Regarding Our Community

[SmashTheEchidna]

Who even started the Skype fad?

I could be wrong, but I believe it was Ashley.

[King Dumb]

They don't have any factual and legitimately given power over this place at all, and any other representation of power they may portray is but a product of the rest of you thinking they DO have power over the community's social aspect: they have authority, but not power.

You've got this totally backwards. Authority is the right to exercise power; rights must be conferred by will. Moderators and admins have authority on the forums. No one has authority in Skype. These people have power.

Should this group of people have social authority over the development and growth of our community?
Authority, unlike power, is willingly given. Social authority like this was given to them by the community, and can be easily taken from them. If their authority is handicapping the growth of our community, they cannot keep this authority, as only they would be shaping the community to their liking. No need for banning or casting them out: just stop thinking they have any authority over the community.

You are correct; authority is conferred willingly by writ or popular will. Changing how we view this group does not fix the problem, it ignores it, and we who conform based upon petty conclusions become as destructive as those we had sought to fight. Authority does nothing to hurt this community.

You say many times, actually, that if we stop thinking these people have authority (by which you meant to refer to what is actually power), the 'problem' will go away. Since this is basically an antithesis to my entire point, I refer you to my original post and to the testimonies presented in this thread as proof that the problem (meaning, this specific distribution of power and the abuse of power) does in fact exist.

If you honesty didn't doubt Ivory's ability, why the heck would you even call it into question? Not only that, but while bringing it into question, you drag in the people Ivory associates in a negative light. Don't give me that "I merely wanted the community's opinion" spiel because it's a lie: the way you phrase a question influences the answers in a huge way, and you purposely phrased your question to get negative answers.

How could you think that telling me not to use a specific argument would invalidate it?

Actually, if I had wanted to influence answers, I would have done one of the two things I just did: use visual cues, or instill a tone of disbelief in the question itself.

Why would I call it into question if I didn't doubt it to begin with? Well, suppose, rather than in question format, I merely stated the information contained in that sentence. How would an average Cutstuff user, who, being an average Cutstuff user, has never been in the mentioned chat, react?

Once again, I merely wish to bring this situation to the community's attention as a standalone issue. Explain to me why I would have phrased my question to encourage negative answers, if I my myself have no doubt in Ivory's ability. If you can't, then one of those two premises must be wrong. Which one is that?

If you move into a new school, you can't expect to just have friends fall into your lap. Sure, you can talk to people in class from time to time, but if you want to actually make friends, you're going to have to make the conscious effort to get to know people, and having an instant, slightly more personal form of communication to do so makes sense. It's also naturally harder for a new person to adjust.

In your analogy you have highlighted a central issue presented by many in this thread. The "new school" is not Cutstuff; the new school is MM8BDM. The "conscious effort" is meant to be forum involvement. The way Skype has been used for the past year has destroyed this relationship: now, MM8BDM is almost irrelevant to the dominating social group.

With Skype, many of us have made friends, but all good things have their problems, and the problems addressed here are just some of them. To me, though, the good still outweighs the bad.

The good and the bad aren't on the same scale. The bad side of the scale of forming friendships would be destroying friendships (which can be argued as well, but that isn't my focus right now); the good side of negative influence on the development of the community is positive influence on the development of the community, which does not mean forming friendships between an exclusive close-knit group of people. Which leads me nicely to my next point.

Just thought I'd bring up some points that have probably already been brought up.

The "Cool Kids Club" is not the Cutstuff chat. Nowhere is it stated to be that. It's just where a bunch of guys/friends/smashbro hang out.

Then why does it have a negative influence on the community? Why does it have such an influence at all? I don't mean to destroy friendships that have been forged through Skype, but I do mean to remove from Cutstuff the influence of groups disconnected from Cutstuff.

Now, in terms of this whole democratic-versus-dictatorial system of authority and the distribution of authority:

Cutstuff is not a democracy. The people to whom I address my original post have no legitimate authority to enact change. However, Cutstuff is also not a nation; it is an online community. It is detestable and unintuitive that the way this community is run is not in the best interests of the majority.

Cutstuff isn't a democracy, it's a dictatorship. Not an evil type of dictatorship, but ultimately, what Mike says goes. We choose to listen to what you, the people think and suggest, but we don't have to.

Only through assumption of hidden meaning, assumption of intent, or blatant misconstruing of my words have people arrived at the conclusion that I oppose the current system of authority within the forums. I think a lot of you are trying to outsmart the truth, which really never works out all too well.

[Mr. X]

If you honesty didn't doubt Ivory's ability, why the heck would you even call it into question? Not only that, but while bringing it into question, you drag in the people Ivory associates in a negative light. Don't give me that "I merely wanted the community's opinion" spiel because it's a lie: the way you phrase a question influences the answers in a huge way, and you purposely phrased your question to get negative answers.

How could you think that telling me not to use a specific argument would invalidate it?

Actually, if I had wanted to influence answers, I would have done one of the two things I just did: use visual cues, or instill a tone of disbelief in the question itself.

Why would I call it into question if I didn't doubt it to begin with? Well, suppose, rather than in question format, I merely stated the information contained in that sentence. How would an average Cutstuff user, who, being an average Cutstuff user, has never been in the mentioned chat, react?

