[BLOG] Hell Has Officially Frozen Over: A rant and revelation

[benhalkum]

As a community leader, I take it upon myself to visit every other community I can think of. Sometimes I become active there, sometimes I just lurk. Either way, I am always watching. I guess I just like to see what works, what doesn't, what drives people to certain sites. What can I say, I am a bit competitive, even if at the moment I am not competing.

When E-Wrestling Torch first began, I was excited. At first I thought this would be the perfect out for me and I could send all of The 'Zine's support over there. Offered them our forums with already faithful member base and my help. They respectively declined and continued on. I still supported them, even pulling directly from their front page as the only source for Zine news for a while. However, right now, that's all they have. Is the front page.

For whatever reason, their activity is borderline dead on their forums. The same people who went over there away from The 'Zine because of it's lack of activity at the time and "negativity" have recently been the biggest cause for the Torch's recent slow times and even, I hate to say it, negativity. The only thing right now that makes their forums appear to be active is Swamp Pirate has broken down his awesome end of year threads separately, meaning you have to reply to like 15 different threads to fully interact. It's cool, but I feel like as a guest it's a slap in the face that no other staff member, or main member, has stepped up and done anything about it.

Don't get me wrong, they began to do daily news items of the day there for a bit, but even that died. All it was, was taking one news item from the front page and posting it on the forums for discussion. No real originality or work done. Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking shots at The Torch, or writing this just to point out the flaws I see. I am telling it how it looks, from a regular visitor perspective, in hopes maybe it'll light a fire under someone's ass. I love Dan to death, but the guy is more talk then action in most cases, and when he does act, he fizzles out. He has a golden opportunity to step up and help the torch, yet he doesn't.

You might be asking yourself at this point, "Well, then why don't YOU step up Ben and help out instead of bitching." First off, not bitching, giving constructive criticism. Why don't I? If you're reading this blog it means you are surfing the site in which is the reason i don't. I must step up and make sure my site is providing the most current content and features, updated regularly, and very active. As a community leader and upper guy, that's my job. Just like it is for those over at the Torch in my position and every other similer site. People tend to bad mouth Kut at RoughKut, but that son of a bitch keeps his stuff active and he doesn't venture out of his site. That's why it has, and will, last.

Me talking positive about RoughKut is not the reason the title says hell has frozen over. Not even close, as I enjoy visiting RoughKut but do not post regularly for the reason stated above about EWTorch. Nope, it has more or less everything to do with David Tyrell's E-Wrestling Nexus at LINK REMOVED TO NOT BREAK ANY SITE RULES.

People tend to believe me and Tyrell are sworn enemies, or we had a falling out, or other stupid shit. Let me set the record straight. I like Dave, he has just been overly flaky in the past with his projects and annoying as fuck with his spam tactics that he declares is hype. Fuck hype. A while back he was over here asking how he could repair his reputation, and the general census was to quit fucking asking questions and just do. Well guess what, he has.

I find myself temporarily banning him occasionally when he begins to spam and make stupid comments over here, but he's always welcomed back. He's like a puppy, sometimes he just needs a smack on the nose. Well, in the course of all of this he has, almost quietly, built ewnexus up from a shit looking, crap ning using, Tyrell project glorifying, dumpster of cum to something that is genuinely good for the e-wrestling hobby/community.

Yep, I just said what you think I did. The Nexus gives you a lot of daily e-wrestling updates. Yes, most are pulled directly from places like here and other news sources, but hey it's spreading the word. There is so much more though. It isn't as polished as I'm sure it will be when he has more experience under his belt, but he has the ground work for something grand set. Awards, rankings, media, blogs, guys in mask. It's coming together nicely. To the point in which I have officially concluded in my head, as my own personal opinion, ewnexus has surpassed the Torch as the next community site that's worth becoming a member of.

There are few community places I am open about saying 'Zine members should also join. PTC is one, EFK another, and I wish more would venture to FWrestling. Up until recently the Torch had been in that list, but with their amazingly fast decline and appearance of just not caring anymore, Nexus has taken a spot amongst the list of places I send people asking me for my opinion on where to visit. It's not perfect, but it's a great resource for fed heads and handlers. David Tyrell has finally proven to me he can become dedicated and deliver. That's not to say he wont ever flake again. he may, and probably will, but in my book he has done what is needed to repair his reputation. At least with me.

So, when venturing around make sure you check out the Nexus. It may or may not be to your taste, but you'll never know if you'll like it unless you sample a bit. I'd say if he used our forum for his forums it'd be perfect, as the Ning forums blow cock. Ok, just kidding on the using our forum thing. The recent WRESTLECELL affiliation was big enough, but Ning forums do blow.

//Momentary Sidetracking//

Fuck Ning.com. I hate their set up, the way they do social networking, and the utter ugliness that they bestow upon us. I wish David could code his own shit, or find something better. I've shit things out I'd rather continue to visit daily then a Ning site. Hell, our blogs and social networking options built into vb are better then that crap. Dave is lucky he is a grandmaster of delivering, so I can look past the fact his site too closely resembles the other 1.3 million Ning cluster fucks out there. God damn it Dave, put some money into a coder. Their forums, really, really bag. Like seriously, I know I was joking about the forum comment above, but I'd almost rather turn most of my fantasy wrestling discussion over to a site like Nexus then look at Ning's set up.

//Ending Sidetracking//

In other news, I have come to the personal conclusion that the "Gavin Bannerman" who recently posted on the 'Zine was a fake, obvious fake. No ips confirm this, but the sites he supposedly was going to bring back he either 1) doesn't have the rights to or 2) does not own the domain to make such a task possible. Especially Steelramp. Anything other then steelramp.com would be a waste of time.

Alright, that's enough community ranting now. i have e-fed results to write for.