Why the fear, though? What could staff do, really? Sure, they might go 'nu-uh' or 'stop that random RP you guys' but then at least you'd know they're assholes. Sitting there afraid is... I won't say silly. That'd be rude. But I'm kinda thinking it really hard, unfortunately. Terrible person, you may all hate me now instead!
ES
We will drown the world in our tears! Let them sip the bitter, salty depths of our sorrow! Those royal few shall rue the day they were more popular than us, and we shall laugh (inwardly) at the suffering wrought by our furious blubbering!
A Story of Pain by ES
"Oh-ho, a post from ES! She probably actually got off her ass to do that hand-over she posted about before, the lazy bum." (In my head, you all sound like that, fyi. 
)
Here's the deal, yo. In my lazy bum dragging of feet to get all this taken care of, only some of which was a friend passing hitting me much harder than expected, I've come to realize that I don't wanna. That is to say, the thought of taking over the board, even with @Sunny's inestimable assistance, fills me with a deep and abiding feeling of 'ugh'. Maybe a slapdash of 'sigh' and a soupcon of 'but but but' as well. All told, it's a hesitation that I should have recognized much sooner. We've all been there, that lingering instead of leaving a game when the fun was over. Well, most of us anyway.
As this is to say, that @Glitch (who still technically owns the board, and has been super patient with me) and I have discussed what's to be done next. Y'all are still using it, so we're not heavily in favor (only somewhat, I promise!) of just closing the doors forever and walking away. We've decided instead to hand it over to someone else to own/administrate/mod as he sees fit.
That person is @Arkandel.
Our primary criteria for this wasn't popularity (sorry dude!) since we're all MUshers or ex-MUshers. Nothing and nobody we chose would be 100% liked, that's not how any of us roll. We picked him because we both trust that he's not going to be an asshole who misuses or abuses the personal emails and administrative rights that come with something that's been alive for.... what. A few years now? That's it, guys. That's all we asked of him; don't take advantage of the users' personal info as it is available to you.
He and @Glitch are working on the transfer. We're not going to be all up ins once it's done, and while he says he likes the board as it is right now (he can speak for himself, boy howdy), there's inevitably going to be changes in time. That's not our worry, that's just the nature of the beast. Get over it. 
Your questions may begin.... now.
ES
Have you started a thread and then immediately regretted it because the damn thing chimes at you with every response? There's a fix for that!
In the lower-left corner of the Original Post is a heart icon. Click on it once to get a drop-down menu. That menu includes 'watch' as a toggle: on or off. Simply click it off and you will no longer get a ping with every reply.
Enjoy!
ES
This is what I gave to @Coin as a rough draft to start from for his game (I'll help just about anyone get a game off the ground, even if I'm not staff there m'self). Feel free to poke holes or make suggestions, I'm sure he'll take what he wants from the mix.
There's enough Stuff in town so that everybody can keep maintenance. E.g., there's vitae enough that all vampires in town can maintain waking up, maybe doing a jolt of Night Life, rinse repeat. Same with other resources for other supers and mortals and such. That way the people who do not give a fuck don't have to worry about resource-wars. Them that barplay aren't forced to deal with something they find unappealing and unfun. (This is a very important point. Not everyone enjoys this sort of game and forcing them to play it is Uncool.) Stuff above that maintenance level is what folks fight over.
Kids (and no few adults) these days are on the text for their communiques. Crisis Text Line (CTL) recognizes that and is using the medium to bridge.
Anyone in a crisis, from "Broke up and I can't stop thinking about her," to "Suicide sounds tempting," or "I cut," can text in free to 741741 to reach a crisis counselor. Our job as a CC isn't to fix the problem. It's to help the texter get from a hot moment to a cool one, so they can make a decision for themselves.
Consider volunteering as a CC. It's 30-odd hours of guided training, and 4hours a week online afterwards. The platform is web based on the CC end.
Honestly, it's all the drama of MU only helping for reals. We've been at this for a while, we've got the skills under our fingers already.
They aggregate their text-in data for anyone to use, btw. It's worth glancing over if that's your bag baybee.
ES
Hello! I'm EmmahSue, or ES, or Meadow, or Lemuria, or any number of a million PCs over the years.
Rome, Thenomain and I are your mods.
WORA's lost to us (if the database becomes available in the future, we'll take a look at whether it's possible or worth it to port topics over), so it's time for something New! (gasp!oooh!ahh!)
Please don't be a jerk with usernames. That is to say, don't name yourself Lemuria or ES and post as me, that's kinda jackassy. Jackass at each other as needed in posts, that's pretty standard, but deliberate ID-trickery because we're starting out fresh, that's not okay.
