Mercy_

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One Year Vineversary!

Today (March 25) is my one year Vineversary (copyrighted by icarusflies).  
 
It was on this day one year ago that I made my original account courtney12490.  
 
In the span of one year, I have met some amazing people here. Some of them are great acquaintances who I have awesome conversations with, the others are lifelong friends. The Vine is first and foremost a community and I'm happy to be a part of it.  
 
So in one year I've  

  • Amassed a whole lot of friends 
  • Nearly 30,000 wiki points (28,243)
  • 37,840 posts and am Whiskey Media's top poster of the year (cementing the fact that I spend way too much time here) x_X 
  • Have a pinned thread in the quest forum (clues to the quests that I've written up and a ton of other people have contributed to)
  • Am a top poster in the off-topic forum, editing & tools forum (with both accounts), quest forum (with both accounts) and bug reporting forum
79 Comments

Off MY Mind

I love Comic Vine... am addicted really. My favorite website. That's based a lot on content, but more than that, it's based on the community. I've met some of my best friends here, people who I've come to grow really really close to. Met my ex-boyfriend here, and my current..not quite sure what we are. So when I say that I love the WM sites and the people here (minus a select few), I mean it. I adore the layout (they've pretty much ruined me for other websites) and I adore the conversations that I have with people. Whether it's RPGing or just talking about random crap in off-topic. I love this site so much and appreciate what you guys have done so much that I opted in for a paid membership. The main motivation for this was because it allows for access to the mobile site, everything else was just a side benefit.  
 
That being said, Whiskey Media has less than ideal customer relations. We are never notified when the site goes down for maintenance. We are never notified when the site receives a "super-human upgrade", there isn't a set date for when quests come out and we aren't notified when the engineers do something that may result in bugs. I understand that you guys started out as something really small, that Dave built something really impressive out of very little and I admire that. But I think that that would give you guys even  more  reason to communicate better with us. The Whiskey Media websites (most of them) are part forum and part wiki, but they're all user-added info. Without the community you guys would have nothing. The databases would be about an eighth of the size (if that) and you would have no forums. Two things that I think everybody loves about the WM family. You're able to learn things and then discuss them, without having to go to a bunch of different websites to do so.  
 
I'd think that you'd be a little more interested in reaching out to those users and making sure that they're happy with the way that things are being handled, considering you rely on them for so much. Even more now that you're offering paid services and pushing for 15,000 subscriptions so that you can do the Giant Bomb world tour. I don't see that happening, though and it's really disheartening.   
 
Something happened today that finally prompted this little rant. At about 6 PM EST things on CV (and from what I'm hearing at least Giant Bomb and Anime Vice as well) got FUBAR. It started with slow loading pages and 504 and 502 errors. It progressed to 500 errors on basically every page. Here is a list that another user and myself compiled of bugs that we noticed: 
 
Profile page leads to a 500 error
No points rewarded for wiki editing  
Wiki submissions do not reload themselves, endless processing image, can't view changes without page refresh
Post count isn't updating 
Posting in the forum is hit or miss 
Forum post time ago is broken 
Number of posts in new threads is not displaying      
Internal server errors 
504 and 502 errors 

Following feed/activity is broken  
@replies are broken 
Activity on profile pages isn't updating 
Writing on walls leads to a 500 error until you refresh the page 
 
To sum it up: the only thing that seems to actually be working is PMs. The items in bold resolved themselves.  
 
At about 9:30 EST I tweeted @whiskeymedia, asking if there was any word on the bugs that were effecting at least three of their sites right now. I was replied to with "We have had no other reports of errors. Could you please give details? Email support at if you need more than 40." (despite the fact that they had been tweeted at earlier by sora_thekey asking nearly the exact same question I had) and the fact that there are literally ten topics covering these bugs in Bug Reporting right now. Which is another issue, because things aren't properly posting, nobody can see the OP making the bug reports pretty much usless. I emailed support@whiskeymedia.com with as many details as I could provide and with screenshots. Some of which I will provide now.      
 

 
When you're running a forum website, I'd say that it's a main objective to be able to have people effectively communicate with each other. That didn't happen last night. When you run a wiki, I'd say that it's a main objective to be able to have people have their edits process properly. Again, something that didn't happen. At the time of me writing this, the site has been down for over eight hours without one freaking word from anybody or a response to my e-mail. I understand that the engineers have lives, but a simple "we're aware that there's a problem, we will fix it as soon as possible" would be nice. 
 
I'm not asking for a magic switch that when you flip it it suddenly makes all the bugs go away. I'm asking for a little communication. When you get a lot of your money from paid subscriptions and your websites are both forum websites and wiki websites that are edited by users, I think you should have a good rapport with those users and try to at least keep them informed of what's going on. Something that Whiskey Media as a whole is doing a pretty lousy job of.  
  
So I guess my final point is this. I love Comic Vine and I love the community here. But customer (because that's what some of us are now, we're your customers, we give you money for services rendered) relations leaves a  lot  to be desired.  
    
And just to note, this was written at 3 AM EST March 11, 2011.   
 
Added note: Not all of use follow Red LAMP on Twitter. The only reason I even knew he tweeted about it was because Sora re-tweeted and it showed up in his status update. Would've been nice if Whiskey Media could have tweeted it, as I'm sure they have more followers than Ethan. 
108 Comments

Just Wanted to Say Thanks

Last night I was insulted in the Real Life Pic Thread. As somebody with really really low self confidence, it hit me pretty hard. Aztek, FTBB, ComicMan24, Sexy Merc and Lord_Oraculous016 and Donnie were all quick to jump to my defense and to tell me otherwise.  So I just wanted to say thank you. 

66 Comments

Good Couples

Which characters do you think would make a good couple? Similar to the "Give a Date" thread, only you get to choose both people in the couple instead of giving a match to the person above you. xP 
 
Side-question. Who do you think were/are some of the best couples?

246 Comments

I'm a Sheep. Ask Me Anything

Following in the footsteps of others, this is a place where you can ask me absolutely anything. No question is off-limits, although if I deem it either offensive or wayyyy inappropriate (trust me, I have a very high inappropriate threshold), then I will either ream you a new one (in the nicest way possible) or simply not answer your question. 

1094 Comments

What Takes Priority?

As any editors know, there's currently a bug for creator check boxes, allowing you to only check one designation for each creator. My question is which job takes priority? I'm working on converting a bunch of trades that are grouped together as series into individual volumes and I can only choose one title for each creator. 

2 Comments

Switching Points/Submissions

Is there any way to switch points and/or submissions from one account to another? I have an old account that used to be my main and has over 14,000 points on it. I created this one for the RPG forum and now use it as my main. Is there any way to switch the points over from my old one to this one?

10 Comments