Issues Regarding Escelation, IRE for short.

[Heroman3003]

Regarding the whole situation of "admins coming off as jerks by shutting down conversations". I'd like to point out a specific issue that I see happening often with those situations that I didn't really see in this thread. It's when an admin that wasn't part of the topic at all enters the conversation, and immedeately makes radical assumptions about what specific party is saying or what whole conversation is about, takes immedeate sides without bothering to look into it and goes "SHUT THIS WHOLE JOINT". This seems especially ridiculous when there already WAS an admin, who was participating in the discourse or observing it and they were perfectly fine with people going at it, even if in steamy manner. Mostly relates to some post-event discussions where admin that ran event is saying completely nothing about continued discussion or actively participates in it but then someone who wasn't even online for it comes in and shuts it down just because they happened to see it and "STOP CRITICIZING EVENTS". Often enough in those situations, its immedeate jump to completely radical assumption and immedeate attempt to 'stop' it that makes staff look, at least to me, completely disconnected from each other and the people in general.

And I know that its hard and annoying to look through 2 hours of fastposting, but immedeately trying to shut people up without ever bothering to get the context is even worse. It makes staff look like those security officers that slap suspicious behaviour charges on any group gathering above 3 people.

[Aces]

Regarding the whole situation of "admins coming off as jerks by shutting down conversations". I'd like to point out a specific issue that I see happening often with those situations that I didn't really see in this thread. It's when an admin that wasn't part of the topic at all enters the conversation, and immedeately makes radical assumptions about what specific party is saying or what whole conversation is about, takes immedeate sides without bothering to look into it and goes "SHUT THIS WHOLE JOINT". This seems especially ridiculous when there already WAS an admin, who was participating in the discourse or observing it and they were perfectly fine with people going at it, even if in steamy manner. Mostly relates to some post-event discussions where admin that ran event is saying completely nothing about continued discussion or actively participates in it but then someone who wasn't even online for it comes in and shuts it down just because they happened to see it and "STOP CRITICIZING EVENTS". Often enough in those situations, its immedeate jump to completely radical assumption and immedeate attempt to 'stop' it that makes staff look, at least to me, completely disconnected from each other and the people in general.

And I know that its hard and annoying to look through 2 hours of fastposting, but immedeately trying to shut people up without ever bothering to get the context is even worse. It makes staff look like those security officers that slap suspicious behaviour charges on any group gathering above 3 people.

So, I want to explain typically how this goes in the background. It usually goes like this.

1. Someone DMs us in a panic over people having an argument, or they @Admin
2. Someone, not necessarily the same person, gives us a summary of what is going on with varying degrees of accuracy.
3. Chaos continues, the conversation is clearly getting more volatile, and it's not possible to go back over 2 hours worth of logs because it would also require us to take up to 2 hours to go over it, while in the mean time offering no response. Furthermore, it's complete information overload with anywhere from 10 to 40 people talking simultaneously and shouting at each other as each of their points are ignored.
4. I can't speak for the other admins but I tend to dive in and go, "Fuck it, better they be mad at me than each other," and do everything I can to make myself the center of attention. I'm loud, I'm brash, and it usually works as intended. Suddenly I'm the center of focus and regardless of whether or not I have said something smart, I've also made it so all questions and answers are focused through me so people are now either getting answers or they have something to direct their shouting at.

I would rather a community where the admins respond poorly than a community where the admins don't respond. One of them shows that we give a shit and people are more likely to come seek us for help more often than not. The other teaches people not to bother with it because nothing will happen.

It would still be infinitely preferable for us to move certain heated topics over to the forum but that's always met with astonishing resistance by the previously mentioned lazy assholes who are more interested in having an argument than the content therein.

[Aces]

Addendum: I do not mean to imply that in a community where "admins don't respond" necessarily means the admins aren't actually responding, but appearances and intentions are often wildly different.

[Slingblade]

It's when an admin that wasn't part of the topic at all enters the conversation, and immedeately makes radical assumptions about what specific party is saying or what whole conversation is about, takes immedeate sides without bothering to look into it and goes "SHUT THIS WHOLE JOINT". This seems especially ridiculous when there already WAS an admin, who was participating in the discourse or observing it and they were perfectly fine with people going at it, even if in steamy manner.

In this vein you have to understand that Admins also administrate one another. There are times that I have stepped out of line in a conversation and someone corrects it and vice-versa with other members of staff. Simply because a staff member is involved in a conversation that is getting out of hand doesnt entirely mean that its kosher. This is why its a team, and not just Ace running the entire show himself or any of the other headmins in that capacity. Do understand that. Couple this with the fact that someone just @admin's or DMs an admin of "HEY SOMETHING NOT GOOD IS GOING DOWN" it can be generally seen that if an conversation is causing people to speak up about poor behavior or shitflinging that it needs to stop.

