CS:GO or CS:S (I don't remember which one) but I refused it due to how many times I had to personally ban him or punish him. Rabid is one of my closest friends in this community but when this was discussed 6 years ago, why would we make a post explaining that Rabid didn't get DM due to his past? What benefit is there for the community to know something like that? Some decisions have no say on the matter because Silence (rhododendron) likes trying things out to better the community, instead of getting approval from 10 people and waiting weeks to implement, he implements it as long as there is net gain. Of course it would be nicer if it doesn't affect the community in a bad way, but at the same time his heart is in the right place and he always thinks about bettering the community and keeping people happy. Nothing else. This does not include the shitty John Cena meme on the forums that he still needs to remove. My own thoughts on this matter though is that I do think you were wrongfully treated, I saw how active you were on the forums and didn't speak up on the promo/demo thread like I should have since I definitely thought you deserve Admin weeks ago. I definitely think we let you down, and for that there are no excuses so I would like to apologize to you on behalf of xG. I personally don't know how you interact on the servers and so I didn't want to make a decision that I wasn't informed on and I trust my higher ups on TF2 + VIrr to deal with Promo/Demo without my help, I will look into the matter for the future to make sure no one feels this way again. I wish you the best of luck wherever life takes you, and thank you for all your support on the forums + servers as staff.

You have been declined from becoming a member, but you may reapply in a month! Note: Multiclanning, don't bother reapplying until you have left the clans you are in currently ~Closed

I never really got the chance to know you well, but I am sad to see you go, and I hope you're happy wherever life takes you in the future, and I truly believe you did a great job as a staff member if that means anything at all coming from me. I'm gonna touch on just a few points made here: With some of the decisions made there isn't actually an announcement made and it's only spread through rumors and that's the only way people figure out about certain changes in the servers, whether that be a slight rule change or where certain boundaries are for spawnkilling in surf.. one person can say one thing, then another person says another thing and then everybody gets confused. Or at least from what I've seen as of late. It's always been a fact that some staff have their niche servers that they play on, and then they rarely play on anything else. But as of late the servers have honestly never felt more divided amongst the staff team or players in general, I've been trying to space myself out from more than just surf lately but even at that there's some staff that I've never even met whether that be from the different times we play, inactivity or whatever it may be. I think a big thing that needs to be worked on is this in specific, so that not only higher ups but the staff team in general gets to know who they're working with better so disagreements don't happen so often, and so it doesn't seem like bias when one person gets a staff position over another person.

This right here. It honestly bothers me how people leave, comeback, and expect their spot back. Let other people have a chance to show what they can do. Also, maybe this is a hint for a staff structure reform? Either that or clean up some (potential) grey areas.

Phew, this is going to be a long one. Admin isn't necessarily all that special of a role. It is quite literally just a moderator that is trusted more. The only difference between moderator and admin is a the title, a few commands, and the ability to permanent ban. Nothing else. I can see why it may mean a lot to others, there really is no reason to feel disappointed for not being admin in my opinion, it's only a title. The probationary moderator role is used for users who we are overall unsure of giving full moderator, usually because we don't know how they'll handle the position or if they can use their powers properly. Probationary moderator is a way for a user to get their foot in the door, but also allows us to see how they are as a staff member. While I usually dislike giving previous staff members probationary moderator, certain actions a user has done in the past can lead to us speculating if they're still able to handle powers as well, which is why they may be put into probationary moderator. The only difference between probationary moderator and normal moderator is just a few "fun" commands, they still get access to kick, ban, gag, silence, mute, and slay. Probationary moderators are still treated as full moderators, and usually go to full within 1-2 promo/demos. When it comes to mod/admin, it usually is just a majority for those promotions, unless one of us is very strongly against a user getting promoted for whatever reason. When it comes to DM+ promotions I believe everyone has to agree, as it is a user we will be working with for a while. We do take the word of other staff members into account, if we got a lot of people saying "hey, this user should be promoted" we'll take a look and see if they should. I cannot agree with this. Personal opinions and bias against a user should be kept to ones self as it can lead to some pretty bad decision making. Personally when I make a decision on staff members, I keep my personal bias from interfering with if I think they're a good staff member or not. While I do believe some opinions do belong in making decisions on who should be staff, like a persons past experiences with a user, it should only be taken with a small grain of salt. I myself have tried to stray away from this kind of decision making, but unfortunately if I do not know a person I cannot make a good decision on them. Hardly ever do I see a user trying to contact me or other users trying to contact me about someone else. The most I see anymore is someone mentioning in the promo/demo that "Oh someone suggested that a user should be promoted" which is fine and all, but I cannot personally give a good opinion on who that user is if I have no experience with them. While I can blame some of this on myself, since there are just some servers I do not personally like playing on, I do wish people would make more of an effort to come talk to me. When it comes to recording evidence, it takes a pretty keen eye to know when the right time is. Usually if I'm suspicious against a user or if the user had said one thing out of line already, I go ahead and start recording. While it isn't necessarily the most concrete way of gathering evidence, it works most of the time. The reason why we cannot take the words of others is because of a "bandwagony mentality". All it takes is one user to take something completely out of context, tell their friends, and the next thing you know its a mess. While I've learned from past mistakes as to why you simply should not simply take someones word on a matter, I can see why it may look silly from the outside looking in. Also if someone did say something on the servers that you feel was pretty bad, please remember we do have the rank website which is a great place for gathering evidence. There should be none of this happening in my opinion. I usually try to step back from a situation of another staff member is already handling it, but if its obviously a situation they cannot handle like if there's a group of people causing the problem, I do try to help the staff member out. As for "rubbing ranks in their face" I've not experienced this personally but if I do see it I will talk to the staff member in question. There should be no reason why some staff should be treated differently than any other staff and to do so is just going to make us look bad as a whole, lets try to treat everyone as our equal. When it comes to adding stuff to the servers, I usually only add maps without asking people as seeing peoples first hand experience with a map lets me better see if it should stay or not. When it comes to plugins I do ask around a bit as those can have a bigger effect on game play. While I do believe that peoples personal interests should be taken into account, I also do believe people should realize that everyone has differentiating opinions on maps/plugins/ect. That's why we make forum polls to remove maps/make huge changes to a server, so we can see how everyone feels about those. While I do believe it make seem like we're being unfair or biased at times, I can assure you we try not to be. We're only human, not every decision we make is perfect. There's no way we'll know how some decisions will effect others until it's already made. Sorry you didn't get the promotion you wanted and that you felt treated unfairly but please keep in mind, we try to give everyone a fair chance. I hope I worded this in a way that does not seem aggressive or mean, I'm not the best at choosing the right words sometimes. I do hope you did not blame your fellow staff for any of this, it's not their fault. The only people you should blame is us, the higher ups, for anything you've felt as unfair.

