User blog:Echostar/Our Voices

Hey peeps.

There have been a lot of issues on this wiki regarding characters- how character ideas are treated, the imbalance between b-crats and the rest of the users, rules regarding OP characters, among other things that need to be addressed. So we have come together to outline each of our feelings about this. We hope that this blog comes across as clear-cut and professional. Thank you to all the users who helped pull this blog together and came forward to share their opinion. If you are not included in this blog and would like to share your own opinion, please feel free to post a comment.

I’ve had a few character situations where I’ve felt the severity of their (and my) actions have been blown out of proportion. I have been judged and consequently distrusted in some ways because of my tendency to push the boundaries. I am considering demoting myself to rollback because I feel disrespected. The main outcome: I feel angry and hurt. I am quite fed up with character ideas being shut down without compromise or even consideration. I now know that I am not alone in this opinion.
 * -|Echo=

Here are a few ideas for a general compromise:
 * 1) Character ideas that ‘push boundaries’ should be run by more than one admin. I know this has not really been possible as of late with two b-crats being inactive.  I am suggesting that, at least until the admin situation is sorted out, a compromise needs to be agreed upon by either two b-crats, or a b-crat and an admin (obviously not the admin or rb posing the idea).
 * 2) Revisit the Roleplay Policy. Some of the reasoning for people’s character ideas have been based on canon, some not, but I do not believe the Roleplay Policy has specifically been referenced.  If you would like to make clear, concise rules about ‘ridiculous’ storylines, please come to an agreement- preferably as a full admin team and not only the b-crats- and update the policy to our concurrence.
 * 3) If the “right” thing to do with a character/user that is pushing the boundaries is going to result in more harm than good, please… just try to keep an open mind and be considerate of the user’s feelings. Sometimes, following the rules to a tee is not as important as how other people feel.

I also have a personal request. I know that Jisk is inactive, and I know that Draco technically has the final say about Teresa’s fate. But I’m asking you to please release Teresa. I feel that this is the situation that especially hurt me. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail, because I’ve probably said it all before. I know that you may believe that I gave no thought to the consequences… but I did, and Teresa’s actions were manipulated. A decision was made without much regard for the way I felt. And honestly… I feel that this is the best way to fix it.

Echo   star    ★

The topic of unfair advantages has been brought up multiple times on chat, so nobody is really a stranger to our views, and it’s clear that the same opinion is widely shared amongst the majority of users, from regular users to bureaucrats - there are unfairly privileged users who are allowed to create blatantly and sometimes vastly overpowering characters, whilst other users are shot down for suggesting any interesting and potentially consequential storylines which may require a bit of work.
 * -|Ellie=

The subject of Ash Prince’s rather high bank balance and ownage of shops can and has been justified, but managing multiple businesses (and a single Tesco, which does not and will never make sense) whilst being Head of Hufflepuff House and teaching Herbology seems more than unlikely, and to top it all off, is a skilled Occlumens who is teaching the practice to a young student, all at the age of twenty-three. His character Jaina, a woman with supposedly contained and controllable ice powers, froze the entire school before taking her throne as Queen of Norway, despite having barely any Norwegian characteristics (her name isn’t traditionally Norwegian whatsoever, which is the exact opposite to what a member of a royal family would be named). These are clear examples of an overpowered character, yet Bond has received little to no reprimanding for this, or any requests to tone down his characters’ powers. However, if a regular user tried that, it’s almost guaranteed that they’d be seen to immediately.

Even small events, such as a character possibly dying at Hogwarts after falling from a tower, have been immediately shut down even though there’s sufficient evidence showing that it would be completely and utterly possible, and even potentially lead into a new and exciting storyline.

