Things about the community mindset I would change

[Ninian]

DISCLAIMER: Please do not take anything I'm about to say personally. I do not mean to implicate anyone I don't name directly. This is complaining about the general community mindset, not the behavior of any ONE individual in it (though I will volunteer blame where it's attributable to me). Please... PLEASE no drama. Please.



Note that this isn't stuff I'm saying WILL be changed. Merely stuff I personally would like to see changed about the general "mindset" of the MSF community as a personal desire, or just things I don't like that I wish were different. It's a personal wish, not anything more. If there was to be anything hard-set about this, I wouldn't be posting about it. It'd be in the News forum or something, and probably with a lot more pretension. These are my personal griefs, no more or less.

Guilt trips: If you wronged someone once, they'd never let you forget it. Remember that one time you forced a TF they didn't want, and you made up? But then they mentioned it again or every time you ever do something they don't like? That sort of crap has no place among mature people, I feel. I'm not going to go more into this one, except I'm willing to blame a lot of the mess the IRC channel became on it. My complete abhorrence for guilt tripping is also why I refuse to let anyone wag a finger about me regarding my past in this community and expect me to look up at them with puppy eyes and a trembling lip. I did stupid crap, I admit it, and I wouldn't mind learning from it -- but if you expect to be able to hold it over my head, or expect apologies that I'm not already freely giving to you then you're in for a rude awakening, especially if the below factor is being taken advantage of. I propose people make up once and then get over it, and hopefully themselves.

You're special because you're you, and everything you do is good: I don't know who's more guilty of perpetuating this mindset -- Sakura or myself. I'm going to say Sakura for this one and myself for the next one, but I do share the guilt in this one. Essentially there is this belief that people are respectable just because they're people. This is a geek social fallacy (number 1 in fact!) that ostracizing anyone makes you a bad guy. MSF I feel took it even to the next level where not praising someone who does inferior work to the same degree as someone who did clearly superior work amounted to ostracizing. I'd be willing to bet that the resulting mindset has something to do with why no one ever felt truly motivated to contribute something of worth. What's the point if there is no observation of quality or communal respect gained for it? It's also why nobody can ever really bring change because everyone's opinions are equal to the point there can be no leaders or followers, project organizers and executors.

Power to the people! I AM the people!: This one? My fault. Totally. You can even look up old posts of mine and look at what kind of asshat I've been with this kind of talk. Basically, this involves a lot of talk about what the "community really wants" when said by a non-moderator, or what a moderator does to defend decisions. The "royal we" gets invoked a lot during this time. It's stupid, and I'm the one who really set the trend off once I retired and still tried to insert my foot in every door and decision. I'm sorry I did this, I'm sorry it became a trend to haunt us. From now on I speak only for myself, and if anyone agrees with me or wants to empower what I'm saying, it'll be on them to do so.

Mod mod mod mod mod mod mod: This is a topic that used to be talked about all the time, and flares up sometimes. Who is a mod? Who isn't a mod? Can I be mod? Is he/she/ferret becoming a mod? What can a mod do? Hey, I'm a mod! I deserve respect! Mod mod mod! Gah. Shut up! Just shut up! The problem with a community which isn't based on contributions or merit is that social status then falls almost entirely on which people are elevated to Mt. Olympus to rule over a forum they finally realize never really was going anywhere (not living or dying, or even just being interesting outside of goofy RPing and randomness). It's like becoming the king of a mountain surrounded by desert wastes. GRAY-colored desert wastes. Is it any wonder why some of the mods wandered off like a jaded/bored max level World of Warcraft player? Funny thing is, I think railing against this one is what lead me to helping start the trend of the above. What a nice mess. Moderators do a job, no more or less, and should try their best to be professional when speaking as a mod and act as a normal user at all other times . Again, thank Sakura for trying to propose the opposite.


And no, I've NOT been reading Ayn Rand. If Eirien, I, or anyone else wind up turning MSF into the underwater city of Rapture then I'll personally serve time as lingerie. Well, whenever we find time after evading crazy TG weeaboo Splicers that is.

[Kether]

Were this a less mature(and for all our silliness we are fairly mature to eachother) message board I would be posting pictures of Kash with the caption "This will end in Fire" I still think this isn't going to end well.

