[TDawg4]

you read this

 It is hard to take in good faith comments from people who never play or are around on disc or people who have declared dinks to be a lost cause. Seems like they are just trying to take as many shots as they can on their way out/causing problems when they don't really care about the community anymore. 

most of the people who have left/declared dinks a lost cause have those opinions because they've tried so hard to make the community a better, safer place and were met with backlash every step of the way, so they leave frustrated and feeling that way. 

you can care about a community and also understand when its time to give up, i doubt anybody who has recently made the decision to leave and rescind their positions have done so with complete happiness

Yeah I agree. I just think its hard to contribute well still when you are in that spot. That bitter taste from getting backlash from doing your best can lead to some remarks from people that I dont think they would normally make. Also on the mental health side actually stepping back is hard, but often the best thing to do.

[EpicGuy]

chelllman, you are absolutely correct. Effective communicating is something that does need to be practiced, and is paramount to building successful relationships. Communicating is key for any relationship, friend-friend, parent-child, partner-partner, husband-wife, moron on GMod server-moron on GMod server, to flourish. When communication stops, anger, strife, and resentment follow. I have always been a massive proponent of "take it to the forums" because the forums are a place for public, open, honest, and tough discussions to be had. Without a place to air grievances, rumors and division are begat, which is what we are experiencing now. But it is hard to have discussions when threads are closed once an inkling of argument, tough conversation, or bickering begins. And it is even harder to discuss things when threads are made for the sole purpose of being closed immediately and to be stared at like a piece in a museum.

PandaInPants, I agree with you when you say that we should have more clarity when things are being investigated or worked on. Prime example, 12 people were recently banned for various lengths of time. As someone who doesn't live and breathe Internet drama, I have next to no idea why the majority of those people were banned because there was no reason provided in the ban. I'm not asking for evidence to be provided. I'm not asking for victims to be outed. A simple one line blurb or a couple of words next to the player's name to provide some context behind the ban would be helpful for people who aren't knowledgeable of the situation.

A question I have for you, PandaInPants, is what were the types of issues that you would run into where you would get zero responses? Who were the people that you were asking? If an admin couldn't answer your question, could another staff member answer it? Maybe a moderator or T-mod? Additionally, what do you mean by "...the only response was from Tief and no flame but she didn't know what rules to push either because staff training has not been worked on in eons?" What rules were Tiefling pushing? What is rule pushing? If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds like no one knew the answer to your issue, or Tiefling made her best effort to answer your issue but wasn't sure what to do because staff training wasn't worked on? I don't exactly know what that means. Couldn't any of the admins begin staff training or drafting a plan to start training staff? Or couldn't any other staff member with some experience do some type of training if they were approached? If someone sees someone struggling, don't just sit there. Help them out. I am not sure what staff training has to do with this exact situation or how the blame solely falls on Icey. Tiefling is an admin. If she doesn't know a rule, or needs clarification on a rule, she should ask the other admins. But I find it hard to imagine that she didn't have a solid grasp of the rules, considering that she made it to admin. I just don't understand what this means. Side note, I did go and check Icey's admin application. I wouldn't say that staff training was a big part of his admin app; it was 2 sentences, or 34 words of the 376 words that he typed. I will agree, however, that there are things that he mentioned in his admin application that I have yet to see.

I don't want to comment on every word of your post, PandaInPants, but I do want to comment on the second to last paragraph of your post. You again mention training. I was taking a look at the TTT staff list thread and the staff going back as far as September of 2022. This is/was not a young staff team by any stretch of the imagination. What young staff team are you referring to? Why do people who have been on the staff team for a year, a year and a half, 2 years or more need training? If they haven't figured it out yet, the impetus should be on them to ask questions. If an admin, another staff member, or a member of the community has not noticed staffing issues that need to be addressed in a staff member, I would say that training is not necessary. Another question that just popped into my head, when did we have staff training? I may have been on one of the hiatuses that you mentioned, but I remember maybe one large staff training during my time here. All the training that I received, and that others have received, was a quick rundown of the RDM manager, a quick rundown of the commands, and an "off you go. If you have any questions, feel free to ask." The bulk of my training came from observing other staff members, asking questions, and learning on the job. And, in my humble opinion, I turned out just fine. And I know plenty of other staff members who turned out just fine without the need for a sit down Zoom or Discord staff training.

