Clearing the Air

So it's time for a serious post, and a serious discussion that I'd like to hear from everyone on. This is a topic that has been building up, and we feel as if it has gotten to the point that we really need to address it, and amend some things.

A growing feeling that the staff has been sensing, and have even been told on occasion, is that the members feel we are perhaps abusing our power as staff. What I mean by this is, perhaps some of you feel we are being totalitarian, or being high and mighty on our shiny staff horses. If you feel this way, if you feel that I may be acting like a dictator or that we have not been listening to you, then please listen.

Perhaps you are right.

All along, it has not been my, or the staff's intention to be this way. We DON'T want to be dictators, we DON'T want to ruin fun or rule with an iron fist, but perhaps we have been lately. This is entirely our fault as the staff members, and we want to amend it.

First, I want to tell you all that our intentions have been good, but we haven't been doing a good job of showing them. We don't want to be here just to rule over you, or have power. It has been my philosophy from the start of HC that the staff members should be no higher up than the members of the forum, and that we shouldn't hold ourselves up as being more powerful or important than the rest of you. Our main goal has been to serve you, however we may have gotten in our own way with this.

I feel as if I should explain some things, and hopefully they will shed some light on how it may have gotten this way and why we may have acted the way we have. After this, I will then open it up to you all to express your feelings and help us right the ship.

I think it all goes back to a while back, when Guy, Eevachu, and the others were staff. There were a lot of open debate issues for the forum, on things to implement to the roleplay that we kind of had a small democracy on. To make a long story short, I felt that things got out of hand when fights started breaking out between staff and the members, especially when there were some heated and ill remarks made toward each other. There were a lot of things entering the roleplay and the forums that I thought were detrimental to the overall health of Hyrule Castle. I wanted to stop these practices, and tried to make a more stable environment.

To create that environment, I changed the staff up a lot, and brought in Ribitta, Quill, RD, and the like. I wanted a fresh staff that could work together and support each other in leading HC. We decided that we wanted to keep the setting intact, and that we wanted things to be very controlled. This started with stricter treasure creations, and character creation grading. It meant we would reject a lot, and be harsher on our grading. We did this for a few months, and felt resistance but things finally became easier for us.

However, perhaps you, the members gave up resisting us?

From here, we moved on to more things and the control became greater. This all culminated to the last few weeks with the sub-accounts, to which we decided to implement it into the roleplay and make it mandatory. This was a mistake, and we are sorry for doing so. This may have also been the last straw on a subject that had been mounting for a while. Our control had gotten to the point that we decided that we felt sub-accounts were the best thing for the roleplay, and that it would benefit it greatly so we added it in. It was a "Daddy know's best" situation, and it was dealt with horribly. I am personally sorry for this, but let's continue.

I feel that as staff, we have become somewhat blind. Our intentions are still good, however our actions are not conforming with our intentions. We still want to serve the members, but we began making decision and forcing them on you without even realizing what we were doing. This IS a dictatorship! This BECAME totalitarianism! RIGHT UNDER OUR NOSES!

THIS ISN'T RIGHT!

I wanted to write this post for a few reasons. First and foremost, because I feel that as the administrator and as a staff as a whole, we over stepped our bounds and have damaged the community. Secondly, I wanted to clear the air, as the title to the thread suggests, and hopefully get your trust back. Thirdly, I wanted to amend the situation, and get HC back to a prosperous point.

Life has been incredibly busy and stressful for me lately, and I am not telling this to you all for sympathy or as an excuse. I have neglected HC even while being here, and I am sorry for that. There are many things that need to happen for HC to advance in the manner that it needs too, and it will take a lot of work to get us there.

Some things that need to be done VERY soon, as pointed out by Razgriz and darklink28: the webpages, links in the lore, etc.... These I will be working on shortly, because I know they matter to you and they do make HC look bad. If you have any suggestions on these, please voice them here.

Now, to finish off this post. We, as staff members, want to hear from you. We want you to tell us how you feel, and we want you to be honest. If you think we have been poor at doing our job, then tell us and tell us why. Help us fix this!

Do you want sub-accounts to go away? What other changes would you like to see? We don't want to be the ones deciding everything anymore, we want the help of you all. We want to make the roleplay fun and enjoyable, and we want to make things the way you feel they should be.

DOES THIS MEAN THAT EVERYTHING YOU SUGGEST WILL BE IMPLEMENTED? Probably not everything, but a lot of it can be. We want an open discussion on how we can improve, and how we can rectify the damages we may have caused. So please, open up to us, and keep it civil.

I think we could definitely work on our listening. If you have an issue, please feel free to bring it up with us. If you don't feel comfortable doing so in public, just send any of us a PM. Nobody should ever hesitate to talk to us out of fear of what might happen- that's not the kind of environment we want to make. We want- I want- HC to be as warm and friendly a place as possible, and a relationship of fear between members and staff is not the way to achieve that.

