DA's State!

Serious Atticus taking over for a moment.

As someone who genuinely cares about this place, I feel compelled to voice some legitimate concerns and provide possible solutions. DA's in a state of decay, and while I'm not the first to say that, it's pretty undeniable at this point. Yeah, tournaments are still being churned out, but that just doesn't cut it. Also, keep in mind this is purely my opinion and isn't some attempt get staff (if anything, this may be counterproductive to that).

DA can be compared to the Roman Empire in a way. Amy Cool, like Caesar, innovated and achieved a great deal, while the the following administrators (and Emperors, for Rome) simply maintained what was established. In the years since she left, DA has slowly but surely declined and is a pale imitation of what it used to be. 

I'm sure there is/have been hard-working administrators and moderators. I'm sure there is/have been administrators and moderators who genuinely care. At this moment though, DA needs strong leadership and can't afford to have an inactive and indecisive staff lineup, which is currently the case. Staff can't just be all about networking and spam posting anymore, and once someone is staff, they need to be held accountable for their inactivity, and not just allowed to hold their rank because no one wants to offend. I get that people get busy with life, and that's totally understandable, but putting in 50% isn't doing this place any good.

What can be done? Well, we should look at the staff lineup first and start weeding out those who just aren't contributing enough. There really is only 3-4 staff who I see consistently contributing. I encourage the current administration not not only seriously review the roster, but look inwards to see if they themselves really are fit. I know dislodging friends and giving up lofty titles isn't easy, but in my opinion, it should happen for the greater good. Let's bring in new faces and promote some current ones.

On a very similar note, there is the topic of re-promoting. If a staff member goes inactive and leaves the position, he/she should have to at least put some effort into earning their stripes back. Insta-promoting back (especially to the position of administrator) is disrespectful to not only the current staff who have been working hard, but also to the regular member who is aspiring to be staff. Again, this shouldn't be about networking.

Finally, let's look at the Head Administrator. Objectively speaking, Anzo is simply unfit for the position, and arguably has been for quite some time now. He's just resting on his laurels at this point. Perhaps it's time to retire, Anzo.


Revising and reinvigorating the staff lineup opens the door to many possibilities. We need new and passionate faces, more YGO-related content, and most importantly the power to greenlight ideas. We don't need monitors (those who are purely here to keep order). 

@Anzo @Lux @Roach @CrimsonOverlord @kyosuke kiryu @PowerNova @Bookingly @Staxx

Last edited by Atticus on Wed Jun 21, 2017 12:30 am; edited 1 time in total

I like the way you think Atticus. I have been saying this for a while. I have been wanting a demotion for a while, not because I am tired of this place, but because I admit that I hardly have time to be online much. Yeah, I can help with whatever is needed, such as promoting the academy to bring in new members, or make tournaments, but I do find myself lacking time. As for new faces, I do strongly agree with that. We do have some staff who are not active due to personal reasons. I mean, I feel like some staff do not care about the place. While I do strongly believe that we need a change of line up in our staff, it won't mean that it will happen.

What can we do? I feel like we need to promote DA more. I have not had time to do it, and we can bring in quality members through advertising to make this a fun place again.

I agree with pretty much everything Atticus said. This site has been decaying for a long time. There are, however, a NUMBER of reason for that. I will attempt to briefly summarize all the reasons before following up in greater detail in the latter section:

1. The user base split back when Amy made her own separate academy
2. Complacency from the administration/moderation team
3. Lack of innovation as of late
4. Lack of in-site text chat
5. Rudeness towards newcomers

And possibly most importantly:

6. This site has essentially become obsolete.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

1. This pulled many loyal users away from this site. Even when her new site died, all of those people didn't just come back here, a lot of them left. Even many who never went to that site just left this one altogether because it became less active.

2. Atticus summarized this one well. No offense intended but y'all don't actually do anything besides running shit like the circuit, basic tournaments, and shop requests. You probably THINK you're doing more, but you aren't.

3. There's been nothing new here in years. The last interesting thing that happened around here was when RP was revived a few years back when I was staff. I wasn't the first person to run that, or even the last, but I was the last to do it successfully. Nobody has even tried to emulate that success since. It's not that there's been a lack of suggestions either, because I've SEEN a number of them, hell I've made a few good ones, but none of that gets acted on. That goes back to point #2, the moderation team doesn't do anything.