This is EXACTLY why spacelobby is a terrible platform to have meaningful critique. An admin might be watching, but if something is going a mile a minute about various opinions it can be hard to keep track. There have been times that I've seen someone directly attack another player in the lobby and didnt notice it until someone pointed it out WHILE I was in the same conversation.

[Aces]

Oh I love that, too. It's the best part of being an admin! When I shout down and eventually ban a person being a shithead only to be told after banning them that somebody else started it by breaking rules and "WHY AREN'T THEY BANNED?!?! BIAS!!!" Oh the fucking joy of it! </sarcasm>

That happens alarmingly often when fights break out on Discord. I don't get to see who started it, and usually therefore don't punish who started it. I usually punish the person most often who refuses to stop. While I do think it's a good thing to sooner punish the person who won't drop it rather than the person who set it off, sometimes the person who set if off was flagrantly being a cunt and needs to be punished anyway. Instead, because I can't track the conversation easily, it's very common to completely miss what started it.

[DeviliciousTreat]

I'm going to ruffle some feathers with what I'm about to say here, and I make no apology for it.

So one thing I am actually able to do with forums is actually reply point by point. I can't do that on Discord. The reasons people don't use the forum is sheer laziness and nothing more. Take that as an insult if you want. The difference between an uncalled for insult and a legitimate criticism is that one of these attempts to offer a solution and the other does not. I will not withhold criticism because of hurt feelings, and I suggest the people who are not okay with that either suck it up or move on to another community where everyone gets hugs and headpats and nothing bad ever happens because drama is banned. When that community burns to the ground, as such communities always do, we'll still be here. It may not be perfect, but there is progress. Drama is inevitable. Arguments will escalate. What matters is the merit of the argument. If you're all name calling merely for the sake of name calling that's when I step in and tell you to knock it the fuck off or ding dong bannu. When you're criticizing something and trying to offer a solution, that's something I will not only allow, I will encourage, even if it means you all have to get a little sharp with each other. I try to lead by example. I'm calling people lazy by insisting that they use Discord, because I stand by my point. They are lazy. I will not redact that statement just because it hurts feelings. It needs to be said. The arguments against using the forum boil down to "I don't wanna" and nothing more, and people wonder why things don't get fixed.

But reading and replying a forum post is a lot more time consuming up front than a lot of people care enough to get into. To them I say, tough shit. It's the reason why none of our applications are on the Discord. People keep asking, and I keep saying no, because it's an awful idea for the very reasons why this thread was forced to exist. To the people who still insist otherwise, I frankly don't give a shit. You can't be bothered to take the time and effort, I won't take the time and effort to listen to you.

I make no promise that arguments will not escalate, and I feel that now you are complaining merely for the sake of complaining. That said, I am also happy you are complaining across a medium through which I can actually formulate a reply to, and in doing so, perhaps we will come to an understanding. However, if you leave this thinking that the staff are saying things to insult the community, you're sorely missing the point. It's equally insulting to us that we can't rebuke someone else's opinion without them considering it an insult. There is a certain point where people are too sensitive, and the only thing left to do is to tell them to grow up. There is no other way for me to say that in any more of a respectable way that I can think of. If there were, I would prefer to use it, because the less I insult people, deliberately or not, the more keen they are to listen. Insulting people is unavoidable at times. Calling someone a dumbass? That's probably needlessly insulting. Telling somebody "you're wrong" and then pointing to evidence that it's wrong, which they then summarily ignore or miss? Well honestly what are we even supposed to do at this point? The slow rise in aggressiveness of tone is a result of this. The goal is never to be insulting, but sometimes insult is taken because other avenues have failed or do not exist.

As I had previously mentioned, I was something similar to an admin in a part of the internet much, much different from this one. We didn’t call ourselves admins, and I wasn’t at the top of the community’s chain of command (we were, on the whole, much, much larger than this one, though the part of it I managed was smaller), but I had all the powers and responsibilities you might expect of an admin, and then some. I don’t think it’s proper of me to comment on my performance as an admin, but I like to think that I held myself to a much, much higher standard than what’s been put on display in this rant.