I will wrap up by saying that I also agree with you when you say that there are some members of the community that need to leave the server alone. I may even be one of the people that you are referencing. However, I'm not trying to hold on to 2016 Dinklerberg's; I am trying to hold on to 2014-2016 Dinkleberg's, where staff spawned with full ammo, there weren't any stupid cosmetics, the line "fast downloads" was actually true, the maps were good, and the players were cool...but it's too late for any of that. This server has seen a lot of absolute garbage over its almost 10 years of existence. And to be quite honest with you, I refuse to watch this community shrivel up and die because people who have been here for all of a baby's fart and people who are a bunch of drama hungry, bloodsucking, forum and discord stalking dweebs refuse to realize that there is a world outside of this community. Yes, staff members who sweep things under the rug should be ashamed of themselves. But those who leave the staff team because they are tired of seeing things stay the same, but magically and conveniently bring up all of these things that they want to change and point out should also reevaluate their motives. Why wait until you abdicate your position on the staff team to want to suggest changes or bring up issues you saw? Why not address them while on staff, where you could have done something. What is the point? To have people smell your farts as you spout your self-aggrandizing bile from your pedestal? Saying that you gave up because you weren't listened to isn't good enough. If you're ignored once, message the person again. If you're ignored again, go to someone else. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. And that goes for staff and non-staff alike. If you have a complaint, comment, accusation, whatever, do not stop bringing that thing up until you get the response you are satisfied with.

I want it to be known that I am not calling out one single person. This is behavior that has actually been a pattern from multiple people that I've noticed over the years.

I'd apologize for the wall of text, but I'm not sorry. I know that barely anyone is going to read all of this crap. I know I spent too long on this stupidity and should be sleeping. I know it's cringe. But what is more cringe is people actively acting like brain dead donkeys while burning this community to the ground. We can, and should, do better.

I leave you with the wise words of one of our greatest presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Thank you all for the opportunity to communicate and discuss with you all.

[Dinomoto]

Ah, communication, my favourite.
I think the most jarring thing to learn about this "community" is that there are opposing groups/sides.
I don't know how or why the trust and respect became that bad to split the community like that, but it is rather off putting.
There is some pride that needs to be swallowed from both sides (I hope its only 2 sides)
Just my thoughts.

[chapman]

Communication would work if people on both sides are open to listening, but this community continuously dismisses actual discussions or pushes to tear apart someone's point immediately instead of furthering a discussion. 

you say this but when I had appealed to be unbanned from the forums, all you did was make me out to be some sort of sexual harasser (which not only had nothing to do with my ban but also was completely already handled in the past PRIVATELY) so to be completely blunt, you’re the last person to be talking about this. I tried being civil with you in the past, but you did exactly what you’re complaining about here. You just tore what I said apart.

[cow]

ya'll have gotta stop continuing drama, especially on well thought out posts meant to be helpful.

[Nate]

I don't know how or why the trust and respect became that bad to split the community like that, but it is rather off putting.

Just my two cents, but there seems to be two different sides that want different things for the server. And I’m not just talking about the whole “Reina vs Dong group” shit. I’ve noticed this for about a little over a year as different people became staff, and offered their opinions and influence. And this isn’t even necessarily a bad thing. It’s always a great thing to hear multiplle sides and listen to different opinions on different problems that we face as a community. It only became a bad thing when several people from either side started burning bridges with anybody who didn’t completely agree with them. When we started shaming them behind private discords; calling them out and essentially getting a mob to go after somebody. And I am well aware that there are more than just some “simple disagreements” and some of this is a much bigger issue; but this has happened for a long time with much simpler disagreements as well. Something that could’ve easily been talked about maturely and easily resolved. And even the bigger issues, could’ve been maturely talked about instead of publicly shaming, privately shaming, and the back and forth elementary level name calling. We as a community truly do need to learn how to better communicate. 

If you are reading this and think I am specifically talking about you; you may just be a part of the problem

[chelllman]

This post was not meant to create more drama which is why I reread my post multiple times to ensure it didn't seem like an attack on anyone else.

I'm a huge proponent of the idea the personal growth can start with even the smallest steps. My biggest regret in life is that I didn't start my journey sooner.

[chapman]

ya'll have gotta stop continuing drama, especially on well thought out posts meant to be helpful.

