Violet Room

Discussion in 'Shelter Releases' started by Bickendan, Nov 24, 2016.

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  1. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    This is exactly why I haven't said anything in the threads pissing their way through the RR, VR and Help Desk. It's enough like Shark Week out there as it is.
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  2. Amaris

    Amaris Guest

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    Lots of personal stuff outside the board has lead to my shorter fuse. I do need to work on that. I think it is best if I just get back to making things go.
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  3. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Assuming O2C and Nick are willing and able, maybe let them take the reigns for a while. :unsure: Your RL situation takes precedence over anything here IMO.

    But yeah, admin playing mod has never worked out here in the past.
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  4. Bailey

    Bailey It's always Christmas Eve Super Moderator

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    For those of us who have been busy and also not paying too much attention to the board due to everything being about the American election, is there a short version of wtf has happened the last couple of days?
  5. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    gturner got exiled to the new daycare room, the board had a shitfit, and then gturner got banned, so the board had a bigger shit fit. You know, the usual.
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  6. Amaris

    Amaris Guest

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    Mission creep. It all started with just taking care of the technical side of things, but then I got to help here and there, and then it became easier to do this and that, and before I knew it I was involved in every aspect of the board. Well, I'm going back to making things go. I can handle that without any issue, and I think the members who don't know why I seem to be everywhere would rather prefer I go back to doing that, too.
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  7. Bailey

    Bailey It's always Christmas Eve Super Moderator

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    What about Ron Paul?
  8. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    He dropped out early in the race because he just couldn't get any traction. Oh, wait, you mean the poster. Making racist remarks in the Help Desk. Volpone's also on vacation for porn posts and racial slurs.
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  9. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    Dick pics and/or racial slurs in Help Desk and/or Media Central; applies to Volpone as well.
  10. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    So what about gturner? Do we unban him and say it was a mistake to ban him if we can't codify exactly why we did it? Is getting rid of him worth the ire of the posters we actually give a fuck about (even if they likely aren't leaving as Tuckerfan said)? Obviously, the VR has to go, or at a minimum there's gotta be some definition as to its purpose if it stays.

    Back during the 2007 meltdown, Elwood eventually had a powwow with the board that lead to a reduction of staff and I think his selling the place to Lanz because he'd been burned out well before that. And frankly, if anyone else is burned out, it's time to step back and walk away because self moderation applies to staff as much as the rest of the board.

    There are still plenty of sane people who are more than capable and less frazzled than some of us who'd just like to be posters again.
  11. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    Just warnin' ya, Ima warn ya if you step down :ramen:
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  12. tafkats

    tafkats scream not working because space make deaf Moderator

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    Some thoughts, in no particular order.

    (1) Re: lawyerball and not having to have some kind of napoleonic code, generally speaking, I agree. We have a few people who, no matter what rule is stated, will twist themselves into knots finding every possible way to violate the spirit without technically violating the letter.

    (2) I certainly can imagine that there will be times when somebody is being such a problem that most reasonable posters -- minus the small number who will lawyerball and contest every decision for the sake of drama -- will agree should be tossed.

    (3) However, I do not see gturner as one of those people. I don't think anything he posted warrants banning. Unless I've missed something, he's not running around spewing racist garbage, he's not starting "So-and-so is a pedophile" threads, he's not calling people names, and he's generally fairly courteous to people.

    (4) There is a perception that the staff plays games with people. The initial "Is gturner banned?" thread provides one example. It must have been obvious to any staff member who was involved in the decision that the question didn't come out of nowhere. However, the initial staff responses were all along the lines of "no, he isn't banned," a statement that, while true, also did not answer the spirit of the question. So meanwhile, we have people like Mrs. Albert helpfully trying to see if there's a technical issue, while the staff sits on relevant information. Now, on reviewing the timestamps, I see that this wasn't actually as bad as I thought it was -- the time from the question being asked to a straight answer being posted was only 30 minutes -- but it still leads to an appearance of non-transparency and game-playing.

