Q&A w/ Jae

[J@3]

I'm bored, this will probably be a colossal failure but I will go along with it anyway.

I remember a while back Andrew did a Q&A about his time at the NLSC for a milestone thread and it was really interesting, so I figured I'd do one for people to ask any/all questions about this place, or my thoughts about things/posters/stuff that's happened/the forums in general etc. There are no questions out of bounds, I really can't see myself not answering anything unless it's stupidly personal like what town I live in or whatever. Most people who know me know I'm pretty honest so go for broke, ask what you want.

[Oznogrd]

how did the pinoy army start and who are the members and cabinet positions?

[J@3]

The Pinoy Army basically started from a group of "defectors".. i.e Pinoys who didn't want me dead in some capacity. We've had problems with Pinoy posters for years, mostly because we gave them that stupid thread and let them post in Tagalog and they proceeded to break a tonne of forum rules because none of us knew wtf they were saying. A few other Pinoy posters PM'd me and others telling us what was going on in the thread, I guess you could call them snitches but I always respected them for it. So we locked the thread, I made no attempt to hide the fact that I thought a large majority of Pinoy posters were brainless retards which resulted in most of them hating me. They had separate forums where they'd talk about me, make threads about the NLSC/my moderating, I think at one site they even had "FUCK THE NLSC" sigs or something like that.

So anyway, the Pinoy Army was made up of the Pinoys who were sick of their far stupider countrymen ruining their country's good name here. I think Shadowgrin is definitely in charge of the group, closely followed by Lean and Kris. There are others, some I can't name because they were the ones dry snitchin' on the Pinoy thread but they know who they are

[Axel The Great]

Hey, if you say the thread title out loud, it sounds catchy, and it rhymes.

Q: So how did a pinoy-hating, easily pissed-off person like you become admin here?

[J@3]

I've been posting at the NLSC for probably 10 years or so which helps. Basically when I became a mod, there was only one admin (Andrew) and a few other guys moderating but they were barely ever around and the forum was essentially being entirely moderated by Andrew. There was sort of a divide with the posters, on one hand you had the older guys who had been posting for a while and on the other side you had the younger more spam-oriented type posters. I think some of the older guys were getting sick of what they interpreted as the younger guys bringing down the overall quality of the forum, so a few of them pushed Andrew to make me a mod.

He didn't want to do it because I was basically a prick to everyone except people I liked and was constantly flaming other guys but eventually he caved in and I did mostly a pretty good job. He was probably taking on too much responsibility around the forum by himself at that point, and I think the balance between he and I as far as personalities are concerned worked out well, because he's a lot more diplomatic than me and I think sometimes while that style of approaching people avoids conflict, it can also make it harder to get your point across. I didn't mind being the villain as long as shit started improving and changing, and I always ran everything past Andrew anyway as far as moderating decisions go.

So once the general forums got back on track, we started filling up the forum with more respected moderators (Stevan, Yohance, Matthew etc) and things were going pretty well largely. To cut a long story short, I think people started realizing I wasn't just trying to be a dick all the time and that my motivations for acting certain ways were purely for the benefit of the actual community itself, and that made me soften my approach a bit and not be quite so hardline which eventually lead to Matthew pushing Andrew to make me an admin. I guess at that time the view was Andrew was the boss but I sort of ran the general forums (NBA Talk, General Talk etc). Making me a admin just took some more of the workload off him, and I had no interest in trying to take over the site or any of that stuff so he knew I wasn't going to try and overthrow him or whatever.

It also meant I could back off a little bit more from actual moderating (moving threads, deleting posts etc) and focus more on the quality of the forum overall. Unfortunately I lost my internet access a few times for long periods of time and a lot of shit changed while I was gone so I haven't really been able to make as much of an impact as I wanted, but I'm one of only a few guys still left from the old days here so I still serve some sort of purpose. Even though Pdub and Jao are better at their "jobs" than I am, I think the fact that I've been around and seen so much stuff on the forum over the years can be helpful sometimes. I've also stopped flaming people pretty much alltogether, aside from a post I made to Tupik a week or so ago I haven't gone off on anyone for months and months. Too old for that now.

tl;dr: I was a good moderator, cut down on flaming people and ended up an admin.

