All right, enough people have posted that I, too, am compelled to say my piece. I'm Stygian Blue. I've been a part of this community for at least a few days and I love it to pieces.
I'm going to take a moment in this space to talk about how I feel and have been feeling with the recent earthquakes this community has experienced. I need to get it off my chest, want to be able to look back on it when I want to remember, and I want to be able to talk about how this has affected me emotionally. Here is that, in brief and in quick-terse dialogue made easy to parse.
…
Once, political discussion could be held and would be managed by community members and, rarely, moderators. Society discussion did not exist back then. However, these discussions increased beyond any channel's ability to remain the channel it still claimed to be, and the discussion pushed out other talk and was disagreeable to users who did not want to taste politics in their daily wanderings.
Society discussion did not fix things. It was proper at first, but as the individual I know of as Sludge or Toymaker or CadaverCommander said, it meant blasting people with a firehose or shooing them into the society discussion channel whenever a conversation became disagreeable to delicate tastebuds.
Society discussion was eventually deleted, and its dialogue spilled out into every other channel, and it was far worse than it had ever been before society discussion's creation, in my opinion. Only in these last few weeks have conversations slowly been turning back to normal, but even then— no. This is dreary and dull.
Let's try again.
…
I had a hard time falling asleep the night meltedbee left the WL. I didn't know what was happening; all I knew was that my friend was gone. I laid myself down in bed and closed my eyes and nothing happened because my thoughts were too loud and my mind too clear for sleep. I got back up.
Over the next several hours, it became apparent that meltedbee was not the only friend who had disappeared — a great number of our most cherished people and authors had vanished all at once, together. I did a quick check of how many people from a list of usernames I pulled off the top of my brain remained, and it was about a third. A third of my friends gone in one night.
I was frantic. I read disgruntled muttering and dissatisfaction from the commons but still did not know what had happened; it seemed most people didn't know anything.
I read the upscroll. I saw anger, so much anger. I decided that it was not safe to contact those who had left, and certainly not safe to ask them what had happened.
I'll be honest. I received a DM for a server set up for people who had left the WL — that was not its original use, as evidenced by the oldest message history, but it certainly felt like the current. I worried that this was some sort of tyranny that, by joining the server, I was unwittingly being enticed to participate in. Some sort of effort to overthrow or usurp the WL from the inside. I saw messages declaring hate for the WL, loathing for the community and watched members fantasize about leaving the WL, and watched members cheer about earning the ex-wanderer role in that server.
I was torn. I felt like I was being forced to choose between two communities I loved and cherished, and forced to decide which friends I wanted to keep and which friends I wanted to burn and turn from. Nobody had told me to do this, but this is how it felt and how I perceived my situation. I was one of the few current Wanderers invited to the server. Murmurs of transmisogyny rippled in the ex-WL server, and, I will repeat: I knew nothing. I didn't know what meltedbee said above in this thread. I hadn't joined a voice chat for some time by this point, as I was always busy with work; I had only known what I could read in the chat threads, and so when messages went around in the WL and ex-WL servers alike over the next few days saying the WL is transphobic, the WL hates trans women, the WL isn't safe for minorities, I genuinely could not trust my mind. I've had problems with confirming reality in the past, and this felt like one of those times — I went through every detail I could remember, every exchange, every probably-confirmed time when an outside observer could help make sure that I was seeing correctly.
I went quiet for a few days, hoping information would come to light about why. But information did not come.
Conversations in the WL, when I booted up Discord once in a while to see if anything had changed, were lost, fragmented, broken by the loss of so many prolific and talkative individuals.
I reached out to a dear friend in the WL. I stated my fears and worries. I talked about how I didn't know what was happening. I was given reassurance, was able to give reassurance to this person whose own fears and self-doubts had been plaguing them more than ever since the incident.