Once again, I merely wish to bring this situation to the community's attention as a standalone issue. Explain to me why I would have phrased my question to encourage negative answers, if I my myself have no doubt in Ivory's ability. If you can't, then one of those two premises must be wrong. Which one is that?

You instilled a tone of disbelief in the question by mentioning that Ivory is in a group with people you had previously declared to be part of the problem, and bringing Ivory into the discussion in the first place.  You have given no real solid reason for making this declaration as it is your opinion.  I'm reading your original post right now.

power is in the hands of a select few individuals – LlamaHombre’s “us” – who govern mainstream community Skype usage. This "us" includes a variety of people, but the culprits of the decadence that rule a central part of the Cutstuff organism are named now: LlamaHombre, Korby, Kenkoru, Red, ThatGuyOverThere, Nostalgia, Dr. Freeman. In a positive feedback loop, these individuals feed off the decadence of each other; many of you may find one or two of them very friendly and likable on their own, but together they create a virus that plagues our community.

The only evidence you give for ANY of these accusations yourself is a chat in which Ken, Red, and nostalgia talk about Obelisk later behind his back:  an act which really isn't indicative of their influence over an entire community, but rather that they're just talking about him behind his back.

And yet you feel the need to raise the question about the administration of the entire site because Ivory is in a chat with some of these people.  It's not presenting unbiased information to the people of cutstuff - it's presenting YOUR version of the information to the people of cutstuff, a version which implies an admin is under the influence of people you are declaring to be the problem.  You only backtrack and say "I didn't really mean I was questioning it" when Ivory actually showed up.  All I've seen in this topic from you is backtracking over your flawed points over and over to the point that I don't even know what your point even is.

[Tengu]

it's presenting YOUR version of the information to the people of cutstuff, a version which implies an admin is under the influence of people you are declaring to be the problem.

Well, to be fair, he isn't the only one that can confirm his statements if I recall correctly.

[Davregis]

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3818&start=110

Except Civil War

[Ivory]

That wasn't a civil war, that was Watermelon and his friends coming onto our forums to act high and all mighty about their crappy version of GvH.

[Davregis]

And this is that, except civil war.

Ironic that the very things going on in this topic are the reasons for the creation of this topic.

[Orange juice :l]

@MrX
I don't think KD was ever really doubting Ivory's ability. He's simply stating the facts that these chats have become so omnipresent that the Admins and Moderators take part in them. The Obelisk thing was just an example- although they're not bullying members out of the community constantly, they do have some negative effect on members already present.

[MusashiAA]

lolcivilwar

Who here is defending the la li lu le lo? I've seen none but themselves doing that.

KD's pretty much questioning Llama's promotion and the la li lu le lo's existence and social authority, as well as their influence over the current moderation. It's exactly what HD said back when Llama and Sora were named mods.

Both things should be dealt with. Ivory already cleared up why he chose Llama to be a mod (and Llama himself has stated he wants to change), now we're discussing the existence of the la li lu le lo and their influences on both the community and the current playerbase.

Civil war is everyone against everyone, taking sides with certain mods. This is something along the lines of a protest against a group of people that have apparently been a social detritment to the community, and one mod who is known to side with them.

[Dr. Freeman]

The best part about the Watermelon topic is that it's the only time I've actually seen the entire community put aside their differences and work together.

Even if they were all working to yell at crappy mods.

[Tengu]

I don't want to point fingers and yell and whine, but I think it might be better to have more actual specific examples as to why Skype and Cutstuff should stay separate.

My first example being about long ago, Wat IV chat. I mean really, if you say one thing that the mod doesn't agree with, you're out. I remember back when Roc kicked probably a good 19 or so people from it. Then a few were let back in and momentarily kicked out by TG. If I recall correctly, it was for no specific or clarified reason and all it did was create even more enemies.

My next example is from quite recently in the Team Fortress 2 chat. YD Removed some people for some rather absurd reasons, such as not liking the way someones voice sounded. I mean, I dunno about you, but if someone treated me poorly because they didn't like how my voice sounded, I don't think I would have a very high opinion of that person or their friends for that matter.


Speaking of friends, that's how this whole thing works. It's one person saying "Oh, I don't like you, I think I'm going to treat you with utmost disrespect" then all of their friends pretty much hopping in the band wagon and treating said people the same way.


In short, Skype just needs to stop directly having an impact on the community.

[MusashiAA]

In short, Skype just needs to stop directly having an impact on the community.

Nah, just point fingers at the mean people and ask them to be more polite.

Or ban Skype.

[Mr. X]

Yes, the end problem isn't going to go away because of Skype.  The end problem lies in the people themselves.  They'd find a way to talk privately no matter what and still do this.

[Ivory]

Just to throw this out there, the Cutstuff Administration does not acknowledge that Skype is an official part of the Cutstuff community.

We can't control if people in this community want to use it, or another client for that matter. We can't stop how people use it. No matter how much you want to wag your finger on the matter. How the heck would we even ban people from using Skype? That would be like me telling everyone that they can't eat yogurt. And It's not as if we can ban people from the forums because they use a specific messaging/voice call client.

This entire notion on stopping Skype is fundamentally flawed.

[MusashiAA]

Which is why I've already said numerous times that the community should just not take these people seriously. If the Cutstuff moderators can't punish them or at least warn them for their behavior, nothing can be done save for telling people to not pay attention to them, much less empower them.