[JaoSming]

tl;dr he's Jaesus


actually, who started Jaesus?

[J@3]

I did. Nice and narcissistic I think I was trying to piss off a religious guy on the forum, so I changed my name to Jaesus H Christ and it stuck.

[jenz]

i always wondered and see some older posters refer to "showerfun". what was it all about?

[The X]

I'm also curious to the showerfun question.

- Favourite poster black & blue forums? How about on the current forums?

- Favourite avatar? My personal one was drex's little puppet monster thing.

- Did you ever continue any of those quirky Live dynasties you had off-line with the shitehouse generated players that you created for it? I recall you using JJ Redick's pic (when he was still in college) for one of them.

- And a stupidly personal random question, do you still play Football Manager?

- Has there been any consistent (known) female posters that have lasted at least a couple of years? I know most are either crazy 13 year old girls showing too much cleverage or get scared off by the other desperate teenage boys.

- Biggest hissy fit by a veteran poster? This one may be a bit more time consuming to recall/find so please disregard if you can't be bothered.

- Best part of NLSC for you?

- Most annoying part of NLSC for you? Excluding the obvious like Pinoys

[J@3]

We had a thread about it in Hardwood Classics but it's from the old forum so it's not accessible anymore unfortunately. Showerfun was pretty much something people on the black/blue boards associated with John Stockton and Karl Malone. We were all like 13-14 years old at the time so in the beginning it was hilarious to infer Stockton and Malone had some sort of homosexual relationship but then Pavel (I think he calls himself Brave Sir Rubin or something now) got a hold of it and ruined it. He pretty much spammed the forum with as much Showerfun related content as possible, to the point where there was a pretty big backlash from most people on the forum who got sick of hearing about it. I'm pretty sure the term Showerfun was actually banned lol. Can't remember who came up with it originally, I don't think it was Pavel but I might be wrong.

[J@3]

- Favourite poster black & blue forums? How about on the current forums?

Black & Blue was definitely Stevan. He was hilarious on the forums and also really cool to talk to on MSN. Matthew was close behind, mostly because we were friends outside of the forums though. He was more interested in debating NBA stuff than I was.

Current forums is Ben. Personally (I've said this to Andrew and everyone before so it's not some huge revelation) I think he should be a mod but either way he's my favourite poster now.

- Favourite avatar? My personal one was drex's little puppet monster thing.

I don't know if I even remember any that well to be honest. Was that a Domokun avatar Drex had? Domokun is cool.

- Did you ever continue any of those quirky Live dynasties you had off-line with the shitehouse generated players that you created for it? I recall you using JJ Redick's pic (when he was still in college) for one of them.

Oh yeah that was the Atlanta Hawks one I did. That whole story was such a mess lol, the way I was doing it anyway. I didn't have the internet at home, so I'd play games of Live 2005 or whatever it was, have pages and pages of scraps of paper with shit written on them then I'd walk to my mums place and use her dial-up connection to post stuff on the NLSC.

That particular one I ended it probably 15 games behind where I was in real life. The power forward I had was averaging like 22/10 somehow.

With the newer stories when I ended them on the boards I basically ended them offline as well. Sometimes all the work that goes into the updates gets too much, but then without doing those things playing the games can feel pointless/boring as well.

- And a stupidly personal random question, do you still play Football Manager

I actually downloaded FM 11 on my laptop, I played it for about 15 minutes and gave up. I think it's just a massive information overload these days. I was playing FM08 for a while but I lost the 10-15 tactics I'd created so that took some of the fun away from it. Might put 08 on my laptop and get back into it.

- Has there been any consistent (known) female posters that have lasted at least a couple of years? I know most are either crazy 13 year old girls showing too much cleverage or get scared off by the other desperate teenage boys.

Nope, none lol. We've had a few who have posted on and off for a few months but they're never consistent and they never stay. Oh wait is Fran a chick? I can't remember but if he/she is, then Fran's the only one.