A message went by in the ex-WL server: "We're reaching Fall of WL territory" It terrified me, and I believed it. What would I do if the WL fell? I only have so many works backed up on my computer, those of myself and others. Where would we go? What would we do? We are united by a love of writing and a love for this community and the people in it, and it was crumbling. Would we make a new wikidot? Would we use Wix? In the end, it would take too much effort. We would go our own separate ways. Writings would go to other sites, be adjusted to meet those sites' standards, be posted or published as fragments of a much larger literary whole. So much would be lost. So many would not put in the effort to continue and their talents would rot. So much potential gone. So many stories, emotions, experiences unfelt, unshared.
And then I remembered that Rumetzen and Rounderhouse and Snapdragon and Uncanny and Mann and Din-Bidor and so many more would not let that happen. I would not let that happen. Even if the WL were to limp on with one work, no works, a dry spell for years, I would be there, as would others. There are people who believe in this project and this community.
That is what I was thinking when that message crossed my path in the ex-WL server.
Time has passed since then. It's been a quietening of fires, a darkening of coals, a dissipatience of smoke. It's been a lot of firehoses, as CadaverCommander said and feared. It's not been pleasant, and I've not always been my best as we recover from this grievous wound.
I've since acquired information, though still not as much as I'd like. A lot of information contradicts other, separately-acquired information, and I find myself labelling information as coming from one side or the other — I find myself putting sides to this and I do not like it. I find that my combination of disorders and personality traits makes it so I believe that I need to choose which side I am on. I did, a while ago. I hate that I was made to choose, even if the one making me choose was myself.
I miss my friends. It's not the same without you.
Now for the professional side of things.
I'll admit I'm doing less crit these days than I was at first, but I would also argue I was doing a lot of crit back when. It doesn't feel very spread out, some few people doing it consistently. I think UncannyClown's idea of incentives has good merit, not only because people would crit more but I think you'd find more crit actually being requested on the site. As it stands right now, the vast majority of the crit I've done in the past year or more has been in DMs, people asking specific people to look at their work in a sort of secretive way. I don't think there's anything wrong with asking a specific person, but it certainly doesn't help the activity-image of the forums when it never leaves DMs. (People also probably wanna keep their work a secret until it's released sometimes, which is fine, let them have their DMs, but generally speaking…) I'd say the same about crit in the Discord channel, forum posts need to happen more than people just linking their sandbox.
AKAM says the things I had not put quite to words because what had been happening was so long-standing that the words died, decayed, had their bones ground up for use elsewhere. I, too, used to do a lot more crit. And then that crit became largely through DMs. And now it's even slower than before. The DM crit system is atrocious especially because one cannot know, as a new or old user, who is available, what their timelines are, or who even does crit these days. I happen to know and have reliable people, but they tend to be the same voices every time. This is not healthy for my writing and I fear my works suffer from a lack of people saying, "This part sucks" — we're too good of friends, and the Work needs fresh eyes and air to breathe.
A global slowmode sounds fascinating and exciting. Even just ten to fifteen seconds.
A reduction in channels is something I've been yelling about for a while now. I think consolidating more channels and making more of the new conjoined channels about onsite or offsite writing would be spectacular.
People are doing to do internet memes. Funny internet posts and memes will happen and will be shared. I want to add an incentive, perhaps, to have users make memes, comedy, quick sketch art, literally anything relating to other people's work. I think having art and humour of works current and old would be fantastic for the community and would work well to spark discussion, readership, and engagement with the work in question, in addition to making the writer of that work feel terribly proud and glad to be part of this community. It would promote positive engagement with each other, is an approachable way for new people to engage with on-site content, and would do that thing we're all talking about here of tightening the silk binding the Server to the Site. silksong reference
I want more community engagement with the on-site works. The Stacks channel is among our least-used, often just there for throwing a quick, "hey, new work" for people who have the new activity feed muted.
