News / Changes in the NE Admin team

Today marks a significant change in the admin team, as both Liampie and CC9 have decided to vacate their spots.

The decision was discussed together and mutually agreed upon, and in Liam's case communicated to us internally several months ago. CC9 has sadly struggled to find enough time to engage with NE admin work the way he wanted.

We agreed it was time to initiate a change, and give new people the chance to join and influence NE's leadership. We wanted to wait until H2HX was fully over with the announcement. Before we talk about the future of the admin team, it is imperative that we pay tribute to the significance of both Liam and CC9's time as admins. For this, I would first like to hand the mic to them.

Dear NE, for twelve years I have served on the admin team. I'm very happy with my contributions over the years, and I'm very happy that my efforts have been reciprocated by the community by still being so active and healthy. It is time to start playing a different role for me though, for three reasons.

1) All admins go through phases of intense activity and phases of being more occupied with other things. Over the past few years, I've noticed that my activity as an admin has gone down more consistently. I am still passionate and I'd say skilled at developing and planning things, which comes rather easily to me, but when it comes to executing and getting my hands dirty, I could not always live up to expectations anymore, leading to an unbalanced and unfair distribution of labour.

2) Taking faulty objects out of savegames, making aerials that use all kinds of new void colours and blurry edges; file prepping has become rather complex again. It's a learning curve that demands energy of me that I can't always muster. I love my real life job, but it can be draining, and it hinders my ability and willingness to commit to such tasks in my free time. Secondly, our own standards in terms of nice HTML presentation of contests and other content have improved (and still are improving) so much. It's exciting, and I learned a lot, but again it's hard to keep up with Xtreme and posix who are more skilled and knowledgable about these things. All in all, I'm being outpaced on almost every front.

3) I'd like to stress that there is no secret story or drama here, but there have been some clashes of personalities based on different ideas on how to manage the community and produce content. Posix has been essentially a close coworker for over a decade, and for the vast majority of these years it has been a positive and fruitful collaboration. I think we need some space apart, which from my side can be filled with the admiration and gratitude that I feel alongside the infrequent frustrations, because it was posix and geewhzz who pulled NE from the gutter in 2008 and have sacrificed a lot to ensure its continued thriving existence. Through my stepping back, the NE admin team can have a more unified voice again and the positive thoughts can endure. Shoutout to Xtreme being an amazing member of the team. He has the brain and the brawn.

I've talked about taking a break from the team for years now, and sometimes you just need to bite the bullet, which I did about 3 months ago when I finally decided that my time as an admin team member has exceeded the expiry date.

It is mutually beneficial for me to continue some of the work I've been doing: maintaining and completing the NE database, general clean-up around the site, and creating content such as The List, the yearly write-ups, and the H2H history posts. This is what I've loved most as an admin, it is very relaxing and satisfying. For this, I'll retain some of the site permissions and access to our social media channels. Despite this mandate, I will no longer officially represent NE. I will not be in the admin discord channel, and I will not be involved in any of the day to day management of the community.

I do make myself available to brainstorm new contest ideas or other content, or to assist with certain admin tasks in case of emergency. I have a wealth of excel sheets and data, they can always call on me to dig up specific information. At your service.

A few words of gratitude from me.

Liampie was someone who quickly showed deeper engagement with NE than most others, making me hope to have him as admin and suggest so to geewhzz. Sure enough, Liam initially declined the offer, but at the second time of asking thankfully agreed, and became admin in early 2012. He was thrown into what at the time was a duo partnership between Louis! and I, with both the 10 year anniversary of the site and H2H6 imminent. Liam also became a H2H6 maiden captain, and won the championship. At the end of what at times was a severely tumultuous season, Liam had proven himself to be a reliable partner. He became someone who firmly stood on NE's side without ever making a big fuss about it. Someone with a passionate heart for RCT, for organising its competition, and for bringing people together to celebrate it.

