News Please Read: Change in Board Staff

Let me begin by saying that I had no intention of posting in this thread after I read the first post. I am responsible for the lack of posting in this thread by more than a few members of this board, and if any problems should arise due to certain members not posting in here, I demand that all the blame fall on my shoulders.

Before I go any further, I want to make it very clear that I do think Kean and Lyri were valued members of the board, and I am sad that they see what happened as reason to leave, although I can understand where they are coming from.

I joined here almost a year ago, so I still count as a "newbie" in the grand scheme of things. When I first joined I was impressed with everyone... the staff, the members, the board itself. There were quite a few specific members who were very friendly and welcoming. In my time here, I've met more than a few people who I would call friends. I had no problems with the forum, up until the April Fool's joke. I had hoped things had smoothed over then, and was rudely awakened during the Great Mass Banning/Time Out. People I'd grown to know and trust were banned from the forums, and others were not - and those who were not had no problems with it. And yet I wasn't banned (and I have no earthly idea why, and do, frankly, believe I should have been, if the others were). I made my thoughts and feelings on that matter very clear when it occurred.

Buffy promised changed. I try to be optimistic. One of my flaws is always believing people are inherently good, and so I often give the benefit of the doubt and second chances over and over.

As most of you, by now, know, I left Merrick. My reasoning was twofold. Firstly, I wished to demonstrate my goodwill toward Buffy, and secondly, I had some issues with the way Merrick was being run. By no means does this mean that I had any dislike for Lyri or Kean as people, and I am completely honest in that I am sad to see them go. I did find that on my part, relations were easier for me with everyone in Merrick once I had distanced myself, and truly believe my decision to resort was for the best for all involved.

Now that I have related my background, I'll turn to the post Buffy made. Upon reading it, I was, quite frankly, appalled. Not with the behaviour that caused this to occur, but with the way Buffy herself phrased it. I am not the most humble person, nor the most loving person or unselfish person. I have over and over struggled with drama queen tendencies, as anyone who has known me for any great deal of time can attest to. As such, I was shocked beyond belief that Buffy would use those very same martyrdom tendencies in this post. It was a call for drama, not an attempt to further remove it from the forums.

I could not, can not, and will not condone that. I spoke to several people and told them in very distinct terms *not* to post here, because it would just feed the drama that is already boiling over here.

This is not to say I don't necessarily agree with everything. I've already made it clear to some people that there is no reason to be surprised by infractions given, since what occurred was in violation of the rules.

At the same time I am a little surprised at Lyri and Kean. Having been in a similar situation as both administrator and moderator of various forums, I know what can be said about you, and I know the friendships you can lose. At the same time, offense isn't a one way street. You are not puppeted to react in any given way. You choose your reaction, and how you deal with what is said. It's a hard decision to make, but by taking offense, you're giving into what the other person wanted and letting them "win."

The main reasoning, however, behind posting now is a more recent post of Buffy's where she outright made a mention about knowing the group of troublemakers by their conspicuous absence of posting in this thread. Granted, there are quite a few people here who this could be referring to, but if it is anyone whom I have asked not to post, then it is my place to accept and take responsibility for my actions.

If you are suspecting ill will of anyone who has not posted, and/or wish to take action against them, I insist that it be done against me. I had hoped to prevent more drama, but it seems that I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't... if that's how it shall be, get on with the damning already so we can move on to happier things.

~~yellowcrayon
 
nerd4hire
nerd4hire
So after a righteous BS edit it sounds like you're saying you (and I quote) are "shocked beyond belief" drama occured which you are not the center of. BTW post the forums you admistor, and moderate, so I know to stay away from those ones.
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anyalover17
[No message]
I have to say I find it absolutely laughable that you think Buffy inital post was Drama, when all it did was point out what was exactly true. If you believe it shouldn't have been mentioned, or swept under the rug, I find that appalling.

This issue has been mentioned countless times at this point, and it's gotten to a stage where we lost two of our important Mods and Members (they were valuable members also) so this had to be said, look at the shocking about of people that have written that they had seen us say there was an issue but weren't really fully aware of it, this post does not create drama, it just goes to show the results of the ongoing drama being caused by a small group of members, and it shows that the mods weren't just talking about some small irritating little issue, but in fact a big problem on this board!

This was an eye opener, in no way was this drama. Everything Buffy said in that post was true.

Also I think it has to be said that it's terrible that firstly you knew who to go to in order to not "Escalate the Drama", and secondly that you felt you had to say it to stop people from talking. That to me says you are aware there is a problem with some members and that you know exactly who it is.

