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Staffing Confessions

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Staffing Confessions written Apr 26, 2022 19:54:11 GMT
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I definitely want to preface this whole post with the fact that I do not condone theft in the form of intellectual property, coding, edits, etc. but the whole spiel people posted about passwords in the rules and rules in general in peeves of the rp just got me thinking:

I know a big rule in basically all rp communities is stealing, whether it be code, graphics, characters, etc. is not tolerated in the slightest. however, what exactly is a suitable punishment? at most, you just kick the member off of your site permanently in the form of banning their ip/email or whatever, but if they really want to, they can come back with a vpn or something. and if you catch them, so what? they'll just move to another site and repeat the same cycle. yes, I know, the rp community (especially animanga) is only so big, but that doesn't stop a lot of people. and everyone likes to play the rule of thumb of 'innocent until proven guilty' because people are afraid of confrontation.

then poses the issue of informing the community of a potential thief: it's merely hearsay with no actual proof because often, the proof is deleted or archived. on top of that, it's a conversation of how the theft happened in the past so who is to say that the person in question may steal again? furthermore, it's deemed inappropriate because it borders the line of vigilantism. sure there's a lot of hypotheticals and generalizations in this statement but it's more or less a thought of what more can you do other than give the person a slap on the wrist? because that's basically what banning someone from a site is imo. it doesn't really teach them anything in the long run because as I've found with rulebreakers I've encountered time and time again, they still repeat the same behaviors.

-- with that in mind, does banning really solve any site problems? or does it just prolong the inevitable of the problem surfacing again? this doesn't just go into theft, but it funnels into misconduct, harassment, crass behavior; the problem just leaves your site, not the community as a whole. not that it's one site's prerogative to protect and potentially gatekeep the community. but it's really just some food for thought.
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Staffing Confessions written Apr 26, 2022 20:34:25 GMT
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Apr 26, 2022 19:54:11 GMT @lumin said:
I definitely want to preface this whole post with the fact that I do not condone theft in the form of intellectual property, coding, edits, etc. but the whole spiel people posted about passwords in the rules and rules in general in peeves of the rp just got me thinking:

I know a big rule in basically all rp communities is stealing, whether it be code, graphics, characters, etc. is not tolerated in the slightest. however, what exactly is a suitable punishment? at most, you just kick the member off of your site permanently in the form of banning their ip/email or whatever, but if they really want to, they can come back with a vpn or something. and if you catch them, so what? they'll just move to another site and repeat the same cycle. yes, I know, the rp community (especially animanga) is only so big, but that doesn't stop a lot of people. and everyone likes to play the rule of thumb of 'innocent until proven guilty' because people are afraid of confrontation.

then poses the issue of informing the community of a potential thief: it's merely hearsay with no actual proof because often, the proof is deleted or archived. on top of that, it's a conversation of how the theft happened in the past so who is to say that the person in question may steal again? furthermore, it's deemed inappropriate because it borders the line of vigilantism. sure there's a lot of hypotheticals and generalizations in this statement but it's more or less a thought of what more can you do other than give the person a slap on the wrist? because that's basically what banning someone from a site is imo. it doesn't really teach them anything in the long run because as I've found with rulebreakers I've encountered time and time again, they still repeat the same behaviors.

-- with that in mind, does banning really solve any site problems? or does it just prolong the inevitable of the problem surfacing again? this doesn't just go into theft, but it funnels into misconduct, harassment, crass behavior; the problem just leaves your site, not the community as a whole. not that it's one site's prerogative to protect and potentially gatekeep the community. but it's really just some food for thought.


honestly, in my opinion, banning people isn't actually teaching the offenders any lessons - it's just making them someone else's problem.

theft is definitely a big one where this is the case (since imo, even when someone is spreading the word about it, it's typically just to resource site staff, where it rarely goes much further + is pretty ineffective when it does because animanga is still v decentralized compared to the rl circuit so word never travels nearly as far as it needs to for there to be an impact).