Weekly art showcases. Maybe every sunday. Not "this one's the best," but "this one caught my eye and here's why. Every week chosen by last week's showcase's author. It would require a lot of planning and maintenance to keep it running smoothly. Which brings me to…
Rule moderation is well suited to reasonable adult people with proper lives and great wisdom, but great wisdom rarely compels one to stay up all night brainstorming wanderers library community events and other such things I know some non-staff members here do. this is to say that I think another role should be created. Community management in the sense of doing outreach, event planning, contest management and onwards and on, would be well-served by creating a new cadre with no user or rule moderation powers (or at least, without such authorities), but with permissions to administrate community events. I think this idea must make sense even if I explain it poorly, because I can not imagine it is new. so many people would like to help our community in low-stakes ways, and this seems like an easy way to facilitate it.
…Sloth, who said the above. I find this to be a most excellent idea. This would have the issue during the (I expect) months of changeover as the event staff (exact job title pending) get to know their role and do it reliably as current moderators and admins are the ones doing the majority of the work, knowing how things work and probably without a giant word doc saying how stuff goes and where modules are and what schedule is usually used for events and so on. If it doesn't exist, that needs to get made. Have all of the information in one place to get ready for this. This is all based on assumptions of incompetence and feels bad to say and makes me feel icky imagining how it would feel to read this as a staff member. I apologize and am too tired and achey to rewrite it.
I'm tired. I love you all, and I miss those of you who are gone. I grieved your absence like a death, even though you were only a click away. I lost hope a while ago that you would come back. I do not think it would go well for you or for us. I would think there would be bitterness and mild loathing and too many differing expectations about what should happen if this-or-that.
But even without hope, I can still beg. I feel like an idiot child hung up on something everyone else has gotten past already, and it reminds me of being told that I am a failure, that I am developmentally delayed, that I will never succeed, that my peers are always better than me. I periodically feel like a child in a room full of grown-ups, when my thoughts take this turn. I have coped my whole life by hating myself, acting anyway, loathing every fibre of my being, and contemplating methods of dying, though I am too proud to commit. So I shall do what I do best: hate myself while doing what my heart cries for me to do. And today, that thing is to beg, even though it will do nothing, and to hate myself further because it sounds like a cry for help. But that is what happened in this division of friends, you see. This is what such a dramatic wound that went so smoothly in just a few days that it felt planned to leave all at once — and that really hurt, you know that? I felt left out. I thought we were friends, and you didn't tell me that anything was wrong. Was I one of your bullies, and didn't know it? I am perpetually afraid as a transgender man of committing injustice and violence against women. I want to ask why you didn't say that anything was wrong, but asking that would make me feel like I should have noticed, and that I am blaming the victim. I feel that that would just add more fuel to your fire. I was supposed to be your friend and you never told me how much pain you were in. Where did the trust go? I didn't realize I had hurt you so badly. Was I never trusted to begin with? Did I never realize the point when the trust stopped? Or is this just a guilt-trip, where I am causing you unnecessary harm once again? I don't know what to do with myself. These are all the words left unspoken on my end. I know some of the things to expect. Silence is the most agreeable, but anything more would mean pain. And I know that check-ins from loved friends would make me feel horrible and encourage me to deny and cover up all these feelings I've been repressing about this. My dreams are more often nightmares, have been that way my entire life. Last night I dreamt of drowning in oil off a broken steam-cruiser. My lungs still feel sticky. I'm tired and I miss you. All of you. And so I decide at last to end this tirade, doing with this what nobody else has been childish enough like me to misuse this healing forum for. I misuse this forum as I commit the sin of writing my feelings, and I am so sorry, and because I hate myself I fully expect this to get deleted and to receive a DM reprimanding me for my action, and I in expecting this will take a screenshot once it's posted because I want to remember my sorrow because I have the unfortunate problem of being unable to remember how it feels when I get this way.
I end this conversation with myself with a beg and an apology in one:
Come back.
I miss you.
I've been enjoying "The Beech Tree" — the last portion of the four-piece string quartet piece "Plan & Elevation" written by Caroline Shaw.
