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Major Discord Policy Changes


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#31 Matthew

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 05:29 PM

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been touched upon by others. Everyone raised good points throughout this discussion and Mitsu hit the nail on the head IMO.

 

I would like to say, though, that on a higher level: politics, social issues, etc, are all important things in the lives of many -- as a result, so is discussing such things. To this end, I think doing a blanket ban on the discussion of such topics may have come from good intentions, but could also be a misstep. I'll be the first to admit that I often saw some pretty mean-spirited things being posted in #CurrentEvents and I can definitely see why some people would be bothered by such content. However, I've also had really great discussions with so many users and those interactions are what made (and make) PureZC such a special community to me, as Klop pointed out!

 

To this end, I would propose perhaps reigning in some of the content in CurrentEvents, be it by being stricter with what's acceptable or by dealing with members who initiate mean-spirited behavior more judiciously. However, I think keeping the channel around in some form would be good! I get that this is hard; Orithan is right in saying that political discussion can be tricky and has been tricky. Maybe this is idealistic, but improving the current environment rather than discarding it could just work, with some, well... work.


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#32 Bagel Meister

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 05:33 PM

I'm gonna have to agree with Matthew. #CurrentEvents has had some questionable things posted in it, but it's also had some serious discussions. I'd like to see it stay in some form.


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#33 Avaro

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 05:50 PM

 

Whenever controversial stuff like this comes up that is potentially upsetting for members, I feel the need to remain professional. To present a united front. Backlash does happen, and if we were to cave every time it happened, nothing would ever get done. To a certain extent, the job of the staff is to decide on policy, and then execute it. For example, nobody likes to be warned over rule infractions. With few exceptions, nobody believes what they did was wrong, and will fight and protest and pitch a fit rather than accept a couple numbers on the internet or a few days away. So I do think it's important that the staff be willing to execute actions that are unpopular, and not to cave to pressure.

 

With that said, I'm a person, too, and I'd like to take a less professional approach here. I'll start by saying that I personally find backlash on virtually anything to be incredibly upsetting. It's not like I'm not listening, or that I don't care. I care a lot about people's feelings and opinions. I should also make it clear that, as is often the case, I feel like I'm having to be the sole public face and target of hate for something that is not solely my doing. It's true that I had a big part in shaping this policy, but I'd ask you all to remember that at the end of the day, I'm one person. I am not someone who just goes "This is what I want, so I'm doing it," when it comes to the community. I am always listening to different perspectives, both from the staff team, and everyone else. The vast majority of decisions are things that are discussed among the staff until we reach a consensus. In some cases, I don't even like decisions we've made, but I execute them anyway because sometimes it seems like I'm the only one willing to. So it often gets to me when people hate me because I happen to be the only one posting.

 

Now, I can see that massive amount of people who are against the policy. Let me see here. Shane. Wait, didn't he like my post on the policy? Weird. Hmmm ... Dimi. Didn't he like my post, too? Yoshi liked the post, too. And Avaro. Wait, didn't one of these people express to Russ just the other night how grateful he was for the changes? Didn't one of them tell me he thought I was the best admin in PureZC's history? (Some of these people have since undone their likes, but my notifications still show a record of them.) Why is it that all these people who at first seemed totally on-board with this policy are the very ones protesting it? This is not a case of one person liking the policy, then thinking a bit and going "whoops." So what the hell happened here?

 

I'm gonna reply to your post as I'm reading through it. First of all, everyone's on the same page of wanting a respectful environment. The removal of the #CurrentEvents channel is a side-matter. I don't have a strong opinion on wether or not we need to discuss sensitive things on PZC. What gets to me is the narrative that PZC is somehow NOT inclusive and that the CurrentEvents channel is the problem. I thought you guys haven't been reading any of the channels. It may or may not be a little bit problematic at the moment, but that's because moderation hasn't happened. In my view, this community would be able to handle a #Serious channel, as long as at least SOME moderation happens.

 

Another thing you mentioned here now, I feel bad for. I get your frustration with being the bearer of bad news. People (like stupid me), start getting bad ideas of you. Maybe you need a staff account that all of you can post announcements with or something, lol.