If you'd like to have a thread where you just toss insults at one another (I suggest trying for creativity in word choice), please open one in the Hog Pit for that purpose. Or wait for me to split this one separate, since it's devolved away from the original point, which is Downvotes.
ES
Just in time for me to think about not running a Mage-game after all!
Is this what irony is? Do we need to call Ms. Morissette?
ES
I don't play anywhere, and haven't in... well, quite some time. I've devoted my non-work time to other things ('other', not necessarily 'better'). But I'm still here lurking, and trying to make sure there's no outright fires going down. We're hands-off as much as possible on purpose; other than the framework around which it stretches, the community can decide for itself what it will be. That's not to say the framework doesn't provide guidance -- putting Hog Pit default-no makes a huge difference -- but we're trying not to get too manipulative behind the scenes.
ES
The Hog Pit is a bit ugly, a lot cruel, and often for the fierce joy of that cruelty. There's nothing particularly wrong with that (it's not my favorite gin joint, still I've had my posts and responses o'er time), but it's also not something that aids in the... evolution? Growth? of our community at large. It was set opt-in so that it would be a deliberate, conscious choice to take part. "Do I want to do this?" "Yes, click." As gates go, it's not locked, or even particularly proverbially high. It's just a moment of decision to step through, and meanwhile the folks who don't want to participate are relatively clear of the mud.
You're absolutely right that this makes it less visible; we don't think that's a bad thing in the end. To my mind, it's turning the prism to get a slightly different facet, to mix metaphors in the most egregious way possible. That doesn't mean the other facets are gone, only that they're not center stage. We could probably do the same with this category (non-game things), but it seems a bit over the top to make everything opt-in. So it's about as even-steven a compromise between 'gonna bathe in the fountaining blood' and 'only pristine unicorns please' as we can get, given the limitations of a forum that doesn't allow for mind-reading ahead of time. As I said above, it's framework with guidance built in.
ES
eta: This thread isn't in non-game, that sentence makes less sense. Flashything! Pretend I know what I'm talking about.
Ladies and gents and non-ladies and non-gents, plus anyone who falls inbetween those various states:
Sometime in the next week, we'll need to take the forum down in order to transfer ownership to my fine self and out of Glitch's patient hands. It might be 5 minutes down, it might be a few hours, depending no how quickly the hosting service does its thing. Once we start, any posts made afterwards will be lost, so we'll just close the shebang for the interval instead.
This is your warning that it's coming! I'll try to post another warning when I have a more definite timeframe than 'sometime in the next week'. If you have questions, you may ask. I may or may not know how to answer.
ES
In that allowing can be construed as encouraging (if you don't pull up a weed, you're allowing it to grow in the garden), @faraday isn't wrong. It's a difference of opinion in how hands-on moderators ought to be. @Glitch and I are very hands-off, and that's a discussed decision. We have neither the time, energy, nor interest in getting all up ins on a regular basis for anything other than the egregious stuff. Again, discussed decision.
When the 'do we want to do this' first came up between us, it was because we felt something akin to WORA was a benefit to the community. But we hadn't seen anyone make a go of replacing that wasn't, well... honestly, crazy in their own right. Our community is not full of Nice People (tm). It has its bright points, but it's also got its fair share of assholes. I'm married to @HelloRaptor, ffs. 
We're attempting to give everyone room to be whatever it is they want to be, while still aiming towards betterment of the hobby.
ES
Try to keep it mildly constructive towards the topic at hand, pretty please.
ES
I want to RP. I don't particularly want to go through the process of creating a new character and bar-playing and sitting around waiting for scenes and pushing to make scenes happen. I'm old and lazy, sue me. I just don't have the time or energy to invest the way I used to.
So, if you've need for an NPC or scene run, whether short term or long, and want an extra pair of hands to handle it for you, give me a ping. I'm decent at the RPs, or so I'd like to think, and I have absolutely no investment in who comes out on top in OOC or IC dramaz.
ES
We're not here to be everyone's mommy and daddy; if people want to be awful to each other in the Hog Pit, that's their business. Anyone, at any time, can just mark those threads read and never bother with actually reading them (I do this regularly). But he took it into private conversations and continued the abuse despite being told to go away.
This is not a hard and fast rule. Every situation is going to be different.
ES
I will admit, dealing with the OOC aftermath of this sort of thing fills up my deep and abiding reservoir of UGH ennui. If you want to play rape-plot, do your thing. But if someone doesn't want to be involved, back the hell up. Help them find a way to not be involved. You are not your character. You are a ST who happens to have some skin in the game.
ES
I admit, I haven't logged in to a MU in... quite some time. I'm not sure if it's a burn-out cycle and I'll eventually come back, or if I'm done for good. But I do glance regularly o'er here, what with being a vaguely mod-like figure.
So, hello, hello. It's nice to know fun folks are still alive and kickin'.
ES