Villayna
01-24-2010, 05:12 AM
The purpose of TNG is to help role-players on the Twisting Nether realm collaborate and share their writing and art. Over the years it has grown as a social hub for many different people who may or may not even still play on this server, or play WoW at all. There are young people, old people, military, college, high school, religious, non-religious, Americans, Canadians, English, professional writers, professional artists, you name it, we probably have one. We come from different walks of life and the only thing tieing us together is this game and this server.
I have always tried to run this site with a bell curve in mind: I'm not going to worry about the extremists on ANY subject, and boy do we have a lot of subjects to fight about here. I enjoy diversity. I enjoy good debates. I am perfectly aware that most people are not this open-minded about things. It's ok to disagree. It's ok to dislike other people on the site. The only thing I have ever asked is that everyone treat everyone else with respect, whether you feel that respect or not. If you want to gossip about whatever on your private vent servers or guild forums, that's not my concern.
Civility and politeness to others are lost arts on the internet. It goes hand in hand with a lack of patience and understanding. It's much easier to just label someone, rattle off some worn out personal attack, and then get all your friends to post behind you to validate your point of view.
Being creative is fun and rewarding for most, whether it be as a writer, an artist, or just something you thought up as a backstory for your character. It's what I want people to get out of the site: the chance to do something creative and show it off to your friends. It is human nature to evaluate the work of others. Some people are better artists, better writers, better role-players, but no one started out as geniuses. Just because you've improved to a point where you can look down on others' works doesn't mean you need to laugh at them because they haven't been doing this as long or as diligently as you have. Stop bullying others. Polite and helpful suggestions are fine. But if you can't keep the elitism in check, it's better to just not say anything.
As anyone who's been here longer than a year should know, I have never claimed to be a perfect moderator. I try to listen to what the members of the site want from TNG and provide the type of environment that the majority are wanting. I am lucky that the IRL job that I have lends itself to liberal use of the internet and my personal life is mostly free of non-work responsibilities. I have invested a fair amount of money and an insane amount of time on making this site work, and I do this because I enjoy reading your stories and seeing what art you have come up with. I enjoy reading about the things that you put in your blogs. I enjoy seeing the surgical knife of logic being wielded by masters in the politics forum. I freely admit it is for these selfish reasons that I keep the site going.
The site has its good times and it has its bad times. They tend to cycle with how happy people are with the game. When people are enjoying the game, they are usually too busy having fun there, then trying to drum up drama on TNG. When people aren't enjoying the game, it's like TNG becomes their own personal punching bag. Some people become snide, and other become overly sensitive, eager to find something malicious in even the most polite critique.
Frankly, I'm tired, and I have some real world priorities that have come up recently that will make it so I don't have as much time to keep an eye on TNG as I have in the past. Which wouldn't be that much of a problem, except the state of civility has reached a low point and it seems like every day there is a new crisis that takes HOURS and HOURS of my time to deal with. Even this wouldn't be a problem, except I get this feeling that some people don't even care that they are destroying something that I've put so much time into. Some of them may even be doing it deliberately. Which confuses me. I am not "the man". You don't need to stick it to me.
Just because TNG has been here for over 4 years doesn't mean it'll be here forever. I don't mean that as some sort of threat, and I'm sure someone would throw up a forum within two hours of me shutting the site down, so I'm not trying to make it out that nobody else on this planet knows how to register a domain and upload forum software. But who else is going to put up with this many different, beautiful souls?
The point of this post is to ask each of you to just chill on the drama-mongering. If you feel the need to kick some puppy, don't. If you are sitting in class or at work bored, and decide to lob a virtual snowball at someone you think will blow up and give you something entertaining to read, don't. I've been coming down a lot harder on trollish behavior the last week or two, but if anything it feels like things are just getting worse.
Just because I'm a softy doesn't mean I don't have limits. This is a heads-up that the waters at my shoulders and I will be banning flagrant trollings. If that doesn't work, then I'll pull the plug on everything but the 8 or so forums that are RP related. Note: this doesn't mean report every bloody thing that person you hate posts. Having someone report 20 different things one person does in a day is probably more annoying to me than the 20 things that person said. I need people on both sides of the spectrum to chill out.
