bepps

(an interesting note is how she felt there were no individual thoughts there, just two sides)


Now tooz, I'm not really sure why you'd feel that way since everything you and everyone else asked for happened. A thread was posted saying that people are being let in too easily and that they weren't feeling comfortable with posting personal stuff like their phone number, address (for sending cards and for group events), and such. Once that happened no more people were vouched in and I didn't even update the vouch list. That temporarily solved the issue while we discussed it.

The idea of a group council was brought up. And it was indeed necessary in order for the group to function because once people saw that I was the group owner and heard that they had to be active in chat they'd idle and IM chicks and then as soon as I came in they'd be all "beppo! Hey what's up man!" and put on a show for me. In the time limit thread I tried to say that a council was already being used but I couldn't name names because eventually word would get out that they were that council then the same thing would happen with them and that would completely circumvent having one. Now that I'm not the group owner and that we're not doing that anymore I can tell you that it was [omitted because this journal is public]. We didn't have regular meetings or anything and in fact I didn't tell them who all was in it for the reason mentioned, but we did have quite a few discussions one on one and all of the vouch exceptions were done by their suggestion.

I know that you weren't saying it yourself Tooz, (in fact in the summer clearance thread you were the biggest opponent of clearing out the inactive members, but a lot of other people were and it became increasingly clear that the majority of people felt that it should be done so I did that. Until that time limit thread it appeared that most members were against it.

Folks were saying that they wanted a new group owner, which I too said months ago and asked them to change it over in the group owners group. Since then I hadn't really put much thought into it and once I did I thought "Duh. Go anon so they can see that the rowdiest buch of folks on SG have no moderator". So in order to make sure that they did I bumped my post and went anonymous.

The real issue was that people didn't know that it was actually a serious thing to vouch someone in here so they were vouching in anyone that they thought were "cool". That's not gonna happen now. It's pretty obvious to everyone now that a lot of people in here feel very passionately about only letting in troo chatters so it's really unlikely that the issue is gonna arise again.

Everything that happened to this group from that thread was exactly what we've been wanting to happen for a long time but couldn't do anything about. I mean I was not gonna reply to every single vouch that people make asking "Are you sure? Did you read the first post up above the names list?" I'd already told everyone how important it is, and in order for people to see who's in that list they'd have to read me saying so. Trouble was, is that they didn't.

The only thing I can think of as to why you'd feel that things turned out how you didn't want is my going anonymous (which it looks like I was the only one), and that was why I did it (the reason posted above). I stayed anon because I really needed some time to chill out. In my adult life I've only been brought to tears 3 times. Once when my dad died, another time when my younger brother nearly cut his hand off, and night before last (although I was pretty drunk at the time ). I know some folks (*cough*Vivid*cough*) would say "You fucking pansy.", but I'm sorry, you guys are almost all of my closest friends and, I know you didn't mean it as an insult to me, but when someone says that I'm incompetent and didn't care, that's the most hurtful thing that anyone's told me in recent memory. From the very start I've been extremely passionate about this group and about what everyone wants to happen in it and that really bothered me to hear my friends saying I wasn't. The only thing I can think of as to why anyone would have thought that I didn't care about everyones thoughts is my not changing my thoughts on the vouch issue. Which, go through there and look and you'll see that all I'd posted was my opinion. I never said what the group had decided on, only my thoughts. Which I'm not gonna change my opinions no matter how many people disagree with them. I will never say "Oh, everyone else says the sky is green. It must not be blue."

There was a big problem in the group and changing the way people are vouched in wasn't going to fix it, and in fact it would only make it worse. The only way that it was going to get fixed was to really make them stop and look at what they're doing. Now everyone's gonna do that. Seriously, I see that thread as being a tremendous success.