Liberation Drama!?
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@Gashlycrumb I’m curious. This whole situation where the staff give you the cold shoulder seems to be something you have encountered before. How many games by your estimation have you been on where the staff eventually just stop responding?
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One.
I appreciate your continued efforts to help me feel bad about myself.
You are not, in fact, curious. I can see the parallels and anticipated that you’d be eager to point them out, but curiosity is not your motivator.
MN headwiz did not “stop responding.” +requests for me there had an average of 16 day turn-around when other people claimed four days. Staffer kept making scene appointments with me, then standing me up, then rescheduling and doing it again and again, such that it took an average of five reschedules to ever actually get to the thing. She frequently critiqued my behaviour and I repeatedly corrected it and found that this was impossible – asked not to complain about the game, I stopped only to be told that everything I ever mentioned negatively on any space was a thinly-veiled reference to the game, even if it was something that happened decades previously. Eventually I was ‘complaining’ by joining the LFRP channel and not saying anything at all. That staffer approached me the week before I was banned to give me a lecture about how content I should be without plot because everybody loved me and I got more +recs than anyone. Yet at the same time she was complaining about me on the staff channel daily, it seems. Also, frankly, that situation lacks bearing on pretty much any other because we were close friends previously and it’s fucking complicated.
I don’t know Siren from adam and I asked for normal player shit in a polite if no-doubt over-explainy way, and then had the gall to ask again when the issue didn’t get resolved.
Also, it’s a damn common complaint about Lib. For years a huge segment of players have found that their +requests sit and then get closed without being handled to ‘clear the queue.’ Scroll up. I actually suspect that Siren ignored me for that long out of pure habit and laziness, and then told me I deserved it rather than admit that she just can’t be bothered for a (formerly, who’s left?) significant segment of players, without stopping to think, “That’s worse, you do get how that’s worse, right?”
Also, no, not “eventually stop responding.” My entire experience with Siren was of someone who responded once and then ignored any follow-up. If her first response didn’t resolve the problem or answer the question, fucked are you, O Starr.
ETA: Oh, wait, since it wasn’t an ‘eventual’ stoppage but a near-immediate one, then the number of MUs where this has happened to me is actually zero.
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@Gashlycrumb I’m sorry this went this way for you, I think you really set the wrong tone by opening up by calling yourself ‘legitimately extremely annoying’ and a ‘horrible person’.
I’m gonna try a little rock em sock em both sides, though. As a staffer, if you knew that turning someone down/telling them they were being too much was likely to get you called abusive and stupid and whatever else…would you be eager to have that conversation? Would you want to put it at the top of your to-do? It’s not good behavior, but it’s understandable behavior, isn’t it? It’s at least as understandable as being cheesed off when your +requests are not getting answered in a timely fashion – which is a valid reason to be cheesed off!
fr fr
(she/her) -
Avoiding a problem is so much easier than confronting said problem, particularly when you can always justify the avoidance by assuring yourself that there’s so many more important things to do…
It’s even easier-er if that problem walks and talks and insists on itself.
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@hellfrog Yeah;. What I was getting at with that is that even if a player is annoying and horrible, it’s not good practice to just leave them twisting. That is to say that, even in cases where it’s understandable, it’s crap.
As a staffer, if you knew that turning someone down/telling them they were being too much was likely to get you called abusive and stupid and whatever else…would you be eager to have that conversation? Would you want to put it at the top of your to-do?
Turning someone down, or telling them they’re being too much, or even just telling them to re-read the theme guidelines and not app an elf into an elf-free world is likely to get that response. I did know it when I was staffing. I knew it would happen before it happened, which was practically day one. (It was an elf.) If you are staffing an open game it’s going to happen.
Did I like it? No. Did I worry about it? No. Did I take a few moments to be chill and centered before I told people stuff like that? Yes. Did this mean I didn’t do it instantly? Yes. Did this mean I might even put it off 'til tomorrow? Yes.
Did this mean I’d decide to just not do it at all and hope the player went away? NO. Absolutely fucking not. It is understandable that I might want to, but it’d be mean and harmful to actually do that. If that player is waiting and waiting for a response from me they are experiencing frustration every time they log on and find no answer. It builds up. The player is gonna get cheesed off and it’s likely that they will, understandably, act like they’re cheesed off. The scent of cheese permeates. Pretty soon the vibe is in shambles, and it’d be my fucking fault for consciously and unnecessarily aggravating somebody instead of doing a part of the staffing job that’s not fun.
Grasp the nettle firmly, for fucks’ sake.
“This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!”
– A. Bertram Chandler -
“No.” is a complete sentence.
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It builds up. The player is gonna get cheesed off and it’s likely that they will, understandably, act like they’re cheesed off.
While that is true and just as understandable, to me, as the staffer’s inability to deal with confrontation with irritable/irritating players… you as the player are responsible for your actions here just as you’re, rightly, holding the staffer responsible for their actions.
The best approach is to leave, not to cause more problems. Either the staffer is intentionally ignoring you, or their backlog is so bad that it’s negatively impacting you. Either way, you leave and hope for better elsewhere. Then you come here and bitch about it with your moral superiority intact.
