"Be NICE to GxGolfer" - LONG post

[MadGolfer76]

Hello all,

 

I've been reflecting the last couple days on the recent changes on the site. Definitely some things that caught me by surprise, along with many other members, and my initial reaction was dislike. I say "initial" even though there are actually still some things I don't like.

 

You know, last summer was my 10th year as a member/poster/troublemaker/insurrectionist on GolfWRX. 20,000+ posts. When you think about it, that is an incredible ~~waste of time~~ amount of time spent reflecting on golf and interacting with golfers across the U.S. and internationally. Lots of opinions shared and taken in from others. Met a current good friend through conversations here - DriverWedge (name is accurate, folks!). Ran counterfeit Diamanas across the Canadian border with MtlJeff...clubbed baby seals with PepperTurbo...

 

Lots of money spent, for sure. Did I really need six 9015D's when they came out? Should I really have let ROBOpti talk me into all those Cobra drivers? Did I really think all those custom shafts were going to have an effect? Really??? But...

 

All in all, I really like this place.

 

I've been working as a high school principal for the last few years. In that time, I've dealt with drugs, weapons, domestic abuse, assaults in school, poverty (yuck), evacuations, protests...you name it, I've handled it (no badge or gun either, thank you very much). I had to make a lot of changes at my school to make it function in a way that is sustainable, promotes security, and provides opportunities for students. Many of these changes were about as popular as funeral farts, to be honest. At one time or another, I've been called a Mau'ist, a racist (my wife is black, btw), a dirty SOB, some words that only Millennials seem to understand, and...in Maine...the worst accusation you can receive - being...."from away." VinDog probably knows what I am talking about, and...even though I am *not* "from away," it bugs me when I hear it, because I've roamed the darkest reaches of Maine for more than 40 years. I've earned my Mainer badge, trust me, and know the secret handshake (the one with the raised middle finger...but I digress).

 

So, why am I sharing this? The reason is because...upon reflection...I see some parallel with what is going on at WRX currently. I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of easyy and Gx and what they are trying to do to either sustain the site or move it forward (depending on who you talk to). The ads are pain in the a**, I admit. But, I can deal with them if it means this place gets to continue, or that it gets to add opportunities for everyone. Now I say this....

 

Can we be nice to GxGolfer?

 

I'm not trying to earn brownie points here, but I get the task he is trying to accomplish. No one, and I mean no one, thanks me for what I do. I'm actually the person in town who gets told "I don't want your job." In truth, I didn't get into this job for the thanks (and certainly not the money) - I just genuinely like what I do, but when the criticism gets heaped on constantly....

 

"What do you mean my kid can't have his cell phone?"

 

"What do you mean my kid can't vape in class?"

 

"What do you mean my kid can't hack the school payroll?"

 

 

....it drives me nuts to the point where I...act a little nuts. I see some of the exchanges here with members (and I have been a complainer too, not gonna lie), and it is one thing to respond nicely and professionally to a couple messages and posts, but after the 100th time....come on, right?

 

It's my understanding that Gx is the person who largely keeps the lights on for this place. He also seems to be in charge of the new rollout. Perhaps another thankless job, similar to mine. However, I would rather deal with the changes and have this place to be a part of than not. If there are some ads in threads, no, I don't like it...but, I've resolved that for now I am going to deal with it. I see Richard and Gx trying to make changes with the intention of moving the place forward, and considering the value I have received from this community in the past, I am going to reserve judgment until everything has been completed.

 

Feedback is surely an important part, and I am sure they will need it, but I think we need to cut them some slack too in the meantime. Getting piled on by members (all many thousands of us well-practiced D-Bags) can't be a fun thing, especially if you are trying to make changes to improve your bottom line. I know what this is like, and it sucks.

 

So, you know those buttons Golf Digest used to hand out to fans so that Colin Montgomerie wouldn't have an aneurysm if someone in the crowd sighed too heavily when playing in the U.S. ("Be nice to Monty")? Maybe we should have a new button here for the owners that does the same thing electronically. Let's cut Gx some slack as these changes are made, be patient with decisions, offer constructive feedback, and be thankful we have a place like this where we can continue to mentally and financially abuse ourselves pursuing an endeavor we can never master.

 

Happy 3-day weekend for most of us...

