The Good
Wherein I will give my full review of the site of Standing Trials, the people within, and the community as a whole as best as I am humanly capable using my nearly three years of membership on the site, and roughly year of staff-work as a basis for my thoughts on the subject.

I will first and foremost mention that when I first joined Standing Trials, it was not quite what it is today. It was an enjoyable site, but there were some potential issues involving how everything was performed that made it somewhat more difficult to easily write here. Something in particular that I remember is that peer reviewers were responsible wholly for the reviews that they gave without receiving much in the way of input from thread-makers which could be a rather blatant strain upon them. Issues such as that have since been resolved in a way that I genuinely believe has benefited the site as a whole.

Another positive that has changed from my beginning time is that a rather spectacular amount of development has been done on a great number of projects. Things that used to sit quietly in their own little corners undeveloped for literal years have finally come to fruition and are being used regularly by players who enjoy their presence. Of course, I mean things such as the assorted magic groups which until recently were only vague ideas in the mind of a head developer, and had no written substance to them.

So, I will state rather blatantly that there has been definite progress since I first began here, and it’s obvious that some of the implementations were for the benefit of everyone on the site, and I’m rather glad that they were brought into creation.

The Bad
Of course, where there is any change which occurs, there are understandably going to be a few which aren’t really accepted as particularly great by everyone around. While I was originally involved in the pricelist project, for example, I found that its final implementation was… exceptionally confusing, at least to myself. When I mentioned this to a few others, the typical responses that they had been provided effectively amounted to “read more” or “read until it makes sense”, which isn’t always necessarily a great manner of running operations.

There were other things which arose which I wasn’t really a fan of, including a number of NPC changes that meant having to regularly glance back at the rules list to ensure that they were still acceptable, and overall just several rules and regulations which have been passed for some time which are somewhat too difficult for my poor mind to easily comprehend.

The same answer was often provided for these assorted regulations, assuring players that they would understand the chaos if only they would continue to read the same lines over and over again, and in some cases, this was probably correct. Nevertheless, the consistent passing of new systems over and over again has done little to make the site overall less complex. Instead, I regularly find that I have to spend several minutes double-checking any work that I intended to pass to make sure that I’m not violating a newly created set of rules somewhere, and that I’ve not accidentally allowed players to violate the new rules as well. All in all, this created a non-insubstantial amount of work, and I genuinely believe that a few of the rules which have been passed could easily be revoked without much harm.

Or, at the very least, we could probably do something about making them easier to understand for players and staff alike, and perhaps condense sets of rules into one place so that they are easier to locate. Presumably, the wiki as a whole sort of accomplishes this, though I’ll be honest in saying that I struggle even to use that grand conglomerate. Perhaps I simply don’t have all the answers on the system cram, but for goodness sake, it’s hard to find things.

The Ugly
If you thought this was going to be the largest section of the review, you’d be quite right. For all the more obvious positives that have been brought to the site, and for all of the things I would perceive as somewhat negative additions, there are a far greater number of activities upon the site that I would consider utterly disappointing.

Allow me to begin this section by letting all of you know that Staff is, at times, very much a secret club. Of course, that mentality is one that is not typically flaunted, nor is it one that is oftentimes meant to be presented to others, but it is nonetheless incredibly true. Have you ever thought of yourself as a problematic player? Have you ever considered that you might have irritated a member of staff with something that you said, or perhaps that you’re behaving in a way that you didn’t think someone liked?

Well, the rest of staff know about it too, because it has been shared and re-shared among our clubhouse like the latest and hottest gossip. Have you ever felt that you’re explicitly being watched like a hawk, that your every action in every thread is being observed to see if you’ll finally slip up? If you feel audited, because you’re under the impression that a large number of staff members, or at least important ones dislike you, then you’re absolutely correct. They do, and it’s not a secret.

Of course, for all of the secrecy that occurs in staff rooms, there is an equal amount that writhes its way out of the player-base. Occasionally, the implications that come out of these are entirely without justification, accusations of unfair behavior sparked by irritated players who really should have seen the outcomes coming when they decided to behave in a foolish fashion. Othertimes, you have accusations that are both somewhat difficult to prove in a purely evidence-based standard, and which are simultaneously adamantly opposed by staff. Anathema to a perfect society.

Let’s talk about Favoritism!

One of my self-given roles as a member of the Standing Trials staff for quite some time was that I would act as the sort of person who would listen to players whenever they had a complaint of any sort or size. I didn’t particularly mind what the complaint was, and I never threw them under the bus by reporting them to any disciplinary group. I was, as it were, a messenger for people who had a message they wanted to send, but who didn’t want to be implicated, either out of fear of retribution or else fear of being incorrect.