The reason we have admins in the first place is because, in any community, there are going to be issues that can’t be solved without putting someone in a leadership role over the regular members and giving them elevated powers. In turn, it is expected that they (the leadership) do not abuse their powers and take the problems brought to them by the regular members (within reason) as their responsibility. That’s why it infuriates me that you came into this thread about admin issues by taking all those responsibilities and pushing them onto everyone else but you, and this isn’t even the only time I’ve seen the admins pull this kind of thing! When I was admin, I took criticism to heart, even if I didn’t initially feel I was deserving of it. I would sit down, discuss problems I’ve been having with both other admins and with the regular member in a polite, civil manner, take notes, and see what I could realistically do about it. I did that because I gave a shit, I did it because I knew who I was running things for, and when you come at us with ‘well basically, I think you’re just whining for no good reason but thanks for whining in the place I wanted you to, lol’ it makes me think that neither of these things are true of you. Ask yourself this: why are you doing this in the first place? I want to hear your answer.

The frustrating thing is that you seem to almost know what you should be doing, but you fail to put it into practice yourself. Sure, it sucks that people aren’t using the forum for what it’s good for. Should more people be using the forum? Absolutely. Are they lazy for not doing so? Maybe. A mantra of mine when it comes to being an admin is if I see a problem, I either deal with it or learn to live with it, and by refusing to do either of the two, I believe that the response to this problem is both lazy and insulting. It’s pushing the responsibility onto other people to give yourself an out when you give others shit for complaining and not offering solutions while doing so yourself, or do you genuinely believe that if you call people lazy enough that they might actually starting using this forum? I hate it to break it to you, but that’s not going to happen, and I detest that this thread has been turned into an admin soapbox to complain about the people from whom they supposedly they do what they’re doing, while the original topic has been declared basically invalid by an admin from the very get-go, just like in the incident that spawned this. If you don’t see this as a problem, then frankly, I don’t know what to tell you, other than that I have little to no confidence in you taking any sort of criticism after this, a point that I’ll get back to in just a moment.

Let’s get back to the original topic of this thread, however, the escalation of tension. You seem to believe that this is primarily about hurt feelings. Let me just state, to be perfectly clear, that this isn’t, and has never been about hurt feeling, this is about admins like you unnecessarily aggravating otherwise civil discussions and thus making it feel as if not only do the staff not interested in the suggestions that the community has to offer them, but that those suggestions are unwelcome in the first place, unless they’re already in line with what the staff wants. I felt this, I know that others felt this during the discussion that prompted this thread, and though you claim to want to support such discussions, your involvement in that discussion had very much the opposite effect. I don’t know how telling people to go no further with a discussion because you’re tired of it yourself was supposed to go down in your head, but in mine it all went down about as well as could have been expected, which is to say that everyone immediately felt alienated and as if they’re not supposed to be part of the process in the first place. I have no doubt that you didn’t intend to drive a wedge between the admins and the regular members with that, just like how you’re not intending to do so with this post, but in the end, that’s exactly what you’re doing, and in the end, it makes me feel like I’m just here to nod and agree with you and not bring up things that I’m not supposed to. I could have told you that that kind of response was not going to be effective in achieving whatever it is that you were trying to do there, even though you not only couldn’t, but also later decided that you were justified in doing so despite how decidedly ineffective it was, and that’s the real problem here. Accept that it wasn’t the right response for the situation, see how you could do better next time, and move on. Don’t attempt to vindicate yourself by claiming that it was necessary when it so obviously wasn’t.

The trouble is that this isn’t the first time that this happened on this server. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a politely-presented opinion get smacked down by an admin with the kind of force that made it seem like they’re personally offended by you even having an opinion that’s different from their own. Even in cases when other admins have stepped in and tried to calm tensions, those admins have refused to so much as admit that they could have handled it better, choosing instead to toss that responsibility into somebody else’s hands, much like what’s going on now. There was a discussion on random events (i.e. grubs, spiders) where some people were questioning their value on this server. A key point that came up was that such random events lead to RP opportunities, which I somewhat agree with, but I responded that they were more generally disruptive than constructive, to which Scree basically told me that if I didn’t like the occasional disruption, then I shouldn’t be playing on the server. Not only is that explicitly not what I said, but it basically came off as a ‘love it or leave it’ kind of statement, that if I didn’t agree with Scree, who very much held the opposite opinion, that I wasn’t welcome to the discussion table. During that particular discussion that spawned this, Scree behaved much the same way, even complaining that people were drowning out one person who was admittedly contributing well to the discussion with their complaints over the admins’ behaviour. Of course people did that, Scree, no one felt like they were even being considered if they didn’t agree with you, so what’s the point of engaging in that discussion? Later, Scree suggested that the problem was that they were swearing too much, when in reality the problem was their dismissive attitude towards everyone else. People can handle someone who is being dismissive of them when they’re just the same as you, but when it’s someone who genuinely has more say in the matter than you, it immediately feels like they’ve already written the epitaph for this discussion, and that any input you provide will not ever be heard. I was keenly aware of this as admin, and I feel like some of the admins here aren’t. You have to put in some effort to not make it seem like staff are on an ivory tower as compared to everyone else, and it seems like some members of staff here aren’t just unwilling to put in that effort, but they’re suggesting that it’s all everyone else’s fault. This kind of behaviour takes the perceived distance between admins and regular members and starts to make it very real.