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Yes, and when I learned that it was genuinely intentional (or close enough that Siren would claim that it was) I left.
I am not sure why it’s being taken as a given that I’m still playing there. But then again it’s taken as a given that Siren gave a clear “no” for me to not take as an answer previous to refusing to respond. I’ve said otherwise.
What “more problems” did I cause?
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I am not sure why it’s being taken as a given that I’m still playing there.
It isn’t. You’re taking general suggestions and advice and treating them as immediate instructions.
What “more problems” did I cause?
I don’t know. You, yourself, said:
The player is gonna get cheesed off and it’s likely that they will, understandably, act like they’re cheesed off.
Which is what I’m going off of.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
@Faraday said:
Pavel is probably right
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It’s immediate instructions that assume I didn’t already do that, and imply later that because I didn’t, my uh, ‘moral superiority’ is broken.
That an ignored player will get cheesed off and the game is likely to feel it is a general truth that staffers should understand.
In this particular instance? I’d been logging in, taking the frustration hit, not bitching about it except to those who opened the bitch-session, reaching out every few months as either a nudge or a new thing, not RPing because it annoys other players if your PC doesn’t do what he says he’ll do ‘cause the +request won’t move. A lot of this had to do with the smooth transition between +jobs not getting done because they needed Sundance and she wasn’t there and +jobs being slow because of the backlog from that and my jobs not getting done when others’ were. This was the second time I had annoyed Siren by responding (no, not on the bb, I put my messages in requests or mail) to bbposts that implied reasonable turn-around times for jobs by pointing out my stale ones and asking what’s wrong, but the previous one was probably nearly a year ago and at least nine months. I just don’t think I was stinking up the place with my cheesed-offness, though it wouldn’t be odd if I had done.
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It’s immediate instructions that assume I didn’t already do that
No. No it isn’t. It’s literally not that at all. I wrote it, I know what it is.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
@Faraday said:
Pavel is probably right
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@Pavel Okay. It came across that way to me is all, then.
“This is Liberty Hall; you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard!”
– A. Bertram Chandler -
Clarification is @gashlycrumb the person that was banned from the game in question or did I miss a plot point somewhere?
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@Pavel Okay. It came across that way to me is all, then.
Yes. Then you were told it wasn’t, and you insisted. That is what makes you frustrating to deal with. You don’t accept correction, and you assume everyone is operating with the same knowledge/belief/frame of reference as you.
That doesn’t excuse unprofessional behaviour.
He/Him. Opinions and views are solely my own unless specifically stated otherwise.
@Faraday said:
Pavel is probably right
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@Pavel Seems to me more like you just want to deny that it’s reasonable for me to have understood you the way I did.
I’d like to examine this more closely but I expect it would read to you as exactly what you’re complaining about,. I’ll take a run at it another way.
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Seems to me more like you just want to deny that it’s reasonable for me to have understood you the way I did.
It might have been reasonable the first time. But when I literally said
Pavel said:
You’re taking general suggestions and advice and treating them as immediate instructions.
That should have indicated to you that I was not giving you immediate instructions for a situation you are in, but instead giving advice and suggestions for a generalised genre of situations.
Multiple interpretations are frequently possible; I’m not the clearest of writers much of the time. But when I specifically correct your initial assumption, and your immediate reaction is to repeat it, that’s incredibly frustrating to deal with.
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I don’t know Siren. But if I were in Siren’s shoes, reading this thread, I would likely conclude I was in the right not to engage with @gashlycrumb. Not based on any moral judgement, but just based on this seeming likely to result in more emotional energy than most people want to expend OOC.
I think it’s best to focus on outcomes over intentions. Specifically:
@Pavel said:
The best approach is to leave, not to cause more problems. Either the staffer is intentionally ignoring you, or their backlog is so bad that it’s negatively impacting you. Either way, you leave and hope for better elsewhere.Ultimately does it really matter if the motive was malicious, abusive, absent-mindedness, laziness, apathy, exhaustion, avoidance, or anything else?
I recently left a game because I didn’t want to keep waiting around for staff to follow up on stuff. Genuinely no idea if they were busy, forgetful, distracted, or actually didn’t like me. I just didn’t want to be in that dynamic of feeling like a dog waiting at the dinner table for scraps, because it makes me feel like crap.
Forget about what staff was thinking, decide what you want/expect, and pick where to spend your energy accordingly.
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You’re taking general suggestions and advice and treating them as immediate instructions.
Huh. This is totally my bad because I misread this sentence. Not just misunderstanding what you meant, but what it actually says. I apologise.
I can see why you’d see it that way and hope you mean based on just this thread and just from Siren’s shoes. The thing is that deciding not to engage with someone when you are their only GM in a GM-required game is bad practice even if they’re a problem player or even a bad person. Pre-emptively refusing to engage and thinking you dodged a bullet 'cause they snarl doesn’t seem right.
Forget about what staff was thinking, decide what you want/expect, and pick where to spend your energy accordingly.
Good advice. Easily muddled if there are announcements made about how what you expect is what staff wants to give and will be forthcoming, please be patient etc. I am often naive that way.
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