Have you ever been part of Something?

[wicked3659]

This is like what? My third/fourth personal LJ post. I swear I'm spoiling you people. This is an experience post if you will. My own personal journey that I want to share with those of you who have the time and patience to read it. My first experience as a moderator, a contributor within a fandom that I truly love and enjoy being part of.

It's an honest account and is surprisingly personal for me. Shaking like a leaf right now ha ha!! So I'll just get on with it shall I?

This is long!! Not story length but a good page or so, so please forgive and bear with me.

I’m part of something. It got big. It got big quick!

You know something though, I’m proud of it. I’m flattered to have been invited to be a part of it and I’m proud at how fast it’s grown and how popular it is.

tf_ic_prompts . It’s not my baby though oh no. This gem was antepathy ’s idea and I was thrilled to help out.

I will be honest with you though, I had no idea that something like this could be so trying or that I would get attached to it. Maybe it’s only trying because I’m attached and I care about it.

It has been a rollercoaster of a month though.

I am going to tell you about it because you know what, I don’t tell you anything, not really and I wanted to share some of the experiences we’ve been through with this, because you know in the end, the people in charge well they’re still just people. I think that gets forgotten sometimes.

When it started up, oh god the excitement. Literally I cannot tell you how many ideas were bouncing around, how giddy we got. It was silly really, two grown women squeeeing over an online community. ^___^ But that first week, that was the best week. Oh it was fun! Seeing how everyone took to it, got involved made suggestions, offered advice. I was overwhelmed to be honest so I mostly took a back seat in the setup.

Now you have to understand I have never done rp before. This was a new and a little intimidating experience for us. We wanted it to be fun but we also know how with something like this structure is needed. People need to know where they stand or there is chaos. The rules were written, they have been edited and amended to suit the needs of the comm and in three weeks (literally that’s all I think it’s been o.O) with suggestions we finally hammered them out.

Did we get things wrong? Oh yes. Mostly in our excitement we forgot something, or wanted things a certain way, you know we just had a picture in our heads of what we thought it would be like.

I actually learned a lot throughout this whole process, I’m not kidding.

Biggest lesson is I can’t please everyone, god knows I want to. Don’t we all? Wouldn’t it be nice for everyone to get their own way?

Well actually… no it wouldn’t be nice, it would be chaos, utter pandemonium. Think about life and society without rules for a second, I don’t know about you but that thought terrifies me. Then again I do like order (I am blaming the OCD). Some of my experiences trying to moderate, help out, appease complaints, concerns, worries, take suggestions, keep an eye on EVERYTHING were exhausting. I know that I don’t just speak for myself there. It took me back to when I did teacher training after university.

I was 21 and my god was I green around the gills. I am quite mature for my age and so I went into it with a firm idea of what a teacher should be. I was strict, because kids don’t want you to be their friend, they need you to teach them but during the training, I had a mentor, he was only about 5 years older than me, he was supposed to help me, guide me. Ha! Well in trying to learn how to teach I got told I was too strict and I needed to relax. So I did. You know what happened? I was walked ALL over. He the big man that he was, sat at the back of the class and belittled me when I lost control and took advantage of me when I confided in him as to how difficult I was finding it to identify with the kids. I lost the kids respect then and someone else had to step in and was just as strict with them as I had started out to be.

I stuck it out for a few months but it was too late. If I had just stuck to my guns, my instincts, my principles, my order I would be a teacher now. In the end, it made me so miserable, I turned to alcohol just so I could sleep at night. The final straw was for me to be inspected and told that although I had passing marks I was to be held back, I had to do it all again, even though I hadn’t failed.

I quit the next day and that probably saved my life. Although alcohol was my best friend for the year following, most of which I don’t really remember. All I can remember from my training, the only lesson I took away from it was; you can’t please everyone. I should have remained strict and have the kids hate me. I can deal with hate, they were just faces to me and in a year they would move on and forget my existence.

A lot of my experiences and emotions came back a few times with regards to this comm. This Tuesday, I cried. I literally cried over an online community. I didn’t sleep at all and I had work the next day. All I could think was how did we get it so wrong? When I’d calmed down and talked it over, I realised something. We weren’t doing anything wrong, we were standing firm, we were listening, making decisions, doing what we thought was best and the inevitable happened, people didn’t like it. But you know what?

No matter what you do in life, no matter what you decide, what rules are in place, what good thing you try to contribute, there will always, ALWAYS be someone out there who disagrees, who doesn’t like it and in the extreme, they will hate you for it. It’s human nature. Some people in the world aren’t happy unless they have something to complain about. That I learned is just life.

