Re: A BSG Blog Post About The Forums
Warning, incoming wall of subjectivity. Read on at own risk.
First off, although I appreciate the time and energy put into writing the post and agree the material reveals unquestionable truths, I unfortunately am in partial agreement with 82 about the method of delivery. When writing a research thesis, it's of course always good practice to be completely factual, and doing otherwise can lead to exactly the kind of uproar we're seeing here as people fail to separate fact from opinion. In the first paragraph, you write, "This post is not my opinions, but my gathering of all the situations I’ve found and tying them together to show everyone what I have come to see." Wait, what? I thought you said you would be mixing your opinions with the facts. This kind of confusing mixture of truth and subjectivity is common throughout the article, and I believe this is why many of us are questioning it's legitimacy. That being said, once we look past that confusing bit, what seem initially to be biased twists of fact reveal themselves to be commentary on the undeniable truth laid out for all to behold. In deed I'm curious how many of you actually read any of the quoted posts in greater detail than was provided in the article, as I think understanding the contexts of the situations would shed some light on smoke's summaries and evaluations. I agree with your opinions and value your research. I just think you could have been more realistic than expecting people to be able to make the separation as well as you or I.
I agree with what's written in the blog post to a large extend. But the thing is that it's getting a really bad view from this topic, because everyone that seams to be in agreement is someone that have or have had problems with Dark in the past.
This sounds like an assumption, and it's one that has been made several times so far. I'd be happy to take you and others up on this claim if you are willing to cite topics/posts of those in agreement with smoke's findings having run-ins with Dark. However, seeing as that constitutes a pretty overwhelming majority of posters, and several people have already stated their neutrality towards him, I'm not confident that will happen.
I'll take this opportunity to point out my own virtually unblemished record on this forum, and my lack of personal association with Dark. I will say though that, moderation aside, he seems like a cool guy from the stuff of his that i'd read. If you get him going on a subject that catches his interest (guide dogs, games, books) his rants are interesting, thoughtful and conversation-provoking. That being said, there are certain things you just don't do as both a member of a community, and one who is charged with keeping order in said community. Using a position of influence to destroy someone's online life certainly qualifies as an unforgiveable offense. Although I knew Walter, and we talked from time to time, calling him my friend would be a stretch. We worked together as stw admins for a while, then later I agreed to host a tt channel for his podcasts. So i guess you could call it a casual business relationship, but it was enough to see the effect it had on him. His personality completely changed. He was much more passive, less fun-loving and more shy. He also faided away and was eventually never heard from again. That sounds a lot more like what would happen to an innocent victem of character assasination rather than a violent and predatorial sociopath.
Dark also has quite a history of using personal feelings as a basis for administrative/moderator actions. Even in my relatively low level of experience on these forums, one pretty minor, but still frustrating, incident comes to mind. I'll be pointing to this topic about webl boxing simulator, in which I recommended it be added to the db, and his response was the following:
As far as WEBL Goes, the problem basically is the same as for all sports management games, which is that I personally just don't feel qualified to write about them as they're a genre of game have no interest in, or indeed enough background knolidge at least enough to write about.
If you have no interest in it, I'd suggest having another mod do it, doing the negligible amount of research required to write a short description, or maybe even having a community member do it. Now there's a thought. Allow community members to draft db entries and submit them for review, similar to a site like apple vis. Whatever the solution, it was a shame to not have a perfectly accessible and awesome game, or even genre, be added because of someone's personal feelings or experience.
If you've made it this far, which you probably haven't, you might be wondering, what do I want done about this guy? Well, as said above, I personally have nothing against him. However, Dark has proven time and again that he is incapable of separating his personal feelings from his administrative judgments, and that is a capital problem in the moderator world where objectivity and honesty reign. You might think I'm voting for his resignation, and I'm not saying that's off the table. But first and foremost, what I'd really like to see is a complete redefinition of the expectations of me and my fellow members. Man's inherently subjective nature makes every justice system flawed, but it's possible to reduce the errors to fractions of a percent by ensuring the rules are as clear and have as few ambiguations as possible. Unfortunately, complete clarity is also an impossible thing due to the seemingly infinite complexity of humans, but again, we're aiming for realism, not perfection. What I mean to say is, we need a clear system of rules that is easy for everyone to understand; for the community to reasonably follow and the moderators to enforce.
My years of administrative experience on stw and redspot were very enlightening. They taught me a lot about how to be fair, stick to the facts, and deal with unreasonable people. One of the most important things I learned is that, if the rules are vague, hard to understand or hard to find, people just won't follow them, or at least will unknowingly do something wrong. That goes for users and admins alike. Redspot in particular had an attrocious rules document written by a one man admin team in probably 10 minutes, and we all know the result of that. Admins treated players unfairly, brought their personal feelings into situations and often made up their own rules which were consistently enforced by only the admin who invented them. Similarly, players frequently expressed frustration when they were disciplined for rules they didn't know existed or pointed out holes in the system, and many simply ignored the document completely. Toward the end of its life, the admin team was cleaned up, uncooperative or inactive members were removed, and those who were left were the ones willing to unite for the singular purpose of making redspot a better game. Communication between the members of the team was streamlined, and the expectations for the players were no longer fragmented by certain admins making up rules they thought should be there. The improvement in quality of life was gradual but noticeable. The rules for this site need a similar reworking, as it seems to me that many members, myself included, didn't even know about the rules in the FAQ section, which is a downright silly place to put rules if you ask me. That aside, many of the questions, or rules, in that post are generalized descriptions that could apply to just about anything an admin wants to apply it to. for these reasons, I'm not sure Dark is entirely to blame for bringing his feelings into certain situations, as that's what people resort to when the expectations are badly defined.
My hope with all this, as it was for redspot, is to see improvement in administration practices. Whether that means rewriting rules, seeing that people are removed or what have you, that decision thankfully isn't on my shoulders this time. Although this community can get nasty sometimes, I still see a lot of potential in it and hope it's remaining life is long. I'm in support of whatever needs to be done to make that happen. I also hope that the people in power will take my, fairly informed I dare say, opinion into consideration when deciding what to do. I did start drafting a rules document for redspot before it's untimely end, and I still have it in case it ever returns, so if anyone wants more concrete advice I'd be happy to share summaries of what I did if you believe it will help.
Long live AGNet
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