but you're not wrong where other bad behavior (stalking, harassment, grooming, etc) hasn't ever really resulted in consequences either, no matter how bad it is - in all my years of rp, i've only ever seen someone get yeeted out of the rp community en masse exactly once, and it took discovering an actual criminal conviction to do it (which is its own can of worms since boy howdy that guy literally got doxxed in the process of getting yeeted + i'm not sure how comfortable i am with the ethics of that situation). and even then, that situation still highlighted that problem i mentioned earlier where apparently resource site staffers had known about this guy for years and nothing ever really came of it because it wasn't widely shared among the community until much later during the yeeting.

all of it is just.... a gigantic mess, and i don't think there's any real solutions to it, but yeah, no, i definitely agree that banning isn't really so much for the offender as much as it is for the victims, and even then, all it's doing is just making the offender someone else's problem to deal with
last edit on Apr 26, 2022 20:37:05 GMT by Kuroya

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Staffing Confessions written Apr 26, 2022 22:14:30 GMT
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honestly I've kinda accepted I can't kick someone off the mass of RP as a whole; I just kick them off my sites and my creations. And ultimately, while it sucks that people are out there stealing things and doing horrible things, I have come to a conclusion. If they continue their behavior, they'll be kicked off other sites. And if they aren't kicked off certain sites, at that point, you can write that site off as one with problems.

I think it would be fair to warn others about their behavior, but at that point people start talking about witch hunts and other issues. I know I would be very hesitant to accept callout posts without hard concrete evidence. Like it's one thing to tell me that a member is bad news, but if there's no screenshots, I'm going to be a little suspicious. Especially since we've seen from twitter and tumblr how callout posts can sometimes be absolutely ridiculous and asinine and simply a matter of a disagreement over fiction.

But honestly, I care less about other sites. I know that's callous to say, but I can't protect other sites. I can't control them or their admin styles. I have to care about my site, and the people who interact with me there.

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Staffing Confessions written Apr 27, 2022 0:36:19 GMT
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Apr 26, 2022 19:54:11 GMT @lumin said:
I definitely want to preface this whole post with the fact that I do not condone theft in the form of intellectual property, coding, edits, etc. but the whole spiel people posted about passwords in the rules and rules in general in peeves of the rp just got me thinking:

I know a big rule in basically all rp communities is stealing, whether it be code, graphics, characters, etc. is not tolerated in the slightest. however, what exactly is a suitable punishment? at most, you just kick the member off of your site permanently in the form of banning their ip/email or whatever, but if they really want to, they can come back with a vpn or something. and if you catch them, so what? they'll just move to another site and repeat the same cycle. yes, I know, the rp community (especially animanga) is only so big, but that doesn't stop a lot of people. and everyone likes to play the rule of thumb of 'innocent until proven guilty' because people are afraid of confrontation.

then poses the issue of informing the community of a potential thief: it's merely hearsay with no actual proof because often, the proof is deleted or archived. on top of that, it's a conversation of how the theft happened in the past so who is to say that the person in question may steal again? furthermore, it's deemed inappropriate because it borders the line of vigilantism. sure there's a lot of hypotheticals and generalizations in this statement but it's more or less a thought of what more can you do other than give the person a slap on the wrist? because that's basically what banning someone from a site is imo. it doesn't really teach them anything in the long run because as I've found with rulebreakers I've encountered time and time again, they still repeat the same behaviors.

-- with that in mind, does banning really solve any site problems? or does it just prolong the inevitable of the problem surfacing again? this doesn't just go into theft, but it funnels into misconduct, harassment, crass behavior; the problem just leaves your site, not the community as a whole. not that it's one site's prerogative to protect and potentially gatekeep the community. but it's really just some food for thought.


I had the skin on my site plagiarized like two years ago...and the site that did it is still up. I made the mistake of confronting them too - so now they've removed all of the really easy points that show they basically just copied and pasted big portions of my site (like linking directly to fonts/js scripts that were hosted directly on my site). I talked to a few jcink skinners and they agreed that my skin was plagiarized, and I handed a ton of evidence to John/Jcink via their DMCA procedures, and nothing happened. :/

Banning really does nothing. You can only really protect your own sites. It sucks.
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Staffing Confessions written Apr 28, 2022 15:57:34 GMT
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As far as banning and bad members go... As a staff, I have been reached out to by other admins of other sites that warn me about potential problem members that are hopping from place to place. I can only ever do the same. As admins, we have to stick up for each other too. Warn others in the community about problem members and the kinds of problems that they come with. Whether it is fc stealing, or whole application/character idea stealing. It does happen, more than people think. People who harass others are also really common. All we can do is warn other staff people that we know, but sometimes, people do deserve second chances. Sometimes they don't. If they are repeat offenders that don't want to listen, then warn the community, but if they have obviously changed or grown past those issues, then maybe the next place they land will be a good fit.

