Resigning as Admin
4 years ago
United States

After 4.5 years as an admin with site staff, I am resigning from site staff effective immediately.

I made site staff aware of my plans to exit about a month ago, and I will make myself available to site staff for consultation for some additional period of time. There are a couple ongoing items I'm advising on in the background. Please do not contact me to help with site issues any longer, I will probably refer you to this post. I no longer have site admin powers to handle these issues. Contact the full mods or Pac, depending on the type of issue.

I need to move on with my life, and I need less stress in my life. The ongoing conflict and disagreement in maintaining the site for the community has taken its toll on me over the years both physically and mentally. I've lost plenty of sleep over the years dealing with site conflicts, crisis management, and whatever else goes along with that. In recent months I've been having substantial issues with stress to a much larger extent than in the past. More recently I've been having moderate health problems for about 6 weeks that I'm still trying to get through. I should be fine in a couple months.

Being an admin on the site was never a position well-suited for someone like me. I don't gain any sort of happiness from resolving conflict or helping people resolve issues. I'm far happier in life as an engineer at my day job than as a customer service representative or a community manager. My primary goal was always to help organize a successful system for maintaining leaderboards for the community.

The early organizational phases of leaderboards, which I was involved with prior to speedrun.com had substantial failures. At that time I was extremely stressed out and disappointed with how things had turned out. I felt a personal obligation to help get the site going due to those previous failures. When I first came on to site staff, I was intending to help with the start-up phase and exit a few months after. I ended up filling numerous roles doing things that needed done to keep the site running, and here we are 4.5 years later. One regret I have is that I failed to help get involved many capable people who have reached out over the years

I don't claim to have been the best person for this job. I think I did alright. There are people out there who would've done a better job. There are a substantial number of people who would've done a worse job.

I've spent multiple thousands of hours of my life handling the day-to-day for the site, and I'm down about 80 dollars for server upgrades for a couple months a few years back. I've reviewed almost 10,000 game requests since April 2016, and many more prior to that. I handled almost all of the moderation requests and disputes up until the last couple years. This is something I did in my free time for over 4 years, and I never wanted to treat it like a job. I'm very cognizant that I've inherently burdened myself too much. I'm very burnt out.

I personally find public relations and community management to be very stressful. Community managers at various gaming related organizations generally don't last for more than a few years. The social media environment can be very toxic, and even aside from that, the hyper-connectivity of the social environment just puts conflict and disagreement on your doorstep daily. I find that most people I've interacted with are genuine people who have reasonable concerns. It turns out that reasonable people still disagree with each other frequently. There's just an infinite amount of negativity out there, and I think people should actively try to not contribute to it. I think we amplify the negatives in life all too often.

I think the site is still lacking various features to make life easier for staff, users, and moderators. Many problems that manifest as people problems are attributable to system shortcomings. These things obviously take time, effort, and prioritization. I feel some responsibility for failing to solve some of the more complex organizational issues with the site that still exist today.

It is my opinion that the site needs to work towards functioning more like an organization. The site is extremely large compared to the size of staff, and it needs more tools for people to handle issues at lower levels. The site needs to be careful and deliberate with the design decisions it makes, because small changes can have very significant impacts on moderators and users. As a primarily community driven website, I think the site should only be in the business of doing things that the majority of users want it to do.

I'm very thankful for everyone that has helped the site get to this point. Pac, it's been a wild ride. There's so much more to say than that, which I can't adequately put into words. Kabuki, Lighnat0r, and more recently Volvagia, thank you for helping solve some serious and complex problems over the years. To the rest of staff, thank you for carrying forward, and I sincerely apologize for any additional burden caused on you by my exit. To the community, thank you for helping build the site to what it is today. Through the site, a substantial amount of communities have greatly expanded to connect people with common interests and to provide a wealth of knowledge on various games.

