Alligator Pond

Membership is falling.

Despite some efforts by Parkglobe management to encourage new blood, even to the extent of giving away free accounts, there is less and less fresh meat in a rapidly evaporating pool.

At this point, with the heat of the summer upon us, the denizens are starting to eat themselves. Unable to snack on small fry the behemoths of conferencing have commenced a final feast, snapping and twisting, rolling their eyes and slapping huge fatty tails onto the surface of the pool to frighten each other into paroxysms. It's survival of the nastiest and it's not a pretty sight.

Where's Crocodile Dundee when you need him?

Cix in Turmoil

Nah, of course not but it looks like the final embers of the tradition that was the Barbie have been extinguished.

Instead we're being offered a selection of 'nights out down the pub' to help build our community spirit. This is profoundly wide of the mark for most cixen who are thinly spread but can get a drink almost anywhere. What they have relished in the Barbie is the chance to put faces to nicknames and the considerable travelling involved for most to do this means it needs a more significant event, something worthy of spending a day, a night and most of the next day over. Anyone who lives close enough to a pub to manage an evening there will most probably have met all the cixen in the area already.

There's some sort of celebration mooted by management to mark a milestone of 20 years or so of online wibbling but not even this is sufficient to make them pull out the stops on the old entertainment organ, only a massive marketing coup would achieve that, something they have no confidence in achieving for themselves, rather weakly suggesting that cixen can do it for themselves and they'll just come along for the ride.

It's rather a pity that with the almost fanatical devotion to the system that most long time participants have Parkglobe cannot make more effort to enfranchise the community who are the whole business as far as anyone can tell but it seems that old style business school techniques have taken hold. There will be trouble ahead.

Catastrophe

A couple of days ago something went tits up in the server department at Cix Towers. For 15 hours or so the system was apparently up and running but nobody using an OLR was able to post messages via telnet to the system although the clunky online interface stumbled on. Despite the fault being logged with support at the beginning of the outage no shreds of information, advice or updates were available until a terse communication from Parkglobe support advised service was resumed and normal life recommenced.

This has had the effect of a pot of boiling water in an ant's nest. Any number of participants that one would imagine from their self reporting to have a life have been devoting considerable energy and time having a jolly good rant about SLAs, customer service and quality of support. Some weak responses from the senior managerial spokesperson hasn't helped one bit.

The Lurker is of the opinion that this storm in a teacup is obscuring a much deeper problem. There is no respect between the customers and management. This mutually damaging relationship seems inevitable given the idiom of a traditional cixen and the ethics of modern business practice but the old fashioned principle of customer rightness will ultimately win out. It's not a cheap service and people who don't get the service they need will take their business elsewhere.

It's all rather sad.

Midnight at the Oasis

Well, I stepped into Cix tonight to find some gossip for the blog and like all village squares at midnight the curtains were drawn and nobody was saying anything, for all the squeaks and squeals coming from the upper floors of the surrounding cottages.

That’s not quite true. A tediously long and repetitive discussion is taking place on Middle Eastern politics with lines drawn along predictable divides, a certain person is yet again keen to share the secrets of her nuptial successes with the disinterested observers of a group therapy session designed to get a no-hoper a mate for the night and there’s a postcard on the noticeboard offering a Sony Profeel television (what’s that?) free to a good home.

You saw it here first.

Cix Blog

Just a short wander through the wilds of a certain not so well known bulletin board/conferencing system/forum environment or call it what you will.

You can join the fun yourself if you want by going to Cix Conferencing and taking the free trial. I warn you, don't be mislead by the clunky online interface into imagining that the conversation is stilted and frustrating. It is, but in a much more subtle way than mere technical misfunction.

Find an offline reader and collect the messages for comfortable perusal and measured response in your own time and than you will begin to appreciate the sort of delayed gratification that many people find extremely addictive.

A word of reassurance for any Cixen who happen to stumble upon this - The Lurker will protect your reputations by concealing your personal details and nicknames but can't hide the true nature of your characters which will shine through whatever happens. Naturally all normal etiquette regarding CCs and other privacy issues will be respected.