[Ninian]

Were this a less mature(and for all our silliness we are fairly mature to eachother) message board I would be posting pictures of Kash with the caption "This will end in Fire" I still think this isn't going to end well.

Why don't you think it'll end well? Care to elaborate? Discussion is good. Please, by all means.

I'm guessing it's because it's one of those "I hate what you do" posts, those have high potential for drama, except I wasn't trying to implicate anyone in particular -- and because of the first geek social fallacy, no one is allowed to ever say anything negative without being an evil ostracizer, and ONLY ostracizers deserve to be ostracized. I shouldn't need to say where that rabbit hole goes.

I guess I should have added the tagline "No drama please", but I assume this forum having a higher level of maturity than most that such a qualifier wouldn't be needed.

[Kether]

Bringing up flaws cannot not lead to some form of Drama, especially when people might take a particular thing personally. That and the tendencies of some to just casual dismiss disenting opnion and rationalize it later.

[Ninian]

Yeah... good point. I think I'll add a big FAT disclaimer to the opening of the post.

Thanks for pointing it out, Lian.

[Mitera Nikkou]

EDIT: Made this post despite previous posts while I was writing. Too lazy to accommodate! If any were needed... I'll read the new posts after I submit mine. <.<;

I'm okay so long as I can continue to practice self-depreciation. ;p

Of course, my own tolerations aside, I'd rather not see that there's so much control over behavior that people literally get squeezed out of the community because of its grip. I can understand that not everyone's well-behaved, or meets some tactical and/or social ideal, but outside of blatant offenses, rule-breaking, and slow learning curves, suppressing the personality isn't any good.

One could argue what kind of methods are best to pursue, of course. It's just my opinion that going in for the kill universally doesn't leave a good taste in my mouth. Sure, you can root out every single one of them, but some of them could have surely become better people. Plus, it can be antagonizing, because they're getting the kind of response that they wanted with whatever they had said or done.

I guess I just have this weird idea about preferring the blame being cast on and between individual people rather than the site/community as a whole.

But to clear up a possible misunderstanding, I didn't mean it to seem like what you had said, Akemi, had meant to be extreme. I was just imagining some possible results if too many rules and regulations were enforced to control behavior. It's just a habit for me to find a balance somewhere so, when something is nipped in the bud, it's done with a pincer attack. Geddit?

And that's it. ^_^;

[Ninian]

Re: Nikkou One thing that can be done is to set a good example, though. And I wanted to point out behaviors I felt were bad so some people might know where to start. Or at the very least, myself: I fully admit I did some of these and worse, especially during my days as a moderator. If I don't have strict guidelines in what I can and cannot do, sometimes I get lost personally.

None of these are rules, nor would they ever be rules. That'd be stupidly draconic. The rules are meant to discourage the conditions that create this sort of behavior, if anything, before it can start. The haphazardly written nature of the old rules explains a lot why I and others got away with this kind of crazymaking.

[Mitera Nikkou]

I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but even your perceived-to-be-bad behavior can set good examples. Perhaps not as you'd like, but that's the funny thing about people.

Personally, however, I've never seen anything wrong with you being yourself, or even trying to reinvent yourself into the kind of person you want to be. For better or worse you can only be yourself. I think all of the interaction is wonderful, but I guess I'm just crazy like that. I owe many wonderful experiences to MSF because of the variety of personalities that I've encountered here. Sure, not all of it had been pleasant, but in retrospect it's possible for old experiences to be appraised with higher values.

[Selena Aninikkou]

I can't comment on everything, but I've seen, repeatedly, the fallacy that saying anything but "That's good!" is considered taboo. The worst place for that? DeviantArt; it is COMMON there for artists to insist no one give any form of criticism at all, constructive or otherwise. How does this help people to improve their skills?

This is one of the things that has always made me angry in my life; when I ask for criticism, all I get is "Oh, that's good! Can't think of anything to say!" I may be a self-destructive perfectionist, but even I know that nothing I produce is so great that there's nothing that can be improved, and when I get a lot of comments like that, I begin to wonder if the real problem there is that people are afraid that telling me what is wrong will hurt my feelings, even if I ask for it...