As for it being inevitable… sure, some miscommunication between people will always happen, but when there are admins who seem to have few, if any problems communicating with regular members while you often rile people up unnecessarily, then perhaps the logical thing to do is to ask yourself what is it that you’re doing that they’re not, or what it is they’re doing that you’re not, that’s leading to such different experiences? I have not seen this from any other admins, and I have seen both Dragor and Soft step in to point out when other admins are aggravating tensions, and if they can do it, then why not you? My point is that if there are admins for whom this isn’t a problem, then maybe it’s not as inevitable as you seem to think it is. Maybe there is a problem here and you’re just refusing to take responsibility and tossing it on all the ‘easily offended’ people you’ve pointlessly aggravated rather than taking responsibility and taking the steps necessary to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, or at the very least to reduce the chances of it happening again. Currently it seems like you’re refusing to accept that whatever the issue is, that it’s somehow a result of your behaviour, and if you keep believing that, then you’ll never, never be able to move past this. The first step of taking responsibility is admitting that there’s a problem with the way things are handled, the second is resolving to fix them. Talk to some of the admins I mentioned in this paragraph, maybe they can give you pointers on how not to aggravate things beyond what is necessary, I’m sure that you can take some things away from them and get better at this kind of thing, even if it’s not an immediate thing, I just want to see some responsibility being taken here.

I really like this community, I really do, but failings like these are why I ended up leaving the previous one I was part of, even if the situation was much, much worse there than it is here (I was in constant conflict with the leadership there because they kept pushing through unpopular and illogical decisions and then refusing to be held accountable for the results of those decisions, not saying that that’s the case here, but there are seeds of that here). I originally didn’t want to write this, because I wasn’t really interested in going back to doing the same things here that I did there as I’m naturally rather conflict averse, but I know that I’ll be kicking myself later if I didn’t get this in before this thread dies because none of the other regular members are going to go on the forum to join in, of course. I’m still probably going to feel like shit about this afterwards, but this is all necessary to say, I feel.

[Aces]

I'm going to ruffle some feathers with what I'm about to say here, and I make no apology for it.
As I had previously mentioned, I was something similar to an admin in a part of the internet much, much different from this one. We didn’t call ourselves admins, and I wasn’t at the top of the community’s chain of command (we were, on the whole, much, much larger than this one, though the part of it I managed was smaller), but I had all the powers and responsibilities you might expect of an admin, and then some. I don’t think it’s proper of me to comment on my performance as an admin, but I like to think that I held myself to a much, much higher standard than what’s been put on display in this rant.

There is little more infuriating than being told how to do your job by someone else, especially when that someone admits they aren't qualified to be doing so.

The reason we have admins in the first place is because, in any community, there are going to be issues that can’t be solved without putting someone in a leadership role over the regular members and giving them elevated powers. In turn, it is expected that they (the leadership) do not abuse their powers and take the problems brought to them by the regular members (within reason) as their responsibility. That’s why it infuriates me that you came into this thread about admin issues by taking all those responsibilities and pushing them onto everyone else but you, and this isn’t even the only time I’ve seen the admins pull this kind of thing! When I was admin, I took criticism to heart, even if I didn’t initially feel I was deserving of it. I would sit down, discuss problems I’ve been having with both other admins and with the regular member in a polite, civil manner, take notes, and see what I could realistically do about it. I did that because I gave a shit, I did it because I knew who I was running things for, and when you come at us with ‘well basically, I think you’re just whining for no good reason but thanks for whining in the place I wanted you to, lol’ it makes me think that neither of these things are true of you. Ask yourself this: why are you doing this in the first place? I want to hear your answer.

I'm having my rant in the first place because people like you have the audacity to lament about how we aren't putting in a sincere effort to do our jobs and hear criticism when we are. This community would not have lasted for six years otherwise. I'm inclined to go, "Sorry, but who the hell are you?" in response to this post, and I have little respect for your input on the matter.

Now, I could just as easily choose to bottle up these emotions, but you are all asking for my sincere input on this, so I'm giving it to you now, and the fact that some of it isn't nice is my criticism in return. Do not accuse me of failing to take criticism just because I have things to say in return. To say I have not accepted criticism flies in the face of my actions which have resulted, again, in my self-demotion because it was made apparent to me that I was not in tune with the current desires of the community, and that my actions were causing damage rather than help. I can accept criticism, but when that criticism is that the staff aren't allowed to also criticize bad behaviors we see in the community, I say again to that "tough shit."