To practically all of the users below bureaucrat status, it feels as if we are entirely disconnected from the bureaucrats. They own the majority of characters with positions high up in the wiki which, although understandable, is still unfair as it seems to be the bureaucrats who tend to go inactive most often. They are allowed to make expansions occur on a whim (without notifying any other users to ensure they’re satisfied with it) for one character’s development, they manufacture and participate in overpowering and sometimes pure ridiculous storylines which no regular user would even have the chance to suggest. They create overpowering characters with lazy and sometimes incorrect and nonsensical excuses as reasons for it. They’re basically allowed to do whatever they please, because there’s nobody above them to tell them “no”.

 It is the music of the people  who will not be slaves again.

I feel like, as an admin I should have a lot of positive things to say about the way the wiki is run at present; but as of now it’s not a functioning administration I can be proud to be part of. We haven’t dealt with the declining admin team that simply cannot handle an influx of new users. We haven’t dealt with users with an excessive number of characters in power. Bureaucrats are given storylines on a plate and even storylines that aren’t directly about their characters heavily involves them as a cause. But admins and below? We don’t get the privilege to try our idea.
 * -|Lily=

Take Ellie, Kibeth, SoA and me on chat the other night. We came up with so many reasons as to why it would work, why it was interesting, how it would involve other characters - and we had to explain this to the bureaucrats. When the bureaucrats get an expansion that heavily affects our characters we don’t get it explained before it happens, there’s no vote as to whether we want to go ahead with it, it’s just done.

Meetings aren’t regular, we only have two regular bureaucrats and departments are meaningless because we are all having to juggle to support each other. There’s no real equality into what seems to have become a hierarchy. Where there are loopholes for bureaucrats, they are inaccessible to everyone else, and that needs to change - all of us deserve a voice on DARP, because without all the user base, there is no DARP for the bureaucrats to run.

 I'm two quarters  and a  heart  down

Hey guys! So, the other users have pretty much voiced all of the main concerns but I just wanted to point out (even if it already has) that the restrictions put on regular users, rollbacks, and admins alike is unfair. Take a look at a few of Bond's characters. Jaina Nordskov froze Hogwarts and harmed a few students along the way and faced absolutely no consequences. Not to mention she was later crowned the queen of Norway. Echo's Teresa Black was put in Azkaban for doing basically nothing if you compare it to the 'frozen expansion'. Kib was barely allowed to make a Grand Duchess and the nymphs nearly didn't even happen... Now look at Ash Prince. He's the owner of many businesses and is also herbology professor and HoH. How does he manage to deal with his businesses and teach Hogwarts at the same time? Not to mention he also has to deal with any rising problems within the house of Hufflepuff.
 * -|Jaye=

Another thing is that CK has both the head auror and the head of the department of magical law enforcement. I recognize there aren't many aurors, but there were still other options and I find that quite unfair as well. Had it been anyone else, the user would have probably been forced to hand over one of the two positions. What I'm trying to say is: we want equality. The last thing DARP needs is users getting frustrated and annoyed with all these restrictions they we face and the b-crats don't and then leaving.

Another thing is that I believe the current administration team should be given another look sooner than later. There's users that barely do anything, meanwhile there are certain users that actually do work and deserve it. Though I don't like saying this, I find that the current team is weak... no offense. There's little communication between us and it makes it harder to address problems that arise in the wikia. A weekly meeting on a chat or something would help a lot. I get that users have a life outside the Internet, but if you can't give the time and dedication needed, maybe you shouldn't be in the team at all.

Those are just things that I felt like I should really mention - even if the other users have already said it.

Guys please note that I'm just saying this because I want the best for DARP... I hold nothing against you guys at all. <3

-JayeMalik'

My biggest problem with the whole admin team is the lack of respect given to us vs the respect we give. I love all the users in the wiki, and I would never want to hurt one, or insult one, but I don’t understand how it’s okay to treat us like just people you need to keep an eye on. We’re people too, and we deserve the respect you get… I mean, some users have been here longer than some admins. Doesn’t that mean anything?
 * -|Lissy=

Another thing is the lack of communication. Like with Bond’s character, Jaina, and the expansion with her; Users were not notified. The B-crat team knew of it, but not those who would take part of it? That’s just another respect thing, as if we weren’t good enough to be let in. Also, where was Jaina’s consequence? After she froze Hogwarts (Hurting characters in the process, mind you.) She was allowed to live her life, and become /queen/ of Norway. I’m not even allowed to have a character as an animagus because she’s sixteen and the Animagus Teacher is inactive. B-crats are given special rights. They’re basically allowed to do as they please.

