My reasons for leaving are my own. However, it's common knowledge that the reason why I left concern personal views on the moderation staff, and the fact it was placing too much stress in my life how I was constantly bumping heads with them over the simplest issues.
I don't have any followers. I am not leading some cult that has thus taken form of my own site. I merely voice my own opinions in ways that some will agree with, and some won't. The ones that agree with it are capable of their own opinion, and they are not in any way, shape, or form following my whims like senseless puppies. It hurts me that you would think of me as capable of using people when I tried my hardest to not manipulate people, though sometimes I feel like this site manipulates far too many people, and it annoys me that you would dismiss what we are saying as a moment of insanity. These are thoughts and opinions that have been brewing in our minds, or at least mine, for awhile. What I said struck a cord in each of them.
Yes, they are my friends. Yet I did not in any way, shape, or form cajole them into signing some pact of leaving on the same day. Arska did so because, well, she's my Arska, my psychotic raven, and because she was the one I always went to because I was depressed about the way I felt targeted on this site. Also, she in turn came to me when she felt treated unfairly. As for Brax, that was his decision, and Magma has always seen a problem with this site's administration. Skoc herself has explained her reasons for leaving
Princess Sierra, I'm sorry to call you out, my love, but I noticed in the past that you especially had a tendency to talk sh*t about people after they left and were thus unable to defend themselves. At least, I noticed that when Naru and Nemo left the site. Also, please do not insult my sister by calling her "dearest" when you follow it with insinuating that she is completely and totally wrong. She may have let it slipped, but I don't think such implications are truly necessary.
Honestly, I was not angry when I deleted my account. I felt betrayed in a sense, a feeling I got often on this site, and hurt and sad. I did not do it because I was angry. I have been angry with the moderation staff on this site plenty of times before. Perhaps I found it alarming that past "transgressions" were not really being forgiven, and I constantly had the weight of this on my shoulders every time I logged on.
Two incidents that continue to be shoved into my face were the incidents involving kyleagius and Sasa. Firstly, though on the outside it seemed unnaturally cruel what I had said to Sasa, it was something I felt, and feel still, that needed to be said. She returned the next day, did she not? And we have gotten along fine. Any personal friendship between us is our own concern, but I can guarantee you she did not hold anything against me. In fact, she joined my site shortly thereafter and continues to go on that site. Does that seem like she is a person I have permanently scarred with my opinionated personality and sheer idiocy? Secondly, what set kyleagius off is nothing of my real concern or my fault. He obviously had something against me, but apparently not everyone can like me, and it does not mean that I am an evil person because he decided to cuss me out and call me out in a conversation where he was not even mentioned in the least. We were discussing what we perceive as errors in the children of society, and perhaps he thought I was saying it as a direct attack instead of seeing it as totally irrelevant to him and definitely not a personal attack that would lead to the way he treated me. I was being mistreated, yet the administration staff has always thought I was the cause of it. Perhaps it is because I remained on this site whereas Kyle left. Until that moment when he went crazy on me, I considered the two of us tentative friends and I never directed any attacks on him in the least.
As for the ESR incident, I did my best to help people with it. I talked to those I saw were hurt by her, but I could not morally allow the slander that was aimed against her. I stood up for her because no one else had, everyone too busy talking about how evil she was for doing such a horrid act, how she betrayed us all and really getting melodramatic. I got multiple PMs from users saying they felt the same way.
As for my "repeated veiled insults toward the common sense of the moderators," whenever I wrote anything negative about the moderators in a post where I was not being too serious in the rest of the post, it was said playfully, and it was not malicious or meant to bring harm. But how dare I try to say anything evil about the gods of SF3?! It always frustrated me that even the slightest joke about the moderation staff would entail such a response from them, when the "commoners" took it for the humor as it was meant.
I am not trying to excuse my actions. Perhaps I am trying to justify them, but that is because the moderation staff has continued to hold these things against me, and the way they do so is what forms my opinion on the wrongness of how they "reign."
