Mod-character interaction (Kali)
From Badrp
#1
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From: B--- ---- Thank you for emailing me directly, Frank. I can tell you put a lot of thought into this, so I'm going to try to do the same. Bear with me, I'm not terribly good at keeping my sarcasm in check. :) On May 27, 2005, at 6:41 PM, Sages Moderators wrote: Hey B---, Text search is a beautiful thing. I found your e-mail with no problem because someone had thoughtfully filed it in a folder called "sages web comic." I love it when the other moderators are organized. :-) So what happened from your end with these unnamed parties, and did you have any other concerns that we can help address? Well, gloves off, faces bare, I saw the exchanges between you guys and Indigoskynet and StardustedLady. Both of these players have become friends of mine since I joined Sages, and I'm very, very grateful that we were able to become friends through that medium. What didn't sit well with me was, as I perceived it, a lack of communication on both sides. I chose not to get involved with these issues, however, seeing as they didn't concern me. I could just sympathize. However. Nadezhda-mun and I are friends going waaaay back. I've known Vivian for the better part of two years now, and she's somebody whose opinion I actually listen to. In fact, I was the one who introduced her to Sages. So when she left, it gave me the first inklings that something wasn't right. Let me say this now: She's said repeatedly that she's left under her own steam, and it has nothing to do with any other players or mods. But her leaving made me sit up and start looking at what was going on around there. And what I saw was a lot of cliques. I've never been one for cliques. Hated them in high school, hate them now. But, of course, cliques happen. I tried to stay out of it, and just have fun. Thanks for letting me know what was up at least with your concern about OOC issues between you and I. You would not be asked to leave Sages if just one moderator thought there might be an OOC problem happening in one instance. I hear people are wandering around saying this, but that is in fact not true. Like I said over on Hippolyta's journal, it's been hard to distinguish between Mod Hats and IC posts that just happened to be by a mod. Perhaps that's just me, though. I know *I* wouldn't want to mod AND RP on any particular board. It would be very difficult for *me* to differentiate between the two hats. So perhaps I'm projecting there. But there have been times when I thought that the line between the character and the mod got a touch blurry. Two people have been banned from Sages, and we described exactly why in a post last week. Both of those happened a few months ago. Another player was temporarily suspended after refusing multiple requests from three of the moderators for repeatedly doing something on Sages that broke community rules, and he chose to leave. If we ever had a concern with anything you wrote on Sages, we would ask you OOC, try to find out what was going on, and let all the other moderators review to get multiple perspectives. We don't kick people out for just one thing, and if one moderator has an issue with someone, the other moderators balance that out. Frankly, you just don't seem the type to be of any concern. I'm aware of the two who've been banned; I was there for second, had literally just joined on the day of the first. That being said, there was a feeling in the air, at least from what I could read, that a rule could be changed at the last minute and result in a banning, as was the case with Jimmy. I recognize that there are going to be changes as the community grows, and not every eventuality can be covered at the very beginning. But that smacked of "scramble to cover asses," if you'll pardon the expression. Not that I think what Jimmy-mun did was excusable or within the realm of good RP. It was, excuse the expression again, an example of disliking the action, but defending his right to do it, since it wasn't covered under the rules of the time. However, I didn't raise any objections at the time because, once again, I was not involved in that particular circumstance. However, I appreciate your saying that I don't seem the type. I'm not big on the drama. I try to keep the humor flowing fast and free, and I dislike being a corral for the drama llama. That I'm writing this email shows how far this has gone for me. Nine times out of ten, I wouldn't have even posted what I did on Hippolyta's journal. But I reached a point where I saw several friends express their displeasure, and realized that I wasn't having fun on Sages anymore. We did a post last week asking for community input, and as a result, we got some e-mails and comments telling us about concerns that people have that we were just unaware of (aside from the conflation of rumors about certain moderator interactions with certain players). As Ollie, Stewie, and all of us keep telling people as a result of this, if we don't hear it directly, we can't fix it. We learned a lot and we've been going to people and addressing concerns, and we're going to be making a couple of announcements clarifying things and addressing some misconceptions, and changing a couple of rules to make