 

MG

 

PS - if you disagree and would like to send me an angry message, please forward them to JonesScott@JonesScott.com.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jmck]

I agree 100% with the sentiment expressed here. 100%. BUT. Much of the criticism is coming from self-inflicted wounds. BST feedback was imminent on post 1, page 1 of the big "New Forum Software and What to Expect" thread. That's mid to late March. At the top of every page we had the "New Old Look Coming Back" banner which said June (or was it even May?), then July, then August, then September. I'm sure that those promises not being delivered for whatever reason are extraordinarily frustrating to the site owners. BUT. There should be zero surprise that criticism ensues when you promise something and then fail to deliver.

 

I love this site and wish nothing but success for it, but this transition has been clumsily handled and any criticism well earned. In fact I think the level of criticism has been fairly mild compared to how badly botched this transition has been, and I feel like I've seen relatively little invective and insults from members directed towards owners throughout.

 

What I really love about this site is the membership, and seems to me this transition has driven more than a few of my favorite members away. Or at least greatly reduced their posts. That's the real shame here. Not clicks, engagement, UX or ad revenue. All of that will recover eventually as time goes on, but are those members coming back? I hope so, but if not all the social media widgets and image embedding and back end stability in the world won't make up for the loss. I don't know how to even start vocalizing criticism for that loss, it just bums me out so I've kind of stopped hanging around too.

 

Just my two cents, and I certainly won't take it personally if anyone disagrees.

[cardoustie]

First world problems

I'm fine with any and all delays / improvements

Content and membership win out

[DavePelz4]

Mad...I agree with the majority of what you're saying. I own a healthcare company with 200 employees and 99.9% of team being female so I understand negativity, bickering, pettiness, etc. While there are some rude posts, the vast majority of opinions are offered by people with career experiences of transitioning parts of businesses and who have a sincere interest in seeing the site improve and flourish from a membership and profitability standpoint. Sometimes the response to that is a comment of being a personal attack when it's actually trying to help. By no means am I the perfect leader...enough faults for several people. What our team has taught me to do though, is to be transparent and communicate not only what but also why. At first I took some of the comments personally as though someone was telling me my kids were ugly. They're not BTW and that's thanks to the gene pool of Mrs. Pelz, but I digress. Our team wants our business to grow, they wanted to serve our clients better and they want me to be a better leader. I'm forever in their debt for caring enough to share those thoughts.

 

Upfront if we knew what the plan was, what the timeframe was for expected completion, etc. it would be easier to understand and might lead to a few easier conversations. I respect GX because as you stated, he's apparently the point person on communications and very possibly the project in it's entirety. It's never easy being THE GUY or THE WOMAN but you can make it easier but being transparent.

 

Seacrest out.

[mukster]

DavePelz4, great post, both in what you wrote and what you didn’t write. I started writing about what you didn’t say, but realized you had actually said it anyway. :smiley:

 

[grm24]

> @jmck said:

> I agree 100% with the sentiment expressed here. 100%. BUT. Much of the criticism is coming from self-inflicted wounds. BST feedback was imminent on post 1, page 1 of the big "New Forum Software and What to Expect" thread. That's mid to late March. At the top of every page we had the "New Old Look Coming Back" banner which said June (or was it even May?), then July, then August, then September. I'm sure that those promises not being delivered for whatever reason are extraordinarily frustrating to the site owners. BUT. There should be zero surprise that criticism ensues when you promise something and then fail to deliver.

>

> I love this site and wish nothing but success for it, but this transition has been clumsily handled and any criticism well earned. In fact I think the level of criticism has been fairly mild compared to how badly botched this transition has been, and I feel like I've seen relatively little invective and insults from members directed towards owners throughout.

>

> **What I really love about this site is the membership, and seems to me this transition has driven more than a few of my favorite members away. Or at least greatly reduced their posts. That's the real shame here.** Not clicks, engagement, UX or ad revenue. All of that will recover eventually as time goes on, but are those members coming back? I hope so, but if not all the social media widgets and image embedding and back end stability in the world won't make up for the loss. I don't know how to even start vocalizing criticism for that loss, it just bums me out so I've kind of stopped hanging around too.

>

> Just my two cents, and I certainly won't take it personally if anyone disagrees.

 

Can't like this post enough. Plenty of truth in it.

[MK7Golf21]

I don’t mind the delays etc but I do wonder about the implementation. Normally, there is a test side where you test all the changes on a near identical platform, go through the “upgrade” process and work out bugs and a plan. Can take months or weeks. You then take that developed plan with all the bugs worked out and implemented in your real live environment. It didn’t seem like that happened here, it seemed the live site was the test area.

