<Yuri>

Well, shroom, I'm responding to your PM here, because seriously, I too, am being affected by all of this, and I don't want the LL site to be involved further
even if it's just PMs
1st point: The competency to solve problems, and your attitude towards the staff regarding this subject
Keep in mind that I'd like to have an honest and serious conversation now. I am probably going to sound rude sometimes, so, I apologize beforehand.
Me and Ven are working towards that. We are trying to organize the clusterfuck that the staff tasks are right now. Everything has been put aside for quite a while.
I'll tell you something. The staff has been focused on you. You Shroom, may be right in some instances regarding the behaviour of the staff. I agree with most of your points.
But there are 3 crucial errors you have done.
First, is being aggressive with your arguments. Addressing or "attacking" especific people with your points will make people want to hear you less and less.
Second, promoting yourself to be staff. I acknowledge your intentions, but pushing yourself will make people not take you seriously.
Third, is that these things require time, and patience. If you just push everything at people's face at once, people will only be overloaded by what you say, and will again, miss the point of your arguments. It's why some polemics, in the whole world, are still not fully settled down.
What is happening to the staff now is that they are just worried, in fact, too worried about the situation regarding you and the site.
And thus, the focus on other problems has drifted away
Me and Ven decided in the staff that we will be addressing these problems as soon as possible now. I am going to set a standard for our staff debates, so there is no aggressiveness, and if you disagree, really, just say no and argue why. No need to fight back against other's argument
that's how a true, rational debate works.
2nd point: Darthbrowser's theory
Your point about darthbrowser, that we leave a bad impression for the lurkers, well, it is for the most time, right
but I've mentioned this in the staff, and going to say this to you now. It's in the very core of the community
"Memeing" and really, just being closed overall, is the way runouw.com built itself.
Ven told me about the smiley spam sittuation, but that's something that by reading the rules, should be clear that is not allowed in the forums, and I think we've settled this.
I hope memes is not really what you meant though. Because memes are what, today, reflect the meaning and identity of the community.
In fact, if you take the meaning of the word "meme", it says the following:
"Any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another in a comparable way to the transmission of genes."
Memes are the gene of a certain community of people. It's what defines the identity of a culture.
And FoA, inside jokes, as well as Level desiging are what form the "meme" of runouw.com
To stop these would be to take away the community's very identity
So yeah, back to darthbrowser
his theory is right, but only to a certain extent.
I've said that to you numerous times, but there are a lot of factors for innactivity.
This is one of the smallest of them
First and biggest factor would be time. It's passing by, and as it does so, people's interest in the forum drifted away. Better wording would be, people have grown. But not only people. The internet has. There are still youngsters out there who could play SM63, but there are just different, similar and better games out there. The internet is a huge place, and the competition is just too much for a flash game from 2008 nowadays.
There's SMBX, there's Super Mario Flash, and the list goes on and on
But heck, even those have gotten stale, and the interest on them is going down too.
Second factor would be the availability of SM63. Few are the ways to play the full version of the game with the level designer. Really, the only way right now is newgrounds. But even newgrounds' community is slowing down. With less and less visibility, people are just more unlikely to play the game.
Third factor is the fact runouw (Rob and steven) has moved on from SM63, and are instead, focusing in LL, in a whole different place
With no updates to come to SM63 anymore, and LL being separate, most of the already existing community is gone, or has moved to LL's site
And then, there is the community factor; the one mentioned by Darthbrowser. The fact we are a very closed community is also somewhat important
So only by that, it's 4 factors, completely different one from the other, and really, the only one darth's theory covers is the fourth: the one that affects the least the activity, if anything.
I'd say that 1st and 2nd are the ones that are making us get less and less members, while the other two affect the already existing community
if we were to separate these by percentage of just how much they affect the community, it'd go something like, 1st factor 50%, 2nd factor 20%, 3rd factor 20% and 4th 10%.
While it is important, it's not the most important. And to deny that runouw is dying is foolishness.
It's not affirming "runouw is dying, so whatever, fuck it"
but rather, accept our fate and really, moving on. It doesn't mean stopping tasks as staff, as you said in the PM, because it's dying. I don't recall anybody with this attitude.
The effort to keep runouw alive as long as we can is not staff only, but something the whole community is involved into.
So, shroom, there was actually a lot more I wanted to say, but I forgot. Guess I'm kinda of sleepy right now. But keep something in mind: You are banned right now. Trying to contact anybody about these issues in this time period, while not against rules or anything, is at the very least, unnetical, because your ban was a decison most of the staff agreed on, and may you want it or not, that's how democracy works.
So, I'm going to say something to you right now, though as a friend, rather than as a staff member. Please, listen to my appeal, because me, as your friend, am really really bothered by this whole sittuation as well.
Let's avoid this subject. let's avoid staff talk for now. I'm not comfortable talking about it with you anymore, because it's bothering me. It's getting in my nerves. It's not being good for my mental stability at all, and believe me, it will probably end up not being for you one time. There are times that even the greatest of the warriors gets weary of battle, and the greatest of the philosophers get weary of argumenting. Believe me.
Me, Ven, and hopefully others will give our very best to address the issues that are in fact, damaging the site. And if the others don't do, I'll be sure to pull their ears. But for now shroom, avoid this subject with me.
I am saying this because I'm confident you are going to take my advice to heart, as a friend. And as a friend of mine, I must tell you when you have reached your own limitations, or when it has missed the point. As friends, we must tell each other the truth, no matter how hard it is. And unfortunately, the truth is that right now, the better solution is to let things flow. I will do my best to keep the site the way it should be.
