I've already had a lot of back and forth in the VC back on Saturday so I'll try to keep things as brief and simple here as I can. I disagree with the general idea of an anonymous submission regardless of how it's done. I also disagree with the idea floated in voice of having a "member advocate" being appointed. Both ideas would be far too easy to be abused. It is my honest belief that either option would devolve into the site becoming a popularity contest with members who don't get along with a particular clique getting anonymously reported either through the anonymous report system or from this member advocate who would likely get voted into the role by whichever clique happens to be the largest.

One of the original sentiments was that the staff are just a clique which shows favoritism to individuals on site and give them preferential treatment. This seems to be where the notion that we'll ban people from the site who truly annoy us. This is despite in almost a nine year run of the site we've had a grand total of nineteen individuals get banned, about two fifths of which were staff being banned for abusing their powers. Even individuals like Cen or Ghost who were part of the group which most blatantly abused their powers did not get banned because they had already left staff and it was their friends who abused staff powers. These people could easily have fallen into the camp of "people who the staff are annoyed with" back then yet low and behold they did not get banned just because of that and are still free to join the site to this day.

I will also take this moment to talk about favoritism as it seems to be one of the words of the day. A lot of people might like to point at the incident from VC the other day as a clear example of favoritism. Of Faire getting in trouble despite Natsu calling her an expletive. Allow me to share the reasoning for this. Faire, mere hours beforehand had told me she intentionally baited Brat into getting banned and if necessary I can provide a screenshot of the exchange. So when I saw Faire stating multiple times that the player should have been stripped of their character I was in the process of telling Faire to stop baiting Natsu, Natsu snapped at her. Both were in the wrong at that point so instead I told them both to drop it and move forward. Natsu took that offer to back out while Faire didn't so Yoshi gave her a temp ban. Even with that I still went to Natsu in her DM's and chewed her out for her reaction, even if it had been a baited one. If it was just me showing favoritism to Natsu, I'd have banned Faire and not given a second thought of Natsu's action. Even after Faire got a temp ban I didn't hold it against her and gave feedback on stuff she was working on with no malice.

Now, let me also take this moment to make it clear so that you hear it from me and not some rumor that runs rampart or gets twisted out of hand. I vented about a part of me that saw dozens of people at each others throats and wondering if I should just shut the site down or quit and let someone else deal with it. I've had these thoughts probably a hundred plus times over the years, but like I've said before while I may bitch and moan about aspects of being staff or running the site, I'll probably be here until the place is well and truly dead. Whether that death comes a decade further down the road or within the next ten weeks I can't say.

What does make it more likely to be sooner rather than later is four people up and quitting after the thinly veiled critiques against them or individuals like them in the thread. While no names were explicitly mentioned, it doesn't take a great deal of mental faculties to see who's being referred to. What makes this even worse is that I know for a fact at least three of the people involved in this thread are making their own sites to head out for if they didn't get what they wanted which admittedly makes it much more difficult to take some aspects in good faith although I am attempting to do so, but it is difficult when I get DM's from multiple people saying "Hey these folks are trying to recruit for their site."

The largest issue here that I've seen is a failure of open communications. Partially its people not being in the loop of certain decisions being made by staff, people assuming the intentions of others or even to a small extent hiding their intentions in general and a lot of things not properly being recorded or lacking evidence. A great example of this is people having arguments in voice and then coming to the staff when there's little we can do about it and feeling that we only are not doing things because of favoritism when the reality is we have no evidence to go off of. And I'll be entirely up front with saying that I've brought it up to staff as to whether we should remove voice channels or make it so that people can not join by default and voice will only be opened up when a staff feels like sitting in there with them. That way they are present should some argument happen and it can be acted on right away rather than turning into people just attesting to something happened.

Another thing that has been at least mentioned in the voice call the other night was potentially bringing back public announcements of any punishments handed out. We did do this for a certain amount of time, but we did away with it due to the argument it could harm the reputation of the punished when new members join and just see their punishments listed. Instead we went to having a private disciplinary log within the staff board where we kept track of strikes and the like, with any punishments being given out through DM's typically, but if it will alleviate concerns that punishments are actually being given out then we can bring those types of things from a conversation in DM's/PM's to the public domain once again.

As far as I can see, the main fixes for all the main problems are firstly people being more honest to one another, whether that be how someone is treating them, what they want done, their feelings towards other members or staff, etc. Secondly people reevaluating their expectations. Both staff and members need to reevaluate why they're here, what they hope to accomplish, where their priorities should be and what they want from others and yes to an extent whether this is the site for them. Keep in mind, I hate anyone feeling they need to leave the site, but just like as of the latest count five people have recently decided that they're not having enough fun to justify the time being spent here I don't blame them for leaving either and will happily take Necro, Q, Yamato, Sharp or Natsu back should they feel like rejoining. Lastly a lot of us need to remember that this isn't highschool. That we're (mostly) adults with jobs, families or a mountain of other responsibilities that are our lives and be more understanding of one another.

So as a final note, much like Cocoa I ask you all to be open with us. If you can't be open and honest with us about matters it makes it is simply impossible for us to even try to meet the expectations you might have for us and in the end if we disagree with something or make a ruling that is not liked, understand that we're not out to get anyone and are just trying to make what we see as the most logical decision based on the information.