 

 

 

This idea that we're "excluding anyone who isn't LGBT" is so utterly absurd I don't know where to begin.

 

We got this idea because the announcement post here heavily focuses on LGBTQ inclusiveness, as if to specifically cater to certain people I won't mention. Those people have been gate keeping LGBT members. I admit this is going into behind the scenes and conspiracy theory territory, but I think those very same people must've been the ones who speak so highly of this policy change. The one's you mentioned who left PZC because they didn't feel included. I think there is so much wrong with this. If they legitimately feel that way, why is it that they don't talk about it? Why do they sit in the back and trashtalk PZC? They have a completely wrong impression of the people who frequent the discord.

 

 

 

I want everyone to feel welcome, even those who some consider "problematic." I'm going to name some people here, because everyone will know who I'm talking about anyway, and dodging around it is just silly. Perhaps I'll be saying too much, so I apologize to these people in advance. Chris Miller frequently posts stuff in Current Events that many would find offensive. I personally am not bothered by most of it, but some people are. Recently, Tim posted something in there that was deemed pretty inappropriate. We had people on the staff advocating for immediate perma-bans for both of them. I personally said, "absolutely not." I feel we need to go through a proper escalation and warning process for all members. So we issued a warning and a 3-day ban for Tim. This was apparently the worst thing ever, because it was clearly a joke, and we've overlooked worse stuff than that before. I don't think either of these people are bad people. Heck, I try to see the best in everyone, and there's almost no one I would truly consider a "bad person." But the things they're saying are problematic, and we had no clear policy against them. Taking action against that was received extremely poorly, with a decent amount of backlash.

 

I have to say, this is good to hear. This is exactly what is needed. The uproar regarding the Tim ban due to was understandable I guess, because this policy wasn't put in place yet and people were confused by the staff's inconsistency. This new policy is the right direction to take. We need some good, fair and human moderation. I'm sure it's possible :)

 

 

 

Now, we look to the other side. We have a ton of members who hate the Discord server as it is now. We have members and staff who have left, some out of a loathing for the state of the server, others out of sheer exhaustion of trying to moderate it. I'm so exhausted with the place I barely post in there. The same holds true of our other two admins. There is a problem here. These policy changes are an attempt to resolve those problems. And frankly, I think they would work, if people would calm down long enough to just give them a chance.

 

I have to repeat, why don't those tons of members talk about it? Enforcing policies like a robot isn't the way to go about it. People take this the wrong way. I'm sorry if I'm being disrespectful here, but it was already agreed upon anyway that the staff seems to be a little disconnected from it's community. I kinda don't think you should ignore backlash, but rather try understand it. If the whole community starts to riot, would you just keep calling them sheeps? This is not your community, it's EVERYONE's community.

 

 

 

At this very moment, people are gleefully dumping all kinds of inappropriate shit in Current Events. Yeah, definitely some productive debate going on in there. Is this really what you guys are defending? What good has really come out of that place? I'd really like to know, because I've seen nothing but problems.

 

No, I don't support that. I think people have just been shitposting out of spite against staff right now. (And I'm not gonna lie, there are a few bad apples in the discord, but they would be easy to weed out)

 

 

 

I'll also say that, as someone who hates drama and controversy and hates being the center of attention, there are times when I've considered leaving the community myself. But the fact is, I think the entire place would fall apart without me. I'm not saying this to be egocentric or to overstate my own importance ... but I put a lot of work into managing things that other people don't seem willing to. And it's because I genuinely care about this community. I care about all of you. I'm doing it for you. And stuff like this ... it just tears me up so much that I don't know what to do. I'm supposed to be working today, making money that I need to support myself and my future, and instead I'm occupied with this, and so bent out of shape over it that it's all I'll be thinking about for the entire day.

 

Everything's been rough. I don't judge you, or anyone on staff for the missteps they've done. I think this drama was all a result of miscommunication and it sucks it happened. I myself haven't been helping things at all... Here's hoping everything will turn out great :)


Edited by Avaro, 12 March 2020 - 06:22 PM.

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#34 Mani Kanina

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 06:17 PM

I think I have said everything on the topic I need to say, so I'll only briefly reply once quoted, if need be.