My second lesson was actually the introduction to the whole role-playing concept. I have even tried to get involved and have a play. Although it does take some persuading as some of you will know. I felt so silly, not in a bad way don’t get me wrong. My friend toyzintheattik  described the feeling perfectly; it’s like the feeling you got when you used to play with toys as a kid, your action figures and your Barbie dolls. It’s like you have your own virtual puppet and this giant playground to play on.

It’s honestly fascinating to me as people really do get caught up in it, and enjoy it. It gets people creating within the virtual world, interacting in a way they normally wouldn’t and something I found surprising, it’s a place people go to relax from RL, chill out and be someone else for a little while. It is quite cathartic I can tell you. Although TFA Prowl would disagree with me as I had him singing earlier. ^___^  (What G1 Jazz insisted!)

Through all of this, the ups and downs, the complaints and the praise. The discord and the support, the odd words of encouragement and even the insults. We created something that other people could enjoy and that we wanted to maintain to the best of our abilities to keep it a place that people could enjoy. We have had to become firmer in our moderations because we thought that by giving everyone something of what they wanted they would be happy, that just makes people ask for more and more and more. We needed limits so we set them and we stand by them because for the most part - and I know this because I have tracked almost every thread posted this week and let me tell you that’s over 1000+ comments coming into my inbox O.O – it works. It really does. Within the RP world people have more or less a free reign as long as they are respectful and play nice and obey the rules we’ve set for them.

And you know something else, we never asked for anything back. We took it and we adapted and now the comm is stable. People come and go, we get people leaving and we get newbies every week. I’m proud that we did this and that we stuck it out and I just wanted to share my first experience as a moderator with you.

The next time though you come across something that you don’t like, anywhere not just online, not just on a comm, before you complain and try to tear off a moderator’s head or run to your friends to discuss their incompetence, just think, there are people behind everything. Someone needs to be in charge and that comes with the risk of not being liked, so just before you get all upset and feel your world is coming to an end just remember those people in charge who run things, keep it in order, they’re people just like you, they get upset, they care just as much as you do. Give them a little room to breathe.

My last little bit this is directly related totf_ic_prompts  I want to thank antepathy  for sharing her idea, setting it up, giving it life and having more patience than I ever could in handling everything that has been thrown at her. This is just an online comm after all we all have RL to go back to and she still has given it her best and I just wanted to give her a mention because honestly with the sheer size and variety of ideas and personalities the comm has not everybody could have done this and I think it worthy of recognition.

antepathy : Thanks for letting me be part of something I am genuinely excited about and that which (for the most part) makes people happy.

Please forgive the length (I did warn you) ^___^

Comments

[antepathy.livejournal.com]

Wow, you really did go all out in honesty here, didn't you? ^___^

I hate being hated. It's by far the worst part of my RL job. I've made 'what's the syllabus say?' a mantra. As you know, the single biggest stress in my job is pushback to those rules. I've been called every name in the book, told I was bad teacher, a shit human being, and even had a desk thrown at me. For simply holding firm to rules I had spelled out on day one in the syllabus. It does NOT get any easier: that's a load of bull. What happens is you find yourself going through phases where you just...shut off. To not care what they think about you, you have to not care *about them* either. And I find that I can't really do that and pretend to teach all that well. I like a lot of my students: they're smart, funny, but just not used to what it takes to be 'college students'. It's an adjustment and it's sometimes a bit rocky. For both sides, because either I care--and lock myself in the office and shake after kicking a student out of class for cursing at me--or I don't care. AT ALL.

Same thing here: either I care what people think of me, or I don't, meaning I don't care about them. I can't do that. While I'm not naive enough to think that just because someone's on my f-list, they're my actual 'friend', I do care about them--I get worried if they don't post for a long time; I want to hear them talk about what they're reading, or their pets, or just general stuff. I am primed to like them as fuzzy little Buddhas themselves, and I guess I want them to like me, too.

As you know, I'm not posting on the comm any more since I've offended too many people, people who are apparently primed to NOT give me the benefit of the doubt, to jump to the worst possible interpretation of what I say (my inner Buddha is sad). It's just better for the FUN (what the comm is about) if I don't introduce that element.

AAAAND I think my comment's longer than your post. Again. :(

[wicked3659.livejournal.com]

I felt it needed saying. If it helps my own post made me cry *is pathetic* ^___^

I'm glad you don't mind me sharing though. And you're a great person to know and be friends with, people who can't see that well, it's their loss I say.

*glomps* you really are ace!! You should be told this more.