4. Don't get me wrong, Discord is GREAT. Having one for this site is GREAT. However it isn't a substitute for an in-site chat. That was one of the draws this place used to have. Hop on, browse the forum, and talk to whoever might be in the chat at the time. It created a space where everything was grouped up, and being a part of the chat was being a part of the forum. That's not the case with the Discord, and not having that removes one of the draws for newcomers that this place used to have.

5. I must've seen at least 5 newcomers get shit talked, ignored, or jokingly kicked/banned upon entering the Discord in the past month alone. The Discord mod team (not all of you, obviously, but A LOT of you) are terrible at welcoming newcomers, and even serve to drive them away, as is most of the community as a whole.

6. This site fits an interesting niche. It's for people who are serious enough about the game to spend their free time going on an online Yugioh forum, playing in tournaments, being part of a circuit, and talking about the game; while also being casual enough to not just try to be a competitive player. Let's face it, despite being named "Duel Academy", this ISN'T the place one would go if they wanted to learn how to play via online Yugioh forum. The user base and the 'education' in general is worse than sites such as YGOrg forums, DuelistGroundz, and previously DN forums.

Most people who are serious enough to put that much time into this game will go to one of those sites, or pursue playing in irl tournaments, otherwise if they're just trying to play casually they'll hop on Percy or DB every now and then without putting in the time a place like this entails.

The amount of people who fit this niche have gone down over the years. Now they DO still exist, in fact there's likely enough of them to have an active forum, at least enough to make this place more active than it currently is. However you need to capitalize on them by focusing more on that niche, and capitalizing on your potential draw. Which is why it's important to focus on improving the four other things I talked about above.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

I'll be honest with you, I don't think anything's going to change here, I fully expect the complacency to continue. However I'm completely convinced that if you DID heed the advice I just gave, you could increase the activity this site would gain.

Agree with everything atticus said, disagree with some trick points.

Have been saying this for years now that we need change. It all depends on how much the actual community raises their voice and gets heard though.

Trickster wrote:

I agree with pretty much everything Atticus said. This site has been decaying for a long time. There are, however, a NUMBER of reason for that. I will attempt to briefly summarize all the reasons before following up in greater detail in the latter section:

1. The user base split back when Amy made her own separate academy
2. Complacency from the administration/moderation team
3. Lack of innovation as of late
4. Lack of in-site text chat
5. Rudeness towards newcomers

And possibly most importantly:

6. This site has essentially become obsolete.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

1. This pulled many loyal users away from this site. Even when her new site died, all of those people didn't just come back here, a lot of them left. Even many who never went to that site just left this one altogether because it became less active.

2. Atticus summarized this one well. No offense intended but y'all don't actually do anything besides running shit like the circuit, basic tournaments, and shop requests. You probably THINK you're doing more, but you aren't.

3. There's been nothing new here in years. The last interesting thing that happened around here was when RP was revived a few years back when I was staff. I wasn't the first person to run that, or even the last, but I was the last to do it successfully. Nobody has even tried to emulate that success since. It's not that there's been a lack of suggestions either, because I've SEEN a number of them, hell I've made a few good ones, but none of that gets acted on. That goes back to point #2, the moderation team doesn't do anything.

4. Don't get me wrong, Discord is GREAT. Having one for this site is GREAT. However it isn't a substitute for an in-site chat. That was one of the draws this place used to have. Hop on, browse the forum, and talk to whoever might be in the chat at the time. It created a space where everything was grouped up, and being a part of the chat was being a part of the forum. That's not the case with the Discord, and not having that removes one of the draws for newcomers that this place used to have.

5. I must've seen at least 5 newcomers get shit talked, ignored, or jokingly kicked/banned upon entering the Discord in the past month alone. The Discord mod team (not all of you, obviously, but A LOT of you) are terrible at welcoming newcomers, and even serve to drive them away, as is most of the community as a whole.