Sad to see you go, you seemed like one of the coolest and most chill staff there was. I do hope to see you on the servers again some day but at this point I can understand if you don't really want anything to do with this clan anymore based on your past experiences.

Yup, it's been looked into. Can't say myself how long or easy it will be to do, but it's not being ignored (y).

There has been a subtle, but notable issue for some time now and it has become regrettable our staff needs to act more self aware in regards to. To clarify, I'll borrow a page from the Staff Manual; Staff should remain unbiased and try to not show any favoritism Staff should be something like a third unbiased opinion on things. Showing favoritism to certain players will result in a removal of your powers. Staff are fully expected to remain as neutral as possible in all matters regarding the servers and we pride ourselves as a community for the equal and welcoming way all players are treated. This becomes an issue for the community as a whole when individuals are given the impression they are not treated as fairly as certain others. There has been an alarming number of cases not only brought to attention from people who feel this way but sometimes so common place it is done openly and not even given a second thought. These issues range from being more lenient towards friends when it comes to behavior and "edging" rules, giving higher priority to the concerns of certain people, purposefully targeting and being harsher on those you find less favorable, to flat out ignoring others breaking rules while turning a blind eye. This cannot be tolerated at this point. Staff are presented with a significant amount of trust and independence, making it much more severe when they break this trust. This is true even when it isn't always intentional, which is why it is going to be much more important for staff to more attentively moderate themselves to avoid any such issues from continuing. If it is found they do, action will be taken at this point. All current staff members will be tagged and expected to take note of this- @Vexx @mrnutty12 @Elcark @Vargas @Vacindak @Kypari @Natsu @Caleb956 @Tekage @Matteomax @Krampus @LAN_Megalodon @Frusty @Skeletal @Ms.Spooks @axtinpyrothe2nd @Segal @Osiris @Vaporeon

Are you missing permissions in game? There is a little bug that sometimes happens with the server where it doesn't default new users to the default 'guest' rank. This of course doesn't give you the basic permissions as everything is set up to run off guest as default so when some users fail to get set to guest it becomes an issue only myself and other staff can fix manually. Since I keep getting asked about why people don't have permissions and its becoming troublesome to keep up I made this thread for people to post if they need to be set to guest (or member if they are already a member of xG). Just post below your Minecraft username if you don't have permissions and I will set it up for you.

