Community Unrest

If you have been on the forums at any point during the last week, chances are you have noticed some class A. shenanigans going down. From what I have observed, there seem to be three basic groups, or to put it in political terms, parties. These three entities generally support the moderation, the elites, and an apathetic outlook on the Pawn community, respectively. In order to familiarize you if you with the outlooks and opinions of each group in case you are not already informed, these outlooks and opinions will be recapitulated in this article, as well as the rebuttal to each of these platforms by the opposing groups, following a brief synopsis of the history leading up to this debacle.
     An appropriate starting point seems to be the beginning, or better yet before the beginning. If you would like to read the following paragraph with a mental image of a 1940's era flashback, be my guest. The year was two thousand and ten, scorching summer heat and boredom bubbling over lead to the imminent creation of what can loosely be called a usergroup named the "Elites," the elites were a special team of only the smartest, the cleverest, and the most mature members on the forum. lol jk, half of us were trolls, but whatever, it's just a group for the cool kids. Now with the membership of this group cam a few perks, such as a blue name and a custom user title (Removed due to HWV's getting mad at us because SOMEBODY seems to like TATTLING), this lead to much interest in the group. I, being the first member to be inducted into this prestigious group, found it to be perfectly useless, which was nice. Now the Elite group has a private forum for only the most serious of Elite matters (To fuck around on), and received quite a bit of traffic. But before long, activity began to dwindle and the section began to suffer. A few months later, with the effect of an adrenaline shot, a few new members who shall remain nameless were added to the group. Did they piss a lot of people off? Yes. Did they know how to have a good time? Holy fuck yes they did. Anyway, this lead to increased interest and activity in the elites, and it also gave the reputation as "trollers" to the majority of the elites, especially following the Pony Ellituminait incident. Eventually HWV caught wind of all of this and banned ponies from the Elite forum, causing much dismay and backlash from the Elites. This got him more pissed and he made some of the mods Elites that he felt were deserving, namely Tone. And to be honest, Tone was about to be kicked out as soon as he joined, especially after he gave an infracting warning for a post in the Elite section that didn't directly break any of the Elite rules. Shit went down, son. From there Tone was kicked out of the Elites and Eilios enjoyed a brief dictatorship over the elites (;D), and it wasn't soon after that, that the growing tension between the Elites, users, and mods caused the incident that brings me here today. Without further ado, I give you, why everybody's flipping a shit!
    First off will be the most prominent in terms of impact on the Pawn community, the moderation. The moderation in general believes that what they have done in recent days is only what is necessary, and the punishments they have issued are just and deserved, whether that refers to deleted posts and threads or banning on IRC for stating the letter N, which is apparently banned now. In response to this, the Elites state that the mods are becoming too aggressive in their procedure. One instance of this is shown by Woohoo's statement in the following; "I've seen that a recently modded person gave an infraction in a music thread because reciting lyrics was apparently unnecessary," this is a prime example, from the perspective of the elites, of this very phenomenon. This forum is a place where teenagers and young adults meet to discuss opinions and enjoy themselves, giving an infraction for something so minor as posting lyrics in a thread about music is absurd. This leads Elites (which admittedly shares the opinions of likeminded user) to believe that the more recent moderators have been promoted to moderator before they have been given a chance to mature emotionally as well as intellectually enough to effectively fill the position of moderator (We know you're trying your best, Nirvana!).
     Next comes the third group, whose main proponents seem to be Balmung and Eilios, that this is a flash gaming website and we're all getting too worked up over nothing. This is exemplified by Eilios's statement; "This is a gaming site, you're taking it far too seriously. Chill out," which accurately portrays his feelings that the anger and seriousness with which we have been fighting is not equal to the seriousness of the impact of anything on this website. In response to this, both the Mods and the Elites wrapped up in all of these shenanigans seem to be of the common belief that this is about the community, not the game, and that representation of one's opinions is crucial, not because we care about the game, but because we want to feel as though we have a say in the way that the community is heading.
     Finally, we have the Elites, seeming to have been surrounded by controversy to those who are privy to the inner working of Pawn for the last two to three months, opinions about the elites range from "They're all trolls" to "They're the coolest people on the forum," the latter of which is not, contrary to popular belief, only supported by the Elites themselves. The position of the elites, as previously stated, is that Pawn should return to the more relaxed forum that it used to be, that doesn't involve infracting for silly things like posts that don't necessarily contribute to the discussion, as well as that the newly modded moderators aren't fit to the task, and more thought should go into who really deserves and can handle the position of moderator effectively.
     Things seem to have calmed down quite a bit during the last couple of days, and now all we have to show for it is a debate thread that was locked unjustly, then unlocked to reach 200+ posts, and some bad karma between some of the staff. To be perfectly honest, though this may be looked upon as an issue with the Pawn community, I personally believe that this is what makes this place interesting, the way we act as a community is honestly fascinating, considering how many of us don't even play the game that was supposed to be the focus of the website, as well as the zeal and competence with which we debate on even the smallest of issues.