[antepathy.livejournal.com]

Well, you ARE one of the people I'm dumb enough to believe actually is my friend. ^___~

Did we get things wrong? Oh yes.

You and your British understatement! For the most part, I think we'd both admit that people were patient about that, knowing we were at least *trying* to get it right. Not always hitting it, of course, but that we were trying!

[wicked3659.livejournal.com]

He he he ^___^ You know me and my britishness *snicker* Yeah people have been very patient which helped a lot for the big stuff and ironed out the itty bitty stuff.

And yup ya can't get rid of me :P I'm like a limpet lol...

[aprilraven.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I just got that face when I read you weren't posting anymore. I LOVED Crush! He had such great snark going on! And I'll confess, I missed when he didn't come around to poke at grouchy Ironhide anymore.

I wondered what happened, and I'm sorry to hear that people got upset. Ironhide was, but not me. And as far as your modding posts, you're doing what needs to be done, re: my comments to wicked. It's your comm and your rules. You're just sharing with the rest of us, and I really and truly thank Primus that you are.

[antepathy.livejournal.com]

It's no big deal and I certainly don't have any hard feelings. I want people to have fun. I'm not so wrapped up in myself that I'd flounce and ruin everything for everybody, you know? There are plenty of people--who are waaaay better at rp than me--to have fun with there, so I'm not really like...necessary to keep it going.

Besides, I'll always have this icon.... ^___^

[aprilraven.livejournal.com]

I would disagree! You were keeping things very lively there! Totally your choice, but still... awwww.

I'm a first-timer too, and really enjoyed Crush pouncing on stuff. Great fun, and quidamling (Lennox) and I are still getting mileage out of some your cracks, lol.

Hahah! I love that icon. Slap that on a T-shirt and wear it at Botcon! (Heard you were going, I'd love to meet you ^^)

[aprilraven.livejournal.com]

Well said, and thank you so much for sharing! You're absolutely right about everything you said concerning modding, and not pleasing everyone. Stick to your guns, and do your best to keep the comm what you set it up to be. I keep flashing on, 'If you build it, they will come,' and they certainly have!

Kudos, applause, free interweb and a metric ton of cookies for you and antepathy for setting this up and taking the time to run this epically huge playground.

I am sorry to hear that some people don't like the way your handling it, but hey, it's your comm, your rules, and now I see what inspired this week's prompt. :)

I'm a first-timer at RP too, and I'm having the time of my life! It's wonderful, and it's a very welcome escape from RL at times.

A heartfelt thanks to you both for setting this up!! XD

[wicked3659.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much ^__^ we're not looking for praise honestly, this is just something we did.

And that quote is from one of my all time favourite films so *hugs* for that :)

I'm glad you're enjoying it we both are it means a lot to us ^__^

[aprilraven.livejournal.com]

Oh, you didn't come across as digging for praise at all. But too many times, the people who come to play don't realize that it takes someone else actually WORKING, to make it all work.

That deserves praise and thanks, both, imho.

I love that movie too! ^__^

Enjoying? Hell, it's sucking me in!! I love it, thank you!

*hugs back*

[eerian_sadow]

oh, have i been there and done that. screwed it up? hell yes. pissed half the memebers off? and then some. thought everything was going to just fall all apart and i'd look like a total ass? yes. (did, in fact, look like a total ass in one of my comms for a long time.) sadly, we cannot all come into the livejournal community structure full of experience for that sort of thing. and then you tossed the RP element in on top of it, and that made it a bit more complex. i'm actually rather amazed that you two got it ironed out as quickly as you did.

and yes, people hated on you for a while there. (and probably will continue to do so, as you find other things that need help/work/fixed because the jack up the system) it happens, sadly. if they don't like the rules of the sandbox, they need to take their buckets and go home.

you're doing it right, no matter how it may feel when people get mad. and you're doing a great job at it. i'm having fun, laratron is having fun (and getting her to actually admit to having fun is like pulling teeth, because it's a foreign concept for her) and everyone else seems to be having fun too. don't let the haters get you guys down; they're going to find a reason to hate no matter what.

also, don't be afraid to swing that ban hammer. people get out of control sometimes, no matter what you do, and it becomes the only choice. it'll suck and you'll probably feel bad about it for a couple days, but the comm will be better for it.

if you need help/advice/someone to cry to/secret police, do let me know. this community management thing seems to be what i'm doing with myself right now.

[wicked3659.livejournal.com]

Thanks :) that's good to know *hug*

[eerian_sadow]

*hugs* you're welcome, sweetie.