User blog:Flamefang/The calm after the storm

So, as I hope you can tell, things have more or less returned to normal in the aftermath of some intense issues. If you have no clue what these are please refer to my prior blog. Before we put this crisis behind us there are a few things I'd like to speak about.

First, we're all part of a community. Roleplaying wikis are inherently different from those containing Encyclopediae and, instead of focusing primarily upon the number or quality of pages, focus very solely upon the user experience. Here, the words 'wiki' and 'community' are nearly synonymous. So, what does this mean? Well, first it shows that each of our members' welfare is vital not only to their fellows but to the survival of the wiki as a whole. Secondly, it means that any disruption or conflict between members on any scale is a serious matter as it concerns not only those directly involved but every single active user. We've seen how things can spread. A user becomes demonized, criminalized, and things spiral out of control from there. Suddenly it's a mad rush to join in the beating; a sort of mob mentality. We're quick to band together in the face of a perceived threat, but what if this threat isn't what we believe it to be? Well, by then, it doesn't matter as things have gone too far already. Grudges are held and by the end of the week we've got rivalries in which users feel obliged to take sides. From there this grows into a wiki-wide crisis, like the one we experienced yesterday. As I'm sure we all know now, such events are not desirable.

Therefore it is necessary that we keep a few key things in mind. As a piece of a community we have obligations towards oneanother, just like in real life. At the same time, the glue that binds both real and online communities together is a sense of mutual trust engendered by our natural empathic instinct.To put things simply for those of you whom I'm sure will find this flying over your heads... for our community to work we need people to trust one another. Now, empathy is far less effective a tool in the online environment. At its core empathy is the ability to recognize another's distress/mood and through it come to understand their situation, and the inverse of this. In the online world we are unable to truly recognize another's distress/mood as most of this is conveyed through body language, facial expressions, and voice. Thus a certain amount of empathy is lost in the process, but, at the same time we are still able to recognize another's situation and act upon it (the inverse mentioned prior). So, we are subject to about half of the emotion typically felt in a real world scenario. As a result, online, this glue that would normally be binding our society tightly together is significantly weakened.

Another major social bond is the inevitability of consequence. Online one is freed from consequence. I have no idea who you really are and you have no idea I am really either. We are both participating in a virtual environment from which we can detatch ourselves at any given time. Consequence binds us together by forcing us to comply with basic societal protocol. In an online environment this is more or less gone and noticeably so. The lack of consequence is the reason for groups like Anonymous, sites like 4Chan, and many other online communities/entities. Here, we do not embody this same lack of consequence. We have policy, we have administrators, and we have Ghost. The rules put in place here are there for a reason, not only to ensure that things run smoothly but also to keep this community together; to ensure that it remain a coherent group and not simply a mass of bickering individuals. Remember that next time you advertently or inadvertently break a rule.

Finally, there are other things that bind us together. We are all here for a reason. We share a common purpose. We share a common dream. You and I wish to roleplay and, to be honest, roleplaying in general isn't overly popular outside specific groups in the real world. We have members from throughout the world that come together, here, to create. And that, to me, is amazing. It is a true mark of our success not only as members of this wiki but as roleplayers in general. Look around, for other wikis like this, and you will find them few and far between. The roleplaying wiki is a rare breed and we represent nothing less than its zenith. Together we have built something unique and through our common struggle we have ensured its continuity for the foreseeable future. Until issues like this come along.

So, hopefully you see now. Our community, our wiki, is held together by bonds of mutual trust, by governing structure, and by a common goal. When we lose that mutual trust, when we defy that governing structure, and we lose sight of that common goal, we set ourselves up for an inevitable fall. Let's not do that. Let's make ourselves a future. Months ago I wrote a blog explaining how one day we'd be able to look back upon our progress and see just how far we'd come. Looking back, I sometimes wonder if we've only taken a step in the same direction. So then, let's take a step forward. Let's improve our community and our wiki. Let's put our conflicts behind us. Now that things are clear again let's prosper.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Your friendly neighborhood Bureaucrat: Flamefang 01:32, August 27, 2011 (UTC)