Ok, so yesterday I wrote a message about Plurk. I must admit, after playing with it for a couple of days and communicating with my Neowin friends, I’ve become somewhat of an addict. For me, it has been so much better than my short run at Twitter (which I still update via ping.fm).

For those of you that have never used a service like Plurk or Twitter. They are often referred to as mico-blogs, to be honest, I hate that term. Think of it is a semi-live chat/form. You post something, and other people can reply. You can give a status update (i.e. d3bruts1d is off to take a nap), share videos and pictures, or have a conversation. - Unlike forums that are generally geared toward specific topics (Neowin, TR, OCC, etc.), these kinds of service are usually far more open. Allowing you to discuss your favorite foods, beer, movies, tv shows, talk tech, the weather, sports, or whatever floats you boat. And it’s fun, ask just about anyone that is plurking right now.

So, if you aren’t plurking yet. Go ahead and give it a try. Feel free to add ‘d3bruts1d’ to your friends list if you want someone to talk with.

Yesterday I posted about an article over at iPodNN, which reminded me that I had an account over at MacNN. According to my profile over there, I haven’t logged in since Mar 29, 2004 at 09:50 AM. I went in to edit my profile, and found a signature image that I haven’t used in a long, long time.

Still looks cool after all of these years. Surprisingly, the image is still sitting on the OCC server. So is the one for LinuXProX, Bishop245, and probably others. I forgot who all I made them for, it’s been a while. lol

I was looking at my site’s stats for the past year via Google Analytics, and found some interesting stats. Well, at least they were interesting to me, you might not care one bit about them. :p According to the data reported:

•  I’ve received 2x more traffic from Neowin.net than I have from OverclockersClub.com. I’ve only been active at Neowin since about May.
• I’ve received almost as much traffic from my wife’s blog as I have from OverclockersClub.com.
• Since switching to WordPress traffic appears to have increased. - Though this is more likely due to the fact that I’m posting more.
• Yahoo brings in about 10% more search traffic than Google.
• Altavista, which brings in very little traffic, still brings in more than Live and Ask.com combined.
• The most popular search term is “viewmymessage.com”, which I was complaining about in this post.
• Aside from the index or main page, the most popular pages here are the ones talking about Trillian Astra.

I’m tired of hearing incorrect things through the grapevine about my history with OverclockersClub.com. Every time I hear about “The Old OCC” it is usually in reference to how Matt (LinuXProX) and I screwed over the members, the advertisers, the affiliates, and the sponsors. Let me make one thing very clear, if anyone did any screwing to anyone, it most certainly was not done by me. During my time as a staff member with that site, there was one and only one person that acted as an administrator, and as such only he had anything to do with obtaining products, sponsors, etc. That person was Matt, and he is the sole person responsible for what happened at OCC.

Let’s take a little stroll down memory lane here… and in doing so, this is probably going to be one of the most lengthily post I have ever constructed. Hopefully this will clear things up for those of you who have been misinformation.

Some of this is a repost of the information found in this thread.

Back in April/May 2002 I was looking at building a new PC to replace the P3 933Mhz system that I had at the time. Searching around, I found this small website + message board that had some pretty nice information on it. I registered, posted a question or two, got help, and started helping others. Matter of fact, the first person to reply to my post was Bosco, the current head admin of OCC.

Back then, the site only had a couple of staff members. Matt (LinuXProX) who was the CEO, CFO, Owner, Admin, etc. of the site, and then there was Dave (Bosco) and Tim (Posey). All of which were cool, laid back guys. I think there might have been one other staff member at the time named Bruno… I forget if he was or not, I think he ended up getting banned because of a bad attitude (reminded me a lot of FxXP or Raven). Anyway it was this nice attitude that everyone at the site had plus the wealth of knowledge that kept me coming back day after day (hour after hour).

At the time, there were only a handful of members that were very active…. RaTeD-R, Psywar, DevilMB3017, hiph0pan0nym0usx, and a few others that have long since moved on to other things. We had a good time, and there was usually a good amount of playful banter/insults between members. No big deal.

Heck, we did stuff back then that would get you banned on most sites these days… like the time Matt was talking about GTA 3 and both Dave and I bluntly asked for a copy.