I would bring such messages to our beloved Team Leaders (whose roles were originally designed, I believe, to ensure that work continued onwards, and whose roles now consist of some amalgam of secret discussions and meetings before major decisions). I would deliver the messages in the hopes that there would be reasonable arguments in opposition to the accusations being made, so that I could deliver those to a reassured crowd of players.

Have you ever watched Mulan? Do you remember the villain of that movie, and how he explicitly gives an order to shoot one of the messengers?

Oh. Look. I was a messenger. Quite suddenly, my role as a person who brought forth information and thoughts from the playerbase was facing a rather severe degree of opposition. People didn’t like to hear that there were complaints that they were giving in to favoritism, and because the best response that could reasonably be given out was, “No we aren’t!” the complaints didn’t really go away either.

Eventually, I began to think that perhaps the staff members were correct. After all, favoritism is a difficult thing to prove under most circumstances, and I couldn’t help but to feel that perhaps some of the player-base were simply irritable. So, as a whole, I began to stop passing on the messages from the players wherever possible, and started working on new projects wherever I could.

My time as an Advocate was, all in all, fairly enjoyable… at first. When I first began, I was working under Anomaly, and her personality and my own were quite compatible with one another. In fact, the only reason I had joined staff at all was to assist her with her work since she had been left alone on the blue team. There were no major issues that come to mind while I worked with her, but, as with all good things, eventually we had a vote on new team leaders.

Anomaly was ousted from her position, and the person who took her place was Munchkin. I distinctly remember feeling somewhat upset at the sudden shift, since Munch hadn’t even been on the Advocate team at the time, but I didn’t dislike him inherently either. In fact, we had played games a couple of times in the past, and overall I had viewed him as a good person to hang around.

Mind you, the first day that he was the Advocate TL, we ended up banning someone and it drove me into an absolute fit. The player in question had insinuated to a moderator that he was going to fight another player, but the other player had mentioned that they had not agreed beforehand to any sort of conflict. Personally, I saw the entire ordeal as a great misunderstanding which had been blown out of proportion, a failure to communicate.

Munchkin saw it, seemed to take a couple of minutes to consider it, and decided that there would need to be disciplinary action. Of course, that escalated further into a call to ban the player entirely from the seat without a chance at redemption. I dug around for evidence in the logs of different chats, interviewed multiple players, and overall was trying to determine a course of action that had clearly already been decided.

Munchkin decided that he would ban the player in question, and had already begun working on his letter when I mentioned that he couldn’t ban someone without having even spoken to them first. (You’ll notice some parallels between this account and our modern day. You know, the lack of communication before action.) Eventually, Munchkin allowed me to speak to the player, and while I continued to gather my evidence, the decision had already been made, and the player was promptly banned.

That behavior drove me up the wall. Another behavior which proceeded to aggravate me to an even greater extent was a 2 hour interrogation at night in the midst of our Advocate chat, wherein I was ordered to provide the names of any anonymous persons who had passed on information to me. At the time, I had been passing along any information that related to any judicial actions we were examining, but was being courteous and allowing for any informants to remain anonymous. That was not allowed within the Advocate camp, as I’d soon come to find out, and after a grueling interrogation wherein I was implored to hand out the names so as to encourage “teamwork” and “unity” I eventually asked my informant to reveal themselves.

I eventually wrote a short manifesto, not dissimilar from this one, and asked to be reassigned to the Storyteller Team. It was a healthy choice in my mind, because I was clearly at operational ends with Munchkin over the lack of consideration which had been given to any of my work, or to the idea of justice whatsoever.

I’d never been offered a position to work under anyone for a city before, because I had managed to slip through the cracks of any sort of training program, and so I was able to work on my city immediately. I particularly enjoyed working on projects for Quacia, and tried rather greatly to provide a place where my players could legitimately enjoy themselves, and progress their plots. I had a rather free mindset wherein if someone wanted to try something, I typically approved it, because I wanted to see them reach out and accomplish things, and because the mod-centric nature of the site meant that you needed a mod to accomplish anything big, I was finally able to provide the ability for them to really grow.

Of course, certain behaviors didn’t end. Certain players within my purview were still audited over their character actions by external moderators, and I was forced to reconcile certain behaviors with newly created rules and regulations which I had been entirely unable to keep up with. In time, schoolwork, among other things began to particularly hassle me and steal away my attention, and I began to ask for some level of assistance in operating the city… which was very very briefly provided, and then promptly abandoned. At one point, one of the staff members I had been working with on the Seekers project promptly left the site entirely. I mentioned in the chat that he had done most of the work, and was promptly met a few moments later with accusations that I had enabled him to break the staff rules (rules that did not have, and which I believe currently do not have any sort of written punishment, because of course they don’t.), and that it had been decided by the TL’s that my punishment would be to finish the project by a certain date and time. I managed to highlight that I had done work the first time around, and the charges were dropped, but the implication that I, a volunteer, would be forced to work on a project or else receive a warning were laughable at best, and irritating at worst.