That is precisely it. It is the way little things erupt into such chaotic drama and the moderators tend to only make it worse. The incident with Kyle was not my fault, though it is continually viewed as so with Swen, and the moderation staff holds what happened with Sasa against me even though she's not as hurt as they seem convinced. Then there was the Tribe of Lirial incident. Because it had my name on it, and because my attempts to making it seem like it was something that there could only be one of, and that one thing was mine made it seem like I was being juvenile and childish erupted like mad. I could continue to list the incidents. Yet when I reflect on them, I see they are not as major as they appeared after moderators invariably fed the flames. These incidents, amongst others, were pinpointed on me and I do not feel I have been fully forgiven for this, shown by the sensitivity moderators have had against me. Then there are incidents I have seen involving other users that I do not agree with. No, I'm not referring to the ESR drama. People need to get over that. Instead, it was the way moderators refused to listen to users until the point the users felt the need to leave the site.
It is pathetic and childish that you would attempt to belittle our reasons and dismiss them so easily, and that juvenile attitude, as well as the way that this site tends to make more out of situations than anything I've known since high school days, perhaps even more than those days, it why I leave. Consider it the fact that though I love you guys, I see as much a problem in many of the users as the moderators, though I am not exaggerating when I say I love you guys. Perhaps it's arrogant of me in a sense, but I've always thought of this site as filled with my younger siblings.
I do not, in essence, have anything against the moderators as people. That is not why I felt the need to leave, as many people have gotten the idea, if I consider the messages and the hateful posts people have written about my leaving.
Swen, you and I were friends before you became administrator, or even moderator, if I recall back to the early days. We had a lot of intense discussions, and I told you pieces of my past that I do not hand out often, mainly because I do not want people to think that I mean to complain or to gain sympathy.
FL, I've always loved reading what you write. You are so brilliant, and your genius posts always intimidated me and made me feel like the idiot that I am. You are also a very kind person.
Alzyran, I love your adorable tree-hugger self. True, I am still traumatized by that PM you sent me berating me for my arrogance with my whole Tribe of Lirial idea gone wrong, but I had so much fun attempting to flirt with you to see if I could get a creeped out reaction from you! (though I bet it just made you sigh like I am a mental case instead of blushing.)
Anda, I've always loved how you always appeared in conversations that pertained to mushrooms in the like. It was always so much fun reading your matter-of-fact approach to it. Also, all my comments on your photos on Facebook are because you're just so friggin' gorgeous.
Tori, I apologize for the claims I made against you. I was angry, and I felt you were attacking me, and I felt the attacks were too far and blowing things way out of proportion. I just often think the way moderators handle situations is unfair and isn't handled correctly, and I think some of the reprimands are made a little too personal and yet too professional at the same time. You make it like a personal attack but think because you use fancy formats that it comes off as intimidating. No, it's just insulting. And I don't really like to be insulted over ridiculous, petty issues. Yet I sometimes see a lot of stress in you as a moderator, and I still remember the PM you sent me when the whole "Tribe of Lirial" drama, about how you thought it was unfair that it was being blamed solely on me. That PM made me cry like a baby. Then other things, listening to my retarded book ideas and pretending to have interest in them. But I just have not been able to respect how you conduct yourself as a moderator.
That is my opinion of the individuals of the moderation staff. That is why I have not left before. Yet I disagree with many aspects of how this site is run, and I am tired of how these people seem to go around and pick at my posts to find aspects of it they don't approve of, almost like they do that to specifically me and are holding against me things I've done in the past.
~Grace
Also, if you have a problem with what has occurred with the "Grace Tribe Exodus," please be more mature about it instead of simply attempting to slander us and insinuate that we are unreasonable, ignorant, or completely insane. Don't write how you perceive things to be in a way that makes me look evil, because I'm not, and particularly when it is a situation when the only way I can defend myself is through someone else's account. I left for my own reasons, and simply because they are not your reasons, or have not effected you the way they have done so me, does not call for saying harsh things about me when I no longer have an account to defend myself. Instead, take it to me. My email address is
QTKTdid@aol.com. Perhaps if you contact me instead of talking crap about me, like many of you have done so of quite a few people that left on less than peaceful terms, it would help quiet this situation and make it easier on the moderators. Though I do not always appreciate their methods, I do in fact consider them my tentative friends.
My own addition to this is to address the way I mentioned the Christianity of the moderators and other users on this site. The mention of it has nothing to do with not liking the way they "moderate," but I see this pretentious attitude in most people of this site of good, chaste kids who because they still have their V cards are something special and above everyone else.
