I Left Them All Behind

  • Thread starter Laggy Lagiacrus
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Laggy Lagiacrus

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It's been getting at me for a while now, and I just needed to say it.
I don't really feel bitter about it, sad, angry, happy... I don't really feel anything. In fact, this is probably just something to provide closure for me - to cement the fact that I've moved on.

It all began about a year ago, when I was searching for a guide on a game I was having trouble with. I stumbled across the forum, and decided to have a crack at it. I stumbled around a bit, and had to have more than a bit of guidance. But, eventually, I became a member of the community - I'd finally found people that would accept me - and everything I'd had to hide before.
Then, it all went downhill.
I guess I was to blame, partly. It's in my nature to act like a prick at times, and when I do, it shows. I acted up, and after a bit of drama, I just shut up, and the whole issue was kept silent about. But, me being me, I couldn't stop myself being an idiot, and I went up the creek again.
Eventually,, I just retreated back, further and further, until the only posts I made were ones on the RP board.
Then, even those dried up, and I became a lurker, only popping in to look over things once in a while.
And then, I did it - I steeled myself, sent one last goodbye to the people who had made my stay worthwhile, and deleted my account.
It's been a few months now, and I'll take a look at how things are going for everyone. So much has changed - new faces, old ones, all kinds. Thanks to my, and a few others' help, the RP board was saved from death, and now it's thriving - even if the standard of posting there is a bit iffy. I sometimes think about going back, but I quickly stop myself - all the people I truly felt I could get along with have moved on as well, so it seems. The people I laughed with, cried with, talked with and played with... They've gone onto better things. They may come back every now and again, or it may be that I just don't recognise them. It's kind of a bittersweet ending - I was driven out by myself and people playing on my idiocy, but when I think about it, I don't really miss it all that much.

Iwaku's my home now. -------- was fun for a while, but in the end, I guess I was just never meant to be a part of them. I've been welcomed with open arms here, and there's never the sense that whatever I do is a step in the wrong direction.

As I said, this is just closure, for me. I just needed to get it out there.
 
Interesting post.

Just curious, but what do you think that one should do in a situation in which they're dealing with a member who is continuously acting out? I'm only asking because I used to be an admin at a roleplaying forum and I just went jihad on misbehaving members when maybe I could have been doing something more constructive. Then again, as you mentioned, things died down for you, but then you perpetuated the dramaz; so is there really ever going to be a good way to handle that situation?
 
My leadership skills are, quite frankly, poor - so you're welcome to register this as null and void.

Try to get to the root cause of the problem. See what makes them keep acting up. I would have responded a lot better if people had tried to nudge me and tell me to stop acting up, instead of just attacking me the moment I fouled up. Bans should only ever be a last resort - you can rule through fear, but eventually, you'll crash and burn, and nobody will be there to catch you when you do. Maybe they just like causing trouble - in which case, ban them. Simple. But sometimes, people just need to be talked to, one-on-one. It'd take a while, but if you establish that you're there to help, as opposed to being an authoritative figure looking down upon the forum below, then people will respect you.

I don't know what site you were an admin on, or what exactly happened. This is just how I felt things could have gone differently for me, seeing as it's all I can offer.
 
I hate to double post, but I just have to say it.

The standard of RP posts in my old forum has, quite profusely, gone down the bog.
There are many was of expressing it, but simply put, things are looking bad.
I thought it was thriving - it wasn't. It was a multitude of RPs, all dead or dying. The standard was awful - little punctuation, few capital letters, vocabulary that sounds like it came from a seven-year-old, and a conglomeration of other things.
As it happened, I had helped salvage the board before, apparently. With my enthusiasm and other people willing to help back me, we managed to get it back to life.
Now, I want to try the same thing. I want to show them how it's done - I want to give them inspiration for better plots, I want to teach them how to structure sentences and language. I want to inject new life back into the forum I was on - I want to save them.
But, alas, it's been said. I can never go back. I'm stuck here, watching solemnly while they destroy themselves.
 
I know the feeling of leaving a site and returning only to find that so much has changed. My first RP site was just that. My IRL and RP friends were all on it, all of the time, but the site leader was a slacking son of a bitch, who didn't help at all with things happening in chat, the forum, etc. Then, we found out he was switching domain names, and so we all switched. His next site worked, for a while, then he was switching again. I got fed up with this and left him, and joined here. Recently, I just searched out of the blue to find him, and he had yet another site. Some of my old friends there were still on it, but the ones that I really had connections with weren't there. Sure, I had great roleplay partners among them, but after experiencing the standard of RP that Iwaku sets, it seems dead to me. I considered briefly about joining the website, for old time's sakes, but I resolved to simply point my IRL friends in the right direction and leave.

Our site leader was still useless, the rps were still without character sheets and had the stable backbone of a poorly-thought out jump-in, where everything went. Granted, I loved a couple of the characters I made, and the friends would last me a lifetime if I was still in contact with them, but I don't want to go back to that pit of nothing it has become.

When I was looking back at the site again, I found out he was moving again. >.<
 
Trying to run a community is hard. D: there's a billion and one things that can go wrong. Even here on Iwaku, occasionally we'll have something blow up in all of the wrong ways. I like to think that the mark of a good Community is how you come back from mistakes and issues. 8D Learning from them and still managing to hold things together. I believe any community can be fixed if you have good solid leadership and a willing member base! But there's also a tipping point where "it's gone too far" and there's no going back. D: Like if your site owners are insane or absent, there's not a lot you can do for the site anymore when it comes to changing rules and tone. Or if the owners are making effort, but the members can't let go of old bad habits and keep clinging to nostalgia.


I've been in the receiving end of all ways a site can go. >< The first community I joined the owner was absent and there was only 3 staff members trying to keep shit together on a site three times the size of Iwaku. I was one of the people that was trying to help revive the site and keep things together, but it eventually had a slow, horrible death. D: Without an owner to give the structure, and without enough staff to manage things, the place was utter chaos right until it's last day. x_x

It helped inspire me to make my own community, though. 8D And that went on for a couple years. It started off really awesome. But I made a lot of really bad mistakes over the years. Like BIG mistakes. So by the time I realized where I went wrong, the community had gone in to the "too far" zone. There was no changing people's attitudes without mass bannings. .__.; And mass bannings would have created that post-war fear feeling that there would have been no coming back from. t___t So I shut down the whole site. A lot of people hated me for it, so it was a while before I got back in to community stuff again. Even then I was just running a forum for me and my friends to rp on.

And now Iwaku! Iwaku had the leaving admin problem. D: It's third admin had just quit the site when Rory asked me over to help out. The community was starting to die off and go downhill, cause there wasn't enough structure staff side and there was a lot of fallout from member drama, and not enough new blood coming in to replace dying out members. I think it took about a year or two for us to change things around and get the site to a stable routine and good atmosphere. It was A LOT of work. Like constant, occasionally pissing people off hard work. >< Cause you have to try things, see if they work, change them if they don't, and go through the whole evolution process.



...I kinda blabbered. .___.; Anyway.... I think if you really loved the site and you think you CAN make a difference, I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to go back there and trying to help! It's just a matter of whether or not it's a feasible possibility!