Apologies in advance to everyone for starting what is probably going to be huge and largely off-topic thread, but I've got a lot on my mind after putting up with a certain A-hole online who none of you know and who shall remain nameless, but whose actions reminded me of the responsibilities of an authority figure and community leader, though his lack of respecting these responsibilities.
I'm going to begin with a little bit of personal history for context, and then get on topic toward the end of this post.
I've been using the internet for some nine years now. I started out as a newbie on AOL, and tried all of the big stuff to try and be important and popular, like running a humor mailing list and all the stuff that n00bs do. I was even part of a stupid little club called the "Bungie Board Elite", back when web forums were nonexistant and AOL's bulliten board service was the big thing. Without going into a tangent about what I've been through tonight, I've learned a lot since the "BBE" days, and no longer lord power over other people when I have it, though I certainly bitch enough when I don't.
Back on track: having branched out from there into and all over the real net, I've dealt with a lot of people of all different kinds of mental, social, and linguistic backgrounds. Because of this - and probably because I live in a part of California that has no single majority race and as many people speaking Spanish or Japanese as English, and never meaning the same thng when they do speak a language I understand - I've learned how to see past people's lingual idioms and personal quirks to understand the real meaning in their words, even if their English is broken to be completely unparsable in grammar, or their tone of voice and body language convey an attitude that they are trying very hard not to put into their words.
So, how does this relate to Myth and this forum? I'll get to that in a second. First, more history.
Back in The Olden Days, all of however many years ago, I had way too much free time on my hands, no real pressing concerns of my own, and an empathy that made me jump in and solve any conflict I found, wasting all my time which I had plenty of and keeping things in places like this running perfectly smoothly.
Then I got a job, and subsequently Stopped Giving A Damn because I began to develop Bigger Problems Of My Own. And meanwhile this place has gone to hell.
The most recent example of this are two people here, Archer and Heron. Now I'm sorry to single you two out and I don't mean to offend either of you, but here goes anyway.
Both of you are offensive people. Both of you are conveying hostility, and claiming that you mean not to, and from the aforementioned abilities I've developed over the year I get the feeling that you both DO actually feel hostility, but are trying your best to withhold it from eachother and others.
Heron, as has already been stated many times, your problem arises mostly from lack of command of the English language. Because of experience with foreign speakers, I can usually understand perfectly what you mean, and a lot of times I see people in confusion here I could easily step in and fix things, but because of Not Giving A Damn due to the Bigger Problems Of My Own, I rarely do so. I'm trying to get back that old empathy, don't worry.
But anyway, others seem to have much more trouble understanding you than I do, so please be patient with them, and try to restate things more clearly when they asked. For all the rest of you, if you're not SURE he meant something, ask. And HG, just out of curiosity, what nationality are you? It might help to better understand what you mean if we know your native language, too.
(Just a quick note here - from LR's post in response to HGK about Madrigal, Heron wrote "Why Madrigal was unprepered?", to which LR responded "I'd say so...", obviously interpreting the question as "Why? Madrigal was unprepared?", when I believe Heron meant "Why was Madrigal unprepared?" You see the problem here?)
Now Archer, you don't have the language barrier stopping you, but what I think your problem is - and again, please don't take offense, this is just an objective opinion - is that you seem to have a sense of arrogance and self-importance, and while I can tell that you obviously try not to exhert this, I can see in your enthusiasm and your eagerness to jump in and lead a new project that you do feel yourself a leader, an important person - and I'm particularly sensitive to this kind of attribute because I'm often the same way.
My suggestion to you would be patience, patience, patience. You try to exhibit patience, restating things and trying to get a good understanding of things multiple times, but even on the first time the very tone of your writing sounds impatient and intolerant, and it only grows more so with the subsequent restatements/requests. I know you don't MEAN to, but you do anyway. So just keep trying.
Damnit, what am I doing majoring in Multimedia? I should be a psychlogist. Now get along and play nice with eachother or I'm going to start turning into one of those evil admins who abuse their ban powers. ;-)
(Also, though since Archer founded it I don't have any real power, if my decree carries any weight I say definitely let Heron into the Inmates of the Asylum order.)