 

If someone considers the other individual lesser by extent of who they are and they are fine with marginalizing them, then seeing eye to eye is impossible. Whether or not the group of user have been asked to debate their points is irrelevant, it should be accepted at face value that being rude or making fun of marginalized groups is not acceptable, that's what these rules strive for.

These are not the types of situations I'm advocating for talking things out. I agree with you that, as you said, being rude or making fun of marginalized groups isn't acceptable. I'm not against that nor the idea that the rules strive for, simply the execution of it.
 
Conversation IS important because it prevents situations like these where there seems to be a large disconnect in how people perceive the community. What has complaining about it privately solved in all the years that people have felt put-off by the site? For you to call it "irrelevant" is a bit worrying to me.
 
Hateful people don't have a place in the community, and I have no desire for them to. That being said, for the same staff who advocated for talking things out among people who had issues with each other, who said they wouldn't take action unless there was a "clear" aggressor; to now take this stance is rather jarring.
 
Things such as this are where a disconnect becomes apparent, and that is where I advocate for civil, adult discussions. I think if discussions actually happened, people would find the people they have issues with actually agree with the stated goals of this more than they probably thought. Is that not a worthwhile development? Or are we simply supposed to dismiss all discussion that doesn't perfectly align with our own views? I fear for the future of this community if so.

 

Oh I see, so it's more about the disparity between how these type of situations have been meant to be resolved before, and how this seems like a big paradigm shift?

I don't want to say your concerns are unwarranted, from that perspective it's quite different. I view this more as an extensions of existing flaming rules personally. Since it might not have been obvious to some before this point that deep insults in regards to who someone is would be classified as such. I know from back in the IIRC days that "talking things out" was the main mantra for chat that was often provided and staff was very hands off, I never really liked the approach myself, but it is true it was like that.

To me, these new rules speak intent more so than action, and it might be a big shift going to a more moderated chat, but I'm also not sure that will be the case. As mentioned in the original post, the discord server does not have enough moderation in the first place so if anything it would be a gradual shift rather than one happening over night.


In regards to the irrelevant comment, it's meant more at active disruptive people who unabashedly want hurt others or don't care if their content hurt others, which I don't think is a particularly large of a group of people. If someone's only stake in the matter is that they want to hate on others then it's not worth consideration in my book.
 
 

I agree, you do need to look past your own perspective. So why is the staff showing a blatant unwillingness in doing so? That was a big part of my problem to begin with, after all.

Do they? Are they blatantly unwilling to listen to others? It's true this change was not put up to the general userbase for discussion before it was launched. But unless you're proclaiming that Aevin is actively lying then this is the build up from years of feedback from a large variety of users. I think it's unfair to discredit that as just staff. Of course, what people are saying in this thread also matters, but I don't think one should be so fast to discredit that people have voiced concerns over a long time.
 
 

I'd wager that your assumption that Pure has sat somewhere in the middle is correct. Is this not a good thing? That seems, to me at least, like a reasonably balanced community where other places back then would have been much more hostile. Again as I've said, I'm not denying that problematic behavior has happened or does happen; but for anyone to act like PureZC has EVER fostered or protected problematic views is blatantly wrong. That is not a reality that exists.

I don't know anyone who has argued the case that PZC has been that bad, so is not really relevant.

Either way, the new rules do actually line up with Pure being rather in the middle politically, since in the more recent years it has gotten more and more politically acceptable that trans people and other marginalized groups should be respected for whom they are.
 
 

I'm not acting like that and I'll gladly explain my grievances. If you would, allow me to turn the attention towards the things I found notable in Aevin's response.

I don't feel like your reply to Aevin is really relevant to me, but I do disagree with your conclusion. In an open space with people across all walks of life are included, it's very much easier for people of minority to be ganged up upon, especially if everything is to be sorted out by debate. It's a nice idealistic stance to take, and I think for minor grievances it works out fine (something I feel the new rules don't really change?). It can however, and have a tendency to do so, lead to people acting in bad faith. You already agreed that hate speech shouldn't be allowed, but even minor instanced of those are actually hard to resolved for the offended. It doesn't really matter if the the one spouting hate speech is doing so in bad faith or not, cause often other will chime in that they don't see the problem with it, which turns into the consensus into it not being a problem. Which suddenly turns the offended party into the one causing issues, cause they are questioning the consensus or the established social norms.