6. This site fits an interesting niche. It's for people who are serious enough about the game to spend their free time going on an online Yugioh forum, playing in tournaments, being part of a circuit, and talking about the game; while also being casual enough to not just try to be a competitive player. Let's face it, despite being named "Duel Academy", this ISN'T the place one would go if they wanted to learn how to play via online Yugioh forum. The user base and the 'education' in general is worse than sites such as YGOrg forums, DuelistGroundz, and previously DN forums.

Most people who are serious enough to put that much time into this game will go to one of those sites, or pursue playing in irl tournaments, otherwise if they're just trying to play casually they'll hop on Percy or DB every now and then without putting in the time a place like this entails.

The amount of people who fit this niche have gone down over the years. Now they DO still exist, in fact there's likely enough of them to have an active forum, at least enough to make this place more active than it currently is. However you need to capitalize on them by focusing more on that niche, and capitalizing on your potential draw. Which is why it's important to focus on improving the four other things I talked about above.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

I'll be honest with you, I don't think anything's going to change here, I fully expect the complacency to continue. However I'm completely convinced that if you DID heed the advice I just gave, you could increase the activity this site would gain.

Let's see..

1. No one really followed Amy to the full extent, and many just came back or quit yugioh anyways.
2. I agree with this one, but what would you offer if you were staff?
3. Agreed with #3. What ideas should we bring though?
4. Discord is mainly why no one posts here. Unless we link something, which we should start doing more of.
5. Shookt was doing that a lot, and we took care of that problem, if you see anyone else being rude, please PM a staff, to take care of that.

6. Well site might need some remodeling to be more eye appealing. Maybe with possible wars coming up, should bring more activity.

Discord revived this place. You cannot say otherwise at all, since most of our bas and tourney participation came from discord users.

Discord staff is the same staff here, in exception to shookt which did a splendid job at driving away spammy users like scott and co, otherwise he drove no one else away.

For other stuff id just be repeating atticus cuz he wrote what i always think about this place currently

People dont see this but Anzo cares a lot for DA the reason you don't seem him around is purely because of time and there is no one worthy of taking over his role of Head Admin (Although he did hand it to me for a while back along).

You mention me coming back as admin and I was asked to come back to help with the ACP and admin related stuff because I have experience and I am trusted. The only reason I stopped before was because I had another child and was moving house and even then I was still helping in the background and since being back I have been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes to ensure the best for DA (Just ask Lux and Staxx).

The problem with the decline in DA is because the decline in Online YGO activity. DN getting shut down had a traumatic effect across the whole online community. DGz is the only other compareable forum to here and that has declined ten fold (and most of there YGO players play IRL).

In regards to discord I'm still on the fence, I can see it's pros but I can also see it's cons of drawing people away from the forum etc. But you can't argue with the fact that discord is more active than the chatbox but hey if people want the chatbox back I have no hesitation in installing it back on the forum.

And finally yes there is a few problems within the ranks of DA and slowly and surely I am working with Lux to iron out the creases and get everything back up smoothly but there are only so many hours in the day.

I will have more to add but it's 01:37am here and I'm very tired.

Roach wrote:

People dont see this but Anzo cares a lot for DA the reason you don't seem him around is purely because of time and there is no one worthy of taking over his role of Head Admin (Although he did hand it to me for a while back along).

You mention me coming back as admin and I was asked to come back to help with the ACP and admin related stuff because I have experience and I am trusted. The only reason I stopped before was because I had another child and was moving house and even then I was still helping in the background and since being back I have been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes to ensure the best for DA (Just ask Lux and Staxx).

The problem with the decline in DA is because the decline in Online YGO activity. DN getting shut down had a traumatic effect across the whole online community. DGz is the only other compareable forum to here and that has declined ten fold (and most of there YGO players play IRL).

In regards to discord I'm still on the fence, I can see it's pros but I can also see it's cons of drawing people away from the forum etc. But you can't argue with the fact that discord is more active than the chatbox but hey if people want the chatbox back I have no hesitation in installing it back on the forum.

And finally yes there is a few problems within the ranks of DA and slowly and surely I am working with Lux to iron out the creases and get everything back up smoothly but there are only so many hours in the day.

I will have more to add but it's 01:37am here and I'm very tired.

No, I disagree, that's not the main problem with DA. Far from it actually. We have a variety of thriving platforms (including a copy of DN) and Yugitubing is growing every day. We have the resources and playbase. I applaud your efforts but things aren't getting better with this direction, dude. 