- Biggest hissy fit by a veteran poster? This one may be a bit more time consuming to recall/find so please disregard if you can't be bothered.

Oh god this is so easy lol Jackal's forum revolt. The whole board went into melt down for like the whole day because Andrew wasn't around. I don't even remember what started it or why, but I remember all of Jackal's supporters getting banned (Mazzocchi, Kobe4mvp I think) then Jackal apologized and came back

Actually Jackal if you see this can you post your recollection of it? I hadn't been back that long so I was in the middle of these 10 person super chats on msn going "what the fuck is going on here?".

Oh actually, another contender might be DRESPN. He was one of the most respected guys on the black/blue boards, like massively respected by everyone. Then he comes here, makes threads full of gigantic pictures of fat black women and goes apeshit accusing everyone of being a racist for finding them unattractive.

- Best part of NLSC for you?

Probably the fact that it's still here. It is basically the only part of my early teenage years that is still part of my life now (including most family members and friends lol). I think being able to see how things/people change as well. Like I remember when you first started posting and now obviously you're considered a vet. Same with Jao/Pdub and people like that. I guess you sort of see people grow up and hear about how their lives are changing etc. I find that pretty cool.

- Most annoying part of NLSC for you? Excluding the obvious like Pinoys

Hmm... I've been annoyed by little things over the years, like how long it took for our 2K coverage to be stepped up etc but really the most annoying thing is probably that these general sections aren't as fun/active as they used to be. I don't know if you remember it but I used to do a thread every week where I'd wrap up what had been happening on the forums, and do poster power rankings etc. I think at one point I had a list of like 20 guys for these power rankings (just for the General Talk board. Now I couldn't even name 20 guys who post here semi regularly.

Good questions btw X.

[Andrew]

Just to add my perspective to the story of how Jae became an admin, he's basically covered how it went down but I would like to add that I was definitely proven wrong in my doubts and reservations. I'd agree that our styles compliment each other well, the fact of the matter is Jae has been (and continues to be) one of the site's greatest assets. You need to post more though, Jae, you were supposed to top the 20,000 mark by the end of the year.

And a couple of questions:

- What was your most satisfying ban?

- What is your all-time favourite NLSC Forum meme? Your least favourite?

[NovU]

Cool. So much stuff I never knew about this forum.

Here're my Qs...

1) What exactly has been your role as an admin? Do you get paid? Is it worth it?

2) Was wondering if you admin guys put this admin job as experience on your resume.

3) What do you do in real life?

4) What are you like in real life? Does your NLSC personality reflect your real personality?

[Lamrock]

- Have you always been a Bucks fan, or did you jump on the Bogut bandwagon?
- Is Jae pronounced "Jay" or what?
- Least favorite current member?
- This goes for either you or Andrew, but has the site ever gotten hacked?
- asl?

[dare]

-Maybe this is a general question, what qualities does it take to become an admin/moderator?
-Is it called NLSC before or something else?

[J@3]

- What was your most satisfying ban?

Tough one, there has been so many I think it'd be hard to separate between Dweaver and all of the Pinoys from the Pinoy thread. A few of those guys thought they were untouchable, so to get rid of them was nice. Dweaver for very obvious reasons. Probably the least satisfying was that English guy whos name I'm forgetting, Joe or something. He was a good poster who went downhill fast.

- What is your all-time favourite NLSC Forum meme? Your least favourite?

Least favourite was showerfun. I hated that back in the day. Favourite is probably NLSC James News Reporter. Just the fact that he took the job so seriously, wanting to call you on the phone etc.

1) What exactly has been your role as an admin? Do you get paid? Is it worth it?

Basically just a more powerful moderator to be honest. With there being three other admins, and the other three doing more work than me it's pretty easy. I've never spent much time in the patching sections so Jao/Pdub/Andrew are far better at dealing with that than I am. Definitely don't get paid, but really I see no reason to step down or anything.

It doesn't take any more time out of my day than it would if I were just a regular poster, plus I get to pitch ideas and mess with peoples custom titles etc.