Why if thats true, did you not go to that group of people and ask them to top treating other people like crap, or stop picking on other members or threatening members (yes it was a joke, but who doesn't love a bit of stabbing humor?)

Why is it that we see the consequences of the problem and now it's time to keep quiet!
 
J
Joyce Summers
Just generally agreeing with the whole post
I am not happy about this at all. I am so disappointed and disgusted by how some of you treat people on this board. I have held my tongue long enough. You guys really need to grow up. The whole "Time Out" thing that happened a few months ago wasn't even that serious and you guys took it to an entirely different level. We gave you guys Time Out but instead of using the time for something productive, a lot of you chose to move the circus along to another site and talk shit about how unfair the staff was being. Then you guys came back and Buffy apologized for doing NOTHING wrong. But you still managed to remind her about how stupid and uneccesary it was.

This site used to be a place where people can come and talk about Buffy without having to worry about somebody bashing them for it. But for the last few months, it has been a mess. The cliques, and shit talking, the putting down of other members is ridiculous. I hardly ever feel like posting anymore because of this. There's no more love here. Just hostility.

-VisionGuy
 
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Summers Blood
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Tranquillity
Tranquillity
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CotA
Disagree
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StuckinTraffic
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Even the list of things that supposedly only Kean and Lyri can do? Any one of us can do most of them.

Yes, if you want to reread what Buffy wrote, key words were "you have now lost the people who were in charge of the following projects:"
and
"Most of these will probably not happen anymore now"

No where does it say no one else can do these. But these where their projects, Like Buffy has already said Lyri was our contact for Keith Szarabakja and Georges Jeanty.

And on the other projects, they were well underway, so it involves us having to take over them and catch up what with they were doing, and for things like the Wiki, all that information wont have been saved online.

Plus this is only Lyri and Keans list, there are still allot more that each of the other Mods do.
 
Nix
Nix
[No message]
Let me begin by saying that I had no intention of posting in this thread after I read the first post....

~~yellowcrayon

YOU are the one fueling drama here.

By your assumption, I am also to blame, due to my lack of comments in the thread, which is ridiculous.

Quit causing problems where there are not problems.

It's her forum. HERS. This is not a public community. She can do with it 100% what she pleases.

The people SHE put in place are sick of being treated the way they're being treated. They choose to leave. It doesn't matter if you have been a mod/admin before and you would handle it differently. This is how they choose to deal with it.

Oh my gosh, if you don't like it, leave!
 
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Joyce Summers
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Flannen
Flannen
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Summers Blood
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Mr. Pointy
Mr. Pointy
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StuckinTraffic
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I think that some of you have completely misunderstood what I said in my post, and the point I was trying to make.

Firstly, I will outright state that I had no idea what was going on or why when the post was written. I didn't know what was said. And the folks who said things most certainly do know my opinion on that.

Secondly, my post was NOT intended to create drama. It was intended to hopefully protect some people from misunderstanding. Now I see that I've only provoked a greater one, so I am truly sorry for that.

There were no insults and no scared little girls in my post. There was merely an attempt to correct any misunderstandings.

~~yellowcrayon
 
I think that some of you have completely misunderstood what I said in my post, and the point I was trying to make.

Firstly, I will outright state that I had no idea what was going on or why when the post was written. I didn't know what was said. And the folks who said things most certainly do know my opinion on that.

Secondly, my post was NOT intended to create drama. It was intended to hopefully protect some people from misunderstanding. Now I see that I've only provoked a greater one, so I am truly sorry for that.

There were no insults and no scared little girls in my post. There was merely an attempt to correct any misunderstandings.

~~yellowcrayon

If you didn't know what the issue was about, why would you come on and say that we were being over dramatic?

I don't mean to sound attacking, but why would you basically call Buffy a Drama queen if you didn't know what the issue was about?
 
I had made a draft post but things seemed to have moved on from there However I will still post what I wanted to say which was:

I completely disagree with Buffy being a drama queen, I have known this girl longer and better than anyone and she is the furthest thing from a drama queen. What she is (like myself) is someone who has been pushed to the end of her rope. Someone who has tried to do things for the good of the board and got it thrown back in her face. We have lost good staff and members because of this - some you will notice and some you will not.

This is why we are taking such action and posting such things like this thread.

Fair enough you can't condone it, but you will have to either accept it even though you disagree or feel free to leave of your own accord. We will not be changing our position on this, we have been pushed to this.

Fair enough you say that you didn't intend to create drama - but it did exactly that. Perhaps now you see how Buffy's post was not intended to create drama yet you seem to think it did...........

