My past apology regarding #PPC2

[Available] Miah Arthur to Neshomeh

show details Jun 18

It has taken me so long to work on this that I think it might be semi-resolved now. Last night when VM and through her, Dann, asked me about this, I copy pasted most of this e-mail for them to see, because I couldn't think of any better way to say things to them, so I do apologize for that.

So I've probably messed this up to the point that no one will be willing to see any potential good in it.  There is always the issue of trying to carry on multiple conversations in a single room when there are twenty plus people present, which is a good reason to start this, but if I try to say that that was the primary reason for opening the room, I'd be lying. The main reason was that there had been so very much fighting and arguing and endless repetitive debates and pointless arbitrary rule changing that the main room was at times absolutely intolerable. (The Second room was started before the Language Discussion on the main room.)

I like the people in chat. I consider them my friends. Even if I never wanted to write another PPC story, I'd still want to know how boot camp, or the first job, or relationship with the girlfriend, or a hundred other things went for the various regulars. I didn't want to leave the PPC, but I couldn't stand the endless drama anymore. All those things that I like to keep up with about people? I hadn't been able to ask any of them about for a long time. All normal conversation had become a bomb waiting to explode. Half of the chatters were afraid to say anything for fear of being kicked or shunned. To have anything like a conversation required using the PM system, which only lets you talk with one other person at a time.

I, and the people who were going to the second room were not trying to create factions.When you have a significant portion of your group too afraid to say anything, you already have factions, just factions that have been silenced. We weren't trying to create trouble. For most of us, for me specifically, this was an avoidance of confrontation.

I got fed up. Fed up with the drama. Fed up with the power tripping. Fed up with the over-sensitivity. The main reason we didn't advertise the room is that we were all afraid that if we did, it would become the same kind of poisonous environment. The secondary room was never intended to draw people away from the main room. The only time anyone in the secondary room has used it (aside from Forge, which is a separate story), and not been in the main room, is when there is too much going on in the main room--mostly due to drama, but occasionally, just too frenetic a pace due to so many people logged on at once. The room really is secondary. There is rarely any conversation in it other than when the main room is in the midst of drama or is too busy to allow an extended conversation. It has been good for those times when two, three, or four people wish to discuss in-depth a mission or fic, which would either disrupt the flow of the main room, or get so chopped up by the main conversation as to be unintelligible.

I am ashamed of having evinced a non-PPC attitude by not discussing it before starting it. It wasn't aimed at permanently excluding anyone, and I am sorry for hurting anyone's feelings.  I have been wishing for a way to bring it out in the open without hurt feelings ever since the Language Discussion took place, and I really wish I had been there the night it did come out into the open to aid in the explanation.

Please, in particular, don't be angry with Data. He seems to be catching much of the brunt of blame over this, and honestly, he was often the voice of reason around the second room. When some of the people in it wanted to make it a secret room, where it would not show up in the list of rooms that people were logged into, he argued against it. On the occasion that people would begin to single out a particular person (not always July, this really, truly was not a 'We hate July' thing) he would be the first to remind people that that was not how people should behave.

I believe this room is needed. It is useful considering what a large group the IRC has become, and I'd really like for it to stay smaller and drastically secondary to the main room--otherwise it would suffer from the same overcrowding that the main room occasionally suffers from. I just ask that you not let my bumbling handling of it force the destruction of it.