Liberation MUSH
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re: Theno
I will say that when we both staffed on The Reach we clashed and rubbed each other the wrong way a LOT; but aside from any maturing I’ve done, I’ve seen Thenomain change in his view about people, the way he relates to them, the amount of patience he shows now vs. back then when it comes to figuring out other people’s intentions and quirks, etc.
I can’t testify for anything he’s done in the past, but the Thenomain I know now is a reasonably chill guy who gets really excited when his code works and is used. Does he still make jokes some people don’t find funny, maybe. But I think everyone does that. It hardly merits someone losing their shit the way Polk did, imo.
In Occam I trust.
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@Coin I’ve found him likewise to be an amazing and engaging, sometimes-troubled person - and I’d prefer an acre of Thenomains to a square inch of Polk.
He’s helped me considerably over the years and I have little save praise for his journey. Polk, well - the folder with my logged conversations with him is rightfully named “Batshittery”.
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@Coin said in Liberation MUSH:
It hardly merits someone losing their shit the way Polk did, imo.
FWIW I don’t think anybody has expressed thinking that it did. Everyone seems in pretty universal agreement that Polk’s reaction was absolutely wild and beyond the pale of a reasonable response. Just that ALSO some folks wouldn’t want to have either party on staff.
she/her | playlist
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@Roz said in Liberation MUSH:
@Coin said in Liberation MUSH:
It hardly merits someone losing their shit the way Polk did, imo.
FWIW I don’t think anybody has expressed thinking that it did. Everyone seems in pretty universal agreement that Polk’s reaction was absolutely wild and beyond the pale of a reasonable response. Just that ALSO some folks wouldn’t want to have either party on staff.
It’s always a wonder when someone can’t pick up on obvious sarcasm – even if the sarcasm isn’t funny – and explodes about needing to be respectful, and is also the same type of person who insists that other people are “unstable” and “offended” when they’re called out on an insensitive comment made about someone’s gender or sexuality.
Edit: I was being sarcastic, it’s not actually a wonder but wholly expected. Figured I’d clarify just in case.
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@somasatori or someone who is happy to enjoy/feel entitled to second+ chances with a staffer willing to be careless/reckless enough to appease them, while pointing the finger at the other person’s past behavior!
And yet. So unsurprising.
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@mietze That was a wild part of the thread, the whole “I’m confident this will blow over and Sundance will come crawling to ask me back.” I feel like I could hear the smugness in his fingers as he typed that out, his lips quivering into a self-satisfied smirk.
they/them
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@somasatori That’s a compelling visual.
Polk, with a quivering lip. Yikes.
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@Roz Ah, I see. I don’t see that as misusing player info personally, though I can understand why it would make people mad. Maybe misusing admin privileges at most, but a downvote isn’t really personal information in the same way as an email address or real name, etc. The way it was framed made it sound like he doxxed people or something.
That’s not to discount anyone’s feelings on the matter. I’m sure whomever he followed around the forums wasn’t enjoying it. But, for me personally, that’s not something that would get me to distrust him or any of his work.
People get mad, people get bitter, emotions run high on forums. All of that stuff is forgivable to me. People grow and learn from their mistakes. There’s plenty in the world of MU* to be weary of, like those who tear down the sandcastle when they lose their beach ball or the VASpiders of this hobby; a little trolling seems tame by comparison.
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@OnceWas Yeah, you know, not the finest thing I’ve ever written.
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@somasatori to be fair, he’s been tolerated through a lot it sounds like, and she’s been willing to lose/alienate many players to keep him on. Charity case or the “la la la who cares about the past” stubbornness, dunno. I don’t know too many other competent headwizzen who would need to remove someone twice from staff positions in spheres for cause and would still allow them staff access to not hurt their feelings and to allow them to continue to have a power hold on the game itself. So I can see why he’d think that it could be just handwaved away.
But I really hope that indeed at least this time something has been learned and the keys permanently taken away. And that there was a line that he could cross eventually. If not I kinda hope maybe more people will view it as a Not Just Polk problem.
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@mietze That’s a good point, and I agree. I don’t know what the dynamic there is, it seemed pretty toxic based on the back and forth. I personally like Sundance, so setting that aside: there is a poor precedent set in allowing someone to come back or taking half-measures in addressing problematic behavior. It’s good it seems like it was fully addressed, hopefully there are some new warning signs or alarm bells that come from this experience (e.g., people setting strong ultimatums, people using all-or-nothing thinking, people saying ‘you obviously don’t care about me because you won’t take my side when <X> happened’ and so on). It’s unfortunate it was allowed to go on as long as it did.
I admittedly don’t have a ton of involvement with the wider community these days, but this is definitely a Not Just Polk problem. Overbearing and abusive personalities have historically pushed to get their way on games; I’m sure they still do. We hear about the big blow-ups, but there are probably many small instances where someone feels obligated to hold someone in a position or people manipulating or bullying people into allowing them to retain even the smallest level of power. That log (which appears to have been removed from the thread) is a good example of what behavior is unacceptable to take from “friends.”
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did it get removed from the thread because people realized that every body in it came out looking very cringe*???
i gotta know.
*in varying levels of cringe
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@Meg It’s difficult to look suave in a monkey-shit fight.
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@OnceWas speak for yourself. i always look great.
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I still see the Imgur screenshot log. What got removed??
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Perhaps the person posting stuff that was obviously from Sundance’s screen that was shared probably in confidence (also an unwise move that real friends should have warned about) thought better of it (hopefully) or was asked by someone else to knock it off?
I hope that’s a lesson learned too, should be easy to figure out who broke confidence.
Oh Roz says its still up, so apparently no to realizing that was a not great thing to do.
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@Roz Discord name, by the context?
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@mietze I disagree, that was a great thing to do! give us the tea!
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@mietze said in Liberation MUSH:
Perhaps the person posting stuff that was obviously from Sundance’s screen that was shared probably in confidence (also an unwise move that real friends should have warned about) thought better of it (hopefully) or was asked by someone else to knock it off?
I hope that’s a lesson learned too, should be easy to figure out who broke confidence.
Oh Roz says its still up, so apparently no to realizing that was a not great thing to do.
She (Sundance) openly shared it all and discussed it all in the game for transparency.
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@Pan said in Liberation MUSH:
@mietze said in Liberation MUSH:
Perhaps the person posting stuff that was obviously from Sundance’s screen that was shared probably in confidence (also an unwise move that real friends should have warned about) thought better of it (hopefully) or was asked by someone else to knock it off?
I hope that’s a lesson learned too, should be easy to figure out who broke confidence.
Oh Roz says its still up, so apparently no to realizing that was a not great thing to do.
She (Sundance) openly shared it all and discussed it all in the game for transparency.
“Transparency.” Sundance takes action and suddenly the logs are free flowing.
Of course they are. This was the one time she actually held him to account, so why not expose his bad behavior? I’d love to see a log of all the times where he did all the other abusive, manipulative, and unethical shit and see the logs of her explaining over and over why she’s doing nothing at all. That would be real transparency.
Because it wasn’t just this one incident that caused this. Even she said that. So exposing the logs of this one incident isn’t really the whole story. Its just a snippet of a narrative that looks good for her: “Polk flips. I call him on his stuff. He freaks. I stand tough. He flips the table. The game goes down, but only for a short while because I already had brilliant backup plans in place thanks to my great wisdom and foresight.”
But that’s not the whole story. So it isn’t “transparency” so much as a slightly dipped down opacity of one part of one day amidst years of shit that happens to cast her as the stalwart hero in this one curated moment.