The frustrating thing is that you seem to almost know what you should be doing, but you fail to put it into practice yourself. Sure, it sucks that people aren’t using the forum for what it’s good for. Should more people be using the forum? Absolutely. Are they lazy for not doing so? Maybe. A mantra of mine when it comes to being an admin is if I see a problem, I either deal with it or learn to live with it, and by refusing to do either of the two, I believe that the response to this problem is both lazy and insulting. It’s pushing the responsibility onto other people to give yourself an out when you give others shit for complaining and not offering solutions while doing so yourself, or do you genuinely believe that if you call people lazy enough that they might actually starting using this forum? I hate it to break it to you, but that’s not going to happen, and I detest that this thread has been turned into an admin soapbox to complain about the people from whom they supposedly they do what they’re doing, while the original topic has been declared basically invalid by an admin from the very get-go, just like in the incident that spawned this. If you don’t see this as a problem, then frankly, I don’t know what to tell you, other than that I have little to no confidence in you taking any sort of criticism after this, a point that I’ll get back to in just a moment.

I genuinely believe people are too lazy to use the forum, and that a lot of problems that arise through the inane bickering that so frequently occurs on Space Lobby could be avoided if people would use the god damn forum. Not all of it, for sure, but I would have an easier time moderating it.

This community is sincerely getting to a point where I want to pull the plug on it due to the sheer amount of disgusting disrespect many of you have for each other. I was incredibly close to doing a purge of members for the sake of quality control and ejecting toxic elements, because at the end of the day, I do not have to and should not cater to the elements of our community who perpetuate that negativity. None of you are entitled to this server, and I am not required to sit here and take or observe abuse of other people. No, the community isn't perfect, but my brash opinion of "I don't give a fuck" about those particular community members is something that has benefited the long term health of our community. Why? Shitty players and shitty people will move on when their demands are not met. However, they will be replaced by good players. I learned this lesson early in the days of Vorestation, and I learned it from a top admin of the largest ever Minecraft community at the time. I was going to college with him. He told me, and it's true to this day, that not all players are valuable, nor is their input. You may not want to hear it, but I will sooner take his advice than yours.

Furthermore, I want to clarify that when I refer to the toxic nature of the community that I wish to purge, I have a list of names in mind. Yours is not on them. Despite the fact that your criticism irritates me, understand that I recognize it to be a sincere effort to try improving something, and because of that fact, I respect it. This is the difference between what you present compared to the kind of bickering I am referring to becoming the norm. The act of complaining without proposing a solution is called whining.

Let’s get back to the original topic of this thread, however, the escalation of tension. You seem to believe that this is primarily about hurt feelings. Let me just state, to be perfectly clear, that this isn’t, and has never been about hurt feeling, this is about admins like you unnecessarily aggravating otherwise civil discussions and thus making it feel as if not only do the staff not interested in the suggestions that the community has to offer them, but that those suggestions are unwelcome in the first place, unless they’re already in line with what the staff wants. I felt this, I know that others felt this during the discussion that prompted this thread, and though you claim to want to support such discussions, your involvement in that discussion had very much the opposite effect. I don’t know how telling people to go no further with a discussion because you’re tired of it yourself was supposed to go down in your head, but in mine it all went down about as well as could have been expected, which is to say that everyone immediately felt alienated and as if they’re not supposed to be part of the process in the first place. I have no doubt that you didn’t intend to drive a wedge between the admins and the regular members with that, just like how you’re not intending to do so with this post, but in the end, that’s exactly what you’re doing, and in the end, it makes me feel like I’m just here to nod and agree with you and not bring up things that I’m not supposed to. I could have told you that that kind of response was not going to be effective in achieving whatever it is that you were trying to do there, even though you not only couldn’t, but also later decided that you were justified in doing so despite how decidedly ineffective it was, and that’s the real problem here. Accept that it wasn’t the right response for the situation, see how you could do better next time, and move on. Don’t attempt to vindicate yourself by claiming that it was necessary when it so obviously wasn’t.

Again we're back to what irritates me, because you imply we aren't already doing this. The thing is, admins are still people. Admins are allowed to have opinions about things just as well as the other players. Admins are still people who are prone to getting emotional. We try to discourage it same as we discourage it when players do it. We moderate and scold each other same as we do other players. I am allowed to have strongly worded responses in defense of myself and my team just as you are allowed to have strongly worded opinions about it as well. The difference is I'm not trying to tone police you right now because I consider the contents of your statements to be an "insult" to my integrity. Sure, I'm mad; I can't help being mad. I recognize that you aren't doing it to piss me off, though. You're doing it because you think you can resolve something by talking about it.