I try my hardest to ensure that everyone is credited regardless of if they are or not. My credit section is rather massive. I even reached out to Leap before editing the skin to make sure it was okay to do so, because I've had issues with it in the past, but I'm trying to be a better person now that I'm not 19 and stupid.

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Staffing Confessions written Apr 29, 2022 20:03:09 GMT via mobile
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Sometimes I'll see a site search that sounds perfect for my site but the op's attitude in the post is so bad I won't post in their search, I feel bad for it but I can't stand needless attitude kfbskgnsmgbsn

I get tone doesn't always work in text but like I also don't know and would rather not take that risk? Idk...

This hasn't happened here or even in a while but I thought about it browsing site searches
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Staffing Confessions written Apr 29, 2022 20:19:05 GMT
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Apr 29, 2022 20:03:09 GMT said:
Sometimes I'll see a site search that sounds perfect for my site but the op's attitude in the post is so bad I won't post in their search, I feel bad for it but I can't stand needless attitude kfbskgnsmgbsn

I get tone doesn't always work in text but like I also don't know and would rather not take that risk? Idk...

This hasn't happened here or even in a while but I thought about it browsing site searches


honestly? i'm the exact same way. if there's something going on in that site search that has me getting the vibe that someone's not gonna be enjoyable to have on my site, i give their search a pass - if they find my site on their own, fine, but i'm not gonna go out of my way to try to pitch it to them if they're not likely to be a positive addition to the community

(it's the same reason why i'm typically pretty hesitant now about replying to site searches from """serial site-hoppers""" - because they're not likely to stick around + be a positive addition to the community, so it just seems like a waste of my time + theirs to try to pitch the site to them in the first place)

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Staffing Confessions written Apr 29, 2022 22:52:52 GMT
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i agree with ^^ because sometimes tone is hard to come across online, but if youre gonna be rude while asking for help to find a site, i aint gonna help you? i care about my member base. i'm also not gonna introduce someone that automatically gives me the impression they're incredibly hard to please, too.
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Staffing Confessions written May 1, 2022 0:22:13 GMT
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it's been over a year since our soft opening, and almost a full year since our grand opening. i'm very proud of my co-staffers for their hard work. but if i'm hoenst, i cannot believe a year has gone by o _ o
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Staffing Confessions written May 6, 2022 17:32:50 GMT
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existential execution is just a fluke in evolution.
i know staffing is a thankless job but when everyone understands that. it makes staffing 100x more easier, and everyone has a better time (members and staff alike)
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Staffing Confessions written May 7, 2022 14:53:07 GMT
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It is a nice thing when your members just treat you like one of them. When they don't stick you on some weird staffing pedestal. I hated being there tbh. For people to be intimidated to rp with me just because I'm the admin. It makes for a boring existence when you get excluded because everyone is too scared to post with you.

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Staffing Confessions written May 13, 2022 1:14:50 GMT
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existential execution is just a fluke in evolution.
it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure out how to configure the award system on jcink to coincide with the site store. if you need me, i'll be in the corner curled up into a ball lmfao
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Staffing Confessions written May 15, 2022 1:19:07 GMT
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I feel like some people come into a site with systems expecting it to be like a flea market.

I don't like this mechanic, I think this one is better or more suited for my character. Can we trade parts of your system with parts of my system? Can I haggle to not be covered under this rule I don't like? This is a banned power, but like, that doesn't apply to VIPs right? I would use the banned power in a different way than you're probably expecting, so can it be lifted for just me?

I feel like a Wal Mart cashier explaining to someone that no, you can't haggle the price of the flat screen TV and no, you can't pay in lightly used socks. You need to use money. Real, actual money that is standard in the place of business. Nobody cares about your obsolete stash of Confederate dollars, you can't use that to buy a flat screen at Wal Mart.
last edit on May 15, 2022 1:19:28 GMT by wolfe
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