The forum has always been the most active part of the site. Back then it was far worse… there would be days and even weeks between new news posts. I started submitting news, but it’d take 2-3 days to get posted. Finally I just started flooding Matt’s email with news submissions. We’re talking about 30-50 per day. Anything and everything I could find got submitted. Finally Matt gave in, and gave me access to the Newspro system so I could post the news directly to the site. This was how I became a staff member of OverclockersClub.com.

Around July 2002 Matt and Dave started a new project. OverclockersClubCanada.com. It was to be a sister site to OverclockersClub.com, which would share the same news database but have different forums. It was, as I understood it, an attempt to bring in more people specifically targeting the Canadian populace. Because of technical difficulties (according to Dave, Matt broke it) the sites were eventually separated. Dave ran OCCC while Matt continued to run OCC.

There were a number of members who defected to OCCC, even some American members (Max you traitor!). This left Matt without anyone to do reviews for him. So he eventually turned to me, his only staff member at the time (Tim had vanished). And in November 2002 I wrote my first review which was for the Ahanix dboX Case (which sadly no longer has my name attached to it).

Personally, I think OCCC was actually a better site at the time than OCC. Though being better isn’t always “best”, and the site had to close down due to financial reasons. If I remember correctly, the cost for bandwidth killed them. The closing of OCCC wasn’t all bad. Most of the members returned to OCC, and some of the staff from there became staff for a short time with OCC. I don’t remember what happened to the others, but Bishop would become the only staff member from OCCC to remain on as staff with OCC. — Of course Bosco would come back later.

I loved OCC, there’s no doubt about that. I did what I could to try and benefit the site, which is why 90% of the products I reviewed ended up going to the members as contest prizes. Out of all of the stuff I reviewed, I kept very few things. I can happily say that I posted more news then than what has ever been posted… even the site today doesn’t post nearly as much news as I did. I’ll admit though, it was a failed attempt to make the “main” site more useful. I had thought that by posting more news, it would have caused people to start using the news comments. I was wrong, but I kept on trying.

There were a lot of other things I did back then that people did enjoy. OCC Survivor and the weekly OCC Polls were a big hit. Though not everything was good, in fact there are a few things I wish I had never suggested to Matt. I was the one responsible for the “OCC Babes” forum, which got me a lot of praise from the guys and a lot of hate from the women (especially my wife)… it was also my fault that OCC ended up with a politics forum. I wish I had never suggested the later forum, I still see it as an eyesore to the OCC community.

One of the most common misunderstanding people have about my role with OCC is they assume I was an admin for the site. This is incorrect; I never had that title or any of the abilities that would go along with such. I was simply a news editor, reviewer, and moderator. I often referred to myself as a glorified moderator. People thought I had more power than I did for the simple reason that I was the most visible… that would become even more true as time would move on.

Any change that happened to the site was approved and implemented by Matt. All I could do was make a suggestion or recommendation.

In July 2003 a really cool event took place, and I’m glad I was able to attend. The OverclockersClub.com LAN Party was held in Matt’s hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. I attended the weekend party as was able to meet several members of the site including Sykocus and Psywar. While I had a blast, thinking back on it this actually marked the beginning of the downfall of OCC.

At the time of the LAN, Matt was supposed to review a Asetek VapoChill unit. For those of you that have no idea what this is, it’s basically a refrigerator that cools your CPU. The sucker cost over a grand, and it was given to Matt to review, and he simply didn’t do it. To the best of my knowledge this was the first product he didn’t review… I am unaware of anything prior to that, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were other products…. it certainly wasn’t the last product he failed to review.

I don’t know why he stopped reviewing products. I know he started playing Saga of Ryzom around that time, and was also doing a bit of mountain biking. My only assumption could be that he started enjoying those things more and OCC less.

It got to the point where he was no longer answering my messages in the staff forum, or anyone of my IMs to him via ICQ/YIM. Weeks and even months would go by before I’d get a message from him. It really started to piss me off, and I’m sure Max (Bishop) could attest to that. As he was the only other staff member for a while, he got to listen to me bitch and complain. Finally Matt would bring on some more moderators to help me and Max out. I was beginning to think I needed to petition congress to get help.