This type of structure is historically very bad about being inclusive to societal outliers, regardless of what the social norms of the place is.
 


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#35 Orithan

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 06:25 PM

I'm gonna address something before I continue...

 

We got this idea because the announcement post here heavily focuses on LGBTQ inclusiveness, as if to specifically cater to certain people I won't mention. Those people have been gate keeping LGBT members. I admit this is going into behind the scenes and conspiracy theory territory, but I think those very same people must've been the ones who speak so highly of this policy change. The one's you mentioned who left PZC because they didn't feel included. I think there is so much wrong with this. If they legitimately feel that way, why is it that they don't talk about it? Why do they sit in the back and trashtalk PZC? They have a completely wrong impression of the people who frequent the discord.

 

~Snip~

 

I have to repeat, why don't those tons of members talk about it? Enforcing policies like a robot isn't the way to go about it. People take this the wrong way. I'm sorry if I'm being disrespectful here, but it was already agreed upon anyway that the staff seems to be a little disconnected from it's community. I kinda don't think you should ignore backlash, but rather try understand it. If the whole community starts to riot, would you just keep calling them sheeps? This is not your community, it's EVERYONE's community.

I would be highly surprised if these people didn't talk about it before. Simply because you, personally, haven't seen them talking about it doesn't necessarily mean they haven't talked about it - they may have talked about it in private or in a channel you had no access to.

People generally don't like airing concerns in public because of the backlash they get from people who don't see the problem, like what happened to me every time I voiced my concerns over the state of the community. I think it is safe to say that they would have done it in private, if at all. If you feel like you are being persecuted by the staff, you may not be even inclined to leave any feedback to the staff, and if you feel like you are unwelcome by the general memberbase, you wouldn't be inclined to discuss with members either.

If things didn't change after said discussions, that is a good motivator to leave and trash talk the site behind its back. Like what certain people in this thread like Shane are threatening of doing right now.

 

 

With that out of the way, I want to point out about how hard moderation is in sensitive situations like during political discussions. Most of the problems that arise with people who are problematic are difficult to moderate because there is usually no clear aggressor in common situations like where party A walks all over party B. Trying to moderate that is painful because the people who cause said problems are usually well spoken, enough to make it difficult to make a clear case on why they are being problematic, and know how to cause trouble if they perceive they are being unfairly moderated. You can increase the amount of moderators but, going by what happened when Pure closed the debate room on the forums years ago, they eventually get burned out.

This I believe is a big part of the reason why Pure's staff wants to avoid moderating it. Their staff just can't handle it at this point.


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#36 DashSim

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 06:27 PM

neat!


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#37 Avaro

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 06:38 PM

I understand, Orithan. I wasn't actually mainly referring to you, here. There's a certain group of people who I'm extremely confused by. They seem kind of shallow, I haven't seen them say anything except "PureZC sucks".

But yeah, maybe we can take this opportunity to talk more about it? Thanks for your reply orithan. What you're saying makes sense.


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#38 Nate

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 07:29 PM

Gotta say, I'm for the inclusiveness and respecting how people want to be addressed -- however, I disagree with the call to just get rid of currentevents.

 

I've been a shithead there before and made some dark jokes. I admit that, and that was wrong of me. But at the same time, that channel has also had way more engaging serious topic discussion than there's been "shitposts" (as someone put it before). Topics that very well may offend some people, but topics that shouldn't be excluded. 

 

Discord has an NSFW tag for independent channels. You can state the reason *why* its marked that way, and members have to agree to see that content. That's a good way to also setup some ground rules for the channel. "Note: This channel is for discussion of topics that may be sensitive. You agree to XYZ rules" You have to specifically agree to see the channel. 

 

Its mind-boggling you would choose to just axe it rather than explore other options first. What you're doing is excluding adult conversations from people that *can* handle serious discussions, and those that might not be in the best state (such as politics draining them and they want to be away from that sort of thing -- that's fair) or it might somehow offend them, which is also fair. But they don't have to participate, and they can opt out from viewing the channel as if it didn't even exist. 

