Rocky Balboa: Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place, and I don’t care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! Now, if you know what you’re worth, then go out and get what you’re worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain’t where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain’t you. You’re better than that!

Hey, I just recently joined this site. Used to be the 9gag community and had my time laughing till my tummy hurts back then. Slowly, it got cannibalized by the newcomers, with all the unoriginal posts. I miss the old site, but there's nothing to be done. What had been a daily fix slowly went to once in a while then hardly. Here, I'm kinda sad I didn't knew about SG earlier, and sense I'm one of the mainstream guys that joined the crowd. :D But, it didn't stop me from visiting the forums everyday to see the comments and so on. It's fun to read the comments and snarky replies. And someday, maybe the feeling might come back to you too. Cheers!

P.S: Felt like I really had to quote Rocky Balboa there. Just a feeling that I had to.

As far as I'm aware, you've never done or said anything I thought was particularly bad as a member of the staff. Granted, it's not like I see enough to know, since I'm something of an outsider who just comments on the forums occasionally and has never used the chat.

But if you're not having fun anymore, and you find you resent or dislike the users you have to work with as a member of the staff, you should probably call it quits, yeah, at least for now. No matter how good you are, it sounds like it's no longer fun for you; and in my experience, that's going to eventually leak out and poison both the rest of the staff and the things you try to accomplish on it. You'd be better off helping to find someone to take your place -- the staff obviously needs people, but the site is huge, and there's probably someone who can do it well.

Since I'm still kinda new to the site (2 months) and haven't seen that much of you I'm gonna base my answer only on the things related to your personal life.

I'd sort my life, my depression (been through that shit, don't have to explain me what it's like) and then maybe, just maybe, I'd came back with a chill approach. If your personal life affects your "job" or "hobbies" you need to stop, get yourself together and after that if your mentioned "thing" still interest you, continue.

Hope you'll get well.
Take care :)

If you truly love SG, then I think you shouldn't give up on it. SG is just oversaturated with bad users looking for free games, of course it's going to have tons of idiots doing what they do best: being idiots; you shouldn't let this bring you down so much, as depressing as it is.

I want more/better for the Steamgifts community, but right now it's pretty hard justifying doing anything besides private/group stuff.

I don't know what to say. If you fell it's better to you just go and do your life.
We will miss you, but sometimes you must think for yourself instead for others people's problems.

:´( don´t leave jade

i did a quick read, the forum needs alot more moderation, there are tons of trash threads just because, and steamtrades seem like a no mans land...

I will not miss you, but you will not miss back, so we are even, BB

So sad to hear that you feel so depressed, I hope you get better soon.

As for my opinion:
I agree that there's more and more spam, complaints and repetetive questions like "why does my cv not go up?" or "how do I create a giveaway", "what headphones should I buy". On the othe hand I think begging has gone down slighty.

Anyway, if you don't feel comfortable with what you're doing and you're not enjoying it anymore, it's probably time for change, otherwise it will keep dragging you down.
Maybe take a small vacation from being a mod and return to being a "normal" user again? If you miss your job as mod, I'm sure you can get it back anytime ;)

Cheer up =)

♥

Honest, Jade, you have to get cg to make a damned tutorial for newbies when they hit various functions of the site for the very first time. It'll reduce support tickets by half, and then some.

And tell him to loosen up on the application process for support jobs while you're at it. (And take a break, too, that always helps.)

I've never been active in posting but that doesn't mean I don't read or "lurk" in the forums. Generally I use the forums for news on deals and what not as I don't like other websites that provide the same information. I don't like joining groups and I don't "lurk" the forums for private giveaways or keys, tbh I find myself entering less and less giveaways but still visiting the website for the news.

With that being said I do notice a lot of people disregarding the FAQ and asking a question by posting a thread. While the post itself isn't really bothersome or hurting anyone, the replies do, which just show how the community is.

The spam, well, its a forum on the internet so I'm not exactly sure what you consider a spam topic. All I know is that I would be more like yourself opposed to cg when it comes to leniency.

As for you stepping down, well, we don't know each other nor have we ever spoken so on a personal stance I would say step down. Obviously it is causing stress in your life which can come back to haunt you so you need to take care of yourself. What I think needs to happen is more mods be added to staff. I've only seen one thread in relation to a new staff member being added and I don't think that's enough.

Shouldn't be a chore, sounds like like you're doing too much. Maybe we need a few more serious mods to keep it fun and less strenuous on the ones we have. I've never clicked on a CV thread or dealt with tickets etc, but I imagine if I had to as a moderator, I would certainly appreciate that trash load being spread across as many mods as possible. I doubt anyone here wants you to leave, just do whatever feels right to you.

<3

Whatever you decide, remember that you are awesome.

I don't see everything that goes on the website, and neither can you, afterall you're not a machine and only human. You shouldn't feel it like it's a heavy burden, being affected by the site or affecting the site. For me, part of being a moderator is remaining neutral when it comes to personal opinions, thoughts and feelings specially when you're enforcing rules, otherwise if you start mixing things up it won't do any good to you or to the site. I've been an admin/moderator of a gaming community for years and I had my high/lows in my life and with the community, and yeah, I slipped and went a bit out of line, but that was once. Never again I let the site get into my nevers or myself being happy or sad affect my decisions. Yeah, somtimes I had that impulse to do things that could potentially be bad but I always practiced patience and rationalised what was going on, that worked wonders for me. There is nothing wrong with being hardlined, but being disrespectful even if someone was disrespectful to you or others or in some ways would "deserve to be bashed", a moderator shouldn't go that way. It's bad for you and for the site as a whole.

As for depression, needless to say, that requires special attention. Our brains/minds are "dumb", they don't think/act rational, that's part of reason why people get depressed.

