on a critical note, you clearly *were* tired when you made the last post: yr tone has changed ( i know you say it's a personal request) and it's not too difficult for someone who's looking to misinterpret yr comments as hostile to do so.
I tossed out several personal addresses earlier. Must have been slipping as the hours wore on.
It's true that I had a few people in mind when I wrote my "personal note" post. (My Gospel is not totally finished yet.) I feel that everyone needed to see that note, hence the multiple postings. They are the thoughts I couldn't say when the topic in question got locked, and I'd be telling those same words to anyone who would listen if they
didn't get posted.
I also feel it's important that everyone knows what's going on. I'm not going to let anyone, moderator or not, pretend that everyone's playing nicely in the sandbox when it's clear that nobody's happy. I'm not going to make peace by taking an olive branch. I'm going to force everyone to deal with their problems instead of pushing them aside or burying their true intentions under pretty words and petty strutting.
There's a lot of bad blood on both sides, and neither side can claim that they acted completely rational and mature. But meaningless gestures of friendship won't help anything; I have no doubt in my mind that the sniping will continue if either group is pushed too far. Posting a list of grievances and incidents on a public forum is step in the right direction. It's time everyone heard the truth about what's been happening for the past few months, no matter how ugly that truth may look.
That is the route to true, lasting peace.
Now this soapbox is getting awful rickety. Don't mind me if I step down now.
i'm not a big fan of game-based fanfic at the best of times: you've got multiple, conflicting canons (published fiction, ingame and written rules) - always a recipe for disaster; and then there's the whole CHARNAME thing. the way games are structured - with the player as protagonist - means that the resulting fanfic usually follows a similar path, which leads inexorably to Mary-Sueism. at least with tv-based fanfic (what i tend to read more often), the write needs to justifiy a Mary-Sue, or at least work a lot harder to make them fit into the genre. with game-based fanfic, there's an open invitation to make the protagonist a Mary-Sue - in fact the author has to work *not* to make protagonist = pc = author's alter-ego.
I used to frequent a fantasy television forum, and liked reading
Highlander and
Forever Knight fanfics written by someone named "littlegreenlight". I liked them because, unlike the other fanfics, his writing read like an episode from the series. When littlegreenlight disappeared, so did I.
Fanfic.net is filled with work of varying quality where the writer wants to be a star in some other universe. FWP (and later PPG) wanted to tell a good story more or less following canon. I agree that it's easy to make <CHARNAME> a Mary Sue, but it's equally as easy to make Duncan MacLeod or Nicholas Knight into one too.
something like 'you-as-moderator and you-as-poster are different people and this distinction needs to be evident' or at least 'if you wish to be idiosyncratic , that's ok as long as everyone knows; but if you wish to be impartial, you have to act that way as well'.
That's the message I tried to write, yes.
Being a moderator does not give you absolute power, and no you can't even ban people. You have to be an admin to do that.
Being a moderator puts you into a position of authority and power. The title,
moderator, means that person moderates. He/she is an impartial judge when it comes to forum business.
Now I know I angered people when I commented that Neil was licking MG's boots. Consider the situation. I posted the only negative criticism on an "OMG MORE PLZ!!11" comment thread. Count Neil's total posts on the fanfic forum. Is it a coincidence that one of Neil's rare forum appearances came just after my comment, with an "OMG ROXXORS" comment of all things? MG's reply ("OMG TY") didn't help any. (MG also burned my britches with her "I like my work--if you don't like it, don't read it" comment, but that's a different grief for a different post.) I've shown the thread to people from the BG2 community, my college community, various other unconnected people, and many of them saw the comment as snide. (I was also chastised for my criticism, but that was from the Hollins crowd. >_<) When I expressed my unhappiness about the remark I saw as snide, I was called a bitch and a name-calling whore by Neil and a facist troll by notmrt. Neil, realizing that a
forum administrator[/b] has no business calling
anyone[/b] those names, changed his post to make it look less vindictive and more responsible. I appreciate the fact that notmrt had the guts to admit that he was responsible for his words, but I cannot accept his apology.
And I acted like a snot, whined and minced like a diva, and held a huge grudge. I'm not apologizing for my actions--I meant all that I did, and time isn't going to change the feelings that drove my actions.
While composed with good attention to grammar and punctuation, I found this gospel dry and unengaging. It is unclear who the central character is and what motivates his or her actions, except perhaps fear of Pirengle.
I've strapped the author to a chair and I'm hold the author at bay with a cat-o-nine tails. Meanwhile, the world wonders, what about Besyrwan?
Hmm well we're talking about FW, and mods can't ban people there. It's the same over on G3.
Maybe posting a manifesto someplace telling
exactly what the forum mods can and can't do might help alleviate further confusion.