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[JayDee]

This is my first attempt on writing something like this so keep with me for at least some lines.

Some of you may know of me, others have likely never heard of me.
What i will do in this thread is to explain on some things that have bugged me for a few months and that i want to share with the public.

I’ll start from day zero, they day i got my Xbox...

Time warp around 2 years back in time:

I got this big bulky box and know this much: I was in need of a chip.
A x2lite was ordered within the hour and three days later it arrived. Three days i spent on mIRC reading up and on xbox-scenes pages with tutorials and on alot of forums.

Evo-X got installed as for most of us, but i soon found that i only used XBMP. (2.1 Or 2.2 i think it was)
I liked it so much so i started to write tutorials for it and uploaded them to my ISP web space.
I soon found myself spending most of my free time in various xbmp related mIRC channels giving support and testing new builds that came out.
After a few months i was asked if i wanted to join the @´s in #XBMP.  We where a close gang, 5 or so active people, all spending more time then is healthy on this little app.

We must have gotten the attention of the development team because they invited us in as testers and support/techhelpers.
Of course we joined, we where delighted of this, but at the same time our roles changed abit as we where now part of something bigger.
As XBMP, and XBMC, are open source projects and fully legal rule changes in the mIRC channel came.
No piracy, No XDK files.
In short: No illegal stuff at all!
Before this, xbmp builds was often found in the chan by people hosting ftps or dccing them around.
But as said, in one stroke all of this was changed.

We enforce this policy, and we do it often and hard.
This have gotten me, and some of the other team members, reputations of being stiff morons that kick, ban and blacklist people just for the fun of it.
This is further from the truth then anything!

Just some examples so you see it from our perspective:
(I will use XBMC as examples as it is the thing closest to my situation and how i look on things but this goes for the majority of homebrew apps)

A guy joins the mIRC channel and asks for a new build.
He gets a kick.
He rejoins and asks again.
This time he gets a ban.
Now he starts to pm the @ that banned him with threats and questions why he was banned.

The sad thing is if he had taken the time to just read the channel topic he would have known what rules applied.
The first kick should have been a clue too you would think.
This happens daily: We get harassed by people that think they can do as they please...

Example 2:

A guy starts a thread on how-to install XBMC.
Topic gets locked with the explanation and instructions to read the pinned topics.
Some do read them, others send you a pm and call you an asshole for closing their thread and claim the answer isn’t there.

The sad thing this time is that the guy wants to be spoon-feed the information and do not want to take five minutes reading up on it himself.
The topics, and especially the manual, are there for a reason.
We do not owe anyone anything. Time and effort has been put into making tutorials and organising threads.
Is it our fault that they do not read the rules or the manual?
These people tend to have their vcr´s clocks blink 00:00.
They have the manual but do not bother to read it but take it to the store where they got it to fix it.
What takes more effort?
Reading the manual for 5 minutes or unhooking the vcr, drive to the store, have the employee tell you that the info is in the manual, drive back home and hook it all up and then read?

So what about this you now think. Is this so hard to deal with?
A guy asking a question in a mIRC channel and a guy posting a thread on a forum.
Hell, anyone can deal with this!

The answer: Maybe.

The examples above happens several times EACH day.
And instead of TRYING they cry out for help as it is our job to do the work for them!

One thing i can tell you is that you will get pissed on a lot. Infact it will happen every day by these kinds of people.

We try to keep it as civil as we can, but sometimes the bucket WILL overflow.
Are we, or any mod, admin, developer or person in question, morons, imbeciles, stupid or all of the above because people do not read the material given them?
This we get each day...
Each day for the better part of 1½ years!

Yes, we can be rude at times giving people the very simple RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual).
And yes, we may have short fuses when it comes to abuse on the team when it is a user error causing the problem and the thing missing is the will to read!

We, and a lot of people, spend the better part of their spare time giving support, writing tutorials and adding to the online manual.
We get no $$$ for this, at best some sample modchips to test new additions on. That’s it.
We rely totally on goodwill from people. Our official site was donated to us and a lot of files people get are hosted by us personally. I host a codec pack for xbmc and some scripts that total more GB of traffic then ever would have thought possible, ~150-250Gb each month, from a shell i got because my ISP web space was too little.
Others in the team do the same, and we pay with our own hard earned cash.
Same goes for the mIRC-bots used for the channels, time and money goes into setting them up and make them play nice...

We provide help for free. Infact we actually pay money to help YOU.
Why?
Just because we love the joy this app brought us and a lot of others around the world.

But still we get harassed and called idiots by people that do not want to read or do not care about the rules WE have set.
It is easy to say "Do not listen to them", but i promise you that you will reach for the +b as often as us.

On the other hand we have a huge fan base.
People that help out a lot on these forums and in our mIRC channel, they get to little credit for the work they do. (If you feel that you are one of them when you read this know this: We rely on your help with support and general questions. Keep doing what you are doing, you take some of the burden from us, and in doing so makes us less grumpy)

They do not have the "power" to kick someone behaving badly or to send out a warning so they often drop of after a few months abuse by newbie’s or flamers.
I do not want to think about the amount of knowledge "lost" from the forums because of this...

This, along with the bitch thread by HSDemonz, is a reminder that ALL apps in the homebrew scene are FREE!.

Bitching on something you got for free (look at the price for a MediaCenter OS for the PC, though MediaPortal is both great and free, and maybe you will like XBMC even more.) and that is open source WILL earn you the title of moron.
We do not think we are better then anyone, but we do think people should think and use the tools at hand before saying something they likely will regret.

But you can not force people to read you will think!

True, but they forfit their right to get helped at the same time. Spoon-feeding is NOT a right you can lean back on!

Of +6000 different people joining the channel #xbmc the last 200 days over 3000 kicks have been served.

Q: Is it our fault that people do not want to follow the rules set? A: No

Q: Are we power-hungry kiddies with @? A: No, must of us are over 25, some close to 40.

Q: Should we be nice when threatened and belittled by someone that think he is god’s gift to Xbox’s? A: Hell no!

But the scariest part about this is the fact that some developers do not read forums, or join public channels, as they just get pissed of by people acting like spoiled brats!

It has even been said as a joke that developers are prohibited to join and read forums. A joke that is not the least bit funny, but very close to true.
Saying that the devs should just shrug it of is also plain dumb, they do not have do to jackshit when abused, flamed or rideculed!

So instead of giving technical help on some issues that we, the techsupport guys, might not master they might rather keep away from forums and/or public channels then running the risk to be flamed by a kid. (That often tend to be more close to 20 years then 12 and that should know better!)
We in the team and the people that try and read-up on things are not really affected by this, as we tend to overcome the problems we encounter, but all this will do is to make your own problems worse and alienate the developers from the public.
And to be 100% honest with you all, i personally do not care one bit about these people, nor do i help them with their problems anymore.

Do not shoot yourself in the foot by attacking and blaming someone.
You do not know what this person can do for you, or rather, maybe WON’T do for you!

This rant was made to put how we act, and why, in a view most do not think of: Namely ours.

You are all welcome to join us in #xbmc , and i promise you that as long as you play by the rules and behave like you would if you sat with us in a normal room you will find out that we are really a very cool gang of people that like to hangout and help people and just chat.

All of this is written from my point of view as op in #xbmc and as a moderator here on xbox-scene and the official XBMC forum.
These views are MINE and can not be said or used to implie other team members thoughts on matters addressed.

I do not know what any other teams or people think of this rant, but i do think many agree with the core of the above said things.


DDay aka JayDee
Tester and Techsupport in Team-XBMC  <