Now, as for the broken links: while Toko works on them, I propose that we redirect those tabs to whatever currently exists. For example, the Library tab would take a person to the current Library thread while the LoTII is being made. This would, hopefully, fill the gap and make us seem less silly.

I've brought this up before, but maybe now is a good time to carefully suggest it again.

Toko, if you have a lot on your plate, you may want to consider appointing a head moderator for the Hyrule RP. This wouldn't mean you'd no longer be involved with it- Velyoukai was originally meant to be head moderator for Ylisse, but when life gave him a hard time I took over as head mod and when he returned, I made him my advisor, instead. He is still involved in the RP that he sparked and helped set up, and his advice is highly valued. This way, he still has influence without dedicating anywhere near as much time to it as he would have had to in his former position. Similarly, you would still have an opinion that mattered, but you could focus on the discussion areas and the main site- the Hyrule RP is gigantic, and taking it off your plate could relieve a lot of your stress.

On a similar note, and I'm pretty sure this is useless to bring up, I would like to make another case for giving Velyoukai or myself Admin Controls for the Ylisse subforum. Your team has nothing to do with our board and, from what I understand, doesn't WANT anything to do with it. However, there are still some small things that we want hammered out, and I'd personally like to experiment with subforum structure and the like. However, I feel it would be invasive to ask you to do it- with Velyoukai still waiting for access to our Staff Forum because of how busy you've been. I know you're busy, but if we could take care of our own business, that would be another annoyance less for you.

By doing these two things, would you be letting go of a significant portion of the site? Probably. I'm a severe controlfreak myself, so I understand it can be hard; I felt the same about letting the members, rather than myself, run Ylisse's plot. But in the end, it would really be for the better. You would still have influence, but your time elapsed dealing with it would be a lot less, which would free up internet time to fix the glaring issues with the site.

(As far as the sub-accounts go: I wouldn't mind seeing them gone or optional. I still feel they add little, other than signature space that I can also get with spoiler tags.)

Let me be clear that ANYTHING is on the table for suggestions. Want the treasure system to be more lax? Have ideas for alternative systems? What do you want us to listen to?

BP, I think getting you admin access is a very viable option. I trust you enough, and I think that giving you access would be a good solution. I want to talk to you about it candidly though. And I'll get Vel staff forum access asap

Also, subaccounts are all or nothing. So if you guys want them gone, they will be completely removed.

If I may be so blunt, Toko, I think a policy of transparency couldn't hurt Hyrule Castle at this point. Let the members know what you're up to. I'm not saying you should make the Staff Forum publicly visible or post weekly Staff Skype Group reports. Just... when you're working on something or starting to work on something new, make sure we can see it somewhere.

Speaking from the perspective of a regular forum member it appears to me that HC is neither a dictatorship nor a democracy.

-A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic or authoritarian form of government in which a government is ruled by either an individual: a dictator, or an authoritarian party, as in an oligarchy.

-A democracy is a form of government in which all eligible citizens participate equally—either directly or through elected representatives—in the proposal, development, and creation of laws.

HC is neither of these. Not entirely anyways. Some reading this may have noticed I made Oligarchy bold. there is a reason. HC has been (from my point of view anyways) an Oligarchy, or a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with a small number of people. These people could be distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, education, corporate, or military control. In HC's case it being the staff and notice it never said anything about the few being chosen by the many.

HC has always been an Oligarchy in my opinion because the power was always held by a small group of people. (Bitoko as the head of it as admin with a group of Mods selected by himself and the other mods at the time.) In the past it was more of a Democratic Oligarchy with Guy and others posting their ideas in the Suggestion Bin for the regular members of HC to discuss on. This got out of control at times and (I believe) caused a bit of fear in the rulers or the staff. Once most of the staff of the Democratic Oligarchy were gone, from retiring or otherwise, and new ones were put in to replace them HC started to become more of a Dictatorial Oligarchy. They more or less stopped allowing regular members to discuss and vote on things preferring to discuss it among themselves. Most members (again from my point of view) didn't seem to mind too much until they were blind sided by very big changes such as the Hylian Honor system (I don't recall much discussion from normal members about it if there was then my apologies I was wrong). A few members were rather skeptical about it, but since it was optional it didn't effect most members.