things better. I saw that, and did not participate in it because, like I said, I dislike being the Drama Contributor. I even saw that I was picked out by name in the "Awesome Things" post that Kali put up. And, forgive me, I know you're busy, but that rather chapped my hide. The webcomic idea got me excited. Two weeks go by, and I send a reminder email. Then: Nothing for two months. And that made me feel as if my contributions were being relegated to the circular file. I mean, not even a "we're still pondering it" email, nothing. It would have taken you or Kali or one of the other mods all of two minutes to send me a follow up. Instead, I figure it's been binned. Lo and behold, it's still being pondered. Coulda fooled me. (This is as angry as I get, I promise.) Again, rather than bring it up, I let it go. It's an LJ RP board. Not worth the aggravation. But I seethed just a bit. For example, we've heard from a couple of people told us that there was a rumor that the Moderators are "targeting" people that hang out in the Sage chat rooms. Nothing could be further from the truth. We rarely go to the Sages chat rooms because we are insanely busy, all of us, in real life, and all have other role playing commitments. We don't know who hangs out there. We think the role playing that is created by Sages is great, and have no reason to be disapproving of anyone that chooses to play in the chat rooms, and we aren't. As a Dark Sages semi-irregular, I had heard nothing of the sort. So, ok. :) Another thing people brought up was that they are confused when we appear to be moderating in character. There was a tendency for us to do that at the beginning of the community (all of us are guilty of this), because it just sort of evolved that way - meaning, we'd ask someone to do or not do something in the voice of our character, without making clear it was OOC, then switch to OOC if things got serious. We had *no* idea of the consternation this caused, and we saw how this could be very confusing for players, so we stopped it immediately the last time someone brought it up to us, and apologized. The players are right. We agreed that it was problematic. And you've nailed my biggest complaint. I won't beat that dead horse any more. It sounds like that is where you and I ran into trouble. You thought I was moderating you by having Frank say things to you, and I can *totally* see that if people are floating around talking about moderators not being clear when they are talking OOC vs. IC how you would get that impression. So I'd like to reassure you: if I had anything to say to you as a moderator, I'll do it privately (now that we have your e-mail) and make very clear that it is OOC. I have a feeling that you've been hearing things from a couple of players that are dissatisfied (not to say their concerns aren't legitimate) and that this whole thing got blown way out of proportion to fact. I've heard some stuff, as I pointed out above. But mostly it was from my own observations. I saw Frank first crack down on Rikku, and then on Cheezdanish (my RL journal, who has also posted to Sages) and then on Hippolyta, and then on poor Phinneas Q. Plectrum (Who, I know, deserved it IC, but...). I figured the mods knew who was behind each character. I drew a conclusion. That conclusion was: *Frank* didn't want me or my characters around. Not the mun behind the man, but Frank the character. Whether that was an accurate conclusion is irrelevant: the damage was done. Since I drew that conclusion in early April, I've seen Frank crack down on others, especially the young female characters, while letting others slide. This smacked of favoritism. Again, as I said over on the LJ, the INTENT behind the written word is near impossible to determine. I'm trying very hard to be polite and rational here, but I'm sure that some of it will come across as snarky and irrelevant. My point is: When you're in an RP situation, it's very easy to hide behind your sock puppet, and let the words get out of control. God knows I'm guilty of that. But I'm not a mod. So much of RPing is subjective perspective when you don't know another player well. I was not coming down on you for who you hang with on Sages; as far as I'm concerned, the more character interaction that happens in comment threads, the better, so we're happy when anyone participates. It *was* very obvious that Hippolyta was or is, uh, fond of Deadpool (given that he is the main one she talks to recently, and invoked the dreaded phrase "fangirling" to him in something she said one day [can't remember where, I can dig it up]), but I have no problem with that. A few people commented on how Hippolyta seems to be crushing on Deadpool (I mean, it's painfully obvious), and I wanted Frank to tease her about it. Fair enough. And, for the record, Deadpool-mun & I are buddies. Just in case that wasn't obvious. I can't recall saying that, although if I did say I was "fangirling" him, it was strictly tongue-in-cheek. Again, intent is hard put across. Yeah, Hippolyta can be very snarky. We've been talking about the different kinds of RPing that happen on Sages (not in an admonishing way, but more in a way acknowledging the wonderous diversity of styles on Sages). We have the comedic, the banter, the really serious