    (4a) My personal opinion is that while staff should be free to act as normal members in almost all situations -- that is, there's no need to refrain from typical Red Room behavior -- that should end when it comes to discussing administrative actions. If a staff member uses the :ban: icon, it takes on a different tenor than if a normal member uses it, because of the power differential. If a staff member jokes about bannings, or doesn't give questions a straight answer in a discussion of administrative actions, it creates an appearance of disrespect.
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  13. tafkats

    tafkats scream not working because space make deaf Moderator

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    (1) I don't know what the current arrangement is between the Four Horsepeople, and I also don't know what it costs to run the board.

    (2) Major decisions are probably best made after simmering for a while, and not in the heat of a shitstorm, but if some of the Horsepeople do decide they're burned out and want to step away, I'd potentially be interested in kicking in a share of the operating costs and taking on one of those spots.

    (3) However, the ownership is currently perceived as skewing left, and I also skew left. I would not bring balance to the force.

    (4) What if Zombie were approached about Horsepersonship? In addition to balancing the team ideologically, we need people who aren't going to get locked into "this is my side, and I'm going to defend whoever's on it and blast whoever's not," and that's generally how he operates.

    (5) However #2, there absolutely cannot be any perception of somebody being a token conservative on a staff of liberals, or a token liberal on a staff of conservatives. I would suggest an agreement that any decision involving banning a member (for reasons other than, say, posting porn) requires unanimous agreement by all the Horsepeople.
  14. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    No, you'll be feeding the sharks again, and he'll be an insufferable twat. It'll be worse than letting Castle back in, because unlike Castle, gturner can count on support from other posters. He stays gone.
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  15. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    You must have missed his time as a mod. He did nothing, literally nothing, and then quit in a huff because "we" (i.e. those who disagreed with his politics) were "blocking" him. When pressed about how this was being done, he'd dodge and weave, but never would admit that he just didn't want to do the job, or whatever.
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  16. tafkats

    tafkats scream not working because space make deaf Moderator

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    Honestly, for most of the board's history, I was almost completely unaware of who the mods were.
  17. Amaris

    Amaris Guest

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  18. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    That sounds exactly like Volpone when Anc took over :bergman:
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  19. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    :lol: at T'Bonz's comment over the entire mess.
  20. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Wait, they're talking about it at TBBS? :soma:
  21. Bickendan

    Bickendan Custom Title Administrator Faceless Mook Writer

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    Not that I noticed; she did a drive by in the VR though
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  22. foil1212

    foil1212 Jose "Mom Fan" Alvarez Staff Member Moderator

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  23. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Welcome back. :)
  24. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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  25. Amaris

    Amaris Guest

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    Everything okay?
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  26. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    :kirkpalm:

    Congratulations @gul, you've killed the board. Instead of actually thinking about a response and pushing for a discussion here before replying, you just gave an answer. I don't know if it was talked about in PMs before you did it or not, but now one of the longest posters here has expressed his disgust with things and all we can expect from now on is an exodus of the few members we have left. Fucking brilliant. Ideological purity takes precedence over reality. The professional shitstirrers now have more ammunition than they did before. Every decision the staff makes from now on is going to be questioned in the light of this and if you thought that gturner posted nothing but crap, well, now everybody's going to be doing it. You've painted a target on the entire staff and even if the decisions of the staff are reasonable, they're going to go after them hammer and tong just because they can.

    Fuck. I much prefer this place to Facebook, but it looks like that's where we're all going to be migrating to.
  27. Amaris

    Amaris Guest

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    Gul didn't do anything more than take out the trash. The problem is that the trash managed to make the floor underneath soggy in how long it had been sitting there. The floor isn't about to give way because of gul, but because of how long we let things rot.
  28. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    It's not that he took out the trash, but that he decided to do it by dynamiting the floor. There's ways to express it without being so fucking obvious that the admins were sick of gturner's bullshit. The loss of gturner isn't the issue, the loss of Paladin is the issue, because he's going to take other people with him, even those that don't agree with him.
  29. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    Holy shitballs, @gul. :facepalm:

    Paladin and John both. Nicely done.
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  30. Shirogayne

    Shirogayne Gay™ Formerly Important

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    Well, as soon as I can find a replacement, I'm gone, if that makes them happy and so is John. I dunno about whether gul has plans to leave, so if pure ideology is more important than image, then clearly the problem is us. :borg:
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