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On Transparency...

18:24 / 23.09.03

I think the current ban on new membership, multiple suits, and multiple users behind suits is slowly killing all of us.

It appears to breed, in some instances, paranoia, deceit, and other negative or Shadow traits found in each of us (we are only all humans, after all…).

In the interests of this community I have a few suggestions, to be taken or dropped not without thought and care, but with reasoned debate &/v careful awareness.

1) Allow multiple suits.
2) Allow multiple users behind suits.

But not without a requirement of honesty & transparency. This means:

Have a thread in the Policy, or FAQ wiki in which:

A single user openly declares the whole cast of hir fictionsuits without any left out.

A suit with multiple users openly declares all of its users.

Honesty and open communication is the key to happiness & fun. Anyone found to be in violation of these rules will be kicked from the board for a duration decided by whomever wants to make such a decision: I figure this would be Tom & whomever he would like to consult.

This could run in tandem with an “Update” thread to keep people informed of ficsuit name changes.

Again, those not willing to be honest and open with this community do not deserve to be here (for X amount of time out for thought and reflection).

Let’s make Barbelith as free as we can and ground this freedom in honesty.

18:38 / 23.09.03

It's because of users being dishonest with multiple suits/users to one suit that this is a problem, and verboten. Given the tedious history of this problem, you'd have to start again from scratch for this to have any chance of working. And it requires an immense amount of trust, which I'm dubious will be forthcoming.

I'm always for new membership, though.

18:58 / 23.09.03

Or: since people have proved they can't behave in a free community, and can't be trusted to obey rules which it is trusted they obey (ie: "Please do not use multiple suits. If we see them, we'll confiscate them, but we're not going looking per se"), why don't we be a bit more stringent and see if they can behave when the rules are a bit tighter? And when they've proved they can, see what we'll see about loosening them again, but maybe going about things in a different way?

I do not think that saying "hmn, this really isn't working? It's so much easier if you just let me get what I want".

It's already been proven in the "Timewave Zero is not me" when it clearly was fiasco that some people are not to be trusted when it comes to multiple suits.

Honesty and open communication
Yes, this is exactly what we need. Not a lot of it has been shown in the various open fights, PM fights, and open dishonesty that's gone on so far. This thread does not help anything, like so many of the others so far.

Tryphena Absent

19:06 / 23.09.03

I look into my glass
And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!"

20:19 / 23.09.03

Melissa - it just doesn't work! That's pretty much how the board started out with an aspiration towards making it a free and easy place to do what you want in - with the assumption that there would simply be no reason why anyone would try and screw that up. Unfortunately, like so many of these social contracts, when one person decides to act against the contract, then they are free to be utterly destructive. The easiest way to demonstrate this is to ask how we stop someone if they don't declare all their suits honestly. We can't! If they co-opt thirty / forty / three hundred / a thousand user names, each based on a separate free e-mail account, each with a different name, it's surprisingly hard to tell they're the same person! So you delete a user who misbehaves and shortly afterwards someone starts arguing for them, why they were right. And then gradually they start behaving like the original poster, until they finally give themselves away. And then they're banned, at which point suit three cuts in. You may laugh... But this is exactly why people are suspicious of people who jump to the defence of banned members - precisely because, more often than not, they're not two people at all, they're the banned member continuing ad nauseum to cause more and more trouble... I'm really sorry Melilssa/Ev, but I develop this kind of online space professionally and - while we're trying something with Barbelith that hasn't really been tried before and that makes it all experimental - I've got four years of experience at what certainly won't work...

21:15 / 23.09.03

Why, Melissa, do you ask?
I'm not accusing you of anything, but wondering why anyone but a spammer, or someone hiding something, would want more than one suit? And what is the need for one suit with two users? Perhaps I am being completely niave and darft, but i think both are pointless and unnecessary.

When is membership gona open up again, though? Is it just til everything calms down a bit?

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:12 / 23.09.03

Gingerbop, dude, Melissa and Ev is Modzero/godog; the suit was apparently registered by his real fiancée with limbs and everything way back when, but has only been removed from mothballs in this time of need.

Like King Arthur. Except utterly self-serving.

04:57 / 24.09.03

I think the current ban on new membership, multiple suits, and multiple users behind suits is slowly killing all of us.

I feel very much healthy and alive, thanks. You don't speak for me.

The situation has been handled with a lot of thought, in accordance with normal board procedure. I was not taken lightly. Any deletion requests were agreed by several moderators, which is as close to a consensus as you're likely to get on the 'Lith.

The only reason you're claiming it isn't seems to be because the decisions effected your and/or yours. That's because you and/or yours were the problem, what with spamming, randomly offensive comments, calling out previous trolls, hinting that you're putting together a clandestine group of posters who will further your objectives within the community, possessing multiple suits and advocating suits with multiple-users.

To be honest, I am amazed that modthree is trying to defend himself and his actions and get himself reinstated. It's a textbook list of behaviour that any longtime contributor knows will lead to being excluded. What did you think would happen?

Your requests for a rethink on board policy concerning the treatment of fictionsuits are naively utopian. They won't work for the reasons that Tom has stated. This place isn't your paradise, it's a net community filled with geeks, many of whom happen to be fairly lefty. We are not the supercontext, we do not wear WWGMD bracelets. We cannot be all things to all men.

This'll be my last word on the subject in response to your comments, Melissa. I won't make any further replies.