I don't know what to say really. You sound like a nice person:) I don't see you doing any harm, and would like to see you continue. My view might be biased because personally I have no reason to get up in the morning. Nothing like this. Maybe you should try to take it more casually and whenever you take something too seriously, try to ignore it and calm down?

If you leave again, and then come back again, the problems you've described will only have amplified.
You have to decide, for yourself, whether being part of this community is what you really still want.

My suggestion? Don't take admin duties so seriously. Pop on when you have time, have a bit of a chat, and leave when you want. Don't feel pressurised or compelled to answer support tickets and do other duties. Just do them when you want.

well, after reading that powerful wall of text, i think that you should step off from the mod job; not because you are doing a bad job, well, to be honest, i don't know it, talking from experience i had practically no treat with support, so i can't talk without knowing. i have read some users complaining about some mods, but i don't have the full story, so those people can be just bitching or making a legit complaint, i don't know.
but, i do know one thing, i like the user Jade, every time i read a comment, or a topic from you, i draw a smile on my face; i love how you treat trolls and stupids, a bit of cruelty an cynicism, it's awesome, you are indeed a great and funny user.
i'm not a fan of the chat, i never get in there, mostly because my english (as you can probably see) is a clusterfuck; but apparently you did enjoy the chat, a lot. why don't you try that again?.
i love how you threat trolls and stupids, a bit of cruelty an cynicism, it's awesome, you are indeed a great and funny user.
you should go back to be an user, and stop being a mod, since you clearly feel that you are fucking the things up, maybe stepping out is a good idea, because if you feel that way, even if you are doing a good job, you are going to start to fuck the things up (that is how our brain works)

anyway, i hope you can get an answer, not for the site, but for yourself... and yeah, that is hard as fuck, looking for answers to ourselves is probably the hardest shit in the world.

tl;dr : quit the modding-thing, go back to the user-ing thing.

you are an awesome user, and probably a decent person, hope the best for you.

If you no longer enjoy it, what else matters?

Can't say I disagree with a lot of your points. Been on the site for quite a long time myself now and slowly become less and less active.

A lot has changed, beyond simply the great people that left the tone of the site itself has slowly become more and more focus on value. Bundlelists, contributor giveaways, giveaway groups, all of these mean something different now that they did back when I first started coming here.

Maybe it's just nostalgia and maybe it's my own growing disinterest in joining groups and solving puzzles that's making me see the site differently these days.

Can't tell you what to do but can only advice you to not get bogged down in going pro bono work that you don't enjoy. You have to take stock and decide whether you think being a mod here and doing all the work that comes with is worth it at the end of the day.

i suggest that you take a small vacation from your role as a support and see if you can still enjoy this community
as a member of it and then after a certain period you decide whats is your path

but yeah you'll be missed as a rule enforcer

A man walks into the doctor's office. "Doc, it hurts when I move my arm like this..."

Yeah, we've all heard that one. Thing is, it's right. Either you like what you're doing and continue doing it, or you don't, and then you should stop and figure out another way to be. There is nothing more noxious, more toxic to human well-being, than people doing things they don't want to do for reasons they themselves no longer believe in. You either find new reasons or you find something else to do.

If you just posted this to have people give you warm fuzzies because that's what you need to keep you going, I'm not going to pretend I know you and what you do well enough to give an opinion worth anything, so I won't. I do hope you'll get all the warm fuzzies you deserve, though.

I don't know you and I haven't been apart of this site for long, but being an opinionated person, I'll throw my 2 cents in anyways. I know how depression works. I have scars all over my arms from trying to kill myself multiple times. For reasons that are my own, I was severely depressed. On the other hand, I hated my depression. The only way I learned to battle my depression is to learn to love myself. As completely gay as it sounds. You have to put yourself and the ones you love above anything else. That includes this website. If you feel that it is contributing to your depression, then cut it out. If you feel you are impacting the website in a negative way, then cut it out. Or at least limit the time you spend on here in a healthy way. Only you know how much you can take.

Treat yourself brother. Take a vacation. Take that woman of yours to the beach. Enjoy life! You deserve it!

Hey Jade, firstly. I feel you were one of the most helpful and supportive "support" guys around, i know you guys don't get paid, or any type of compensation for all you do. For that, the work you've done is extra special.

I, and i'm sure many others realize it can't be an easy task, taking care of 300K+ users and trying to solve every trouble that crops up.

I saw this from the very bottom of my cold, corroded heart. We love you Jade!

Take the time you need, do what needs to be done. If you ever wish to return, we will welcome you back with open arms.

Take care buddy.
/AJ

Thank you for the effort you put for the site and its community either as normal user or as moderator. You have been a very positive member for the community and a point of reference after Lokonopa left as moderator. I can't tell you what you should do now, I don't think. I think you only should be aware what it's better for you. In your shoes, I'd spend more time with who make me happier, especially when I feel weak.

As you, I noticed in the forum some members aren't as active as they once were and I think old times were better times. I hope always something good is coming soon though.

For the record, I never agreed in Wikipedia (where I was an active member) or in somewhere else, to that process where you resign as moderator because you lost confidence with the community. It doesn't matter how much you are active, I wouldn't revoke any moderator rights for that. Even one single act as moderator within one year is helping the community.

I don't know, after reading that part about love and hatred, it reminded me of CoD. Seriously. I hated it so much but kept going in and kept being mad.
For you, I don't really know. You were doing a great job, you were fair, that's what I appretiate.
As others have said, don't take it so serious, it's not something you live from.
Decide what's priority for you. If we, strangers are priority to you, no matter how honored we could be, it's quite weird. (My opinion)
But if that's something that makes you happy, ain't gonna judge you. Do what makes you happy.