My apologies, it’s not my intention to cause drama by expressing my opinion; however my wording made it come across as a drama fest. It just is extremely frustrating to me to see a lack of self awareness when it comes to having double standards and/or hypocrisy. I’ll refrain from making any further comments on this issue.

[PandaInPants]

-snip-

I

The issues I would bring up were various issues, any issue under the sun, and typically harassment. I will say a lot of what I bring up happened more in the first 7 months of my staffing as we got a lot more staff in the latter half of the year and movement actually started on understanding how to staff. I would ask for help in the ttt staff chat with a wall of text about a situation and ask for help handling it because I didn't know what to do. I would typically get small responses to give verbals or a warn if the upper staff felt it was necessary, but I didn't always get a response.  It didn't help that I would look to the upper staff when they were on to find out if I should act on things, but A lot of the people I staffed with resigned shortly after I got staff or were inactive so it was mostly fresher faces from late 2022 or people from 2023. Many people I remember staffing with were ok with slur usage or staffing based on vibes alone even if rules were being broken so I wasn't very good at staffing for a long time IMO. One scenario was when I was on with Chibill there was a player raging and telling others to kill themselves, when I asked to handle it chibill did not have a good idea of what warn to give it as he said at the time he didn't think it fell under any of the guidelines. (later we did resolve the issue)It is hard to observe other staff when they are inactive, don't have enough experience to make decisions themselves, or don't feel like staffing so they don't do anything when they do get on. The part about Tief not knowing much was not saying she didn't know basic rules, but more for complex situations when they required more experience or knowledge. And for her pushing rules, there were periods where she was getting flack from the community for warning according to the guidelines and so she had a harder time knowing what to enforce due to so much backlash being thrown her way. If I ever enforced rules Tief would get flamed. I bring up staff training more because even on my last day as Mod I never had a good idea of warning on the server. A lot of things are ruled on completely differently by completely different staff members so finding out if something was bad enough to get warned for was always an issue for me. When we had a lot of staff commenting on posts a few months ago I would say how nice it is to actually discuss warning things and when to warn instead of just guessing and hoping I don't make a mess of nothing.

To bring up why people waited until they leave to bring things up, its because they tried their best to discuss it internally because we are harped on so much to never leak staff chat, never talk about anything related to staff chat, etc. I mean I have heard about a staff member who leaked a staff chat to show racism and got demoted and punished when they were talking about a serious issue within the staff team. So it really discourages anything being done when the issues stem from something internal. A lot of people just get fed up thinking about the amount of issues in an online community instead of just leaving to enjoy time with their own friends so they air their grievances on the way out to get it out in the air while they don't have to think about being punished for taking action.

-snip-

you say this but when I had appealed to be unbanned from the forums, all you did was make me out to be some sort of sexual harasser (which not only had nothing to do with my ban but also was completely already handled in the past PRIVATELY) so to be completely blunt, you’re the last person to be talking about this. I tried being civil with you in the past, but you did exactly what you’re complaining about here. You just tore what I said apart.

I didn't make you out to be a harasser, I simply commented my opinion of you based on my interactions with you from at the time months ago. "-1 most interactions ive had with you are unpleasant and you make sexist comments often, In another discord server I hung out in for a bit you would join the chat and say a lot of stuff that was specifically to make people in there uncomfortable and made lots of sexist comments claiming they were jokes or you were just drunk. These interactions made me dislike you and not want you around community members in general." Nothing I said was dishonest as you said "I do not make those kinds of comments or jokes anymore, as I realized that was something that was unacceptable behavior" and that you and the person you were upset with to start the comments had made up. As you said it had been 9 months so maybe you had changed so I did not push the issue further.  I feel that if I have witnessed actions that I heavily disagree with I can add that opinion to a thread about letting you engage with the community. The response you gave was that you only chose to be a nuisance and be offensive due to a disagreement with someone else, yet you would still say these things when that person was not around and make uncomfortable remarks. I figured that if you were to do that then I did not trust you to have calm judgment in a community with a lot more people who you would disagree with more. I never tore into you I just stated what information I had on you. I dislike you and could say many rude things to get my point across, but I am IMO quite civil and choose to instead interact very little with people I have chosen to dislike. Also to be honest the opinions of people who knew you before your ban still let me know that you had not changed much.

[RussEfarmer]

these are good resources and I will use them to communicate effectively with yo mama

nah but seriously these are all excellent