Jan 10, 2021 18:00:50 GMT SPIRELE said:

How do you know they ghosted if its only been a week?

in my experience, if someone's part of the discord and suddenly leaves the server without warning and doesn't do anything on the site in the following few days (posting, logging in, etc), then yeah, they're almost definitely ghosting

(since i've maybe had someone leave the server but stick around on the site, idk, at most five times in the two or three years i've had discord as the prime chatting medium, and i generally had some kind of heads up somewhere + it was p obvious they weren't leaving since they still maintained an active presence on the site afterwards)

so I'm finding out that it's actually really hard to plan slice-of-life events because I'm so used to over-arching plots and the residual ic drama, and outline of plot progression that comes with that. So, it's really weird to me to be doing like really chill festivals and stuff, and everyone's like... okay with it?! And, like the most dangerous thing to happen is like weather or circumstantially related to resolving differences or, at most, if it's harvest-moon related, restoring 'magic' back into a small town that is relatively normal.

there's like no ginormous fight with monsters or like an endless search for an universally powerful object. It just is, and I love it, and i'm here for it.

I just wish I knew what I was doing asjfajdfalkdfj

I have re-written this post, like, three times now because I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this in a way that makes sense and also doesn't let my intense saltiness about the matter soil the whole thing.

It's been coming to light recently that there've been incidents on my last couple of sites where discussions happening outside of the server (where I could not see it), but evidently close enough to it that it still managed to get back to the victims of such discussions... well, got back to the victims, which at best drove decent people out of what should've been a safe space for them, or at worst has killed their faith in RP communities to this day. And that bothers me. Immensely. The fact that it happened at all, of course, goes without saying; but the utter helplessness of knowing that maybe I could've done something if I'd known. I don't want this to ever happen again on another site. And I know there's no way to stop friends from venting small grievances in DMs - heck, a little vent can be helpful sometimes to get the frustration out so you can see things a little more objectively afterward - but I want some way to crack down on this 'witch hunting behind staff's back', or whatever you'd call it. It's not welcome in my spaces. Period. Out, out, out.

The question just boils down to, like - how do you enforce something like that? What can you do when that sort of thing happened to stop it, if you don't even see it happened much of the time, and trying to lead by good example doesn't work? I don't want to set up some ban-hammery rule that sparks a witch hunt in the other direction ("Oh, you expressed that you didn't like Jimbo? Sorry, I'm ratting you out to mods to get you GUILLOTINED"), but it's also, like... if someone doesn't step up to stop it when they see it or at least tell someone else who can, what're you ever gonna do.

Hhhhh, 'too long, didn't read', I'm opening discussion/asking for suggestions on how to mitigate toxic behaviors and exclusionism that happens on the very fringes of RP. I feel like I've failed members in the past who were wronged because I learned too little, too late to help them, and I want to know what measures myself and maybe other staff members can take to stop stuff like this from happening again. :/



SECONDARY CONFESSION, because it does feel disingenuous to not be open about this when talking about the above, and it's probably a more thread appropriate confession. Especially last year when 2020 stress was taking its toll on me, but it most certainly didn't start there, I'd use the staff channel as a personal vent channel when certain events or certain members were frustrating me. I didn't even realize how awful that can be until looking back on it, and being in servers where others used those kinds of spaces for similar things. I can't promise that I'll suddenly turn over a new leaf and never, ever do this again - but I can promise that I am actively working to and will continue to work to stop this kind of behavior when I catch myself doing it going forward. There's a difference between a healthy discussion over things that need staff attention and letting your personal irritation get the better of you, and it's a line I'm ashamed to say I've crossed many times. I like to think that I've never let any such vents get the better of my overall impression of a person, and I have never (at least intentionally) spoken of people in a way that was meant to demean them or make the people around me think less of them - but it's still really uncool, and I'm sorry to anyone I might've wronged in this way. 😔