I can't speak much on behalf on the current issues and I'm not terribly interested in trying to process these he said she said Mocha Length Posts to the fullest of their ability. I skimmed them and grasped what I could for them in a quick read because I just don't care to look too far into them. With that being said, inc Mocha Length Post... because well... I'm Mocha and it's what I do.
I'll provide my experiences and you can disregard them, or take the essence of them and apply it to this situation if you'd like. I don't care. No I'm not looking to get involved despite my name being brought up in both statements from both parties. I have nothing against anyone except Kancer because he's not straight (I'm only joking, I don't even hate Kancer and that says something. Now that I think of it, I really hate one particular EU swine for being a complete maniac and falsifying Skype call screenshots while not having the mental capacity of debating without calling someone a faggot)
All jokes aside, here's my experience with Myrm as admin:
I had left for a tour that started during the spring and finished at the end of the summer. When I left, Shane was admin and I had not received a single complaint of over moderation for the past 8 months or so. The site was in particularly good shape in my opinion despite the DDOssing bs. Anyways, I returned to a new admin and after a few weeks I noticed how the CoC was being disregarded completely. The 20-29 section was nothing but calling everyone cunts and pussies and faggots and saying how they should alt + f4 real life and it was only getting worse. I made multiple staff chat threads and sent multiple
@Myrm messages asking what the move from here is. I made between 5-10 attempts to get an answer as to the direction of moderation with 0 response. Some staff members replied saying they've noticed how poorly things have gotten and how they'd like to get the site back on track. Being the most senior staff member, I took up responsibility and posted a warning in staff chat saying that I was going to revert to the old school way of enforcing the CoC as it's written TEMPORARILY and if anyone disagrees, to let me know and I will not go any further. I sent a final PM to Myrm and received no response. I wrote another post saying I'm just going to go for it for a short time until the malicious forum talk was down significantly.
I gave out an infraction for someone telling another twink to slit their wrists, and then I believe one other infraction to James for calling someone a cunt or something like that (which he and I came to an agreement on) and for the first time since my return to the site, I logged on and received contact from Myrm! Except... this was the message :
"I really appreciate what you've done for the site and community and I have immense respect for you as a person, but I think we have some different views on the direction of the site and the methods that need to be used to accomplish certain goals. I respect your opinion so I hope we can still maintain an open dialogue. I'll ask that you be kept in the staff Skype group, and I'll be open to hearing any issues or suggestions you have. I don't want you to feel like I'm trying to scapegoat you or throw you to the wolves, but I think this is necessary for the future of the site."
This after my nearing dozens of attempts to contact him about how to proceed, and receiving no response. Triggered AF. I also thought this was interesting how he'd like me to remain in the staff Skype call... except I was never even made aware that there was a staff Skype group call.... nor was I invited to one...
Fast forward, I wake up a few months later to a PM from a friend saying "heads up Myrm is trying to ban you" and I laughed saying something along the lines of "lol I don't think so, probably a joke... last I knew we were on fine terms despite the lack of communication resulting in me being demoted and that whole mess..." then I get another PM with the copied text from his Ghost Bustas Cover Letter Application that Myrm had submitted and I didn't really believe it. Then one of you slimy bastards pasted a link to a google archive in the shout box (thanks for that, I wanted to see it for myself you little devil <3)
This experience alone backs a LOT of what I'm seeing from the XPHasselHoff website. In my own personal experiences, I have seen enough for me to say that I don't feel as though Myrm alone has what is necessary to keep this site running from a technical standpoint alone. I have nothing against Myrm, I'm not rooting for this site to fail and another to succeed. However, I know the insane amount of work that goes on behind the scenes to keep a site running, and I'm confident that Myrm doesn't have the resources to perform such a feat. Should he acquire them, great! But currently, I feel as though this site had come to a halting screech around August after my wispy ghosty spirit had been exercised from the staff.
Say what you will about Shane, but the site was rotting with an expiring license and it was not going to be renewed when Shane came across it in 2010. He is a business man and saw opportunity, but if it weren't for him, TI would have ceased to exist completely AND THIS WAS BACK IN 2010. At least he had the technical ability to provide maintenance to the site. He was very hands off and appointed other staff members for more hands on / theory crafting of the site / community which I believe was the right move as he wasn't particularly involved with twinking nor the community. Without the technical abilities and resources to keep this site running, it stops fucking running. You can have the BEST intentions but if you have not the resources to keep the site running, that doesn't get you anywhere.
Upon purchasing the site, Myrm should have taken extra caution in learning everything he'd need to know to operate the site. If you're going to make a huge investment, at least know what the hell you're getting yourself into and if you don't, ask for help. Mutiny only gets you so far if no one knows how to operate the sails of the ship. Don't gamble with what you can't afford to lose, especially if you know nothing about the damn game. (Unless you're Casino who is addicted to gambling and gambles houses on the daily for the lulz)
It appears as though xpoff has at least the minimal ability required to create and operate a site. They have a large staff whom appear to be in good community and they appear to have good vision for the site. For all I know, they may just permaban me over there simply for my name (hell that may happen here too) and I'm still supporting the concept of having a passionate staff who's in good contact with each other to help this community grow and flourish regardless of who it is. I don't care what domain name, what logo it is, nor if my thousands of posts are completely deleted or not. I don't care to retain the thousands of likes I've acquired in the countless days of post creation time I've spent on this site because frankly, the distant past holds very little relevance in today. Nobody is going to go reread threads from 5 years ago except Barb when he's necroing shit like a damn freak without the leash.
I personally believe that Myrm should agree to the terms on xpoff and accept the leadership role he wanted to have, while setting a crew to uphold the technical abilities required that he should have had sorted out upon taking over responsibility of admin on a site with 26,000 accounts. The burden here is on Myrm to cut his losses and step up to the plate and to retain a bit of peace for the sake of the community. If I were admin and I knew I weren't qualified to run the site, I would be straight up and pass my hat to someone more qualified because it's the right thing to do for the betterment of the community and site.
XPjackmeOff will probably outshine TI if I were to speculate. F2P may always use this... But... I'm one of the few who was around to see pwndepot fall to twinkinfo after this site was created. Why would an entire community move websites to join 20-50 people that are using a new site? Well when we made TI, the entire community that was 10 times as large as this one moved to TI because one admin was passionate enough about twinking and was taking it upon himself to get ptr links, write blog posts, make twink movies and the new site (TI) was something absolutely incredible. If you take WoWhead with their daily posts, guides, ptr information, videos, contests etc THAT'S what we had for specifically twinks alone. It was absolutely incredible. This new site may not be able to rival what this site USED to be, but in retrospect, this house of trash talking forums with 0 actual content has been on the decline since Drayner left the site. It has sustained and slowed the dying process here and there, but what TI needed was an admin who would take it upon himself to create and fuel the inspiration for more content and advancement as a community. The staff at XPsuckmeOff no doubt have the passion and the ability to maintain CONTENT on the new website... something this site has been deprived of since Drayner left.
Regardless, this could not have come at a worse time. Being between expansions and with us not even being certain to our existence after the launch of Legion, the community didn't need this to happen right now. This could have been a private matter and could have been done 100% away from the public eye and resolved in private... If Myrm weren't completely unreachable.
Just my opinion. Pretty valid points if I do say so myself.