Really, what I want, is a pure respect between users and admins-- We are not bad, you know. We love this wiki as much as you guys. So please, instead of treating us like children, respect us, and treat us with the same respect you treat your other B-crats.

 Listen to your heart! Listen to the rain! Listen to the voices in your brain! ~ Lissy

A fully functioning team of bureaucrats must be able to effectively handle any problems thrown towards them at any given point. In light of recent events, I haven’t seen this from our current bureaucratic team. Am I incorrect in assuming that’s why they were voted into the position in the first place?
 * -|SoA=

As far as I see it, this issue isn’t something that’s recently become apparent. Contrary, it’s been something spanning over a few months now. My issue is that since Bond’s pseudo-demotion, he’s continued to reap the benefits of bureaucracy even after his stepping down. I’m referring to blatantly overpowering (OP) characters, such as Ash Prince and Jaina Nordskov.

While I’m not the first to have voiced these opinions, they’ve usually been shot down by current members of the bureaucrat team, due to the excuse that Jaina is ‘contained’ despite freezing the whole of Hogwarts, before claiming her throne as Queen of Norway. Similarly, with Ash - I was given the reasoning that due to the fact that his businesses and other merits come from his airtight backstory, it is acceptable.

I’d understand that if Bond was still a bureaucrat, these OP elements would easily be justified given his authority and position within the Wiki. However he isn’t. I don’t ask for overpowering characters - even Sabrina was a self-made character, IC & OOC - I never used her to create a mini-expansion for my own ulterior gain (see, The Freezing of Hogwarts School). You don’t see Red - one of the longer serving ex-bureaucrats being given these opportunities to claim such OP characters.

However, when Echo decides to kill one of her own characters, she was put into multiple layers of reprimanding consequences.

Which brings me to my original point. If one character’s death caused such a scandal both OOC and IC, it leaves me (as an ex-bureaucrat) to conclude two possible situations. Firstly, our current bureaucratic team can not handle their own roles fully. Or, conversely, our bureaucratic team is not substantial enough to cover the depth and scale of the roleplay occurring. We have two active bureaucrats, plus Bond (I’m not sure what to class him as, given the ambiguity of his position currently). This needs to be dealt with.

However, when I expressed an interest in helping Bond out with anything he needed; I was met with passive aggression and a condescending tone. I’m an adult. I served as a bureaucrat here, and on Hogwarts RPG. I act the fool, but when push comes to shove, I care about this wiki and I don’t make a joke out of it. None of the older people on this wiki would want to be spoken to in that manner. So why is it okay for them to speak this way to us?

Perhaps I’m digressing into a more personal issue for me, we’re not going to discuss it. My issue here is to please define, and clearly underline what is and isn’t OP, and who is and isn’t on the Bureaucratic and Administrative teams.

While I’m on the topic of Administration - we seriously need to make sure our admin team know how to use their rights - and what the can do as admins. By this, I mean training the admins on using the admin dashboard and admin tools like restoration of pages, looking at user rights, etc. I feel like when we expand our team (something else we’re long overdue on), we need to look at this issue under a magnifying glass.