2) Was wondering if you admin guys put this admin job as experience on your resume.

I don't personally, maybe if it was like RealGM or something huge I would consider it depending on what sort of job I'm doing but otherwise nah.

3) What do you do in real life?

I've had a bunch of different jobs over the years, most recently security. I quit that in November, in January I'll be getting a higher security license so I can do things that pay better than crowd control. Control room stuff, personal security etc.

4) What are you like in real life? Does your NLSC personality reflect your real personality?

Sort of. My sense of humour is identical, the way I type is pretty similar to how I talk but I'm really pretty relaxed in person and to be honest nothing ever makes me angry. I don't give a shit enough to get angry at most things lol. I think on here people probably think I'm pretty aggressive, but that def isn't the case in real life.

- Have you always been a Bucks fan, or did you jump on the Bogut bandwagon?

Definitely jumped on the Bogut bandwagon. I used to like the Lakers back when they had Cedric Ceballos, Nick Van Exel, Sedale Threatt etc... but for whatever reason the more successful they got the less interested I was in the team and eventually just stopped considering myself a fan. Sort of reverse bandwagoning. I do consider myself a Bucks fan instead of a Bogut fan these days, I've watched something like 300 Bucks games in the last 6 years. You can't devote that much time to a team and not get attached to them.

- Is Jae pronounced "Jay" or what?

Yep like Jay. In real life I say "It's Jae, like the letter" and the reply is nearly always "What letter?"

- Least favorite current member?

Hmm that's tough. For very different reasons mandich and Vlad. Mandich because of how he responded to the Oz thing (he's apologized now) and Vlad because he's charging money for his editor. I get that he's putting in a lot of work but IMO charging money for patches and such is sort of against the spirit of what the site was initially created for.

As an actual poster I have no opinion of him whatsoever and from what I hear this editor will be massively useful to patchers, but yeah I've always had a problem with people charging for this stuff. He's not the first, won't be the last.

Oh and that Terrybgood spastic or whatever his name was.

- This goes for either you or Andrew, but has the site ever gotten hacked?

About 50,000 people have threatened to do it over the years but I'm not sure, Andrew can take that one.

asl?

13/f/thailand

-Maybe this is a general question, what qualities does it take to become an admin/moderator?

I think age helps. All of us admins and most of the moderators are in our 20's. I think Pdub is over 30, but I guess there's got to be a level of maturity/responsibility that you just get from real life situations and translate it onto here.

So basically maturity, you need to be somewhat objective because you can't just ban everyone you don't like (even though I sort of did at one point lol), you have to be able to make the right decisions consistently regardless of how unpopular they may be and in a team setting like we have you've got to hold each other accountable as well, and actually be able to take that constructive criticism.

Pdub and Jao were sort of perfect for the role because they're really active in the game/patching sections, so they can communicate with the patchers on their level while still enforcing the rules and stuff. Andrew is like the overlord who keeps everything in check and I sort of control this little area of the forum down the bottom.

-Is it called NLSC before or something else?

As far as I'm aware it's always been the NBA Live Series Center. Andrew was in charge of the NBA Live Domain before he took over at NLSC.

[The X]

- Favourite avatar? My personal one was drex's little puppet monster thing.

I don't know if I even remember any that well to be honest. Was that a Domokun avatar Drex had? Domokun is cool.

Yep, Domokun

Definitely jumped on the Bogut bandwagon. I used to like the Lakers back when they had Cedric Ceballos, Nick Van Exel, Sedale Threatt etc... but for whatever reason the more successful they got the less interested I was in the team and eventually just stopped considering myself a fan. Sort of reverse bandwagoning. I do consider myself a Bucks fan instead of a Bogut fan these days, I've watched something like 300 Bucks games in the last 6 years. You can't devote that much time to a team and not get attached to them.

That describes me too, don't know what's wrong with me in that regard

[Houndy]

Whats your gamertag on XBL supposed to mean?

Favorite Dynasty/Association?

Worst decision you made for NLSC. Best?

Favorite shoe brand?