Yellowcrayon - If you wish to discuss anything else feel free to drop me a PM. Not that I feel certain things should be hid but if we can either discuss things and find a way through or we can go round in circles - which is what we have been doing.

People are very understandably upset on both sides of the fence but continuing like this is will get us nowhere and is just going to end up drawing more lines.
 
S
Selig
Completely agree that certain issues need to go to PM or Email now to avoid further disruption!
Nix
Nix
[No message]
Even the list of things that supposedly only Kean and Lyri can do? Any one of us can do most of them.

Perhaps we can, technically. But that's not enough. I've been a mod for more than half a decade now, and know what it takes. And honestly, the list of responsibilities taken on by Kean and Lyri had me awestruck. It's not easy to find moderators of such a caliber.
 
white avenger
white avenger
Absolutely!
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Summers Blood
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Mr. Pointy
Mr. Pointy
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Angelic Slayer
Angelic Slayer
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Tranquillity
Tranquillity
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It seems to me, just from reading the posts here of the last few days that some of us have forgotten, or have chosen to ignore the fact, that we are all basically what amounts to guests in Buffy's home. Anyone who doesn't like the way that she and the staff who she has chosen to assist her in running the place do things has every right to make their objections known as they are walking out the door. This isn't the tv show, folks., and we're not the Potentials. The lady that pays the bills makes the rules, and we can freely choose whether to to follow those rules or take our objections with us as we make our exit.
 
Mr. Pointy
Mr. Pointy
[No message]
Airam
Airam
Thank You!
Buffy Summers
Buffy Summers
Thanks :)
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Harley
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StuckinTraffic
[No message]
It seems to me, just from reading the posts here of the last few days that some of us have forgotten, or have chosen to ignore the fact, that we are all basically what amounts to guests in Buffy's home. Anyone who doesn't like the way that she and the staff who she has chosen to assist her in running the place has every right to make their objections known as they are walking out the door. This isn't the tv show, folks., and we're not the Potentials. The lady that pays the bills makes the rules, and we can freely choose whether to to follow those rules or take our objections with us as we make our exit.

Excellent example, hey remember that time in Season 7, when the potentials decided that Buffy was going to far so kicked her out of her own house, then they basically led themselves into a trap and were blown up, and it ended up that Buffy was right all along and the Scythe was under the vineyard... Yeah that was a good episode.
 
Nix
Nix
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Washburne
Washburne
Ha. You have to get some karma for that.
Skanky Vamp
Skanky Vamp
Wasn't it Faith that led them into the trap and got blown up?
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Big Damn Hero
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Joyce Summers
definitely karma for this post haha
I think what people need to remember is that this board isn't a democracy... it's private property, and the property owner has the right to make and enforce the rules.

Basic civility and respect should trump "freedom of speech" here.
 
S
Selig
Basic civilty and repect should be part of free speech!
Even the list of things that supposedly only Kean and Lyri can do? Any one of us can do most of them.

To the best of my knowledge, all of those jobs were voluntary. By the size of the load that these two ladies were carrying, volunteers must be in pretty short supply. Maybe if there had been less energy being spent bitching about how things are run here, some of the ones doing all the bitching could have volunteered to share the burden. After all, "any of us could do them," right?
 
Professor Walsh
Professor Walsh
[No message]
I'm tired, and some of this may not come out exactly how I want it to. I'm not the most eloquent of people and I'm certainly not going to get bogged down in the current discussion of "who" and "drama" and all that crap.

What this boils down to is that this site has lost an integral part of it's staff, for reasons that should be entirely, well, just not there. Not just hard working members of staff, but friends to most of us - either through reading threads that they've participated in, having conversations with them in threads, or getting to know them on a more personal level. And I will miss both of you.

I'm fairly new. I don't know what the boards were like five years ago (or even one year ago) but I know that even now this place has the potential to be what I realised it could be when I joined - a community. That's something that everyone has to work together to get - the old and the new, the young and the old. If you have a problem with someone, speak to them directly or just don't speak at all. Nothing gets solved by being two-faced, bitching behind people's backs or having a gossip with your friends. Nobody's perfect.

I am fully behind the moderating team on this. And I hope that we can all work together to make the Buffy Boards the place that it deserves to be.
 
Holy hell.... What in the world is going on here, people??!?! Seriously... Do we really have to resort to all this freakin' name calling and mean-spirited insinuations?
People messed up and said some really hurtful things in a heated moment, causing two very important members here to jump ship. That's the facts, and it sucks all around. But we shouldn't let this be the downfall of the entire board.
Honestly, I could definitely understand at this point if Buffy and Faith DID decide to close the board. This is getting rediculous.
 
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