The big hit came with the blind siding of the Sub-accounts. Not only was this sprung on the normal members but the staff mad it mandatory when no one had any idea it was coming. The Dictatorial Oligarchy had just forced one of their ideas on the normal members. Naturally some members hated the idea on that alone. Many more, such as myself, saw no real addition being made with the Sub-accounts and opposed it for that reason. The absolute worst thing the staff did was appear to not care what the members thought about it. The staff forced it whether the members wanted it or not. I believe there is still a majority of the normal members against it. In a display of I'm not sure what, stubbornness, unwillingness, or hell just not giving a shit what the members thought, the threads and posts stating views against it seemed to be ignored. There is also as Willow said a gap in communication between the staff and the members for the most part. That can never help a situation like this. Governments have done this in the past. And revolutions HAVE come about because of it. The Americans felt that way about the British during the American Revolution. The French people thought that of their government in the French Revolution. If this continues I can foresee something similar occurring here. I hope for everyone's sake it is more like the American Revolution than the French. For were it like the French then HC would be destroyed.

I believe this is the most I have ever typed for a single post that wasn't a character sheet. Everything said in this post if from my point of view and I am in no way saying that I am right and other people are wrong. I am merely saying what I feel and what I observed. Thank you for listening and I hope something is worked out soon.

-Harry (Ultra5)

So it's about 5 in the morning, and I have work to do, but I figure it's worth a shot if nothing else. I will do my best to be impartial here and outline what I feel needs work.

The first step is as has been said before, communication, communication, communication. It would feel far better if we had had some idea that changes were coming, or even if not, I feel that much of the drama could've been avoided if it were at least explained why sub-accounts were deemed necessary; I understand that they make things easier for the staff to track, but honestly, when the implementation comes before the explanation, any explanation given just sort of feels like it's an attempt to backpedal and appease people that came after the fact, even when that's simply not true. Just saying, "Hey, we made sub-accounts, I'd like you to use them," is somewhat less effective than, "Here's a sub-account function, we'd appreciate if you used it so that we could figure out who's doing what and where we can focus our events and time," you know?

The second concern is sort of an offshoot of the first. But honestly I see an enmity beginning to form between mods and members that really need not, should not, be. I can't actually see a solution to this other than communication; you know that feeling where you bump into someone on the street, and you're both in a rush and angry at each other, and spend weeks hating each other, until finally socializing and realizing, hey, he's not so bad? It's that kind of thing. If we could meet our minds I feel we'd understand each other much better. If on the other hand we segregate ourselves then I see only ever-worsening mutual hatred in our future.

The third isn't exclusive to the staff, but I feel it needs to be said. Everybody could stand to bite the bullet a bit and try, at least try, to get along and respect each other. It just sort of happens, guys. Mistakes are made. Crap hits the fan. Things are done or said that should not be. I realize that the decision for sub-accounts was not made lightly. However, on the same token, the measure was wildly unpopular; one side or the other attempting to hold the other side responsible, or give a back-sided apology, or anything of that sort, is only going to end badly. Let's agree that the fiasco in general was handled badly.

That said, because the users are so disparate and I'd have to talk to everyone individually, I'll go into more detail for what I saw from the mods; that is, I feel as though we weren't actually respected, though the intent may have been different. This isn't because of the mod veto of popular opinion, though I admit it did rub me the wrong way; sometimes these things happen. This was more because, like I said, an explanation wasn't immediately furnished, the points on both sides were ignored or misunderstood more often than they should have been, and lastly when Guy pointed out pretty much the same thing everyone else did, he was seemingly treated better than anyone else. I'm not knocking Guy, but when it takes former staff to get attention... well, it's difficult to perceive respect for us. Around this time is where I began to get angry, mostly because, as I said, I hadn't done anything I felt warranted being disrespected. I realize that you fund the site, make the skin, keep things coded, all that jazz; but honestly it's difficult to be grateful when I feel as though I'm being treated as a second-class citizen. I could be off-base with this, but all the same it's important to consider the perception, since that could set us off to a bad start in the future that we could avoid.

In a more concrete sense, I wouldn't mind if sub-accounts were done away with; however if you feel they are necessary or useful to you I've pretty much given up fighting it.

I apologize if this is structured like an attack on the mods; I understand it could be easily construed as such. Still, it was a candid view on it, and undoubtedly I too have many things I must improve. However, please understand that I don't say these things with the intention of burning you; I say it because I feel that these were the places that, for whatever reason, the wheels fell off the bus. I say it because I feel that with a sincere effort we can fix the problem. At any rate thank you for your time and energy.

Now that I'm fully awake and it's not 4 AM after a hectic party, I'd like to add a comment:

I'm with UD.

I feel largely the same. I see what Willow is saying up there about trust and respect being earned, not demanded. And for the past few weeks, I have been trying my darnedest hardest to respect the Hyrule team and its decisions. In our sense of powerlessness, I've tried to placate other members, telling them quite literally that 'it's the lesser of two evils to go along with the sub-accounts' because I didn't want HC to blow up. I'm not doing this because HC hosts Ylisse, and my board will go to hell along with the rest of the site if it collapses. I care genuinely about this site, both its large RPs, its discussion section and its main page.

But it's so hard to respect people who, as far as you know and can see, would like to see you, your board, and your members swept under the rug.