I have no knowledge of anything that went on behind the scenes at the time. All I know is I’d receive a package of something in the mail every few weeks, I’d review it and send it to Matt and most of the time it would end up on the site. I know a couple of guides that I wrote never were posted, the URL actually worked at the time. - One that comes to mind was a guide on how to start a PSU without a motherboard.

Eventually I just got so pissed off with the lack of communication from Matt, and the lack of ability to do anything myself that I decided if OCC was going to continue like it was, that I wanted to try and make something else… a community like OCC, but one that I could actually be responsible for and do things as needed. That’s where the idea for TechRelated.com came into play.

The irony of TechRelated.com is that the domain name was actually purchased for OverclockersClub.com. Back when Matt drew up the whole “OCC Name Change” contest, I was looking for names that I thought would work and sounded good. TechRelated.com was available, so I purchased it with the hope that Matt would use it. Needless to say Matt didn’t use it, in fact, Matt never went through with the name change… or the contest.

In early September 2005 I formally announced my resignation as an OCC staff member via a post in the staff forums. To give you an idea how bad things had gotten by this point, Matt didn’t respond to it until early October. I didn’t leave with any harsh words; I simply wished him well and went on my way.

At the end of October, I announced TechRelated.com but it wasn’t until May 2006 that I actually opened the TR Forums and allowed members to register.

During this time, Dave (Bosco) has been given the role of “Site Manager” and I suspect that Matt had already put plans in motion to sell OCC. Personally; I wish that he had sold to Dave or approached me about it, but he ended up selling to Howard Ha, owner of Neoseeker. Don’t know the guy, never had any interaction with him, but from my perspective he appears to be the man behind the curtain. With Dave running the day-to-day activities in a role similar to what I had, with the exception that he actually has the power and authority to do things.

Now during this time, some odd things start happening. Rules are created that basically say you cannot link (post or sig) to a site that is in competition to OCC. The same time, my IP is blacklisted and my email is banned. Now being on the outside here, I see this as a direct attack. How would you perceive something like this?

Finally, Dave (who actually reads this site from time to time) tells me that the rule wasn’t because of me, and also starts looking into my ban. After a month or so, things are fixed, and I can post again. My ban appears to have been something Matt did before he left.

Another thing happened during this time (mid August), which angered a lot of members. The big “OCC DB Crash”. There are two theories I have here. Personally I believe that this was sabotage done by the previous owner, or simply a big frak up by the current owners when they moved things over. Either way it was a nasty mark on OCC.

It was actually good for me, as it increase traffic to TR at the time. It’s amazing how something like that can send people running to other sites. Of course, I can see how losing 7 months worth of posts can piss people off. There is no acceptable excuse for that kind of loss.

Backing up a few months before the OCC HDD Failure there were some other things going on that irked a number of members, including me. The site had a desperate need of moderation, as almost all moderation had ceased for a while. Dave did the right thing and brought in some new staff members. While he made the right decision in doing this, I think he got some of the wrong people for the job.

A moderator needs to be a people person. Someone who can communicate clearly, and not throw insults at the members… it also needs to be someone who actually knows the rules that they are suppose to enforce. A couple of the people selected should have been on the top (I’m talking #1, #2, and #3) of the 100 worst possible choices for staff members. Matter of fact, I don’t know why they weren’t banned when they were members of the site.

The new mods did their job in cleaning up the forums, but did so in ways that ruffled feathers and just generally irked other members. They insulted members, started and participated in flame wars, and simply failed to listen to legitimate complaints and criticism.

A few members were actually banned (Overclocker16 and ClayMeow) for voicing their opinion and trying to make the site better. How stupid is that? I agreed with both of these guys, stepped in, voiced my opinion, and publicly bitch slapped a couple of the mods. The best part about it was, I didn’t get a single warning for this, wasn’t banned, and eventually the others were unbanned.

Certain staff members have held a personal grudge against me ever since this even, and I can understand why. I’d hate be embarrassed like they were. One staff member even resorted to registering on TR and doing nothing but complaining and starting threads about how much better OCC was than the rest of the world. And you know what, I allowed the threads like this. It did nothing but prove my point. Personally, if I had a staff member that had done that, I’d have fired their ass.