I hope this post meaningfully articulates my personal experiences, and provides some understanding of why I need to leave staff. It has been an extreme learning experience for me personally, and I wouldn't be the person I am today without having been through this. I'm not going to go so far as to say I'll never rejoin staff, but I will say that I currently have no future intentions of rejoining staff. Out of respect for the rest of staff, I intend to minimize my public discussion of my opinions on site direction going forward.

As for me, I'm working towards improving my lifestyle. I intend to substantially reduce my social media presence going forward. I'm finding it unhealthy for a person like me. Spending half my life on the internet hasn't been the best for me. I'll still be around playing games with friends and showing up to events and things like that.

I'm not really looking for thanks or anything, I'm just seeking to inform and offer insight. I'm leaving town for a while later today due to additional life issues.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Amaz, Difixed and 63 others like this
Netherlands

Thank you for everything you have done for the website and I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavours.

Edited by the author 3 years ago
afnannen136, Imaproshaman and 6 others like this

Thanks for everything, Kirkq. You've been absolutely invaluable to the site and it won't be the same without you. Best of luck with the future. o7

Edited by the author 4 years ago
YUMmy_Bacon5, Gaming_64 and 11 others like this
European Union

Thanks for everything you did for us all in those 4 years! Good Luck on your future stuff and live a healthy life.

DracaarysTrophy, Imaproshaman and 2 others like this
New Jersey, USA

Thank you for all the work you have put into the website, and I wish you luck on your future endeavors

Germany

Thanks for everything, Kirk! I took a lot of inspiration from observing how you handled conflicts and I hope others will also be inspired by your parting words above. You may not see yourself as the best fit for all the community kerfuffle, but I think you did a great job not only as a site admin, but also as a moral compass for those invested in the project. Wish you all the best!

Imaproshaman, Razorflame and 2 others like this
Surrey, England

Oh my god! As far as I remember you were the face of speedrun.com, but I understand it's a new era, and we have new mods and admins now who will improve the site off of your hard work. Thanks so much kirkq, I don't think the site, and the runners like me, would've got to where we are today without you. Good luck!

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
France
xDrHellx
He/Him, It/Its
4 years ago

Thanks for all the work you've done. 4.5 years though ? Damn, time flies, i think when i joined you weren't part of the staff, or maybe didn't have such an important role.

All this makes sense, in fact, some of the things you said felt really relatable. Take care, good luck with life and such, and again, thanks for all the things you've done with / for this site.

Texas, USA

Thank you for approving one of my favorite games! (BFDIA 5b) I can see the position has been taxing on you so I wish you feel better going forward.

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
Canada

You've done far more than your fair share. Health first is something we should all abide by.

You take care of yourself now. You deserve it.

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
Antarctica

Thank you so much for all the work you’ve put in on the site since you’ve been onboard. Good luck with your day to day life and I hope you start to feel better!

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
Ontario, Canada

Hard to belive that it's been that long but yeah you've done allot for the site that's for sure and more then any some individual should. Thanks and good luck with the future.

Ontario, Canada

Thank you for all your hard work sir. Best of luck looking forward

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
Idaho, USA

I hope you have a healthy life and thanks for all you do. Most speedrunners may not know it, but without admins like you, we wouldn't even be able to post our runs the way we do now. Thanks for your time.

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
United States

WELL YOU'RE GETTING A THANKS ANYWAYS AND THAT'S THAT! =P Thanks for all you've done for us!

And honestly, you've done more than fine. Despite any shortcomings, there's a reason why this is THE leaderboard site for a wide swath of speedrunning community. You're a big part of that.

Good luck and take care of yourself.

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
Wisconsin, USA

Good luck in your future endeavors. You will be missed by this site!

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
Valhalla

Thanks for helping make the site what it is, good luck on your life style change, I'm right there with ya, better now before we get too old.

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
4 years ago

Enjoy your retirement, may games and going fast in them be its own reward~!

Imaproshaman and HowDenKing like this
Kent, England

Speedrunning owes you a debt kirkq. Wishing you the best of luck in the future.

HowDenKing, DracaarysTrophy and 2 others like this