 It's so,    ugly     <font face="Century Gothic"><font color=#86608E>I almost feel    <font face="Century Gothic"><font color=#86608E> sorry for it.    <font face="Century Gothic"><font color=#86608E> ~SoA    <font face="Monotype Corsiva"><font color=#86608E>

I want to start with a 'disclaimer': the current administration team have done a great job running the wiki and juggling their respective lives, and I have absolutely nothing against anyone mentioned in this post. It's just that we are severely low on admins, though I am aware that we will be reviewing the administration team sometime in the future, and also that there are quite a few privileges given to those in power which are not given to regular users. I am simply trying to help you make the wiki a better place.
 * -|Kibby=

There have been many instances where I have been forbidden to do certain things by bureaucrats, despite the fact that these things are, frankly, quite mundane compared to the storylines that they are permitted. For example, SoA, Catty, Omnia, Jaye, Hecate and I struggled to obtain permission to create some French aurors and a fugitive fleeing said aurors, despite the fact that high-ranking users are allowed entire expansions to themselves and a few of their friends.

Something that I know most everyone has touched on in their quotes is the OP characters allowed to users like Bond. For example, Jaina Nordskov is both the Queen of Norway and has powers over ice, similar to what I would expect of a full-blown ice-nymph (which are disallowed), whilst Lissy and I encountered extreme difficulty in simply having part-nymphs approved. And we were also limited in what they were allowed to do. In addition to this, she had an entire expansion to herself, freezing Hogwarts and injuring many characters in the process, from what I can gather, and suffered no consequences at all. Echo's character Teresa, however, when attempting to find a way to block the cruciatus curse (and not harming anyone but herself), suffered severe backlash. Echo herself also suffered multiple reprimands after a decision to kill her own character, which should surely be her choice.

Bureaucrats are always allowed to do as they please, as they have complete control over the goings-on on DARP. We as normal users are patronized and seen as immature children by the users in power, and our opinions dismissed as irrelevant, as shown through things such as the fact that we cannot vote on admin and bureaucrat promotions. This is why we feel the need to complain in chat, and why we often come across as rude, impatient or immature. We do this because this wiki (which is supposed to be a democracy) seems to be slowly but surely transforming into a hierarchy.

With the influx of new users, I think it's wise to revisit the policies and to remodel and expand the administrative team. We need to demote inactive users, and also demote users who are active but do not do their jobs. I feel that it would be wise to demote Jisk, because although he is a wonderful bureaucrat and has done a lot for the wiki, he is simply not active enough. There are countless other things I could suggest in this post, but I'm not here to give instructions.

I think that the others have covered most of what I would suggest - that we revisit the character and roleplaying policy, that we elect members of the administration team as a community, that we ensure that admins are not excessively OP, that we teach admins how to do their jobs. It wouldn't hurt to list departmental duties, either. We need to analyze how admins and we ourselves can make the wiki a better place, especially in the run up to a Wikia Spotlight. And we need to have a better system of communications. Perhaps we could bring User Relations back, in order to achieve this, or we could instate user levels to prevent OPness (and to put an end to character bans). Because yes, it is perfectly reasonable that an older, more mature member of DARP should have important characters... just not all of the important characters. Or any extremely OP characters, for that matter.

<font color="Purple" face="Candara" size="4">I'm a damsel. <font color="Purple" face="Candara" size="4">I'm in distress.  <font color="Purple" face="Candara" size="4">I can handle this.  [http://anastasiyassandbox.wikia.com/ <font color="Purple" face="Candara" size="4">Have a nice day. ]

Most of our wiki rules are made to regulate newbies, the assumption being that everyone else can be trusted, and left to their own devices. We have no rules that regulate admins, no way to impeach a bcrat. The assumption is that the admins regulate one another. But they also chose one another. It's like the system is asking to be corrupt.
 * -|Rabbit=

For a long time, we've had a largely unspoken touch-and-feel policy about character powers. Giving extra powers to a newbie is always a no-go, while older and more responsible characters are usually allowed them. I've been a recipient of this myself. At one time I had part-veela Neva, metamorphmagus Celesta, half-vampire Val, and they were at least half my chars.

We need clear, concise, and fair rules, that are equally applied to everyone. We need some system for regulating bureaucrats. And if admins elected by other admins? They are meant to take care of everyone, so why not have everyone elect them?

