Post by Mari on Oct 3, 2019 19:11:47 GMT -8
Yo. Unfortunately Stariii left our forum today. This came after several attempts to work something out with him that didn't, well... work out. We're aware that he was good friends with several members, and so in spite of everything that lead up to that, it was a rather painful goodbye.
And we need to talk about that goodbye thread, because it contained some very uncharitable and dishonest information in it. The goodbye thread is still up. You can read it if you want. It is, however, in violation of our forum's rules and is rather unpleasant, so do keep that in mind. Now I'm going to go over a handful of things I felt needed clarification.
Star's Firing
Star made the claim that he was fired from the staff team some time ago for refusing to give me an apology. That is a... gross mischaracterization of what happened, and the actual reasons were not mentioned in his post. As a staff team, we often discuss things, offer each other feedback, and yes--criticism. I could not get away with firing someone over a minor disagreement, and I'm perfectly happy not having that much power. I'm not going to state the actual reasons Star was fired because I don't agree with his choice to make that incident public, but I had several reasons that were much better than that.
Rosalyn
Star made the claim that I infected Rosalyn and made her unplayable. This is half true. I did expose her to dangerous starvia levels... in a thread about trying to cure the starvia. It was not my intention for her to actually fall to the starvia, nor did that come to pass. Star never asked me about Rosalyn or voiced any concern about this to anyone as far as I'm aware. He simply didn't re-app her after returning and I just kinda assumed he'd lost interest. Regardless, if I had had even a hint that he was concerned or bothered by that, I would have spoken up immediately and told him my intentions. So with that being said, sorry Star! I had no idea.
Star's Discomfort
Star portrayed us as very unreasonable and used some very colorful language to describe our handling of his discomfort with nom moves and the new fat spells a couple of characters have. The staff team actually tried its hardest on multiple occasions to compromise with Star. He was offered reasonable compromises such as "If this really bothers you, we'll do our best to avoid making you a part of it". I even once forfeited a PVP match because one of my characters put him in a position he wasn't comfortable with. (I had no idea at the time.) Star did not accept these compromises. He insisted that we should have to change our characters and our items to suit his tastes, even if those changes were unfaithful to the source material and would impact our enjoyment of our time here. He complained about threads he wasn't a part of, and about people chatting about things he didn't like and him just happening to come across it.
We have rules against this type of behavior. Specifically, rules 1 and 2 from our Welcome to Life Itself thread.
After a while of trying to talk this out, it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen. And so we were forced to enforce those rules, which Stariii made a habit of breaking even after being told to stop. This is not a common problem. We've never had to do this before, and I thank you all for making that possible.
Star's Ban
Star was asked not to participate in any threads I was running. This is because I was the target of a lot of his bully'ish behavior, and at that point I knew that if he joined my threads, I would either have to do what he said or get harassed by him. And that's just not an ultimatum I can stomach. He was free to join threads run by anyone else, but on a personal level I just wanted to be left alone. I had expressed this desire to live and let live before to him, but he was hostile to the request. He was also banned from the Discord because he was unable to use it without getting upset and judgemental with people. This happened after his voluntary departure, as we determined he had made the right choice but didn't want him to feel tempted to come back if he was going to continue hating being around us so much.
Star's punishment was conditional. He was told that if he had a change of heart and could be more tolerant of other members, the bans would be lifted. Else, he was free to continue RPing with other people. We were all worried he would do this, but he left us no choice. When a member starts to bully other members for having their fun, it becomes a choice between a bully and the people they're bullying. I put up with it for a time when it was mainly me being targeted, but it wasn't just me, and it started getting worse. So we discussed the ongoing problem and took action. Far from sweeping it under the rug--we addressed it. Privately, and professionally. The fact that Star was a beloved member by many people made this a painful decision for us--but not a hard one. Star made a habit of breaking the rules, and as relaxed and understanding as we try to be, we couldn't just let him get away with that forever.
We asked him to follow the rules, and he said no. That's the real reason he left.
On Star's concerns
If we were to ban nom moves, would we have to ban yoshi and kirby? Would we then have to remove the mega and mini status since those could also evoke memories of some strange fantasies someone has seen around the net? Do we need to ban the Super Spicy Curry, since that item had a rather odd fan following after Ultimate's release? Should we lock Corrin up and throw away the key since he doesn't wear shoes? That could be pretty interesting to the right audience. Literally everything is a weird fantasy to someone.
To put it bluntly, it's not staff policy to judge people for being weird. We're weird. Nintendo is weird. And I don't believe that shaming and judging weird people with weird senses of humor and weird passions is good for our future. Maybe I'm biased because it seriously messed me up inside being the target of a lot of the drama with Star, but I don't want to play fun police if I don't have to. I don't think any of the staff does. And frankly, if someone can't look at a concept without seeing it as sexual... that's kinda on them. When I heard about the existence of a fattening spell, I certainly thought that was strange. But y'know what I did? I looked at the evil witch I was plotting, looked at Hansel and Gretel, and said "Huh. Actually yeah, I could use this." And then I made a really awful rhyme about it because apparently I was stealing Gruntilda's thing. I didn't see it the way Star did, because I would consider that very uncharitable.
Nothing is black and white, of course. If I thought any idea or concept was being represented in an overly sexualized manner unfit for our forum's guidelines, we might have something to say about that. But that wasn't the case with Star's concerns. Nor would we suddenly ban a concept itself if that issue did come up. I think Star allowed his personal feelings to cloud his judgment on this issue and, unfortunately, we weren't able to help him move past that.