What followed was a fruitful time as a trio between him, Louis! and I. He began to dive into the daily grind of admin work, namely the release preparation, which at the time was still extra tedious due to our vanilla RCT2 object linking procedure. But there wasn't any stopping him, and he integrated himself as a vital admin member very quickly. He took on a variety of tasks, and it was like his energy knew no limits.

Over the years, he would prove himself to be an avid contest inventor. He left a significant mark on the design of H2H's rules as we know them today, thanks to him being both a participant and captain several times and engaging very deeply with the format. This is really something that has never changed, and hopefully won't, as you'll remember the player points regulation of H2HX was his idea earlier this year when we started conceiving the event. He is of course also the inventor of Grand Tour, which has seen two very successful seasons so far, and almost created an RCT sub-style of its own. Again, he created the format due to his deep knowledge, both of NE and other communities, as some have likened the contest to RCT2.com's "Road Rallies" from many many years ago.

But Liam also has vast knowledge of the Dutch parkmaking scene, where he's been around most any community, and seen and remembers (!) their output. In fact, from the beginning of online RCT showcase parkmaking, the largest to follow in scope behind the English speaking community has always been the Dutch, and thus it was important to have someone Dutch speaking among the NE admin team. The impact Dutch parkmaking has had on the heritage of the community overall is significant, and Liam personifies this aspect to NE, facilitating our access and understanding of the Dutch scene, oftentimes himself perhaps being unaware of it as it comes so naturally to him.

He will remember everything there has been in RCT showcase parkmaking, the bad and the good equally, and I dare you play a game of "Guess the Park" against him. You will lose. This also reflects in his desire to do archival work for NE. It is an aspect of the site that may not be at the forefront of attention, but it is important that those in power care about our heritage, where the development of showcase parkmaking and its variety of building styles plays the most important part. Backstage, Liam has composed mappings of lost park catalogues of both individual players or entire communities from days long gone, in order to systematically hunt, conserve and archive all such parkmaking, reach out and chase people for their collections, get the max out of what waybackmachine has to offer, all to ultimately enrich the big RCT library that is NE. His initiative and contribution here has been instrumental, and this is in fact a job that as mentioned above he will continue doing from now on.

But life and things at the site change, and the modern day grind of admin work such as Xtreme and I are doing is no longer something he enjoys. As he's described, I must also be honest and say this has sometimes led to certain friction, a feeling of imbalance, a cause to intensify disagreements unnecessarily. Over a lengthier process, we established that an adjustment in the team was in everyone's best interest, and thus while Liam will stay close to the admin team, he will no longer be part of it.

All this text shouldn't read as much as a farewell notice as it might do, because Liam isn't leaving NE. But right now, we thank him for 12 years of service as admin: for levity, for spontaneity, for calm relentlessness, for refreshing lack of ego, for creativity when it mattered, for foresightedness, for thinking outside the box, for challenging himself and us in equal amounts, for an eye for fairness where only he could see it, ...and quite simply, for believing in NE like few have in our 22 years existence.

Bedankt Liam

Naturally, I'd also like to thank CoasterCreator9. After G Force and ][ntamin22 had stepped down at the very beginning of 2020, Liam and I were eager to find someone new and motivated, and CC9 joined the team by the end of January 2020. He sunk his teeth into the admin jobs with great fervour from day 1. He integrated himself into discussions seamlessly, and always gave his opinion in a wholesome and well grounded way, often incorporating great variety of different views on the topic at hand.

He was also more tech savvy with Discord than Liam and I at the time, and helped us tidy up convoluted permission settings behind the scenes. He became an expert map maker in a heartbeat, and was often someone we turned to for especially hard to make aerials. If anyone knows the nitty gritty of your "creative" last minute transparent map edge solutions, it's him.

Similar to Liam representing the Dutch community, it was very fortunate we could have someone from the US with CC9. North America is still the region where most NElers come from, and of course the site has US origins. This was also important as we could have someone able to mod during US timezones, and in fact this would prove critical during CC9's time. It's not a very enjoyable aspect of being an admin, but it's absolutely important, and not everyone knows the great service CC9 has done here a couple of times. He always had a keen eye to spot ill votes in a contest poll, and literally saved NE from looming threats on a few occasions. He was there when it mattered.