Thanks,
Mortica/Villayna
I have always tried to run this site with a bell curve in mind: I'm not going to worry about the extremists on ANY subject, and boy do we have a lot of subjects to fight about here. I enjoy diversity. I enjoy good debates. I am perfectly aware that most people are not this open-minded about things. It's ok to disagree. It's ok to dislike other people on the site. The only thing I have ever asked is that everyone treat everyone else with respect, whether you feel that respect or not. If you want to gossip about whatever on your private vent servers or guild forums, that's not my concern.
Civility and politeness to others are lost arts on the internet. It goes hand in hand with a lack of patience and understanding. It's much easier to just label someone, rattle off some worn out personal attack, and then get all your friends to post behind you to validate your point of view.
Being creative is fun and rewarding for most, whether it be as a writer, an artist, or just something you thought up as a backstory for your character. It's what I want people to get out of the site: the chance to do something creative and show it off to your friends. It is human nature to evaluate the work of others. Some people are better artists, better writers, better role-players, but no one started out as geniuses. Just because you've improved to a point where you can look down on others' works doesn't mean you need to laugh at them because they haven't been doing this as long or as diligently as you have. Stop bullying others. Polite and helpful suggestions are fine. But if you can't keep the elitism in check, it's better to just not say anything.
As anyone who's been here longer than a year should know, I have never claimed to be a perfect moderator. I try to listen to what the members of the site want from TNG and provide the type of environment that the majority are wanting. I am lucky that the IRL job that I have lends itself to liberal use of the internet and my personal life is mostly free of non-work responsibilities. I have invested a fair amount of money and an insane amount of time on making this site work, and I do this because I enjoy reading your stories and seeing what art you have come up with. I enjoy reading about the things that you put in your blogs. I enjoy seeing the surgical knife of logic being wielded by masters in the politics forum. I freely admit it is for these selfish reasons that I keep the site going.
The site has its good times and it has its bad times. They tend to cycle with how happy people are with the game. When people are enjoying the game, they are usually too busy having fun there, then trying to drum up drama on TNG. When people aren't enjoying the game, it's like TNG becomes their own personal punching bag. Some people become snide, and other become overly sensitive, eager to find something malicious in even the most polite critique.
Frankly, I'm tired, and I have some real world priorities that have come up recently that will make it so I don't have as much time to keep an eye on TNG as I have in the past. Which wouldn't be that much of a problem, except the state of civility has reached a low point and it seems like every day there is a new crisis that takes HOURS and HOURS of my time to deal with. Even this wouldn't be a problem, except I get this feeling that some people don't even care that they are destroying something that I've put so much time into. Some of them may even be doing it deliberately. Which confuses me. I am not "the man". You don't need to stick it to me.
Just because TNG has been here for over 4 years doesn't mean it'll be here forever. I don't mean that as some sort of threat, and I'm sure someone would throw up a forum within two hours of me shutting the site down, so I'm not trying to make it out that nobody else on this planet knows how to register a domain and upload forum software. But who else is going to put up with this many different, beautiful souls?
The point of this post is to ask each of you to just chill on the drama-mongering. If you feel the need to kick some puppy, don't. If you are sitting in class or at work bored, and decide to lob a virtual snowball at someone you think will blow up and give you something entertaining to read, don't. I've been coming down a lot harder on trollish behavior the last week or two, but if anything it feels like things are just getting worse.
Just because I'm a softy doesn't mean I don't have limits. This is a heads-up that the waters at my shoulders and I will be banning flagrant trollings. If that doesn't work, then I'll pull the plug on everything but the 8 or so forums that are RP related. Note: this doesn't mean report every bloody thing that person you hate posts. Having someone report 20 different things one person does in a day is probably more annoying to me than the 20 things that person said. I need people on both sides of the spectrum to chill out.
Thanks,
Mortica/Villayna