What you fail to understand is you're preaching to a choir who has been singing this song for ten years.

The trouble is that this isn’t the first time that this happened on this server. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a politely-presented opinion get smacked down by an admin with the kind of force that made it seem like they’re personally offended by you even having an opinion that’s different from their own. Even in cases when other admins have stepped in and tried to calm tensions, those admins have refused to so much as admit that they could have handled it better, choosing instead to toss that responsibility into somebody else’s hands, much like what’s going on now. There was a discussion on random events (i.e. grubs, spiders) where some people were questioning their value on this server. A key point that came up was that such random events lead to RP opportunities, which I somewhat agree with, but I responded that they were more generally disruptive than constructive, to which Scree basically told me that if I didn’t like the occasional disruption, then I shouldn’t be playing on the server. Not only is that explicitly not what I said, but it basically came off as a ‘love it or leave it’ kind of statement, that if I didn’t agree with Scree, who very much held the opposite opinion, that I wasn’t welcome to the discussion table. During that particular discussion that spawned this, Scree behaved much the same way, even complaining that people were drowning out one person who was admittedly contributing well to the discussion with their complaints over the admins’ behaviour. Of course people did that, Scree, no one felt like they were even being considered if they didn’t agree with you, so what’s the point of engaging in that discussion? Later, Scree suggested that the problem was that they were swearing too much, when in reality the problem was their dismissive attitude towards everyone else. People can handle someone who is being dismissive of them when they’re just the same as you, but when it’s someone who genuinely has more say in the matter than you, it immediately feels like they’ve already written the epitaph for this discussion, and that any input you provide will not ever be heard. I was keenly aware of this as admin, and I feel like some of the admins here aren’t. You have to put in some effort to not make it seem like staff are on an ivory tower as compared to everyone else, and it seems like some members of staff here aren’t just unwilling to put in that effort, but they’re suggesting that it’s all everyone else’s fault. This kind of behaviour takes the perceived distance between admins and regular members and starts to make it very real.

I will not speak for Scree. However, I will say that your claim that the admins never admit fault is verifiably wrong. Not just the ban appeals forum admit when we are wrong, but there have been numerous OOC announcements by me apologizing for when tempers get short. I assume you haven't been around to see them.

Literally just a couple of months ago I announced that I was stepping down for a self-suspension that I have referenced multiple times now. Once again, I am irritated that you fail to acknowledge that. It leads me to question where you were when this happened. If you missed this, I ask what right you have to comment on the current state of affairs when you give me zero credit for my actions so far. Once again, I see no reason to take any of your advice, as you don't seem to have any understanding of where I am coming from.

As for it being inevitable… sure, some miscommunication between people will always happen, but when there are admins who seem to have few, if any problems communicating with regular members while you often rile people up unnecessarily, then perhaps the logical thing to do is to ask yourself what is it that you’re doing that they’re not, or what it is they’re doing that you’re not, that’s leading to such different experiences? I have not seen this from any other admins, and I have seen both Dragor and Soft step in to point out when other admins are aggravating tensions, and if they can do it, then why not you? My point is that if there are admins for whom this isn’t a problem, then maybe it’s not as inevitable as you seem to think it is. Maybe there is a problem here and you’re just refusing to take responsibility and tossing it on all the ‘easily offended’ people you’ve pointlessly aggravated rather than taking responsibility and taking the steps necessary to make sure that it doesn’t happen again, or at the very least to reduce the chances of it happening again. Currently it seems like you’re refusing to accept that whatever the issue is, that it’s somehow a result of your behaviour, and if you keep believing that, then you’ll never, never be able to move past this. The first step of taking responsibility is admitting that there’s a problem with the way things are handled, the second is resolving to fix them. Talk to some of the admins I mentioned in this paragraph, maybe they can give you pointers on how not to aggravate things beyond what is necessary, I’m sure that you can take some things away from them and get better at this kind of thing, even if it’s not an immediate thing, I just want to see some responsibility being taken here.

So I often say "The act of complaining without offering a solution is called whining." You are clearly not here to whine, so that's good. However, the suggestions you've offered so far are things that are already being employed, leading me to think you are badly misinformed on what admins are trying to do to fix things. Another problem here is sample bias, which is when your opinions are based off data that only appears in certain circumstances leading to an erroneous picture of the situation. People only get mad at admins (and in fact everyone else) when they do something bad. People remember the negative more than they remember the positive. They also only notice when things go wrong. Ergo, you're not going to remember the negative, so you fail to see the positive, because why would you ever bring that up? The only people coming to this thread are probably going to be the ones who feel the same way as you, regardless of how much they have or have not actually played on the server. I have not bothered to look up how much you've played here because I am not wanting to make that relevant, but your complete ignorance of major events like my stepping down from staff leads me to believe you either have not been here long or you're not nearly as invested in the community as you claim that you are.