I am sorry that we were unable to find a better resolution for everyone, but I am proud of the way the staff team kept their heads and handled this difficult situation. I think we made the best out of a bad situation.
And we need to talk about that goodbye thread, because it contained some very uncharitable and dishonest information in it. The goodbye thread is still up. You can read it if you want. It is, however, in violation of our forum's rules and is rather unpleasant, so do keep that in mind. Now I'm going to go over a handful of things I felt needed clarification.
Star's Firing
Star made the claim that he was fired from the staff team some time ago for refusing to give me an apology. That is a... gross mischaracterization of what happened, and the actual reasons were not mentioned in his post. As a staff team, we often discuss things, offer each other feedback, and yes--criticism. I could not get away with firing someone over a minor disagreement, and I'm perfectly happy not having that much power. I'm not going to state the actual reasons Star was fired because I don't agree with his choice to make that incident public, but I had several reasons that were much better than that.
Rosalyn
Star made the claim that I infected Rosalyn and made her unplayable. This is half true. I did expose her to dangerous starvia levels... in a thread about trying to cure the starvia. It was not my intention for her to actually fall to the starvia, nor did that come to pass. Star never asked me about Rosalyn or voiced any concern about this to anyone as far as I'm aware. He simply didn't re-app her after returning and I just kinda assumed he'd lost interest. Regardless, if I had had even a hint that he was concerned or bothered by that, I would have spoken up immediately and told him my intentions. So with that being said, sorry Star! I had no idea.
Star's Discomfort
Star portrayed us as very unreasonable and used some very colorful language to describe our handling of his discomfort with nom moves and the new fat spells a couple of characters have. The staff team actually tried its hardest on multiple occasions to compromise with Star. He was offered reasonable compromises such as "If this really bothers you, we'll do our best to avoid making you a part of it". I even once forfeited a PVP match because one of my characters put him in a position he wasn't comfortable with. (I had no idea at the time.) Star did not accept these compromises. He insisted that we should have to change our characters and our items to suit his tastes, even if those changes were unfaithful to the source material and would impact our enjoyment of our time here. He complained about threads he wasn't a part of, and about people chatting about things he didn't like and him just happening to come across it.
We have rules against this type of behavior. Specifically, rules 1 and 2 from our Welcome to Life Itself thread.
After a while of trying to talk this out, it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen. And so we were forced to enforce those rules, which Stariii made a habit of breaking even after being told to stop. This is not a common problem. We've never had to do this before, and I thank you all for making that possible.
Star's Ban
Star was asked not to participate in any threads I was running. This is because I was the target of a lot of his bully'ish behavior, and at that point I knew that if he joined my threads, I would either have to do what he said or get harassed by him. And that's just not an ultimatum I can stomach. He was free to join threads run by anyone else, but on a personal level I just wanted to be left alone. I had expressed this desire to live and let live before to him, but he was hostile to the request. He was also banned from the Discord because he was unable to use it without getting upset and judgemental with people. This happened after his voluntary departure, as we determined he had made the right choice but didn't want him to feel tempted to come back if he was going to continue hating being around us so much.
Star's punishment was conditional. He was told that if he had a change of heart and could be more tolerant of other members, the bans would be lifted. Else, he was free to continue RPing with other people. We were all worried he would do this, but he left us no choice. When a member starts to bully other members for having their fun, it becomes a choice between a bully and the people they're bullying. I put up with it for a time when it was mainly me being targeted, but it wasn't just me, and it started getting worse. So we discussed the ongoing problem and took action. Far from sweeping it under the rug--we addressed it. Privately, and professionally. The fact that Star was a beloved member by many people made this a painful decision for us--but not a hard one. Star made a habit of breaking the rules, and as relaxed and understanding as we try to be, we couldn't just let him get away with that forever.
We asked him to follow the rules, and he said no. That's the real reason he left.
On Star's concerns
If we were to ban nom moves, would we have to ban yoshi and kirby? Would we then have to remove the mega and mini status since those could also evoke memories of some strange fantasies someone has seen around the net? Do we need to ban the Super Spicy Curry, since that item had a rather odd fan following after Ultimate's release? Should we lock Corrin up and throw away the key since he doesn't wear shoes? That could be pretty interesting to the right audience. Literally everything is a weird fantasy to someone.
To put it bluntly, it's not staff policy to judge people for being weird. We're weird. Nintendo is weird. And I don't believe that shaming and judging weird people with weird senses of humor and weird passions is good for our future. Maybe I'm biased because it seriously messed me up inside being the target of a lot of the drama with Star, but I don't want to play fun police if I don't have to. I don't think any of the staff does. And frankly, if someone can't look at a concept without seeing it as sexual... that's kinda on them. When I heard about the existence of a fattening spell, I certainly thought that was strange. But y'know what I did? I looked at the evil witch I was plotting, looked at Hansel and Gretel, and said "Huh. Actually yeah, I could use this." And then I made a really awful rhyme about it because apparently I was stealing Gruntilda's thing. I didn't see it the way Star did, because I would consider that very uncharitable.
Nothing is black and white, of course. If I thought any idea or concept was being represented in an overly sexualized manner unfit for our forum's guidelines, we might have something to say about that. But that wasn't the case with Star's concerns. Nor would we suddenly ban a concept itself if that issue did come up. I think Star allowed his personal feelings to cloud his judgment on this issue and, unfortunately, we weren't able to help him move past that.
I am sorry that we were unable to find a better resolution for everyone, but I am proud of the way the staff team kept their heads and handled this difficult situation. I think we made the best out of a bad situation.
Last Edit:
Oct 3, 2019 19:13:16 GMT -8 by Mari: Formatting