On top of the added stress of the real-world, I then discovered that all of the efforts that I’d put into the pricelist project which I had been quite fond of had been changed completely without any indication provided to me. Hours of progress that I had personally performed had been changed into something I didn’t even remotely recognize, and I abandoned the project entirely, figuring that if it was just going to be changed anyway, then I would revitalize my efforts in running my beloved city, though, eventually I decided that the strain in the real-world was growing rather severe, and my constant difficulty with the site was proving to be too great to continue. I made an announcement that in two months’ time, I’d be leaving, but that I’d make efforts to leave things in a good condition for my city.

A few days later, someone came to me as they’d done in the past and mentioned to me that there had been a major event. Once again the comments of favoritism were shot out into the air as, lo and behold, one of the TL’s PCs had been made into an Immortal.

It was a drastic achievement to be certain, though I could certainly see why some people had come to the conclusion that something was remiss about it. After all, the character in question had less than a hundred posts, and some of those around site had hundreds. Why was literal godhood being handed over to them? The events of a single group of threads had apparently laid out in such a fashion that the option had become available, and, with the apparent wish of eventually rolling out the update anyway, the character was given the single strongest ability anyone had ever had in the game. Of course, they were a pipsqueak to start out with, but could anyone honestly justify that being one of the site’s literal gods was somehow a downgrade? The character was fresh and new, it wasn’t as if though they wouldn’t have needed to grow anyway.

People complained to me, as they often do, and I, in my foolishness decided to bring it up with the Team Leaders. The circumstances surrounding the issue seemed to be rather skeptical at best, and I shared that information, and the comments that had been given to me, but did what I always do, and withheld names. The response given was effectively that those people were too cowardly to show themselves in the first place and so they were to be considered little more than a bunch of naysayers.

Clearly, I shouldn’t have brought up the issue at all, because only two days or so after the comments had been passed along, I was stripped of my staff rank. There was no warning to the action, nor is there typically any provided. When I questioned other members of staff, I couldn’t find any of them who had been privy to the discussion which removed me. All of my efforts had genuinely been utterly useless, a chasing after the wind. All that I knew was that the Team Leaders, the very people that had been criticized so many times in the past had met together, and decided that my behavior was too aggressive.

Perhaps worse than merely losing a position was the fact that my city was taken out of my ownership without any discussion. Certainly, I would have left already in a couple of months, but I had full intentions of making things pleasant before I decided to go, and now those would never come to fruition. At absolute best, I could submit any last-minute changes as development and Aegis, one of the Team Leaders would decide whether or not it would be approved.

Naturally, I was agitated. Most of you know what my behavior has been like for today. I’ve tried not to be overly aggressive though, and I’ve never resorted to name-calling, because it never was my style.

Nevertheless, with so much of my own work and imagination suddenly stolen away from me over comments that people were upset, instead of allowing for a civilized discussion, it became evident that it was time for me to leave. When I made a declaration that I’d be going in a day or so at most, I was promptly banned from the main chat of the site without a word being uttered as to why.

In summary, then, here is the truth of Standing Trials:

•	It started out as fun, and it progressed nicely for some time.
•	And then the Team Leaders took power, and they are currently a mother and her son, and two of their good friends.
•	Any criticism of the current Team Leader arrangement or staff in general will lead to punishment or at best, aggravation, regardless of how it is worded, because it is not allowed, and there are hotheads among the punishing party.
•	Progression on the site is dictated by how mods treat you, not necessarily by the efforts you put into actions. If you attempt to progress alone, you will be remarked upon negatively in staff chat, and efforts will be put in place to get rid of you whenever possible.
•	If you are a friend of the mods, you will receive either better rewards, or at least more consistent rewards and threads than other persons.
•	All of your work can be taken away in an instant by someone who doesn’t care what you’ve done, and who won’t discuss it with you.

As a final statement, would I recommend Standing Trials to a new player?

I don’t know. I had fun here throughout the years, and if you understand honestly that all of your work could potentially be removed, and you understand all of the bullet-points above, and are willing to follow them, then I genuinely think you’ll have a fun time.

But if you intend to step out of line, or if you prefer to write mostly with yourself and one other friend, or if you think you might step on anyone’s toes, then maybe you should find somewhere else to play.

Sincerely,
Tyrant.