 

Again, I'm all for inclusion of all of our members. I take preferred pronouns very seriously, and at the end of the day, as much as I've been a jackass before, I don't wish anyone in our community any harm. But excluding conversations many people seem to enjoy having (it IS a very active channel), even if its antibacterial handsoaps potential adverse effects on human health (this is a real example from *today), should have a place where it's kept out of general discussion...

 

Another concern is conversations that would normally be put in CurrentEvents (even if not political or ... dicey in the "could offend department") start leaking into General. Is your solution to just start getting rid of people that naturally want to talk about actual issues/world things then? Not even just political, you have it in the rules specifically against that. That's fair. You're just going to have a more... dynamic general channel, I guess.

 

Should have called a vote. I'd rather members specifically opt in rather than just kill it all together. 

 

Strongly agree with most of the rest of the announcement though. I'm all for making the general community welcoming to all.

 

At the end of the day, I hope the staff achieve what they're hoping to accomplish. IMHO, I just think exclusion with the intention of inclusion is never the solution.


Edited by Nate, 12 March 2020 - 07:40 PM.

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#39 Aevin

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 07:40 PM

With completely good faith, I'd ask for some examples from people on what good conversations you've had in there. To be frank, every time I've peeked in there, it's looked like an absolute mess. So, by all means, educate me. What good experiences have some of you had in Current Events?

 

And if we were to keep it around, what would be the guidelines? How would it be moderated? And who would moderate it? I can't imagine that after this whole mess, we'd find many volunteers.


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#40 Evan20000

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 07:47 PM

With completely good faith, I'd ask for some examples from people on what good conversations you've had in there. To be frank, every time I've peeked in there, it's looked like an absolute mess. So, by all means, educate me. What good experiences have some of you had in Current Events?

Regularly had good interactions on a wide variety of subjects in there. My most recent one with Robin we moved to DM in the interest of not swallowing the channel with Corona Virus infographs but the discussion overall was productive and we came to an understanding of each other's positions. The important thing here is that the discussion probably wouldn't have progressed to this point under the new rules as it's very much an upsetting/sensitive matter for a lot of people.

I regularly shitpost with Nate and Toast in there over things both serious and not, all in good fun. I've seen Klop and Bagelmeister contribute to discussions. Back when I was in the discord, this was very much the most active channel by a huge margin because there was so much room for conversation to organically occur.

 

 


And if we were to keep it around, what would be the guidelines? How would it be moderated? And who would moderate it? I can't imagine that after this whole mess, we'd find many volunteers.


This really is the crux of the issue. Current events is a scapegoat for overall unhappiness with the atmosphere of the discord as a whole given that it encompasses the bulk of the discussion that occurs yet is also the least moderated. You already know my stance on this as I gave a list of good candidates to promote/hire a few months back and that hasn't changed.

EDIT: I'm sure it's been pointed out at least once in the thread, but the behaviors cited for the removal of the channel have -never- been allowed on this site

 

EDIT2: Robin liked this post? Never mind all that, under the bus you go. Fuck you Robin! :tard: .


Edited by Evan20000, 12 March 2020 - 07:58 PM.

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#41 Nate

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 07:52 PM

With completely good faith, I'd ask for some examples from people on what good conversations you've had in there. To be frank, every time I've peeked in there, it's looked like an absolute mess. So, by all means, educate me. What good experiences have some of you had in Current Events?

 

And if we were to keep it around, what would be the guidelines? How would it be moderated? And who would moderate it? I can't imagine that after this whole mess, we'd find many volunteers.

 

In returned good faith (as was my original post, by the way), I would say a lot of the corona virus discussion. I've tried to keep all the talk about it on my end in there, except for one time I posted in general when I gave an actual tip that the virus was expected to spread much further in the USA this last week and to take extra care/things seriously (which turned out to be correct).

 

News articles are often posted in there that usually spark discussions -- not even talking political ones. Nicholas Steel posted a link just the other day (though I got pissed because the anti-ad block didn't let me read it). 