When you are in a staff position like that, you have to maintain a certain level of professionalism…. thankfully, there is no such need for bloggers and such.

I actually apologized to Dave via IM for ripping his staff a new one, and we had a laugh about it (see the d3bruts1d.com forums). Though certain staff members continue their grudge.

The end of March 2007 was a sad day for me. Financially I could no longer support TR. The cost in bandwidth was killing me… does this sounds familiar? lol So on 3/31/2007 TR closed its doors. And as I suspected, members gravitated back to OCC and those members received some snide comments from staff about coming back.

Me? Yes, though I had never left OCC, my posting did increase. I started posting more than the once or twice a month that I had been.

In mid May I was responding to a post, and went to look for an OCC review that I had done a long time ago. My name wasn’t on it, so I started looking at a number of other reviews that I had written. My name wasn’t on any of them, and in most cases the “written by” line had someone else’s name entirely. — Some of them even said they were written by a person that wasn’t even a registered member for a year later.

I don’t think I have to explain to anyone why this pissed me off. Seeing someone else’s name on my work absolutely infuriated me. And so, I went off on a quick rave here. After I had some time to calm down, I posted on OCC about it. I talked to Nerm about this via PM, and was informed it had to do with the new CMS that OCC was using for reviews. So, I did what I thought was the right thing to do and posted an update here on d3bruts1d.com that explained things as they had been explained to me.

Three days later, someone starts deleting my profile/signature without explaining anything to me. Since I didn’t get a warning or anything, I figured it must have been a bug or something I was doing on my part causing the stuff to be removed. So I added everything back to the way it was (and mind you had been for a very long time). I get a nastygram from one of the mods (#1 on that list I mentioned before) that basically said he was doing it, and gave me some bogus crap about how I wasn’t “Former OCC Staff” and how I had never been staff, and how d3bruts1d.com was malfeasant towards OCC.

Well we know how that whole situation played out (it still makes me snicker), and needless to say I’ve been quasi-banned from OCC. Sure, I can log in, but I get nothing more than a white page when I do.

And they’ve still not listened to me when it comes to submitting links to Digg. I tried to help them out by telling them how to play the “Digg Game” but they wouldn’t listen to me, or anyone who tried to tell them what I was saying was not for nothing.

It’s been well over a month now since my banning. I’m happily settled in at a few other communities. I hadn’t thought about posting anything in regards to OCC again until I heard through the grape vine I was being blamed for OCC’s past and current problems.

I’m sorry, but that shit doesn’t stick. OCC’s past problems are directly and 100% related to the person that owned and managed the site back then. And you know what, that wasn’t me. I was a little peon in the scheme of things. I just did what I was told, and I reviewed every product I received, with one exception.

I was supposed to review X2: The Threat and I didn’t. The game was sent to me on burnt, label-less CDs, no user manual and no box. The game was complicated to install, ran like crap, and wouldn’t work most of the time. It wasn’t something I could review and I was told not to worry about it since we really weren’t a gaming review site (not for my lack of trying though!).

I spent my time with and after OCC trying to help the site. So if it has problems now it wasn’t because of my actions. Quit trying to blame me for this stuff.

I hope this clears up everything for those of you with questions, theories, and/or concerns. And with any luck, this will be the last time I have to post anything on this subject.

Well, it’s been two weeks since I was banned from my former home away from home. And do I have some irony to share with you!

You may remember my disgruntlement over finding the reviews that I wrote for OverclockersClub.com now supporting a “written by” with someone else’s name. In some cases, the name on the review wasn’t even a member of the site until long after (2 years in a few cases) the review was published. For those of you new to the subject…. yes, they have removed my name from my own work. They say it was because of the new content management system being used, but this new turn of events says otherwise.

You see, now the “written by” line has been updated for a number of my reviews to say either “Admin” or “Former Staff”. I’ll get to the latter in a moment, but as far as being written by the admin. While flattering, I am not, nor have I ever been an admin for that site. Perhaps had I actually controlled such power, I would never of had a reason to leave and attempt my own venture. Rather, I could have simply made OCC the unrestricted, friendly, informative, and bustling community that it is a shinning inverse of now. Granted, it would have dropped the niche name that it has… though I had hoped that Matt was going to tackle that objective with the whole “name change” contest that fizzled off.