And before you get angry at me for the tone of my message or the stubbornness that I show to criticism, also understand that criticism is a two-way street. If you cannot take it, you should not be dealing with it. No, that doesn't mean you have to roll over and just accept whatever the hell I say. If I thought that were true, everything I just said would be hypocritical. You're allowed to defend your position, but then so am I. What I wish people would understand is that there is a difference between a tense debate and outright disrespect. At no point do I feel you have disrespected me. Yes, you've pissed me off, I've said that, but you've not disrespected me in doing so.

I really like this community, I really do, but failings like these are why I ended up leaving the previous one I was part of, even if the situation was much, much worse there than it is here (I was in constant conflict with the leadership there because they kept pushing through unpopular and illogical decisions and then refusing to be held accountable for the results of those decisions, not saying that that’s the case here, but there are seeds of that here). I originally didn’t want to write this, because I wasn’t really interested in going back to doing the same things here that I did there as I’m naturally rather conflict averse, but I know that I’ll be kicking myself later if I didn’t get this in before this thread dies because none of the other regular members are going to go on the forum to join in, of course. I’m still probably going to feel like shit about this afterwards, but this is all necessary to say, I feel.

In conclusion, I just want to say something in regard to this, and that it's I get it. I, personally, at the moment, don't think very highly of your opinion. I have made that obvious. Does that mean you shouldn't fight for it? Fuck no! Be a stubborn bastard. Maybe we are entrenched in our ways. Maybe we are making the very mistakes that I've watched kill communities in the past. We aren't going to know that until people bash it into our heads. You alone may not be enough to convince me, but if your sentiment is echoed by others, I end up being forced to listen. The only difference between now and the past is that I'm no longer in a position where I can force action quickly and without regard for the opinion of other staff. Whether or not that is a good thing is to be determined by everyone else, and the only metric I have of it is the server's player count. For the time being, I made a promise to be more involved, and I would not be here discussing it if I wasn't.

It may take time, I may have my head up my ass and not even know it, but I can't do anything too risky right now or I risk causing further damage. In spite of how much your sentiment might aggravate me, it is still important for me to hear. I can't help being aggravated. I can't help getting emotional. I would appreciate it if people remembered that the admins are human too so they aren't so surprised when we respond angrily from time to time and act like we're completely unjustified in doing so. If someone is being disrespectful, there's often a good reason for it. I am not saying that justifies it per-say, but we've shown a great deal of patience for this community, and only recently is that patience running very thin. The question right now is what we're supposed to do about it. I do not intend to shift blame, but if I felt that the blame on the admins was as serious as you imply, I'd have fired those admins by now, and have taken such drastic action already in the past. Perhaps I just don't see it yet.

[Aces]

Actually, this prompted me to talk to my admins about a list of people I wanted to purge and those nasty players have either already left (good riddance) or have sincerely improved their behavior.

So that isn't happening now, because a "purge" of any sort feels dangerous. I brought it up, and after discussing it, decided "yeah it probably isn't a good idea." So I am voiding those statements.

I leave my post unedited for context anyway though. It's still relevant to express my annoyance with the server right now. That annoyance might be rapidly fading, however.

[Heroman3003]

It seems like there is a lot of assumption that every criticizm that is directed to admin team as a whole is directed at every admin personally at same time rather than overall actions of them as a group, presented by actions of specific people at specific moments. This is the pain of blanket statements about any group. You are inevitably also covering people who did absolutely nothing wrong, and those people go and defend themselves, clearly showing themselves to be blameless and in the eyes of everyone except person starting it the accusations are cleared from group as a whole. I feel like this is very close to what is happening in this thread, Ace. You are taking blanket statements as personal ones, and try to negate them entirely based on your own personal experience, forgetting that its not just you personally who is being put into question. Because one person being clear of what blanket statements accuses group of doesn't automatically clear everyone in the group of it. When while you, I genuinely believe, are clear of vast majority of negative points made in thread.

There are staff who admit their fault and are even willing to be community's punching bags when something they do is wrong, sometimes to stupidly self-harmful extent, IMO. And there are those who will just go silent at some point without ever actively acknowledging it. There are situations where staff will take criticizm politely, take it with rudeness and then there are situations where discussion is moved it somewhere where it won't be seen by most or silenced entirely. There are staff who are active both ingame and on the server, who will respond to almost every ahelp of any variety, and there are staff who aren't around much, or will only ever respond to open-and-shut severe rulebreaks and pretty much ignore most other, more petty situations or requests.