[el badman]

- Do you have an all-time favorite patcher? (NBA Live or 2K)
- Ever been a fan of Luc Longley?
- Whose cuisine reigns supreme?

[J@3]

Whats your gamertag on XBL supposed to mean?

Which one? Get To The Choppa is a Arnold Schwarzenegger quote, the Dinosaur Brocore one is from a song I like, they say "It's all about dinosaur brocore" at the start.. I have no idea what it means lol.

Favorite Dynasty/Association?

I really liked Lamrock's Raptors one he was doing not long ago, with the short updates and full season recaps. So easy to read. I've liked all of The X's and obviously Sit's are great.

Worst decision you made for NLSC. Best?

Wow tough one... worst decision was probably going for so long without internet access over the years. A few times I've been gone for 6-8 months and when I come back things are always different. I was probably a bit harsh on banning a few guys over the years as well.

Best decision was probably just all of the games and ideas for threads I used to come up with. There was the Football Manager NLSC story, the NLSC Weekly Stuff threads, the sig of the week competition, the reality show etc... I guess small things to keep people interested and make the place more active.

Favorite shoe brand?

Probably Supra at the moment. They have some kick ass looking shoes, even if Justin Bieber wears them too.

[Axel The Great]

What qualities of basketball make you like it?

When will you ditch that avatar you've had for like forever?

What player is the most frustrating to watch in the NBA?

What poster would you most like to ban?

Have you ever "accidentally" banned someone?

Who was the most annoying poster to ever post at the NLSC in your opinion?

If given a chance to handpick a new Mod/Team Member/Admin, who would it be?

You're a soccer/football fan right? What do you think of the WC being hosted in Russia and Qatar?

[Andrew]

Tough one, there has been so many I think it'd be hard to separate between Dweaver and all of the Pinoys from the Pinoy thread. A few of those guys thought they were untouchable, so to get rid of them was nice. Dweaver for very obvious reasons. Probably the least satisfying was that English guy whos name I'm forgetting, Joe or something. He was a good poster who went downhill fast.

I can't quite remember the username either, but I think I know who you're talking about. There have been a few like that, good or even great posters, people who know their stuff and are good to have around who just seem to lose it and become difficult. It's always disappointing when that happens.

Least favourite was showerfun. I hated that back in the day. Favourite is probably NLSC James News Reporter. Just the fact that he took the job so seriously, wanting to call you on the phone etc.

Yeah, Showerfun really got run into the ground. If you didn't like it to begin with, it was completely unbearable by the end.

No honourable mention for the Frank Castle Club?

I don't personally, maybe if it was like RealGM or something huge I would consider it depending on what sort of job I'm doing but otherwise nah.

I mention the NLSC on my resume. It's actually gotten me some interviews and went a decent way in landing me a job some years back.

Yep like Jay. In real life I say "It's Jae, like the letter" and the reply is nearly always "What letter?"

Seriously?

- Least favorite current member?

- This goes for either you or Andrew, but has the site ever gotten hacked?

About 50,000 people have threatened to do it over the years but I'm not sure, Andrew can take that one.

Not that I can recall. The kid who once offered to buy the site for $100,000 just so he could fire all the moderators originally claimed to have hacked into the admin panel so we better unban him, then claimed he got an email from someone who had gotten into the admin panel and claimed he talked them out of it so we should let him back because he saved the site.

As far as I'm aware it's always been the NBA Live Series Center. Andrew was in charge of the NBA Live Domain before he took over at NLSC.

I think Tim's name might have been in the title at one point but if so, that was very early on and very briefly. However, some people have referred to it as the NBALSC even though we don't use those initials and NCLS, even though that's wrong.

[[Q]]

- Do you have an all-time favorite patcher? (NBA Live or 2K)

oooo good one. to be honest i can't remember their names it's been too long.

[J@3]

- Do you have an all-time favorite patcher? (NBA Live or 2K)

Probably Tony or Jowe. I mean I never really downloaded patches to be honest, I only played Live on PC up until Live 2001 then I went onto the consoles. Jowe always had the best jersey patches and Tony Huml's cyberfaces and stuff were so far beyond what everyone else was doing. Ben also was doing great things with his roster updates, because he was using advanced statistics and such back when people weren't even that familiar with their existence in the first place.