But much more importantly, CC9 is saving real lifes during his day, a job infinitely more important than being an NE admin. As such he has struggled to find the time to commit to NE, and whilst he's tried to touch in and share his input, we had an honest exchange and mutually agreed it would be better to offer the position to someone with more availability.

Thank you for the good times with you amongst the team CC9. We needed your input, and it's one we will keep listening to. I hope you will still do an aerial every now and then, and I genuinely hope we'll have more of you, not just in the admin chat, but in the community at large.

Admin recruitment 2024

With that opens an admin vacancy. The chance to become NE Admin is quite rare, typically arises only every 2-3 years. If you are interested, please apply to Xtreme and I either via discord DM or site PM, as you prefer. We are looking to have a team of min 3 active admins, and 5 max.

Being an admin is like a job: you service the NE community. It's not about you or any perceived status of the role. You are paid for the job in a different currency than money: You get pleasure out of taking care of NE, you are motivated by seeing it do well, by what happens RCT wise when it does. You get to be on the inside of all NE planning and decision making, meaning you will be able to influence the site with your voice and opinion on what you think is the right course, on all accounts. You will get first hand access to all submissions we receive and be at the forefront of the best RCT showcase parkmaking on the internet.

In turn, the job also has requirements. Like with any real job, no one fulfils them all, so don't feel discouraged to apply after reading this.

Let me first set aside a few must-haves that will make your application unsuccessful if we're not convinced you have them. In order of importance:

1. You need to love NE, first and foremost. We need to see you feel a desire to service the community as mentioned above. Ideally you are in a relationship with NE where you feel it's given you a lot, and you want to give back to it and make it better, because you know you can.
2. Your availability. You will need to have enough time to commit to taking care of NE. If we find you are just a lurker it really will not work. You don't have to be around 24/7, and you shouldn't depend on the site emotionally too much either. But you will need to be happily willing to set aside a certain couple of hours per week for NE. Sometimes, with bigger events like we've just had with H2H, this may mean to plan your day a little so you can post or close a match on time, or at least communicate within the admin team about your availability.
3. You need to be a person who desires kindness and respect, and also loves giving it. Your first nature should be to treat people with sincerity. This does not mean you cannot be ruthless when presented with bullshit. But your general personality should be one of good will and compassion.
4. You should know you can be a work horse. There will be no cherry picking of tasks. We assign them based on who is most suited for them and available. I want an environment of allrounders who are equal and support each other always. While there will be certain specialisation, we should maintain flexibility in job assignments to prevent any one admin from becoming solely responsible for certain tasks. If you want to do only individual tasks that's perfectly fine, and in fact good for NE, but that's the role of a supporter, not an admin.

With the above checked, all of the following can be learned if your mind is committed and healthy. No longer in order of importance:

• General computer literacy. An would-be interview question might be what the difference between zip, rar and 7zip is, and what you would use for NE releases and why. Perhaps you've also used a terminal before and know what it is.
• Experience with CSS. We still use it a lot for the presentation of events and more elaborate official posts on NE, and if you can help with that it's a definite plus.
• Experience in image processing, such as with Photoshop, Affinity photo, or similar. You should feel comfortable to produce the fullsize aerials NE uses for all releases, which typically require more manual editing than you might think to make them clean and nice looking. You should know what alpha transparency and pixel sampling are, and how they behave across RGB and indexed colour depths.
• Understanding of ORCT2 object tech. The game was not primarily made for the vast amounts of CSO coming out of NE all the time, so when preparing our releases, we need to be extra mindful these days for things not to break or look wrong. Thus a general expertise and familiarity with CSO, or a good grasp of the latest ORCT2 object related changes, is a definite plus.
• A strong appreciation for RCTLL. The site's origin come from RCT1 days, and a lot of NE's blueprint from back then never really changed. A general understanding for this tradition, and having RCTLL up and running on your computer, knowledge of famous RCT1 parkmakers and their releases, is desirable.