[storm3]

> @Redjeep83 said:

> I don’t mind the delays etc but I do wonder about the implementation. Normally, there is a test side where you test all the changes on a near identical platform, go through the “upgrade” process and work out bugs and a plan. Can take months or weeks. You then take that developed plan with all the bugs worked out and implemented in your real live environment. It didn’t seem like that happened here, it seemed the live site was the test area.

 

If they had a size-able full time dev and qa team, then yes. I doubt any of the staff is working on this as their full time gig. Keep in mind that this is a free enthusiast forum, not a multi-million (or billion) dollar revenue SaaS company. Expectations should be tempered.

[MK7Golf21]

> @storm319 said:

> > @Redjeep83 said:

> > I don’t mind the delays etc but I do wonder about the implementation. Normally, there is a test side where you test all the changes on a near identical platform, go through the “upgrade” process and work out bugs and a plan. Can take months or weeks. You then take that developed plan with all the bugs worked out and implemented in your real live environment. It didn’t seem like that happened here, it seemed the live site was the test area.

>

> If they had a size-able full time dev and qa team, then yes. I doubt any of the staff is working on this as their full time gig. Keep in mind that this is a free enthusiast forum, not a multi-million (or billion) dollar revenue SaaS company. Expectations should be tempered.

 

Just need to duplicate your live/prod environment to a development environment, separate servers etc. Dev side obviously won’t have the traffic and you can do your test upgrades and changes to it first to find exactly what you want and any issues you will run into. I’m sure golfwrx knows what they are doing though. Like I said didn’t bother me but I’m not everyone

[storm3]

> @Redjeep83 said:

> > @storm319 said:

> > > @Redjeep83 said:

> > > I don’t mind the delays etc but I do wonder about the implementation. Normally, there is a test side where you test all the changes on a near identical platform, go through the “upgrade” process and work out bugs and a plan. Can take months or weeks. You then take that developed plan with all the bugs worked out and implemented in your real live environment. It didn’t seem like that happened here, it seemed the live site was the test area.

> >

> > If they had a size-able full time dev and qa team, then yes. I doubt any of the staff is working on this as their full time gig. Keep in mind that this is a free enthusiast forum, not a multi-million (or billion) dollar revenue SaaS company. Expectations should be tempered.

>

> Just need to duplicate your live/prod environment to a development environment, separate servers etc. Dev side obviously won’t have the traffic and you can do your test upgrades and changes to it first to find exactly what you want and any issues you will run into. I’m sure golfwrx knows what they are doing though. Like I said didn’t bother me but I’m not everyone

 

I am sure they have a dev environment, but having a separate environment is not going to be the savior by itself. You still need resources to test which given the tight time frame and limited resources likely did not happen as thoroughly as they would have liked. The staff mentioned that they have 2 developers so I guarantee that they are not doing code peer reviews and given the move to a new platform, there was likely a learning curve and quite a bit of rushing that resulted in in some of the mistakes. Also unless you have decent dedicated BA/UX resources, the developers are going to be wearing that hat themselves and the UX experience generally does not end well (keep in mind that much of what was initially delivered was working as expected, the requirements for the UX bad).

 

People seem to forget that this is a FREE forum and what is going on here is really not that important.

[GeorgeHWB]

EDIT

 

Ah, forget it.

[braincramp52]

Good thread Mad! I've been trying to understand what all the complaining has been about for months. It's not like the blah background is costing us posters money.

[Dpavs]

> @DavePelz4 said:

> Mad...I agree with the majority of what you're saying. I own a healthcare company with 200 employees and 99.9% of team being female so I understand negativity, bickering, pettiness, etc. While there are some rude posts, the vast majority of opinions are offered by people with career experiences of transitioning parts of businesses and who have a sincere interest in seeing the site improve and flourish from a membership and profitability standpoint. Sometimes the response to that is a comment of being a personal attack when it's actually trying to help. By no means am I the perfect leader...enough faults for several people. What our team has taught me to do though, is to be transparent and communicate not only what but also why. At first I took some of the comments personally as though someone was telling me my kids were ugly. They're not BTW and that's thanks to the gene pool of Mrs. Pelz, but I digress. Our team wants our business to grow, they wanted to serve our clients better and they want me to be a better leader. I'm forever in their debt for caring enough to share those thoughts.

>

> Upfront if we knew what the plan was, what the timeframe was for expected completion, etc. it would be easier to understand and might lead to a few easier conversations. I respect GX because as you stated, he's apparently the point person on communications and very possibly the project in it's entirety. It's never easy being THE GUY or THE WOMAN but you can make it easier but being transparent.