This also deals into a larger problem with community as a whole: People in general are afraid of going against the admins. I know that you are trying to build an environment where people can go up to the admin and tell them everything they feel. Or go to another admin when they feel unfairly judged. But, you can't just make people drop the fear that is nearly inheirent since its so common in online communities. Fear of admins being untouchable and being punished for even daring to go against them. It doesn't help that there is history of people getting publically humiliated with admin at helm for things like just presenting their opinions, even when those opinions are reasonable. So people remain afraid of speaking up. Because they fear that speaking up will not only change nothing, but will also paint a large target on their forehead. I've seen multiple times where people felt like they were wronged and ranted in my DMs, and when I suggested to go to different admin/higher up admin, they just said that its pointless and that they feel like if they try, it will make the situation even worse. Sometimes I managed to convince them to go and do it anyway, and every time I did, it came out just fine. But there are also situations where I couldn't. And they remained like that. And now if we look at the bigger picture. There are probably many more situations where person who felt wronged didn't have anyone to convince them to still go and resolve situation properly or just bottled it up. This issue is only further aggravated by severe disparity of ways admins react to different things. Which can result one person getting bad end of admin stick, and then remaining untrustworthy of entire staff team, assuming all of them will react same way. Over my time here I pretty much have mentally separated different admins to whom I can come with different issues cropping up when I want to guarantee that I will be taken seriously and heard out properly before any judgements are made.

I really respect your decision to step down, I really do. As well as I really do appreciate the intent behind the community as a whole that you are trying to build, AND your rhetoric in picking staff members even. And I do understand that all staff are still people, I don't expect you guys to be clones of each other acting all the same. But its severeness of disparity in reactions thats causing the issues. When one admin does bad thing, average internet person will assume that is will of the team as a whole, not will of that one person. And yes, you guys do grill each other out when one of you screws up. But problem here is. When player is being grilled by staff, rightfully or unrightfully, it can sometiems happen in public chatrooms, where everyone can see it. When staffmembers grill each other, it happens behind closed doors, where nobody knows whats happening. So an average observer will see an unfair judgement followed by awkward silence most of time. And make their own conclusions, which won't often be the most positive.

That plays into different staff being seen differently too. Some will offer apologies, will turn their DMs into cesspool and will take even severe actions, while others just stay quiet. But people who just get grilling behind closed doors won't be seen as having gotten any form of retribution. Because a player has no way of knowing if that actually happen and if something like that will just happen again soon. All they have is silence. And so, builds an image of an 'untouchable' admin, whom you can't go against even when you are in the right. Because despite being in the right, they will put you down and in your own eyes, get no reprecussions.

I know that this is getting pretty off-topic at this point, but I believe that it's the worry, anxiety and fear people have about approaching admins for anything that's not critical that results in so many bad situations. When argument goes uncivil, rather than call an admin to resolve situation, they start being uncivil back. When event ruins their own enjoyment of the round, they are expecting personal complaints to be ignored, so they just begin ranting in chatrooms. And after they start acting on their own rather than requesting admin help, they end up turning from "side that got hit" to "one of two equally bad sides". Even if it is just them still trying to defend their own ground.

I am far from qualified on giving good solution. Good specific solution at least. But I do think that overall, improvement this community needs the most for its staff-player line of communication is working better on making admins look less untouchable. And making approaching staff about issues you have with other staff seem less like just throwing yourself to the wolves. Because regardless of all, staff is a team as a whole meant to represent the server, as you put it yourself at some point. So when some are being a negative influence on staff's image in the community, its not just those some that will be seen as negative, but staff as a whole. So while I do not expect everyone to just stop being a person and start being a staffbot. I do think that people who are staff learning to not be as negatively emotional about things would go a long way. After all, it may just be that some personalities just make bad staff members to represent the team. Not bad people, not in any way. Just bad choice for doing that one thing.

I do thank staff for volunteer work they do and I know its a fucking pain to deal with people sometimes. I just feel like there is little work being done to make staff as a whole feel more approachable as staff. Only specific people and only for specific issues.

P.S. This was less of a reply and more of a tangent about general feelings about way staff acts on this server. Filled with personal bias and anecdotal evidence and totally dismissable. But I seriously doubt that I am alone in thinking at least some of those things.

[Aces]

I'm going to leave a lot of people unsatisfied and drop out of this discussion, sorry. I won't elaborate why. I will try to come back and review this later assuming any of it is still relevant to me participating in it.

You guys continue, though.