Now, back to the “Former Staff” and the definition of irony. Remember the words written to me by my favorite OCC staff infection? Furthermore you are not former staff…. You have never been on staff…

Would you please make up your minds? If I am not former staff then why do some of my articles say they were written by former staff? Besides, is it really that hard to make it say that it was written by “Bryan McDaniel” or even just “d3bruts1d”? Either way, you’re still acknowledging that I was at one point in time a staff member, thus making me now former staff. Does it really hurt you that much to have my name associated with it? It’s not like I’m asking you to link back to d3bruts1d.com or anything, of course if you did, you’d have to ban yourself.

No surprise here, but they finally quasi banned me from OverclockersClub.com yesterday evening. Rather than actually banning me, they moved (my profile) me to a group “Awaiting Authorisation” (that’s their spelling, not mine!) which has no privileges. While I can log in and view the forums, I cannot post, reply, or even edit my profile. Ha! All because of a sig that linked here, and a title that said “Former Staff”…. well that, and I ran a script that kept updating my profile every time they reset it.

Am I sorry? Frack no, I’ve done nothing wrong. Besides, what’s the point of being a member to a site that doesn’t listen to its members, doesn’t accept criticism, and is overly restrictive?

So, what now? I’ll not lose any sleep over it, thats for sure. There are other tech related sites out there just like OverclockersClub.com… of course, there are also other tech related sites out there that aren’t like OverclockersClub.com. I’m not going to be one of those vindictive users that spams the forums or makes perverted changes to their wiki. Heck, I’ll even continue to play on the OCC CS:S server as long as they let me… in fact, I was there last night, which is why I haven’t gotten around to posting this until now.

I do wish that someone would go in and edit my profile… they set the custom title to “God”. That wasn’t done by me, I don’t think I am such, I don’t want others to think that, and personally, I find it offensive.

Well, just got a message from one of the OverclockersClub.com Staff Members that I’ve historically had an issue with. Did you guess Raven? If so, then you’d be correct. Sorry, but there isn’t a prize for a question that easy!

Here is what dear old Raven had to say (screen shot or it didn’t happen):

Changing sig and custom member title.

Please read rule #8 in the rules section 2 forum signature rules. Not following these rules will result in one of those actions.
Furthermore you are not former staff this is no longer owned by Matt. You have never been on staff with this corporation.
we were trying to be nice , evidently you did not get the hint.

Alright… so now I finally know why my profile on OCC (title / signature) has mysteriously been changing over the past few days. Keep in mind, this is the same title / signature I’ve had for months. Anyway, let’s take a look at Rule #8 shall we (bold added by me)?

Signatures containing links to personal or non personal web sites that in any way make reference to derogatory statements towards race, creed, pornography, any malfeasance towards OverclockersClub.com, its staff or members will result in a warning, suspension, or a permanent ban, without notice.

Obviously, he’s referring to the part that I emphasized with bold there. Is d3bruts1d.com malfeasant towards OCC? Just so we are clear on the definition, let’s take a look at the dictionary, shall we?

the performance by a public official of an act that is legally unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law; wrongdoing

Does d3bruts1d.com fit any of that? Simply put, no. Have I voiced my personal opinion or distaste for things going on at OCC? Yes. Is that malfeasant? Nope. Am I in violation of the OCC rules? Considering that I wrote most of those, I’d have to say no… but that is up to the interpretation of the OCC staff. Why is it just now an issue?

Now, back to another thing he said. I am a former staff member of OverclockersClub.com, nothing changes that. The fact that Matt sold it to Howard or that Dave runs the show now doesn’t change that. Raven may not be happy that I was at one time a staff member, but that doesn’t change things. I am still, and will always be a “Former Staff Member”. Having the option to edit my own title, I like having “Former Staff” there. It’s what I am.

So, why all of the hate all of a sudden? Because I’ve started posting more frequently on OCC? Because I had, what I considered to be constructive criticism about his latest review? I’m not sure what the deal is… my guess is it’s personal.