I've been told that some if not all of the Hyrule mods feel Ylisse is my way to jab at them or criticise their way of running a forum. I can assure you, it is not. In fact, Ylisse was never my idea to begin with, and any differences in the way these two RPs are run are entirely coincidental and come forth from two different philosophies on RP running. Do I compare the two teams in official posts? I do, but only to illustrate what I'm saying. Humor me; try to reconstruct the second paragraph of my first post in this thread without the example of Velyoukai, without losing its clarity. See how hard that is?

I know I haven't done much for the site per se, but for some reason the team still voted me to Veteran rank. Recently I've felt that rank under my name has lost its meaning- I'm a Veteran and a mod of another RP, but I'm not respected or listened to any more than a Newbie. On one hand that's good. But it's bad when that means no one but Hyrule staff is listened to. And I feel that is the biggest problem with HC at the moment. If you want any points to be brought up and listened to, contact Willow or Quill to do it for you; any other mods are disagreeable in communication to the point where they are perceived as assholes, and if you do it yourself then you're wasting time. This... is not how we should feel.

The way sub-accounts were implemented has caused one of my mods to quit the Hyrule RP altogether, and the other is so strongly considering it that I'm pretty sure she's as good as gone. As a start of the new regime, and a concrete suggestion as for how to show the members that you care about their opinion rather than me saying 'this is what you're doing wrong but I won't tell you how to fix it,' I'd like to make a suggestion.

Why not make a thread in the Suggestion Bin or in Announcements or somewhere with a poll, where you allow members to vote for or against the removal of sub-accounts? Leave the thread stickied for maximum visibility, and unlocked so that anyone who wants to support its vote with their reasoning can do so. You'd be surprised how insightful some of the members can be. Once the poll results are in (I suggest leaving it up for a month or so), take the staff, sit around the table, and discuss the results. Don't just look at the numbers, but also at any reasoning that may have been given. Then, make a decision based on that, post that in announcements, and give us a few days to ask questions before you follow through with it.

That is my suggestion as a mod and as a veteran member of the Hyrule RP.

I'm not going to pretend like recent events have affected me much. In regards to HC, I'm now more or less a flickering wisp which periodically appears, cackles quietly, and vanishes as abruptly as it came.

That said, I'm glad to see it hasn't taken long for Bitoko to realize that (as Will concurs) mandatory sub-accounts were an unfavorable implementation. Having optional sub-accounts is distasteful to me on a personal level. Abruptly making anything mandatory without member consensus is distasteful to me on a professional level. I'm just a non-roleplaying-member now, but on this subject, I speak from experience.

I've poured my creativity, logic, and effort into concepts for HC (and other role-playing sites) in the past. I have tried to make them seem as appealing as possible, and endeavored to logically explain every decision I made. I'm fortunate in that several of my ideas have received (nearly) universal acceptance. However, I've created some that never saw the light of day, and am--embarassingly--the creator of the "class system" of HS. When my ideas have fallen on deaf or unapproving ears, I may try to improve them or correct misunderstandings, but would never force any idea on an already-active community who would be forced to make a mandatory change.

I suppose hindsight is 20-20. In my humble opinion, a leader should never need to pair those two sentences together, unless circumstances are considerably dire. (And honestly, few things in regards to a role-playing website would truly be dire.) I'm glad to see we've learned from this.

Despite everything that's happened, I've always had and always will have the following opinion: There should be a wall between staffers and other members, but that wall should be as transparent as possible. Personally, I feel the only subjects which need to be hidden include (a) spoilers, (b) discussion of grading, or (c) discussion over disciplinary or security actions. However, I haven't been staff in ages, so again, these are only my personal opinions.

Um, I guess I should visit more frequently, because I keep missing thing like this. Even though I'm not a regular member like you guys who posts in the role play section or get to know one anothe on a level-to-level basis, I would like to say something from past experience with community ad forums;

I've been apart of a community since 2007, and I branched out to different forums and different styles of forums and personalities of members and staff. Coming from ZeldaUniverse, a huge site that has flaws to where I don't have time to list, to a small forum like this with people who can get along with each other is an improvement than most forums. Yes, I may not be here from when HC was having its problems and issues but when I am here, I see positive energy from most of you.

I also know that not every forum and member is NOT perfect, and we do tend to make mistakes, but eventually those mistakes are forgiven and we learn to love anothe again. I know that I may not have anything negative to say, but I sure as hell damn have something positive to say because I think some of you members need a reminder of how each forum is different. There may be changes where you don't want to happen, well tough beans, just learn and accept it you might learn to like it I remember when ZU was going to merge with another site and I nearly flipped shit because I didn't want to be apart of it, but I eventually got over it.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, respect each other and love another. I mean I may be off topic with this post, but me not sleeping for almost 3 days straight, we need something like that to read or something.

Love you guys, don't hate, appreciate dammit