I'm leaving xg for good. This is my only and last formal goodbye. In case you didn't know what happened I'll sum it up. 7 months ago now I took a break from being staff for personal reasons that I chose to keep to myself. Tf2 wasn't fun for me at the time. The drama in xg was unbearable at that point. There were several decisions being made that in my opinion weren't in the best interest of the clan. No I'm not going to go into detail about them because I can't be bothered. I came back roughly a month later 2 weeks after pyro update dropped and it took a lot of time an mulling over to forgive tf2. At this point I was hearing a lot from community members that missed me being staff(not just other staff) and eventually I was convinced to come back to staff. Now since I stepped down quietly I was expecting the process to be easy. It was not. Instead of resuming my position as staff I'm put unfairly into a probationary role solely because of 1 higher up's bias against me. I was being punished for no good reason. I was assured that it's no big deal I'll most likely get admin back as long as I keep staffing well. I got mod quickly and ended up staying mod for the last 5 months. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement. In fact multiple times I even considered just giving up entirely, but I decided to stay for the people in the community who actually appreciate what I do. I stayed because the servers liked having me. I don't know what the accused hold up is now and quiet frankly I'm over hearing lies and excuses like I have since I first got staff. From the beginning it was "who the fuck is ms. spooks?" "You need to be more established with the community" "you need to do more." "I never see her online so I can't make a good opinion on her" etc. Now keep in mind since I was considerably new staff at the time it wasn't a big deal. However time started passing by and I've watch many staff (you know who you are) go from member to admin before me, and now they're dms before I've even gotten admin back. I kept asking what am I doing wrong and keep getting the same run around. "Nothing, why?" just to be followed up later with some half attempted accuse "Oh you just need to do more." As time went on that clearly didn't end up being the full truth getting comments like "If you did more you'd already be admin" "You're not entitled to admin" "You're too passive" etc. It's not fair that I do the same amount of work as an admin, spend more time than a majority of the mods, and have been an established community member for 2 years without even a blemish. Now some of you will take this as an outcry because I didn't get a rank that's just slightly better than mod, however my problems run deeper than that. It's not fair that I had to harder than other staff the entirety of my time of being staff. It's not fair that I keep getting pushed aside for other staff who are better at sucking off the higher ups than I am. I'm done playing the charade of "work a little harder" "Do a little more" Because even with the backing of multiple staff and plenty of recommends it clearly doesn't mean jack to you. It's incredibly disrespectful not only to me but other people who have gotten this treatment to string us along like a grunt. I'm not your lackey. I didn't become staff to do your job, and I most certainly don't see anywhere that says I'm supposed to suck you guys off in order to even get looked at. It's beyond hurtful to continue to be punished for things out of my control and more importantly I didn't do. This is my only request of all of you staff. If you're not my friend and you're only friends with me soley because I'm staff. Get the F U C K off my friends list. Get out of my servers. Get out of my life. I have enough garbage I have to deal with in my life and I don't need more fake people around who don't care about my feelings. Stop pretending to care about what I have to say then just doing the same garbage I'm complaining about. I have rooted for and defended most if not a majority of you even if we haven't been the best of friends. I've stood up for you and I tried to be there when you're down. It's funny to me how people forget the people who rooted for them when they get power. I have been mulling over for the last couple days what all I'm going to say when inevitably I say goodbye after being shafted again for no good reason. So I'm going to finish this with a list of what xG should improve on. 1. Staff are volunteers not lackeys This "do more" mentality and backwards logic of having more mods than admins is part of a huge issue that doesn't respect your staff equally. despite all staff volunteering their time and efforts to improve the servers and the community. Treating admin as some mystical, magical, special role that's Juuust out of reach feels really really shitty for all the mods who have to work harder than other staff to prove themselves. 2. Stop using probationary for no reason. This is a punishment role. It's used for staff who don't deserve a full demotion but still want to make things right as staff. Likewise It's used for people who have a dirty history. Stop slinging it around for every person who you don't feel like fits the personality mold even when they've done nothing to deserve it. Stop using it as a compromise because 1 higher up doesn't like the person. It should be used to establish wrong doings not "We just trust you a little less." 3. Majority matters. It's been a huge problem for a while where higher ups have to make unanimous decisions. What this means for all the other staff is that if 1 higher up disagrees despite everyone else agreeing on said thing. It won't go through. The voice of one is too strong in this community specially for higher ups who don't go on servers enough to see what is going on or that just choose to disregard the intent of the community and more importantly the other staff. To fix this, it should be that majority rules. It should be that the community or staff vote count for 1 higher up in of themselves, because giving the people no say is what's going to kill the community. 4. Be transparent. All decisions should be clear, concise, and have good *valid* reasons. It should be your goal to be as unbiased, well informed, and clear as possible. This under the table garbage that's been going on is just sleazy. You don't want your real opinions out there and you don't want to be held accountable which quite frankly is an embarrassment to your role. Be open and honest with your staff and not just string them along with excuses everyone knows are lies. If you make a decision you're accountable to that decision. Don't just keep letting everyone else have to figure it out. 5. Stop only caring about people in your respective group. This is a big clan with large divisions and even in tf2 large sub divisions. Its been an issue for a while that surf staff only favor surf staff and tgh staff only like tgh staff. Unfortunately it has even gone as high as the higherups. Just because you haven't played on the servers (which isn't a good idea anyways) doesn't mean you should give only people in your respective server the special treatment. If you want to be taken seriously you have to take others seriously as well. It's ok to get more information to form your own opinion, but it's not ok to say it's not your problem because it's not your server. 6. Witnesses matter. I'm all for innocent until proven guilty, but some of you take this as an opportunity to ignore issues all together because no tangible evidence. Staff witnesses have just as much say as a normal witness, none. It doesn't matter how many people say a person did an action because without proof you're never going to confront the issue. You make no effort to gather more information. It doesn't help when you expect people to be recording EVERYTHING that goes on, and to be honest if you are wanting people who record everything just to nail one person it's a pretty sucky, bandwagony mentality. 7. Stop treating other staff like dirt. This is to all staff. Stop staffing over each other when someone else has it handled. I'm not talking about you both get on at the same time or accidentally warn at the same time. I'm talking that another staff handled the call, they're already trying to resolve the issue, and you jump in gung hoe and start shafting them. It's not acceptable. Trust the staff members to do their job. Unless you have to make a decision that involves perms only you have as staff it should not be happening that staff are stepping on each others toes. Likewise, Mods are volunteers. Means they donate their time and energy into the servers just like you. Stop talking down to staff who are a lower rank and stop kicking them around because you can. Stop rubbing your rank in their face. They get it. It's not acceptable to disregard another staff as a whole just because they're a lower rank. 8. Share the interest of the community not just yourself. There has been many times where higher ups have made decisions under the table that are looked at negatively by the community or ultimately effected them negatively. Yes we get you like this one plugin idea and the other higher ups are all for it, but when you implement it out of nowhere and it effects the players to the point of complaining about it that's not in the interests of them. Part of making the community a better place is by making it unified, and when you keep making decisions that effect a mass in the community you create division. With all of that in mind I want nothing to do with this community anymore. If you're really my friend you'll accept that. I'm not going to keep getting a run around, doing your jobs, and investing time and energy into a clan who doesn't care about me back. I'm not looking for a debate here. I'm not justifying any of my points. I'm not going to bother responding so don't bother baiting for a response. No I'm not changing my mind. I don't know if I'll ever come back to xg after all that it's put me through. I don't want your excuses so don't bother sending them to me. I may still come on the servers once in a while but you're not going to get much out of me here. Goodbye xg.

