The theme in this test journal will be "What it's like to be the admin on UER". I figured other people besides myself might get some amusement from reading about the various follies that occur in my life thanks to UER, almost daily.

If you're interested, Read On!

So, Exkalibur and a few other people had the idea of creating a fund to give Jester some money because his camera was stolen during OPEX. I thought it was a great idea, and promptly integrated a donations request on Jester's behalf into the forum.

Over the OPEX weekend, I also banned NYUE for using the "Modify" feature 13 times to remove posts he had made.

So, on Wednesday, I get the following email:

From: NYUE To: Avatar-X Subject: Ill donate $40 for the jester camera fund You got issues. I deleted like 5 posts max. Your retarded. You fucking asshole. Your so stupid. UER sucks I spit on it. I shit on it. The site is so old it should be deleted. You have no talent in webdesign. You should become a porti potie cleaner. Thats all you can get you poser scammer. You take peoples money for your self. Jesters camera fund my ass your taking all the money so you can buy yourself a new PDA geekfag. I hope you die. NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER. Hey I fuck niggers.

This amused me quite a bit! So I wrote back:

From: Avatar-X To: NYUE I just did a count -- you did it exactly 13 times. It's "You're retarded", not "Your". It's "Porta-Potty". It's "Yourself" not "Your Self" I can see where your intelligence level is. Jester is being sent the money for his camera later today. -av

He wrote back:

From: NYUE To: Avatar-X Nah. Your keeping the money. Just so you know your new Avatar looks so fucking retarded. It looks like the wolf wants it doggie style. HAHA.

I replied:

From: Avatar-X To: NYUE go ahead and ask jester... i've already sent him the money. -av

He replied:

From: NYUE To: Avatar-X I did he said he didnt get any money and never knew about a jester camera fund.

I wrote back:

From: Avatar-X To: NYUE yeah, sure he didn't. maybe you should check his post in the jester camera thread. -av

I just thought you guys might appreciate hearing about this NYUE is the guy who claimed to have super-fast servers for free, but then didn't know their specs.

[gripe]

In case you didn't know it yet, I run this website. I do it in my own time, and mostly out of my own pocket. That's fine, I'm not complaining.

However, it bothers me when people have a problem with the site, so they take it out on me personally. "Av, " they say, "Why did you ban me? I know that I broke pretty much every rule in the book, and that you warned me twice already, but why did you ban me? It must be because you hate me! I hate you now Av!"

Or let's not forget "Av, why does your site quiz people when they want to register? You're forcing your personal ethics on everyone! I know that the four ethics questions in the quiz are clearly labelled as being optional, but you're still forcing your ethics on people! This means I will now hate you!"

It really sucks, because it turns me into the bad guy. Being the bad guy really sucks. If you've never been the bad guy, maybe you won't understand, but it hurts to be treated this way. Site admins have feelings too...

Should anything and everything I say be taken with so much power? I don't want it. But let me explain:

A big contributer to this site recently took all of their photos offline, with no apparent explanation. He then emailed me and asked me to remove his account and any remaining photos. I was unclear as to what was going on, and asked why.

As it turns out, it was I who started this event. A few days ago, I noticed a new gallery in the Canada Malt Plant location in the DB. They were a series of outdoor photos, showing the perimeter of the malt plant.

I posted a comment in the last one, I don't remember the exact wording but it was something like "yay, another generic malt plant gallery" or something. The word "generic" was in there.

This comment was supposed to be a joke, an attempt to poke at the large number of outdoor malt photos that there are. Now, I myself have several hundred outdoor malt photos, and the malt is one of my favourite buildings, which is why I thought the comment was funny. But the person in question took it much too seriously.

I've already apologized via email to said person, but what I'm trying to point out in this journal post is: I'm just a regular guy. You shouldn't take what I say with more worth just because I run the site -- I'm no photography critic. I think most of my photos suck, I just post them because I enjoy taking them.

If me calling your gallery "generic" makes you go so insane that you delete hundreds of photos, and want to remove yourself from the site, you seriously have some issues. I'm really not that important.

In response to the entry which appeared in Silent Knight's journal recently:

He posted that he had wanted the issue to remain private.

I decided to make the issue publically known (I didn't name him in my post, but it's not too hard to figure out who it was) because I wanted it as an example of the headaches, flames, insults, and other general stupidity I have to deal with on a daily basis.

The purpose of this journal is to let you "step into my shoes", so that maybe the next time you're writing the usual "hate letter to av", you make it slightly less hateful, knowing what I have to deal with.

I felt terrible, finding out that I am the reason for SK leaving this site. But I apologized, which is really the best I can do. If he still wishes to leave after that, well, I can't stop him.