Finally there is an outlier criterion that extremely few people fulfil, which is why I'm listing it separately: If you are experienced as a web developer, NE needs you. You should be experienced in the backend tech that goes into hosting websites, and in coding with databases like NE uses for forum posts, parks, objects, screenshots, etc etc. That mainly means experience in SQL and PHP, and ideally some more modern frameworks, too.

Thanks in advance to anyone considering and applying. This is a hobby, so feel free to be as liberated and honest as you like.

Thank you for the kind words posix - it genuinely made me tear up. This has not been and will never be easy for me, but it's with the best interests of the site in mind.

I hope to continue to help the community grow, but I really hope to share my ideas with everyone in the form of some completed parks before long.

Thanks to Liam and CC9 for your service to the website, all the time you voluntary gave away to make this site the best it can be so we can do our hobbies here. It will feel weird to have NE without Liam as an admin. 

Thanks Liam and CC9 for your commitment and hard work. I'm sure a lot of it goes kinda unseen but you should be sure that everything you did is appreciated.

Excited to see who will fill in these admittedly large shoes, but I'm sure the choice will be a good one!

Thank you all for your effort admins! Liam it's sad and (what's the negative form of) exciting to see you leave. You have done so much for NE over the years and I hope that someone will be able to fill your shoes. CC9 also thanks for you contributions! You've never been the most visible admin (to me at least) but I'm glad your work doesn't get unnoticed by everyone her.

I am copying my message from discord:

I just want to say thanks to Liam and CC9 for their service on the admin team. It's a job that (sadly) often goes underappreciated, and oftentimes we can all be a bit ungrateful. Let's take this opportunity to reflect on what they have done to help our community, especially Liam, being an admin since I was seven years old and on the site since before I was born. I think that's a reflection of how longstanding NE is as a community, and I think that is really cool. I would like to think that there are people out there that won't find their way until years and years from now. There really is an overlap of multiple generations (or at least sub-generations) on this site, which is honestly rather unique on the internet today. NE has given more to me than I have given to it over these past 4 years, and for that I am grateful. Here's to more RCT!

Saving from discord,

Thanks @Liampie and @CC9 for all of your hard work.  It has been quite the journey,  especially for Liam.  Lots of ups and downs in the last 12? years,  and you've gone above and beyond for the community in that time,  steering through some turbulent waters as RCT as a viable hobby seemed to be fading...  all while achieving within the game at the highest levels.  Thanks to you two for your service and a special thanks to all the current and past admins for your leadership and sacrifice.

Liampie and CC9 - thank you for all your work. In my years away from NE I would check in once a year or so and somehow each time I'd be surprised it was still going. That's thanks to you guys and also Posix and Xtreme also. I really believe this place is a treasure and so thankful to you all for keeping it going.

Thanks Liam and CC9 for all the hard work you guys have put into the site over all the years. It will feel weird especially with not having Liam as an admin anymore, as long as I can remember he was an admin. Also good to hear that both of you, despite leaving the admin spot, will be sticking around in the community. Thanks again both!

Thank you so much to both of you for the contributions you've made.  Any volunteer effort like managing this kind of community relies on the quiet, dependable, and deliberate engines who can commit hours of their time to the un-sexy back end.  NE has been incredibly fortunate to have such reliable engines for as long as we have.  I can speak from personal experience in saying that the work you've done is immense and immensely valuable to this site and community continuing on even stronger in the 2020s than it did in the 2010s.

Thanks you, Liampie and CC9, for all the hours and hours of doing boring, tedious and very important work helping keep this site running, dealing with all the headaches, and for helping give me, a player with little technical skill or patience a chance to return to NE, share my stuff and even compete in contests. And I'm very happy to here you're both intending to stick around and build.

What a surprise, It's going to be weird not seeing you in the team… Your devotion to the community was admirable, and I think you guys contributed greatly to the peaceful atmosphere on NE this last years. I thought the admins team worked really well together. We're a bit like a flock of sheep that have lost one of our shepherd dogs (Posix is the shepherd in my mind, I don't know why)