dramatic, and the stuff that doesn't really fit into any easy category. We started Sages for comedy, but are amazed at the quality and diversity of RPing that we see on the board. Honestly, we have some great witers. Agreed. I try to stick to the comedy side. Perhaps a bit of background on me as a person is necessary here: I come from a show biz household. My father was the head writer on a show called Benson for several years. Benson's brand of sarcasm came directly from my father's head. My father's sarcasm and sense of humor has been instilled in me. Whenever I create a character, or do comedy writing, I have a tendency to skew very sarcastic. Call it indoctrination, call it inculcation, call it Susan, that's what I do. As an example of my "real life" writing, I point you toward SomethingAwful.com, where I had a Comedy Goldmine article back in October about my acting career. Hippolyta is the part of me that says all the snarky stuff I'm too polite and nice to say. Once again, it's easy to hide behind a puppet. We had a period where some people seemed to go out of their way IC to be really gratuitously nasty (at least that's how we perceived it) to other characters IC and that frankly puzzled us; it seemed to just be sort of contrary to what the community had been before. By this I don't mean merely simply serious dialog, or emotionalism; it's sort of easier to point out by example rather than principle, because it *is* so subjective. For example, some of the Mary Sue hunt stuff just left the mods shaking our collective heads. Some of it was hysterically funny, but a few of the comment threads just seemed to get needlessly vindictive IC, with people just role playing conflict that got more and more serious, and witch hunting people. Does that make sense? Sometimes characters at Sages drift in that direction in threads, and it's certainly a free for all at Sages, but we went through a period where it seemed to happen more and more, and we started to put the message out informally to lighten up and have fun (not that snarking can't be fun! I don't mean comedic snarking). So to be honest, there were a couple of times when I'd comment to Hippolyta, and then think when I got a reply "is she pissed OOC?" It can work both ways. There've been a few times that I wanted to have Frank talk to Hippolyta, but just wasn't sure how to approach her. Fair enough. Most of the time I wasn't "pissed," though; I was just confused. Perhaps that's my lack of Punisher canon showing through. I'll make you a deal, Frank. I'll take everything you say IC at face value from now on. But I'm not going to pull my punches anymore, either. If you get up Hippolyta's nose IC, she's gonna do her damnedest to hull you where wind meets water. :) Frank can be really a heavy, and a few times people got confused IC/OOC, got upset, and I had him back off. The upshot is that as of two weeks ago I don't do serious char hostility on Sages anymore (aside from parody) because I'm just not enjoying it. I take it to the off-Sages RPGs where Frank plays. In other words, he's lightening up, back to how he was at the beginning of the community. Frank will answer serious questions in a serious manner sometimes, but since some of us are wearying of seeing people post on Sages and just be met with threats of violence or real...nastiness, I guess, IC, I'm walking the walk and playing more for parody to be consistent. Again, fair enough. I'll hold you to that. :) A good example would be that we had a new character appear on Sages, and someone pursued her character through a long thread, calling her (IC) disgusting, stupid, idiotic, arrogant, and then finally vomiting on her. I missed that. Jesus. Snark is one thing. That's out of line. I read that the next day and thought "dude, why? Why are even on Sages if you want to have your character flip out on someone, be repeatedly insulting, and throw up on them on purpose?" (Clearly there was also a mun probably having a bad day behind the angry character, and hey, we all have bad days, but it was a little overboard.) Also please understand that a huge chunk of people that Frank RPs with on Sages have known him (and I) for a long time, and *know* that Frank is easily distracted by comedy, and also know that when he's being a heavy, it's not personal. Anyway, I have no problem with you OOC, I'm sorry that it got to this point, and I wish you'd told me earlier. Hopefully this will clear some things up, and I'm very interested to hear more of your perspective and thoughts on the situation, obviously. I hope it clears things up too. Again, I am not trying to stir the pot here. I loved Sages when I first joined up, and I would like to continue loving Sages. But the communication, on all sides, has to improve. I'm copping to that, as I did my part to engender it. This is my part to help improve it. Thanks, Frank Ditto. B--- | 
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#2
