@TNP said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:
But that would be bullying, according to some posters that seem to have the approbation of admin.
In the past, most people have reported creeps and stalkers like Cullen / Azazello / Surtr / whomever through DMs to me. When reports of this kind of activity have popped up, my practice was to ask the reporter to DM me to discuss whether there were any concerns that the alleged creeper / stalker was on this board and, if so, what would substantiate their belief. In some cases, there was substantiation (to my satisfaction); in others, not so much.
Cheating on games, exploiting code, blurring OOC and IC lines: these are things I didn't care about as an admin here. Creepers, stalkers, and doxxers? That's shit I took very seriously. But as creepers, stalkers, and doxxers often do very personal things and, in many cases, cause their victims to do embarrassing things, I preferred to take it to DMs because no one needs that laundry aired. Also, the point of my inquiry was ultimately to try and prevent further harm to the victim.
I guess what I'm getting it as if you suspect there is a creeper / stalker here I think you should inform staff so they can take action to make this place safer for you and probably others. As always, though, if you don't, that's fine too because no one should force anyone to go through trauma again.
@faraday said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:
Which honestly makes me sad, because I don't think the MUSH community is big enough to sustain two separate discussion forums
What do you mean by "sustain"?
To be honest, if people stop using boards like this then it is more probable that it is because other systems, like Discord and reddit, are sort of pushing independent boards like ours into the obsolete bin when it comes to finding new players, in my opinion. Also, the interest in our particular hobby, which was never strong to begin with, is no doubt dwindling further now that people can reliably play TT games over video. To boot, we also have had few innovations in the past five years, and it seems to me that our constructive discussions revolve around the same issues we've had since I began playing these games over 25 years ago.
If we're talking about this community, then I would agree that the split may kill us both, but as been stated by numerous people -- and I believe it -- our community is but a fraction of the total hobby population. If posting here is going down, it is possible, if not probable, that this is because many of our past active posters were more interested in posting without filters and enjoying being part of the regular spectacle.
What I can say is that I have no plans to shut this place down, as its maintenance is not particularly expensive. So long as people want to us it to advertise, discuss game design, or post up kitten pictures, it'll be around.