--Forewarning: This is gonna be a long post. If you post JUST to say "that's too long, I didnt read that" I'll be mad at you--
Intro:
So lately there have been tons of threads popping up saying stop the fighting and blame the new people and etc etc. You've all seen them, unless this is the first forum post you've checked in months, in which case- Hi! I'm DG- Otherwise I am sure you all know what I mean.
This post is going to be my opinion to a large degree, however I will try to keep it impartial and I will try to keep from placing blame on any specific people.
In this post, I will address these individual sections:
Forums
and Covens
The two are very intertwined as to why people leave, why people get confused, and why there is fighting. If you aren't willing to open your eyes to a new perspective, please dont bother reading.
Forums
The problems with the forums lie in a few specific areas-
Off topic discussion
Old members
Drama characters
War Posts
Each will be addressed in it's own right.
Forums A- Off Topic Discussion
Alright. This is a LARGE cause of all the fighting. I would like to tell you why and provide examples. First I will tell you why, and this reason is simple, off topic discussions, such as save the animals, join my army, give me your finger etc... Open the route for argument. The animals thread was a source of conflict because all the links used to support the 'good' argument were from peta or peta owned websites. But, even without those links, there would have still been argument there. There are people that truly think animals are meant to be below humans (not in that way you freak) and just because people here are usually wiccan or pagan doesn't mean everyone is.
Not everyone here respects nature and so I am sure that there would have been arguments with or without the PETA involvement.
Second example, join my army, do this for me, do that for me... etc. Most people here are underage, legally they can't join your army. Also, the leaders of these army posts have usually walked in here saying they hold great power, ANYONE THAT DOES THIS IS ASKING FOR AN ARGUMENT. No matter if you have great power or not, if you are new and you enter a place saying "I am strong, bow to me" then the people will resist. That's just how it is.
Army posts are off topic even though they relate to the war, they have nothing to do with magick and the same people end up joining every single 'army' there is.
Now lets cover why these cause conflict, shall we?
Off topic posts open the door for personal opinions, and where there are opposing opinions there is CONFLICT. If people post asking about magick and spells and etc only, or try to teach others only, there is going to be NOT AS MUCH CONFLICT.
That was simple, wasn't it?
--This will be continued in the next post so please do not post yet--
I know you must be thinking "What the hell!? Old members?!?" but LISTEN.
A lot of older members I know don't post on the forums because they selfishly don't want to answer questions. This leads to people getting PMed a lot when they don't know the answer, just because they are someone that new members see posting. This angers people.
If you are knowledgable, PLEASE SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE. We came here to LEARN and old members not posting because "The forums are a sh*thole" or whatever DOES NOT HELP ANYTHING.
Forums C- Drama Characters
This is the one people probably remember most vividly. There are people that come here LOOKING for fights sometimes, I apologize for name dropping but the two most recent incidents involved Stryoth and Nahara.
If someone comes in here demanding you bow down to them or give them your soul or something, SIMPLY IGNORE THEM It will PREVENT them from causing trouble.
Forums D- War Posts
There needs to be ONE, moderator started and governed INFORMATIVE war post. The others need to be DELETED, they are old and filled with WRONG info. Every time someone asks about the war they are treated like they know nothing, the truth is NONE OF US that I know of want to sit and sift through all the crap and discussion that went on about the war.
There needs to be ONE informative post. That is IT. All posts on that post that are not adding info or asking a legitimate question should be deleted, or there should be a separate thread for discussion. Both should be official threads by moderators to keep order.
Forums Outro
As you can see there are some problems that would be easy to fix and others that would be nearly impossible without FULL MEMBER COOPERATION. Hopefully we can achieve this at some point.
Covens
I'm sure we all know something is wrong with the covens, the answer is VERY simple in fact. Most covens, even those with normal spells that dont hurt anyone (any non black magick coven) restrict their spells and rituals to members only JUST TO GET MEMBERS.
When a new person joins and, say, wants to read rituals or spells to get some fresh info, and then they find out that they can't because it's restricted, it's confusing and it makes them wonder what they have to do to read it.
They end up joining not because they like the coven or what it stands for, but because they want to read the spells.
If a spell or ritual is simple and easy and nobody is hurt by it, MAKE IT PUBLIC for the gods and goddess' sake! Keeping spells private just to get memberships is stupid and wrong. It's like saying "Join our club, we have cookies" and the person joins for the cookies without even knowing what the club does.
Covens should NOT be that way. You should not only work to educate your members but your peers as well! Help the community for a change!
General Outro
If you made it this far I'll be officially surprised.
I hope that you agree but even if you don't I'm glad you read this far.
I truly hope that these issues can be addressed somehow, even though they are deep rooted in the community, and I hope that everyone will stop copping out and blaming newbies and stuff now that the issues have been isolated and specified.
Because of the technical inabilities and the loose tolerance I stated in another thread which is now deleted, I estimate the whole site inactivity rate will increase massively by August. What will be the cause? The cause will be the condition of the site now. What can be done? Don’t ask because we can’t do anything. There has to be some technical changes. All of the debate and the proposed solutions all lead to a paradox which cannot be solved by any member.
There is no Godfather or perfect member who can lead the community in the right direction, which I guess is order and being a community unless the site owner intervenes themselves. All of the debating and counter-debating all adds up to issues not in our reach of fixing, as I stated the issues in another thread which is now gone. Unless those issues are resolved, it will always lead to a paradox of which nobody is responsible, but yet everybody is responsible.
There are some aspects being missed which we cannot help. For example, to fix some of the issues above it will have to get 1. Technical & 2 Lawful, there will have to be a technical fix to some of the issues above and establishing law, rules for members to abide by and so far we’re not seeing this. I’m not in the mood to rewrite all of the content I had in another thread which is now gone, which would serve pretty well to what I’m trying to say, but we’re in a paradox.
I agree DG – but I’m trying to look at something higher here. The moderators apparently don’t have an image of authority here, or deserve respect, because they sure don’t get any from some members here. That is a future establishment which would be beneficial. The site owner appoints moderators for a reason – they aren’t able to be around all the time.
What I’m trying to say is there should be some individual identification for the authority bearers around here – a visual clue perhaps? This works, a lot.
If you don’t have authority you have a junkyard. I don’t think some members can identify the authorities around here and because of that, they think there is none. This all is what I mean by [too much] easy-tolerance also, which isn’t really the moderators fault, they could bear easier if they had some more abilities and so will the community in turn. It is actually like a pyramid. Imagine would it would be like, now, without moderators. I hope you see this site has come, and where it would go, I just think more could happen.
I agree with your points – I’m just adding some extra notes, about authority and where it can take a group of people, and a community. I do, and probably others also, can see this is going “downhill”, though. This community doesn’t appeal to me like it did in the past, and I’m sure to many other members too, let’s fix that, or can we? We just need more “tools” and I’m sure we can.
I acknowledge that we’ve ruined this site, but its fine and ready to grow, or before it goes down, or which one is it at now? You’re points are valid, I’m adding some solution.