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From: Sages Moderators <sages_moderators@yahoo.com> Hey again, I've spoken to Nadezhda via IMs quite a few times. She seems cool with me, and with Sages now; she contacted me, not the other way around. I have nothing but respect for her. I think she left during the whole dust up with a few people trying to feud. I know *I* wouldn't want to mod AND RP on any particular board. It would be very difficult for *me* to differentiate between the two hats. So perhaps I'm projecting there. But there have been times when I thought that the line between the character and the mod got a touch blurry. I've modded and RPed in numerous games outside Sages, and managed to do ok, but I completely understand that some people can't, feel differently, and may project those expectations onto us. We created the community for us and everyone else. There *is no one else* to moderate it, unless the Buddha wants to take over. :-) I'm aware of the two who've been banned; I was there for second, had literally just joined on the day of the first. That being said, there was a feeling in the air, at least from what I could read, that a rule could be changed at the last minute and result in a banning, as was the case with Jimmy. We explained that in the post last week. We can't forsee *every single rule* we are going to need; we didn't when we set up Sages. We learn from you guys. In the Jimmy situation, we freely admitted, and always were quite up front that we had no rule to cover it, but we had to make one. We talked about whether or not to ban Jimmy mun for *three hours*, trying to work out a way around this, plus spent two days dealing with almost fifty e-mails complaining about Jimmy's actions. I don't think people are aware of how much work they cause for us when they pull stuff like that. We banned him because what he did was awful, and we knew that if we kept him in the game, the situation would be tense and explosive. There had been two previous incidents where Jimmy's mun had crossed the line that we had noted, so this was not the first. That's not something we explained beforehand to the general public. Editor’s Note: this explanation drastically conflicts with an account from someone acquainted with Jimmy-mun. Not surprising, perhaps, but at the time of this incident, it’s not clear that there were 50 players in the game, making 50 e-mails seem disproportionate. Of course, this could point back at Daisie for suckiness. No matter what we do, we take heat. We realize that. We'll never please everyone. Players need to remember sometimes how much work it is for us when shit like this happens. I recognize that there are going to be changes as the community grows, and not every eventuality can be covered at the very beginning. But that smacked of "scramble to cover asses," if you'll pardon the expression. Not that I think what Jimmy-mun did was excusable or within the realm of good RP. It was, excuse the expression again, an example of disliking the action, but defending his right to do it, since it wasn't covered under the rules of the time. I just explained this. Keeping the mun in the game would have started a war, and at a certain point, when we spend hours and hours dealing with repeated complaints about a player, it becomes too time intensive for us. He was not willing to work with us previously. If they don't change their actions, and we are spending all of our time modding them and the situations that they create, it is no longer viable. We are only human. The case was the same with Stardusted Lady, to be blunt. I even saw that I was picked out by name in the "Awesome Things" post that Kali put up. And, forgive me, I know you're busy, but that rather chapped my hide. The webcomic idea got me excited. Two weeks go by, and I send a reminder email. Then: Nothing for two months. And that made me feel as if my contributions were being relegated to the circular file. I mean, not even a "we're still pondering it" email, nothing. It would have taken you or Kali or one of the other mods all of two minutes to send me a follow up. Ok, you might not know this, but one of the moderators has had a death in his immediate family, another moderator has an imminent death of a family member coming up, one of the moderators took time off to relocate geographically and all that that entails, and I suffered a death in my immediate family. We have said before: we are behind. We are playing catch up. Real life will always take precedence. We've been hit hard by real life lately, all of the mods, and we're doing our best. We did not forget. That's why we put it in the post. I don't see a reminder e-mail here anywhere; no mail gets deleted. I'm looking for it. Sorry about the delay. I've heard some stuff, as I pointed out above. But mostly it was from my own observations. I saw Frank first crack down on Rikku, and then on Cheezdanish (my RL journal, who has also posted to Sages) and then on Hippolyta, and then on poor Phinneas Q. Plectrum (Who, I know, deserved it IC, but...). I figured the mods knew who was behind each character. I drew a conclusion. That conclusion was: *Frank* didn't want me or my characters around. Not the mun behind the man, but Frank the character. Whether that was an accurate conclusion is irrelevant: the damage was done. Since I drew that conclusion in early April, I've seen Frank crack down on others, especially the young female characters, while letting others slide. This smacked of favoritism. I had no idea who was behind your characters. I don't even remember who or what Rikku is, to be honest. I had no