The other day when I posted about my names being removed from OCC articles, I talked with Nerm (OCC Admin) and hardnrg (OCC Moderator) a bit, and thought things were cool. Heck, I was even on the OCC CS:S Server with some staff members. No one then said anything to me. Why am I now getting heck from a reviewer? Oh well. I’m changing my profile back. If this is the way it’s going to be, the go ahead and ban me. I may have spent a great deal of time and effort with OverclockersClub.com, but it is not the only tech news and review site out there.

Wanted to follow up to the item I posted yesterday. Apparently the whole situation is more related to the new CMS system that OCC employed to managed articles. When the current staff converts the old articles to the new format, they have to pick someone from the current “reviewer” list. My name isn’t in the list, so they cannot pick me.

If that’s all it is, sounds like a simple solution… add my name to the list, even temporary, so that it can be selected. Or, depending on the language of the CMS, I’d assume PHP, simple edit the code. Shouldn’t be that had to do.

Sounds like the whole thing is more of a failure to plan than anything.

And yes, all of this holds true for articles that were written by other ex-staffers over the years, and not just me. Doesn’t make me any less upset to see my name gone from the work I did.

Alright, now I’m pissed at OverclockersClub.com…. you know, the site that I helped out with for many years before going off to try my own thing. I was reading a comment in the OCC forums that was talking about how the site recommends most of the products that they review these days. I went back and was looking up some of the reviews that I did oh-so-many-years-ago, only to find out that those reviews no longer have my name attached to them.

That’s right, the reviews I did don’t say reviewed by Bryan or even d3bruts1d. In some cases, the review simply says “Admin”, but what really pisses me off is when it is someone else’s name completely. Go look for your self…. try and find a review with my name on it.

Here are some examples….
eDimensional Wireless E-D Glasses Review says the review was done by Jeff Loper . Sorry, but that was my review. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow (PC) Review, Unreal Tournament 2004 (PC) Review and Battlefield Vietnam Game Review… yup all reviews I did as well. Heck, in the Ahanix dboX Case Review you can even see my mother’s couch in the background. The COMDEX 2003 coverage was done by Matt Cameron and myself, yet are names are no longer on it. In this one, you can see me talking to a guy from Microsoft, and here I am getting my game on at the nVidia booth. Here is Matt posing with the ladies at the Biker’s Bash Pre-COMDEX show.

They didn’t stop with reviews… they even took my name off of guides. Remember the How To Use IRC guide? Written by me… now, if someone updated it down the road, it should have said “updated by” and someone else’s name… that’d have been cool. There’s my lapping guide which also doesn’t have my name on it.

What’s the point of removing my name as the author for the reviews/guides I did? Did they just want to remove any trace that I had once been a reviewer there? I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it plagiarism, but it’s pretty damn close when you remove someone’s name from a piece of work and then call it your own.

Not cool OCC… not cool at all. If you don’t want my name associated with the site, even for past articles then you need to take those articles down. Don’t just replace my name with someone else’s… take everything down.

Update: Please see this follow up.

I won’t lie. I still stop in on OverclockersClub.com from time to time, granted I don’t spend nearly as much time as I did when I actually worked for the site. But if you haven’t seen the place in a while, you might want to stop in for a visit. The place has really picked up since LinuXProX sold the site and Howard & Dave took over.

Now, the site is under a “reconstruction” as they redo the layout…. at least I hope that is what they are doing, as right now the main site looks “half assed”. Some of the older articles are still under the old site layout, while others have been “converted” but the layout is FUBAR. I’m sure they’ll get it straightened out later.

Looks like they are publishing at least 2 review per week, which is good. And they are also posting links to Digg, which is a great move to bring in traffic. Though, I’d suggest putting a “Digg This” button on every article / news item and quit using the giant “counter” button… or at least find a better way to integrate it in so it doesn’t look so out of place. Though using a much smaller article image might help. Personally, I’ve never been to found of those… especially when everyone is a different size. And if you are going to use them, at least have a link on the stupid things!

All-in-all, I’m glad to see things picking up for OCC.