Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogean
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Hey Everyone.
I still intend on posting a little more information regarding Sirken's status. However we are still in the process of compiling all information and making final decisions. These things take time even for organizations with paid staffers, which we obviously are not. On top of that I've been stuck working 12-14 hour days because of a customer emergency at work. I hope to have something posted on the weekend.
I still expect people to respect my original request and refrain from speculating and bashing Sirken or any current and former staff members. Some of these posts have gone way over that line and we may be issuing bans. It is completely uncalled for.
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Tl;Dr - I get serious about elf sim policy.
Big Rogean... You know (or maybe you don't) that I've always respected what you've helped create here and how you handled CSR back when you were still actively involved in player disputes. Especially during the old DA/IB days, you were usually fair, level headed and most importantly, actively sought to encourage us to work out our problems without staff intervention. You also caught an inordinate amount of shit from a lot of the player base back in the wild west days of unmoderated RnF. I say this because I do understand the intent of the "no staff bashing" policy.
That being said, and without getting into specifics that would violate your request, I would urge you to consider maybe the "no staff bashing" policy has been taken a bit far. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the original intent was more to shield staff from unfair and unsupported slander by the community, not to completely protect staff (and by extension their decisions) from any community input or discussion. Where as we used to have too much free speech here (free speech as a concept, not talking about the US first amendment for you pedants out there), now we have too little.
Completely disallowing discussion about player disputes and staff decisions has not only created an atmosphere where the community cannot voice their opinions and help shape server policy, it has also in some regards killed a part of the community. I'm sure you don't remember old RnF as fondly as a lot of us players since you were too often a target of criticism, but I think you'd admit that the often childish squabbling we used to do in there over guild disputes did contribute something to the community. Now RnF is 99% garbage because all the raid drama gets hushed up for fear of getting someone in trouble for discussing staff decisions.
I'm not saying we should go back to completely unmoderated RnF, and banning players for unfounded slander seems legit, but forbidding players from discussing anything remotely related to staff or their decisions has contributed to creating a situation where the community as a whole has no outlet to hold the staff accountable. Of course some players will undoubtedly take things a bit far, but it is ultimately criticism on a niche community elf sim forum. Can the staff really not handle that? Maybe even ignore it?
I get it. This is a free box. You, bog and the rest of the staff owe us nothing. But I really don't believe that you guys don't care about the community, because if you didn't you wouldn't put in all the work that you do. The no staff bashing rule has really hamstringed the community, essentially killed RnF, and created an atmosphere of fear where numerous people lost accounts with years worth of work simply for offending a volunteer who was supposed to enhance the community experience. That doesn't seem like it is in line with the original intent of the policy.