I'm glad the rest of us are on the same page though. We can do great things with this place; all we need is the power to do so.

You cannot use the death of dn as an argument as dn 2.0 now exists and is fully operational and has many many users. 

Yugioh duel links also raised ygo awareness and is bringing in tons of people into the ygo community, much like pokemon go did. Veterans returned just because of it, so not focusing on that too is a crime imo.

We should stop with the notion that online ygo is dead. There are way too many resources that prove that wrong

I have single handedly tried to impliement DL here with no support and even had to rope in help from a old friend to try impliment it as Well since no one else has even contributed (even after pestering).

The lack is content isn't solely down to the staff here it's the users as Well. A forum needs content/discussion, not all this can come from staff. Users need to also.

Also I see people complaining about lack of contibrution but yet don't contribrute thereself

But ultimately the staff is responsible for what the forum becomes, since we are the ones handing out the content.

The other users are our customers in a sense. We just need to get our shit together

I've been saying this since oooohhhh uuuhhhh 2015...

Anyways... I've been working on trying to get one of the major dueling systems to use Duel Academy as their official forum.  Which will bring so many new members and new ideas. But in order for the community to grow for the better, we'd need to take a hard turn in a different direction. TBH... which is something we need. Other than that, I don't give a fuck about the forum past the basic shit. I tried doing what you're doing, but I was shot down. Not only do I have the time, I also have the money to throw at this academy. I was willing to do whatever was needed... but... that has come and gone... now my days of pitching ideas and them getting shot down are over. 


You wanna know why the discord is drawing member away from the forum...? IT'S BECAUSE IT'S A FORUMOTION FORUM!!!  

forumotion is so ass...

even tried suggesting getting basic visual changes done to the site. And nothing came of it.... but props to roach he did try

@Staxx Man, that screenshot of Anzo's comment made me ill. 

This thread isn't a personal jab at you two, Roach and Lux. Anzo set this place on a downward spiral and you two are the only ones who can either save the day or let it crash. Just look, it has been a consensus, dude. These are dedicated and long-standing members who are echoing what I brought up, if not adding onto it.

What we're proposing can do nothing but improve the Academy.

No defending anzo, but in a way he has a point when he states that people will stop coming once we offer prize money. I think that we can improve without needing money involved. Though I did not like when he states when he said no need to aim high, because that mentality is not right. Also, staxx has always brought up great ideas and he's right they get shut down because there is no change. Mind you staxx knows how to run things around here. He's ran forums before or been staff so I know his ideas will work.

Alright this comment might edge me towards getting banned here AGAIN, but it needs to be said.

If your mentality is to stagnate instead of trying to be the best you can be: You're a loser. That is a loser's mentality, and is capable of doing NO GOOD whatsoever.

Jeez, the drama.

You guys really aren't getting this aren't you. You see, I personally don't really care what any of you think of me, DA or the other staffers. You're all just visitors here. I on the other hand the only one who has been here for 10 years now.

You see, and to make this simple for your minds to comprehend: I'm not going anywhere. DA is mine. You don't like it, you leave. Simple as that.

I don't give a fuck what you think of me Atticus, or anyone else.

If you don't like it here, then just fucking leave, I don't welcome the likes of you to be part of (my) our community.

Anyone else who feels the same as Atticus is also welcomed to get the fuck out of here and go dig some hold and live there. I've been nice with all the backtalk and all but for real, I've had enough.

Whoever opens a similar thread to this one, who ever encourages a thread like this one, whoever points out opening a threat similar to this one: is getting permabanned. Just because I can.

@Roach and @Lux has the permission to permaban anyone who thinks they know whay they're talking about whether it's about this forum's staffers or how we run this forum. This ain't a bloody free country you thickheads, this ain't a parliament or anything, your voice means shit, it's a blood gaming forum - if we don't like your attitude we ban the shit out of your account. So get real.

I've been trying to be professional, trying to respond in professional manner for some time. Though you folks aren't worthy of such trait, no wonder BLS banned half your asses back when DN was still a thing.

Consider this everybody's last warning.

~Cheers

~Locked