idea it was you. We have no idea who is munning a big chunk of the characters at Sages. I don't recall talking to cheezdanish, but if you point me there, I'll take a look. I wasn't the only one that spoke to Phinneas, as I recall....I barely remember what went on there. So, I had no idea any of them were you. I'm sure if you were feeling weird that any negative IC interaction would just contribute to it. (I've been there.) Yeah, Punisher canon helps, but it isn't necessary. The Marvel chars at Sages, and the large group of other players that know Punisher canon, tend to understand right away what's going on (I'm still shocked at the number of people that really groove on Punisher on Sages, and send me private e-mails with these long erudite discussions of Punisher canon. It's fun.) But on the other hand, the whole point of Sages is to make characters comprehensible to other characters from different universes, so I try to be clear. Punisher canon helps when someone says something IC that relates to something Frank has experienced, and the person conversant with Punisher canon can anticipate his reaction (if it's serious, not comical). One night Dream said something like "I control all action" (loosely paraphrased) and Jane and Huck's players IMMEDIATELY figured out that that wasn't going to sit well with Frank, because that meant that Dream would have set in motion the events that killed his family, warned Dream, and ran away as fast as they could from the thread, which I chose not to pursue. When you're in an RP situation, it's very easy to hide behind your sock puppet, and let the words get out of control. God knows I'm guilty of that. But I'm not a mod. Sometimes IC and OOC feelings are the same. With Frank, when he gets blunt, it's nothing to do with the person behind the character. It's not me sitting here thinking "well screw this other player, let me piss them off back." I remember the show Benson very well! :-) I used to watch it. What can be done on television with expression and timing is very different from the written page, I think. Sometimes in writing it can just come across as a little too barbed. Face to face is easier, as we all know by now. I've seen Frank crack down on others, especially the young female characters, while letting others slide. This smacked of favoritism. Huh? Can you point me to where he smacks down young female characters? I'm lost, but would like to see what you see, so I can re-evaluate and take a look at it and see what I'm doing. If anything, the way Frank is intended (as he is in canon) is to be nicer to kids. As for favoritism, every character at Sages is going to have the right to vary their reactions to other characters. I mean, I could say that Hippolyta smacks of favoritism with Deadpool, using your logic above, if you see what I mean. She's sometimes very nasty, other times she's nicer, depending on the person. However, I'm trying to level out what Frank does, but if someone like Bullseye showed up, or Nicky Cavella, well.....it would present a challenge to RP that for comedy, given Punisher/Marvel canon (Bullseye killed Elektra by impaling her, Nicky Cavella dug up the remains of Frank's family and desecrated them. You can imagine his reaction.) If you get up Hippolyta's nose IC, she's gonna do her damnedest to hull you where wind meets water. :) Uh, I think I just said that I wasn't comfortable with character hostility anymore, and that the mods were kinda lightening up. Something about Frank in canon: he is driven. He has little time for anything that is extraneous. He does not make small talk, unless he is gathering information. He has an extremely precise mind, and tends to put a lot of thought into what he does, which is why he's not dead. He absorbs vast amounts of information in a very short time. He has no time to be nasty or angry; it's not his thing. He does not lose his temper (twice in thirty years of canon has he done that). There are, as a recent discussion pointed out, vast misconceptions about him amongst people that don't know Punisher very well. He is the hardass of all hardasses but not unkind, if you know what I mean. He just will not interact with anyone or anything that does not serve his purpose, which is to kill as many people that need killing as possible, divert others from a bad path, and shoot Wolverine as often as possible. He does have a sense of humor, but it's...black. A great word for Frank in canon is: controlled. Obviously, the Frank I write on Sages has an element of parody, given the above. :-) Hope this clarifies. I honestly have NO recollection of Rikku and the others, and it honestly was not meant personally. I had no idea it was you. Frank | 
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Editor's Note: the element of parody has been largely missing since the early days of Sages.
#3
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From: B--- Sorry for the delay of my reply. I've been away from my computer for the last day or so. Needed a break. :) I've said everything I needed to, so I won't rehash it all again. I'm sorry to hear about all the personal stuff you and the other mods are going through. You're all in my thoughts. Thank you again. B--- |
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