 

I mean yeah, some of it is political, and there's been a fair number of "shitposty" memes that could offend. I guess I would suggest specifically barring that, or specific topics. Wasn't it you that told me to not bring up one specific topic after it was discussed (and another member took it to some asshole extreme to insult some people), Aevin? And I didn't bring it up again. I'm happy to follow ground rules on topics to be avoided -- I just think there really is enough to justify keeping the channel as a whole. If you want more examples, I can dig, but I gotta be honest, most of it lately has been corona related or one specific member posting dumb memes I haven't even responded to personally. 

So with that said, in good faith, I would suggest clean up. Lock it down more with specific rules (like your suggestion on not bringing up certain topics; I was happy to oblige). Tag it so you have to opt in. As for mods.. well, I can't really suggest mods to you. I don't participate on the forums anymore; I don't know who's applicable. I can tell you I've had civil and worth while discussions with Nathaniel and Anthus in CurrentEvents - but I don't want to speak for them. Maybe both of those two hate the channel and want it dead as far as I know. That part would need to be up to you guys, I can just toss out my suggestions on rules and alternatives to just killing the channel completely. 


Edited by Nate, 12 March 2020 - 08:11 PM.

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#42 Mitsukara

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 08:21 PM

One idea that occurs to me, but I don't know if it's a good one- could current events image memes perhaps be restricted to their own separate channel from the discussions? I think it's possible to set a discord channel to prevent members from posting images in it automatically.


Edited by Mitsukara, 12 March 2020 - 08:23 PM.

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#43 Aevin

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 08:30 PM

I will say that at the very least, we won't be archiving the channel immediately, and will give it at least a few more days for discussion. I would ask that discussion from here on be level-headed and thoughtful. You know, not like I posted earlier. :P

 

I do think it's important to state that the commitment to LBGT inclusiveness is something very important to me to keep. Any discussion in CE would need to adhere to that. And for my part, I do feel like cracking down on memes could be an important step.

 

I'm not guaranteeing anything, and I absolutely believe that some changes need to happen, and some aspects of these policy changes need to go through. I also want to stress that this is not entirely up to me. But I would invite anyone to give their input in a respectful fashion.


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#44 Haylee

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 08:44 PM

If I may, I think the biggest reason for the lack of moderation isn't that the channel itself is awkward, but rather, staff burnout. I'm glad we're doing aps soon, because when we've had the same staff for multiple years, no matter how good a staff member you actually are, the methods of that particular staff member are going to wear thin and we very much need new blood to help get the other staff back into it.
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#45 Anthus

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Posted 12 March 2020 - 08:44 PM

I've read every reply in here, so I won't reiterate too much, but I kind of wanted to present something else. I wanted to walk you guys through how the staff (myself included) came to this decision. I'm just going to say it, but we aren't always the best. In fact, this whole situation is one that I've personally never been so conflicted on. I've gone back and fourth, back and fourth, whined elsewhere, whined to the admins, etc etc.

 

So for a while some staff (myself included, again) felt that PZC should be more focused on Zelda Classic, and talking about games and stuff. So, what we did was what I'd like to call a hot and dirty fix. I'll admit, I was actually one of the main people pushing for removing currentevents. Why? I'm active in there, right? Well, I was lazy. Yep. Lazy. Did I try to talk to Tim when he posted the thing that got him banned for three days? No. Did I talk to Chris Miller about some of the stuff he posts? No. Have I ever asked Nate/ Toast to tone it down? Never. Did anyone else try to? No, not recently. Did I go and bitch about it elsewhere for the better part of two days? I sure did. I didn't help fix the problem. I made it worse.

 

So after reading all these replies, this is my conclusion. We may have made a mistake to outright make this new rule prohibiting these discussions without A) presenting an alternative, and rules at the time that are detailed, and B) making it even harder for people to feel like they can talk about stuff. A lot of us are adults, or close to it. A lot of us are friends, and a lot of us have had talks here, in current events, and elsewhere. I think what made people absolutely flip their shit was how this seemingly came out of nowhere. The wording of the OP could have been better, but to be frank, I don't really have any better way to put it. Aevin catches a lot of flack for being the guy who does all this stuff, and while it is ultimately up to him (and the other admins) what changes get made, us other mods could have been more firm, or thought about it more.