*Any underlined text is personal opinion* Not what she meant. Pretty good point on the second part, though. I think she was more pissed off that she got probationary moderator for zero reason at all. She did a great job as staff the first time, but she stepped down because personal reasons/TF2 was getting boring. She feels like she was being unfairly treated and rewarded for amount of work she put into the servers. She was given a fairly large amount of recommendations and thinks that they were disregarded completely. She feels like she was pushed aside even though she was doing just as much as the others who were jumping ranks for sucking more higher up chode than she was. Now, I'm only trying to break down a few of her points, I'm trying to leave this as unbiased as possible as an attempt to not cause a shit storm. Hopefully this might better explain what she means, @Goblins : )

You have been unbanned! Note: Going to go ahead and unban since it was an accident, sorry for the inconvenience In order to avoid being banned in the future, please get a refresher on our rules by clicking the links for the appropriate division below: [TF2] [CS:GO] [GMOD] [Minecraft] [Nuclear Dawn] ~closed

I believe she was talking about the times where, for example, Silence added a bhop pluggin all out of the sudden which everyone hated, not some internal decision that hasn't happened anyways. Another example could be simple rule changes that no one announced.

+1 This was quite a long time ago so why not.

Stock hud is disadvantageous in so many ways to having a proper, custom hud. For example, health being closer to the center makes it easier to see your health first off.

Please change your hud to a custom one. It will look better. I promise!~♥ Also, love the video. :3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekBRLRKHseo Feedback is appreciated!

I could write 10 thousand paragraphs to discuss everything you stated, but in conclusion I agree with a lot. And instead of continuing the arguments we already had, I'll just agree to disagree with some things. Welcome to the step down squad, though! However, there are two points that I wanna say something about: In my opinion majority decisions don't always lead to the best. Just think about why you don't vote for political decisions directly and elect representatives instead. I think your logic is in some instances very understandable, but in others not. Good idea but it has too many downsides imo. I mean, just think about how devided this clan is in certain groups. Imagine if one of these groups would want to get someone demoted. They could simply just agree on a wrong story and accuse someone falsey. To conclude: Sad to see more staff step down, but I can understand the reasoning behind it. This clan is by far not perfect. Also, since I've been a higher up for like two years, I wanna tell you that - as long as i was a higher up - we always tried to do what was best for the community and sometimes it failed, however, I don't think anyone is intentionally doing something you really hate.

stock hud is better than any of the bullshit that people try to make. All of the good huds have stopped getting updates

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