>

> Seacrest out.

 

"...99.9% of team being female so I understand negativity, bickering, pettiness, etc."

 

If Mrs. Pelz or the work crew see this you are probably going to be in the soup (again?) DP4 :)

Of course there is no way they will find out provided you take a brown paper bag, fill it with large denomination currency and ....

[nitram]

Well said Maddy. I realize things change and am glad to be back. I for one like what they've done with the place.

[MadGolfer76]

> @DavePelz4 said:

> Mad...I agree with the majority of what you're saying. I own a healthcare company with 200 employees and 99.9% of team being female so I understand negativity, bickering, pettiness, etc. While there are some rude posts, the vast majority of opinions are offered by people with career experiences of transitioning parts of businesses and who have a sincere interest in seeing the site improve and flourish from a membership and profitability standpoint. Sometimes the response to that is a comment of being a personal attack when it's actually trying to help. By no means am I the perfect leader...enough faults for several people. What our team has taught me to do though, is to be transparent and communicate not only what but also why. At first I took some of the comments personally as though someone was telling me my kids were ugly. They're not BTW and that's thanks to the gene pool of Mrs. Pelz, but I digress. Our team wants our business to grow, they wanted to serve our clients better and they want me to be a better leader. I'm forever in their debt for caring enough to share those thoughts.

>

> Upfront if we knew what the plan was, what the timeframe was for expected completion, etc. it would be easier to understand and might lead to a few easier conversations. I respect GX because as you stated, he's apparently the point person on communications and very possibly the project in it's entirety. It's never easy being THE GUY or THE WOMAN but you can make it easier but being transparent.

>

> Seacrest out.

 

You hired 200 women and have to supervise them all? Dave....what were you thinking??

 

(jk)

[MtlJeff]

The changes mostly aren't even big changes, and for all the complaints ive seen about atmosphere here I actually find it's as cordial now as it's ever been . I can live with a few ads and format changes

 

Let GX earn a little of those dollars for him and the site. This place has been a great place for me to come hang over the years and we have him and easy to thank.

 

So yes take it easy on them

 

And Mad did our Diamana smuggling ring get optioned by LionsGate yet? I believe Johnny Depp was in talks to star as you, and my character was being changed to a LGBT actor. Hollywood man. But its progress

[DavePelz4]

> @MadGolfer76 said:

> > @DavePelz4 said:

> > Mad...I agree with the majority of what you're saying. I own a healthcare company with 200 employees and 99.9% of team being female so I understand negativity, bickering, pettiness, etc. While there are some rude posts, the vast majority of opinions are offered by people with career experiences of transitioning parts of businesses and who have a sincere interest in seeing the site improve and flourish from a membership and profitability standpoint. Sometimes the response to that is a comment of being a personal attack when it's actually trying to help. By no means am I the perfect leader...enough faults for several people. What our team has taught me to do though, is to be transparent and communicate not only what but also why. At first I took some of the comments personally as though someone was telling me my kids were ugly. They're not BTW and that's thanks to the gene pool of Mrs. Pelz, but I digress. Our team wants our business to grow, they wanted to serve our clients better and they want me to be a better leader. I'm forever in their debt for caring enough to share those thoughts.

> >

> > Upfront if we knew what the plan was, what the timeframe was for expected completion, etc. it would be easier to understand and might lead to a few easier conversations. I respect GX because as you stated, he's apparently the point person on communications and very possibly the project in it's entirety. It's never easy being THE GUY or THE WOMAN but you can make it easier but being transparent.

> >

> > Seacrest out.

>

> You hired 200 women and have to supervise them all? Dave....what were you thinking??

>

> (jk)

 

Fortunately, we have a great team of both female and male leaders who understand the inner workings of the team much better than I. You know I can't even figure out 1.

[MadGolfer76]

> @MtlJeff said:

> The changes mostly aren't even big changes, and for all the complaints ive seen about atmosphere here I actually find it's as cordial now as it's ever been . I can live with a few ads and format changes

>

> Let GX earn a little of those dollars for him and the site. This place has been a great place for me to come hang over the years and we have him and easy to thank.

>

> So yes take it easy on them

>

> And Mad did our Diamana smuggling ring get optioned by LionsGate yet? I believe Johnny Depp was in talks to star as you, and my character was being changed to a LGBT actor. Hollywood man. But its progress

 

They opted out in favor of "Clubbin' with Pepper." Unfortunately....

 

Johnny would have had to put on too much weight for the role. lol