Feel free to respond, but after this conversation is over, I'm done with talking about staff problems with you.

<Shroom>
meh, should have written that concrete list of "what makes a good staff" a few months earlier
but this is also something which a good staff should be able to handle: how to deal with someone who has starting difficulties
who is overly ambitionated, but needs time to figure out how the community works
and this basically means to not bully; this generally pertains the community as a whole, but the staff is supposed to be the instance that should guarantee things like justice and equality
You remember the LDC drama well. Harmless and MoD were making hostile posts that I reported for being basically flaming and the staff took no action on it; instead of doing something against bullying, some of them (or some who later became staff) just encouraged it further
Adressing your first concern, pugnacity on my side. You can agree that I had faced some serious bad luck with my first attempts in the LDing scene. But the reaction should have been different. The problem was the stupid attitude of theirs that "judgings and scores are not questionable", and that this forms a real taboo theme, be it related to my own scores or others ... why does this have to be such a taboo theme?
I was faced with unfounded accusations like "you want to bend and rig the system to your own will, you egoist", and especially "it was you who was actively and deliberately causing drama".
and similar attitudes continued in the later staff debates. Every effort of mine in terms of bringing up critical subjects and being outspoken, was called "aggressive" and "too heated" and "bumptious" and what-else-do-I-know.(edited)
Don't get me wrong, there surely is an inner vulnerability and hurt vanity on my side. Like there was with Doram at the very end, but I swear to god that I would never let that be an inducement to ban someone I'm annoyed at. And generally I quickly hit a point of no return, and often enough I was restlessly driven by wanting to get out of the bad treatment and not wanting to accept it.
Second point, campaigning to be staff. It was pretty much an ambition since the first days ever, I even dreamed of becoming lemod similarily as quickly as MP3. This quickly turned out to be utopian, and so I took a step down and tried to approach myself with slow steps. Then there was the Runolympics, the time where I became active on chat and did a lot more productive stuff. I had no clue why I was unwanted, why they bared at it so hardly, especially when there were enough arguments to promote somebody in general (since Sk and you became inactive). I mean, it should have been my expectable and "standardized" position within the community at that time. Then they tried to find some filmsy reasoning of "what I should do better", which was rather hypocritical considering their own attitude, and that was phenomenally upsetting. Under normal circumstances, campaigning to be staff wouldn't have turned out to become a mistake of mine. And even then, you can't always follow the path of least resistance. That was the fundamental error of Doram allowing the demotion of mine.
Third point, lack of patience. I really think that the wheels could turn quicker here and be more efficient, and often enough it felt like they used "my impatience" and "everything needs time" as an excuse for their own disability and causing stagnancy. I've made good efforts during the time as SR, and the decision on promoting Raiyuuni only took a few hours while they said that promotions used to take two days or more usually.
If you call it unethical that I keep raising my voice even after being banned ... I disagree honestly, not only because the ban has no moralic justification for me anyway (democracy is something different than a conspiracy of "elitarists" who form a majority of staff, but not of members). It's quite brave to keep adressing things, and it's pretty much the only chance to reach positive change. The reason why I was banned is quite the same reason that made me become an idol for some others. By the way, by the term "memeing" I don't necessarily mean all kinds of internal jokes, but I mean cases where these kinds of jokes and mannerisms are not called for or get out of hand, e.g. provocative sarcasm hurting another person; posting a gif or abusing BBcodes in a drama topic (with a sentence like "me currently thinking" or similar); or screaming fads in the chat ("Garfield" I recall for once), or just memes becoming too autotelic and overused in general.
I get that these subjects are bothersome. Guess what, I pretty much PM'd you first because I knew that Venexis was recovering from some kind of illness, and that he was "less available" than you. I guess I'll stick with talking to him first from now on. But you should know that "running away" from problems will never solve them. Doram took a week away from the site after my demotion, and you know how he returned. He was a different person. Relentless, merciless, hypocritical, cynical, not ready to compromise, blind for the truth.
Similarily it's fact that Nin's resigning wasn't helpful, and now it's the same with OJ resigning. Did I really make them resign, do I really have all of the blame? What prevented Nin from confessing his tiredness in front of the staff first, so they would maaaybe see it as a sign to change something for themselves, instead of retiring without a word and totally out of the blue? What made OJ resign now except from his problems with learning constructive behaviour and his unwillingness to not see me as an enemy of state? I have no idea oc of what happened in the staff chat but if there was heat again, it definitely wasn't because of the tone of my previous message, I swear
Lastly, concerning the general state of SM63, maybe this is the way that every fangame dies down sooner or later, but still I'd try efforts to delay it as long as possible. People were already envisaging its death and waiting for LL in 2013 or early 2014, before I helped to bring a boom in 2015 that has mostly gone out now. But I still think that better staffing and better organization would also keep SM63 more active for a bit longer, at least the hard core of the LDing scene. Probably it's also me refusing to say goodbye to something that I really love, and that has formed a part of my own being for the past two years. I just refuse to give up.
Good luck to you and Ven. My conclusion stays that if there's still some serious interest on keeping the community here alive, change is needed. All of these statements are revolving around my own history here, but it's closely related to the destiny of runouw.com in general. After I was given my first warning for backseat moderating, I decided to connect positively to new members, to build them up step by step (yet trying to "enforce" a certain degree of discipline at the same time). I've built up various talented designers, as well as I helped active people like bowser07, awesomeguy, Nuclear_Blaze or npromin. They lost their father-figure.