<font face="Arabic Typesetting" size="3">-<font color="#000000">R. <font color="#000000">A. <font color="#000000">B.

Before starting this off, I want to acknowledge how much you've all done for the wiki. I appreciate it greatly and I want to commend you on that. Speaking as a former crat, I know that the job can be stressful and hard, but in the end, you do everything you're doing to make the wiki be a better place. This is why I've decided to speak up - because this is how a lot of people feel, and I don't think it's a good thing that anyone is feeling this way.
 * -|Red=

1. I think that everyone should be allowed to vote for admins or bureaucrats. This has been one of my biggest frustrations. I liked it better when things were a community vote. It didn't even have to be the entire community, even if it was just the admin team down to the rollbacks, I was fine with it. (I still prefer it when it's the entire community, of course.) The thing is: I know that the admins want someone they can trust working with them, but I feel like if the community trusts them enough for them to be elected, then surely they can be trusted. When I was elected, I felt the responsibility because it was something a community I cared about entrusted me with, and that's why I felt like I needed to do it to the best of my ability. 'Sides, if someone who breaks the rules all the time is elected, it's easy to demote them. (Also with a vote, please.)

2. The OP characters. I don't know much about the Frozen expansion, but I know it started while I was still kinda active, but a couple weeks later I started slipping into inactivity. I remember that I saw the wiki one day and everything was blue. And you know what? I was confused. Really confused. I stalk RPs and all, but I didn't really know who Jaina was. My favorite expansion was Duxterra because everyone had an opportunity to participate – you could make Order characters or WHPS characters and I remember I had only been part of the wiki for around two months then but it made me feel like I could belong. The Quidditch expansion was fun too for the same purpose - anyone could make a player. But the Frozen expansion really only benefitted a few characters, and only they got to develop through it. That's what storylines are for, no need to make them full-out expansions.

3. Activity. I know you're afraid of promoting some users but this brings me back to my point number one. Trust the community. Trust the people we trust. I really don't see how an inactive admin would be any better.

4. Bond, I know you've been here since this wiki was born and you have been such a big help and I'm not saying that we stop recognizing that fact or that I think you haven't done anything. Because the thing is, you've done so much and that's why it's hard for me to say this, but I say this as a friend. The day someone suggested we turn the link to your user black I was bothered, except not very much. I knew that we were just paying tribute to one of our most dedicated users. Except, as SoA mentioned, you continuously reap the benefits of being a crat. You say you stepped down but to me, your name in black is pretty much the same thing as having your name in gold.

5. I restrain myself from making characters I feel like you will have a problem with. That bothers me because while I know that certain guidelines are in effect, I don't do it simply because I don't want to go through the long process of proving that you can trust me. I don't feel like I can be trusted, and I don't like feeling that way. I get that it's easier approving your own ideas because there's no one to get the 'yes' from, but even when I was bcrat, I was afraid of making characters that could push boundaries. And I don't want to sound condescending, I really don't, because I know that we're all different and maybe that's just me and to be honest, I probably didn't do too good a job of crat myself but I want you to trust us with our ideas. Not just me, but us. The community. Warn us if we're getting out of control, but I don't see the problem in testing it out for a bit.

6. I don't know if you guys know/remember, but a while back forums were brought up to Zan for when it came to decisions that would affect the entire wiki, and I think it's right. Forums are enabled for a reason. We should start using them. Like I remember, there was really a time when we really did, but that wasy way back when Raven was still here. I wasn't very active when it happened, but remember when Jack was demoted and everyone got to vote on it and everything? I liked that.

That's it, really.

You guys are great friends and people and I'm glad that DARP has given us the opportunity to know each other. I feel like everyone in DARP is one big family, which is why we're just really looking out for one another here. <3

<font face="Verdana" size="2" color="Firebrick" >LittleRed <font face="Verdana" size="2" color="DarkRed" >CrazyHood