Liberation Drama!?

MidnightCreature

I don’t believe he’s been banned, but he did tell me he’d left the game.

I’ve also been watching this exchange, and I don’t think what he was trying to get across was that the staff were specifically mean or targeting him, but that it’s part of a much broader problem.

@gashlycrumb can really only speak to his own experiences on this forum, but he’s not the only person I’ve heard who has had similar experiences to this. Lots of people have remarked to me found it very difficult to get Siren to do anything for them, even if it was a minor sheet correction or a bug fix.

I also assume you’re speaking in good faith here, but…

I’m a bit fatigued by how often the “volunteer” label gets emphasized when talking about game staff. Not just from you but I’ve seen this argument before. Like, yes, you’re taking on a second job that you don’t get paid for, but lots of hobbies are like that. A lot of hobbies take time, effort, and consideration, and they can be frustrating.

There is also a lot that game staff have to do that the average player generally doesn’t.

But I still don’t exactly vibe with leaning so heavily on the volunteer aspect of it. It’s not as if game staff are performing a service in the way that going and working at a food bank or an animal shelter is. It’s more like going to a theater group and offering to work as part of the stage crew to help put together free community performances.

So a person shouldn’t staff on a game unless they’re actually into doing the work of being a GM/Storyteller/Dungeon Master. Like, if you don’t enjoy being a storyteller and interacting with players, then you probably shouldn’t be staffing on a game.

This can explain why people have limited time, why things sometimes take longer than anyone would like, or why a hobby has to come second to real life.

But I don’t think it should be used as a blanket response to criticism about someone consistently not doing the basic things attached to a role they voluntarily chose to take on or when they break their own rules with the regularity of the tides. If someone wants the authority and control that come with staffing a game, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for players to expect them to actually perform the functions of that role.

Pavel

It turns out that for some reason I can’t access the game’s website. No idea why, no real care to investigate either. But it’s like Saint Carlo Acutis himself is looking out for me.

Roz

@MidnightCreature said:
But I still don’t exactly vibe with leaning so heavily on the volunteer aspect of it. It’s not as if game staff are performing a service in the way that going and working at a food bank or an animal shelter is. It’s more like going to a theater group and offering to work as part of the stage crew to help put together free community performances.

all of those things are volunteer work tho. when people bring up the “volunteer” aspect, it’s not (in my experience) to try and call to mind some specific form of volunteering that involves feeding the hungry or something. it’s literally just to say that you can’t expect performance consistency at the level of a paid job.

volunteering for a theatre is just as much volunteering as for a food bank. the point is someone not being paid and only working in a limited capacity, not making a moral point about the work being done.

So a person shouldn’t staff on a game unless they’re actually into doing the work of being a GM/Storyteller/Dungeon Master. Like, if you don’t enjoy being a storyteller and interacting with players, then you probably shouldn’t be staffing on a game.

most people do, though. most staffers IME do so because they enjoy some aspect of staffing. the problem is that no amount of enjoying helping players or running plots can survive having to do so for players who make the work miserable to do.

But I don’t think it should be used as a blanket response to criticism about someone consistently not doing the basic things attached to a role they voluntarily chose to take on or when they break their own rules with the regularity of the tides. If someone wants the authority and control that come with staffing a game, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for players to expect them to actually perform the functions of that role.

to me, i feel like the comments are often more about perspective, particularly because these issues often get brought up as big moral failings. which — no. it’s a hobby frustration. someone dragging their feet on jobs is an annoyance, not a moral calamity.

Wizz

@Gashlycrumb said:

I don’t believe it’s ‘most ideal’ for GMs to talk to players, I believe that’s a core element of the job.

other people have said this more politely but this is not a fucking job. it’s something someone is choosing to do, completely on their own time, for free, take it or leave it. they don’t OWE you anything more than they are offering, period.

I understand that’s a point of disagreement you are going to begrudge but honestly I really don’t care, players who come into someone’s game with that level of entitlement need to log off and go get some perspective or they will always find themselves on the outside looking in.

Gashlycrumb

@voiceinthevoid said:

I do have a few questions. Is @gashlycrumb banned? Does he want to be banned if not? Does he still play there? Does he believe he should be banned?

I’m not banned. No, I don’t play there, I left. I don’t want to be banned. I don’t think I should be or deserve to be banned. I don’t care if I’m banned since I won’t return anyway.

You don’t actually have to ban a person to tell them that you refuse to interact with them. That’s what should have been done, six months ago or whenever Siren made that decision. I dunno about ‘unethical’ as @Roz has a point that it’s not a moral calamity, it’s just crappy.

Yes, there have been a lot of periods when almost no jobs were answered on Lib, and the major such time has a tragic cause. I didn’t resent it or bug anybody about it. Siren has posted a couple times on the bb that everything is caught up and jobs are being done normally, with the implication of a less than two-week turn around. I didn’t even think she disliked me until I asked the cause of these delays for me in the context of the posts and she told me so. I thought it was an organisational issue.

@midnightcreature I don’t like framing it as volunteer work either.

Say, folks. Y’know, museum and library volunteers sometimes:

Refuse to do the parts of the job they don’t like.
Skip their shifts on a whim.
Reserve for their friends tickets/swag/prizes that they are meant to give out first-come-first-serve.
Demand frequent praise.
Become furious at any attempt to guide them.

This is why many institutions find that they cannot afford volunteers. You need a full-time professional to wrangle them. It’s not uncommon for volunteer programs to run at a financial loss and the institution to continue them purely for community goodwill.

Please don’t have this attitude towards volunteer jobs. You may harm the organisation you’re trying to help. (And if you are just doing it for your ego, well, pssst: the professionals are likely to call you “the staff infection,” when you’re not there if you do that stuff.)

catzilla

Tossing my two cents…

If the main staff dislike/hate/etc. they should just say it instead of ignoring said person in hopes they go away.

“Hi so&so, thank you for your interest but you and this game/staff/etc don’t vibe. We hope you find your game in the future. Here’s the door. Bye.”

That literally took 5 seconds to write.

I agree staffing isn’t a job. I’ve always seen it more like having an open house of sorts. If there was someone in your open house that clashed with you for whatever reason, you wouldn’t just ignore them, you’d ask them to leave and if they refused you’d show them the door (banning).

voiceinthevoid

@Gashlycrumb

I believe you stated you don’t believe you should be banned and also said that staff told you the delay was related to being uncomfortable dealing with you?

What are the options then?

Staff deals with you despite discomfort?

New staff is hired and told to handle your jobs?

Evilgrayson

It doesn’t really matter whether staff thinks you’re great or shit or anything in between.

A simple request solved with one command - two if you have to manually close out the job - should not take six months.

A request for a steer on a long-term project should not take six months, especially when the staffer in charge of the sphere is the only one for that sphere.

There’s accepting that people are volunteering, and there’s ye gods WTF?

Pavel

All staff should hire The Other Dude. Whenever a player becomes so irritating, so poorly behaved, or so… arduous to deal with, you just send their stuff to The Other Dude and they will be responsible for “gently offboarding” the player in question.

That shall be their only job.

DrQuinn

@Pavel That’s what Cheesegrater (I don’t think he migrated over from the last place or if he did he’s using a new name!) did for Tenebrae ages ago. Also coding, but when there was a problem player that had eventually exasperated other staff, he’d be called in to look at the situation and 9 times out of 10, show the person the door. Or in that last 1 time, tell the staffer they were wrong. He was a great sanity check for bad situations.