The OFFICIAL GRIPE THREAD

[rah]

I would say before this gets out of hand, but I guess I'm too late.

SO.... This will be the thread that it's discussed in. PERIOD. Yes this probably should be discussed in the Site forum, but this is an important issue to the OT, so I'm going to put it here so there is no confusion or many, many different places to look.

NOW, before I give a chance for the discussion to continue, I'm going to say my piece.

THIS is our (dan, ming, Locutus, mine, and we don't forget mark) living room.

We built this with a lot of hard work, time, commitment and many other things. Many others volunteered to help us build it and it's always been appreciated. There are those that think it used to be a mansion. Now it's a bit more humble. There's never enough free time to keep it perfect. Real life has many demands. There are never enough hands. And anyone that thinks we're rolling in money from this site................

Despite that, we still invite everyone to the hospitality of our living room in hopes of sharing information, sharing our joys, sharing our sorrows, asking others for help, having fun, and even some dissagreements.

We are not perfect, and believe it or not, I don't think anyone of us has has ever claimed to be.

You are guests in this house. We invite you, and you come hoping for a good experience. We take pride in that.

There are dissagrements and like in any house, someone has to make decisions, This is our house so we have to make those decisions. Just like with most fathers, we're not perfect. No one is. But it's still our house so dems the rules. If thats that big of a problem, you're welcome to move out. Everyone that leaves is missed and we're a bit less for it. Just so in life.

Sometimes we serve up steaks and sometimes we have to serve up dogs and burgers because that's all there is. It's still served with pride and eveyone is welcome to partake. Sometimes we may even serve it up a bit crispy because we're not perfect.

As far as I'm concerned ASHER ate the hamburger, spit it out, said it sucked, and he could have made it better despite never having truely contributed to cooking or providing the food ever. And then *****ed when his father called him out for hurting his mother's feelings.

Laugh all you want at that. But we really do feel that this is OUR living room and you're all invited guests.
Would anyone behave like that in their own living room?

If you really would, I don't want you to be a guest in my house.


Feel free to take out any frustration on me since I'm that weird uncle. I still take pride in my house.

Have at it.

And yes we have egos. Yes sometimes we're stuborn.
WE aren't perfect, but we're still your hosts. Deal with it.

Today I was very dissapointed.

[rah]

AND I posted this without discussing it with the others.
THIS IS MY opinion. So if you're going to make fun of the analogy, I'm the target. No one else is. Bring it on.

[LordShiva]

What is this thread about?

[Lancer]

This thread will be deleted for sure. ...dad.

Everyone needs to lighten up and start enjoying. Everything should have fun made out of it.

[Lancer]

"Today I was very dissapointed."

Why?

[rah]

We usually do make fun of it, this time it wasn't fun.
That's when it crossed the line and why I'm so dissapointed.

Let's pass the bong.

[SlowwHand]

It's about magic and illusion, Shiva. Making you see things that aren't there.

On sub-topic, I would spit it out if it was less cooked than I can eat. I just don't like blood in my mouth. Well-done, which i know is....rare, is what I like.

[Lancer]

Originally posted by rah
We usually do make fun of it, this time it wasn't fun.
That's when it crossed the line and why I'm so dissapointed.

Let's pass the bong.

Blah. Asher was trolling, Luc took the bait and they were both off into anger lala land. So Luc played Asher's game ie got played, Asher got banned, everything got deleted and the disfunctionality goes on infinutum. What's not to enjoy?

Have fun Rah.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by rah
We usually do make fun of it, this time it wasn't fun.
That's when it crossed the line and why I'm so dissapointed.

What's the line? There's been plenty of disrespectful stuff here and nothing was done about it. I flat out insulted Ming and his moderating abilities for all the world to see and never got a bit of flak for it. Asher does something that can't be confirmed (because you deleted the evidence) and was banned for weeks. How are we supposed to know where the line is?

[PLATO]

You know rah...I like coming over to your living room and hanging out. Lot's of cool people and...Man! The games you guys play!!

I have made some really great friends here. Learned a lot of things I never knew. Seen points of view I had never thought about. It truly has been a great experience!

But...
(as long as this is the place to air the laundry)

I was at your house a while back and was playing my favorite game. We had broken into teams to make it more fun. In the other corner of the room, someone on my team did something stupid that I had no idea of. Suddenly the owner's of the living room start yelling at me because I didn't take responsibility for what my friend did. I was threatened to be thrown out of the house unless I admitted that I was a cheater.

I'll never forget that. And while I still am grateful that I can hang out in your living room and enjoy the games I love with people I like...I will forever be looking over my shoulder wondering if my host has a new tray of appetizers or an axe for my back.

Been wanting to say that for a while. Thank you very much for giving me a place to do it.

[rah]

Hey if I can vent, our guests are allowed also. But it's not an open license to be hurtful.

I don't know the details of your ordeal so I can not comment. But I'm glad you got a chance to vent it.

But more glad that you play good games.

That's why I'm here. I've had the opportunity to play a lot of good games with lots of good friends.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by rah
Hey if I can vent, our guests are allowed also. But it's not an open license to be hurtful.

I don't know the details of your ordeal so I can not comment. But I'm glad you got a chance to vent it.

Ming can fill ya in one night in your REAL living room over a cold one!

[Lancer]

Yup, and I caught 5ish years of bull**** that had me leaving at one point. I couldn't make a thread without it being deleted. That sucked, but it's changed. So things do change around here. Rah, why did that change btw? Nobody is interested in sharing that with me even though those 5ish years sucked.

That's another thing. Everything here is PMs. This is the first effort to communicate, real open, up front communication that I've seen here...opppss, just realized Rah, you are so screwed guy.

[Tuberski]

I didn't read the thread in question, I read a different, OT thread, that got deleted.

ACK!

[Koyaanisqatsi]

With all due respect:

You may think of this as your living room. In a sense the metaphor fits. But in another sense, the sense I referred to in another thread, the metaphor is horribly broken.

When I come into your living room, I do not take any ownership. There is no identity at stake. When I come here it's for the community, and the community exists independent of the software on the server. I rarely even get to play Civ anymore, though I wish I had the time to put into it...even one multiplayer game would be nice since I don't think I've played a Civ game online since CivNet. And I know, having had it explained to me before, that that means the management essentially thinks I contribute nothing to the site at this point. So be it; that's probably true by any measure, my personality doesn't lend itself to posting a lot even in OT. When I had time, I was involved, now I don't so I'm not.

The problem is, though, this means I (and I would wager a decent number of people in OT) don't see this primarily as a Civ site anymore. When it was a Civ site, maybe it was your living room. But frankly, though it's appreciated, the fact that it's your money and effort currently keeping things afloat doesn't mean it's not my living room too. If anything, it's turned into a town square. You run things, but the social relationship is stewardship, not ownership. Since the actual legal relationship is ownership though, you (rightfully, perhaps) feel that you don't need to take crap from people about how you run things. Ok, that's fine, but sometimes it doesn't fit the community. The community can't oust you if it feels you're not taking proper care of it. The most it can do is pick up and move away en masse, and the fact that this has happened several times in the past should should tell you how well they've viewed the historical management of the site. As you say, it's no longer a mansion, and there are reasons for that which the various bits of management don't like to hear (just an observation).

And yeah, Asher is an ass. I think we all knew that already, no need to feel bad about it.