 

But here's the thing, and I think we can all relate to this. The staff are just burned out. Please, Aevin, and Russ, do not take this personally, cause I know you guys care, but I think it is wearing on you too much. I think it is becoming too heavy of a burden, and it is clear that you care, but it's also clear that neither of you seem happy doing this. I've noticed a trend with us staff: An issue arises on discord. Someone brings it forward sometimes, and then we kind of sit around for a few days talking about it until someone does something rash, or until we kind of forget about it cause it happened hours, or days ago, and people have moved on. Within the staff, we really don't have a protocol, or a clear way to deal with stuff. We've talked about it, but that's just it... we talked about it. Nothing has been firmly put in place. So some crazy new thing like this gets pushed through cause we are all kind of jumping on the band wagon cause no one has anything better, or wants to try to think of anything better. I'll be the first to admit, and even quote myself; when Aevin showed the draft of the changes I said "This is like a dream, if I were to make some changes, it would basically be this."

 

I wasn't thinking it through. I'm not speaking for anyone else with this bit, but I was not thinking it through. I was stressed and worked up a bit about some other off site stuff, and I really wasn't in a position to be thinking about some big sweeping change that would upset everyone so much. I've talked with Shane, Chris, Tim, and a few others, and we did kinda circle-jerk some PZC rage. Won't deny it. Part of why I was mad was cause I felt like I let everyone down. I know, sounds like I'm trying to play the victim, but it's my honest feelings. I was disappointed in myself at how effing PISSED everyone got, so I got pissed too. I saw how upset everyone was, and how badly this was being received. I've been displeased with Aevin at times, but I hate to see a well intended guy being the punching bag for an entire community as if it were only him, when really, we are all somewhat incompetent, and disinterested in moderating the discord.

 

I don't think I'm fit for this kind of decision making, and I really don't think any of us are, to some degree. I'm not really sure where to go from here, but I will leave you all with this: No offense and please hear me out, but when it was TS, Aevin, and Russ running things with LtM owning the site, it was a little better. We simply had more resources. LtM occasionally did behind the scenes tech stuff, and the admins could focus on running the site events, and the discord. We had a bigger divide of power, and TS was very active in Pure's server, well liked, and charismatic. With now only Aevin and Russ running things for most of the time, I feel things have gone.. stagnant on some policies. No more is there an active admin. And again, you can't force yourself to want to participate. You can try to clean up the community so you may want to participate more, but what happens when that community falls apart, and everyone is even more mad at you? Wouldn't make me want to interact with that community much either so I totally get where they are coming from. I was wrong when I said they are apathetic. Wrong entirely. They are burned the fuck out. There's this "community image" we want, but no one to provide an example. People who use ZC have found other groups, admins included. I feel like both Aevin and Russ have moved on from the PZC discord, and I was one of the few voices saying "do this thing you've wanted to do with this server to make it better" and a lot of our members are kinda in "WTF mode" about it and.. mods gotta deal with that.

 

I'm not quitting, or stepping down either, but I've considered starting a poll to see if you guys think I should (not here, but as its own thread). This is totally a good time to mention we are hiring btw. I have been here for literally half my life, 15 years this past January. I can count on one (okay, maybe both) hands the amount of people who have been here longer. I may not be the most assertive, or articulate, but trust me when I say, I've seen a lot, and this is probably the biggest shit show since the 2008-10 debacle, or whenever the debate room/ mature discussion was around, idr cause I was uh, banned most of that time. But I still lurked till coming back in 2012. Then again to discord back in 2016. I've become closer with a lot of you, and I hate to see this fighting and stress, and hurt feelings.

 

I'm just kind of rambling now, and I don't really know what to do. I could talk a bunch of shit about Aevin, and jump ship, but I don't want to do that either. I've said enough, and I don't know what else to do. That's becoming a recurring theme with me. I just ask that we somehow all try to come to some form of reasonable compromise.


  • Nathaniel, Nate, Eddard McHorn Van-Schnuder and 11 others like this


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