- Ever been a fan of Luc Longley?

Not really to be honest. Chris Anstey and Shane Heal were my favourite Australians who had played in the NBA until Bogut came along, but yeah Longley never interested me. Anstey didn't reach his potential as a player until he was in his 30's for some reason, I still think he could've been useful in the NBA.

- Whose cuisine reigns supreme?

French. I love French cooking, even moreso than Italian. Pretty much anything white in sauce form (no, not that) I'll eat.

What qualities of basketball make you like it?

Probably the amount of skill that goes into it and the fact that even though it's a team sport there's only 5 guys on the court for each team at a time, so you can sort of identify more easily with who's playing than you could say in football where there's way more people on the field. I've always liked it really, since I was 4 or 5, just seem naturally drawn to basketball.

When will you ditch that avatar you've had for like forever?

Lol I was thinking about that before when X asked me what my favourite avatar was. I'll change it after New Years.

What player is the most frustrating to watch in the NBA?

Definitely Andrew Bogut. He's stupidly inconsistent offensively, it's hard watching him tear teams apart one day then in the next look like Ben Wallace with the ball.

What poster would you most like to ban?

Probably whatever alternate account terrybgood is using at the moment. Outside of that no one really, I don't think (unless someone's breaking the rules or spamming the hell out of the place) there'd be any real need or benefit to banning anyone. I would like to lock the patching threads so they didn't all have 10,000 replies with "WOW RELEASE!!" but that's another story.

Have you ever "accidentally" banned someone?

Yeah heaps of times. For some reason in the Philippines people often share the same IP, like you'll have 10-13 different posters all using the same IP address. Same with AOL customers actually. So a few times I've IP banned one guy and found that I've accidentally banned like an entire village in the Philippines from accessing the forum lol. As far as "accidentally" doing it, I haven't.

Who was the most annoying poster to ever post at the NLSC in your opinion?

It's a really tough choice between COOLmac and LankyMan. LankyMan was a ridiculous attention seeker who definitely had some pretty severe psychological issues. It got worse when he started signing up new accounts every time he was banned and spazzing out when he was caught. A few times I was trying to delete 20-30 new threads he'd made to spam up the forums on a 56k modem. COOLmac made A LOT of posts and none of them were good, or were of any use to anyone anywhere. I'm sure he was a nice guy but he was just a terrible, terrible poster.

If given a chance to handpick a new Mod/Team Member/Admin, who would it be?

That's a good question. I'd say Mod: el badman, Team Member: shadowgrin (I don't know what he'd do lol, I'm sure we could find a job for him) and Admin: Ben.

You're a soccer/football fan right? What do you think of the WC being hosted in Russia and Qatar?

Russia I can live with and sort of understand. Financially they're in a great position, the country is huge and it's in Europe which FIFA wanted so I'm not mad about that. Qatar was a ridiculous decision and clearly influenced by everything except whether or not the country is suitable to host a World Cup. I thought there were like three other countries who deserved it over Qatar.

[J@3]

Least favourite was showerfun. I hated that back in the day. Favourite is probably NLSC James News Reporter. Just the fact that he took the job so seriously, wanting to call you on the phone etc.

Yeah, Showerfun really got run into the ground. If you didn't like it to begin with, it was completely unbearable by the end.

No honourable mention for the Frank Castle Club?

I don't personally, maybe if it was like RealGM or something huge I would consider it depending on what sort of job I'm doing but otherwise nah.

I mention the NLSC on my resume. It's actually gotten me some interviews and went a decent way in landing me a job some years back.

Can't believe I forgot the Frank Castle Fan Club... also forgot The Syndicate, which was elaborately planned but eventually didn't lead to anything outside of just having fancy sigs.

Re: the resume thing, I think putting that you're the webmaster of a website is definitely worthwhile. My actual forum "job" I don't know how useful it would be, unless I can make it sound a bit more fancy than it is.