You're welcome. :p

That's why I'm here though I was only gone for like half a week.

Holy fucking shit, seriously, this whole goddamn ugly mess. Thanks for dragging my name into a clusterfuck I had no idea was going down, by the way, plus super thanks to everyone who's implied I haven't said anything due to, I dunno, queenly indifference instead of A. working a job with a two hour commute B. almost a thousand miles away from Brian and C. having been less and less involved with the forums for a long while now, partially to avoid messes like this.

So I really shouldn't be awake right now, but. This whole thing is so, so ugly. I'm disappointed in pretty much everyone involved. Shiney and Meister, you went about all this in a self-confessedly underhanded way and it would've been a lot better to hash your disagreements with Fifth out in the mod forum like we've always tried to do prior to this. For being so concerned with fairness this kinda feels like you guys making personal dislike into policy. On the other hand, Fifth, you do have a tendency to get really hostile right off the bat that makes discussing differences in moderation with you an unpleasant prospect, and anyone who can laugh at himself over Going Nuklear is self-aware enough to try to get a grip on this. Brian, I don't think you handled this super-well but it's kind of a lot to have dumped on you in the middle of everything else that's going on and I'm sorry I haven't been able to help out like I should. I could see how maybe Bells was being a bit of a backseat mod, but a long-term member in good standing like he is didn't deserve banning for it. Nightwhatever wasn't being more than usually misogynist for this place, but he did deserve an infraction for it and if I'd been the one to catch it, that's what I'd have done.

I don't know what can be done to fix this, if anything. It's all been coming to a head for a while now, that's plain, since the whole Frogman thing at least and evidently even well before that. I feel like at least some of it is my fault for basically not giving shit one about the forums for ages now and just letting everyone do whatever they liked about it. I don't know. I've also been one of the people advising Brian to cut the forums loose for a while, and it seems like a lot of you would be fine with that, so...maybe it really is time. All communities have natural lifespans, you know? It's just kind of shitty that NPF's ran out like this.







...It's probably a bad idea to pay much attention to the little impulse urging me to figure out how to use my admin power to de-mod everyone but me and delete everything and start fresh with one post-by-moderation-only thread ruled by my whimsy.

Mashirosen, I feel that action is being taken to fix this, and beyond that, everyone* involved has expressed a desire to keep the forums going regardless. Everyone's on speaking terms; you can't really ask for more than that.

In short: please don't kill the forums. We like them, drama and all.

*Except for Krylo, because well, Krylo; and DFM, because he just does shit like that

That's natural. Don't worry about it. No one blames you.

Well no one with half a brain blames you. I mean, there might be someone somewhere, I don't know, I'm not psychic, but I'm pretty sure they aren't worth worrying about.

You, like you said, have a job and shit to do and a life, and just because say, I, for instance, DON'T have a life and have time to give a shit about this stuff and get all wound up in it and probably make things worse and blah blah blah, doesn't mean that you should have to give up yours and stick it out in here. It's just a forum.

And while it may be important to people like Me or Shiney or Meister or Fifth, that, in no way, requires you to think it's important. Neither does the fact that you used to at one time. Everyone moves on sometime.

I doubt I'll still be coming here when I'm 80, even if the forum DOES still exist then, after all.

Edit: On the other hand, we do kind of miss you around here. You're pretty fucking awesome. So like, if you WANT to come back, that would also be appreciated. Even when you are banning me for being a stupid twit and making threads that should never exist.

Honestly, I think the better idea is for Brian to just make his head admin actual head admin. Whether it still be Shiney or not. Just make someone who isn't him the definitive boss.

Like I said in my first not a total asshole post, a lot of this could have been avoided if Shiney would have just told Fifth that he was the boss, and that if Fifth kept on being that way with the trolls and what not that he would be de-adminned and was just very open about it and strict, but Shiney didn't feel comfortable doing that as he feels Brian is the boss and he doesn't have that kind of power.

Ergo; make the head admin head admin with Brian completely disconnecting himself.

Least I think that's where we're headed here now that everyone is calmed down.

I could tell you how.

I mean, if you want.

Just gotta let me have my own thread, too. Fair's fair.



edit: Just going to say I actually totally want the forum to keep going, and it was never really my intent for it to die. It's just, well, I was rather heated and didn't like my arguments being deflected with that particular whatever it was.

Yeah, if you'll notice, we seem to have mostly moved on from feeling awful and are yucking it up in the followup thread, so it's nothing to go all Extinction Level Event about anymore.

I dunno, though, I mean yeah everyone else seems to have settled down but -- and maybe this is just because I've come in so late and am too sleepy to have fully processed all three hundred million posts on the subject -- between the mods it seems more like everyone's on passive-aggressive or aggressive-aggressive "Fuck you" "No, fuck you" terms due to having said things that can't be unsaid, mostly because they're the kind of things that ought to have been aired out ages ago before they started to fester. I sort of resent having been asked in absentia to take sides as I like everyone involved while also thinking none of them come out well in this.

Hmm.

I liked it at DEFCON 1. The lights are all strobey and you can just shoot people and nobody cares.

Honestly, I think that the forum should stay open, as there is quite a strong core community here. But, some.. rearrangement may be in order.

Brian really should step back from the forum. I mean, he is obviously very busy with all of these projects he has going for him, that he quite simply does not have time to deal with the humdrum of forum management. Definitively hand the torch of supreme forum overlord to someone else, and only be personally concerned with the forums as a platform for communicating with his fanbase. Really, it seems a major problem with a lot of the mods seemed to be an unwillingness to step up to the plate.

The one thing that this thread has accomplished is now these problems are open to the air, and steps can be made for correcting them. People seem less afraid to speak up about these problems now that the powder keg is gone, and some fatal flaws have been laid bare. There's still time to fix them before they really bring the ceiling down on everyone's head.

I know I'm not a mod or an admin anymore, and I know I did... kind of... mention you at one point in a PM to Brian, but again, heated and stupid.

Really, you have no obligation to take sides.

And, like you said, there's wrong and bullshit on every side, which just removes your obligation even more.

If you WANT to deal with whatever shit is brewing in the mod forum, you can do that, I guess... but, and I know this might not carry a lot of weight as I'm not an admin anymore or whatever, BUT I really don't think you have an obligation to sort it all out.

Neither does Brian, honestly.

That one falls on the people arguing, and more strongly on Shiney, unless he's going to quit as head admin (but he's not).

Edit: While you're thinking about it, I MIGHT need a couple screen shots from the admin CP to jog my memory on the specifics of where to click. I remember the generals off the top of my head, though.