Thanks to everyone involved for working together to not escalate anything further.
Judging from all the Information I got and insight as well as reading back quite a bit from the past and the events, it seems to me that the problem arose long ago and was not able to be resolved until it escalated.
The problem being that I-Novae apparently has limits, honestly any of us have, of how much and what kind of talk they can and want to take from outside. Yet they were unable to communicate that fact and where they wanted that line to be drawn to the community or us community moderators until recently. All while feeling the effects of perceived transgression on themselves.
They try to explain it in different ways but it still uses that old style of communication that doesn’t convey what they actually want. Old community members may know what I talk about as some of the behind the scenes stuff can be seen by reading between the lines and seeing what is happening without any words being spoken.
There’s something important I personally learned a few years back, which is if someone is putting pressure on you and/or hurting you and keeps doing it even though you asked them to please don’t do it, it is best to take the measure of separating that relationship.
Which I-Novae has done with critic on discord. There might be other reasons, but this seems to me to be the main one, directly or indirectly.
Many are really unhappy how that happened and argue that some intermediary steps have not been taken, the “asked them” part. That’s one of the reasons behind the backslashes happening.
Dudes, it is ok to have limits and to be phased by what people say. We aren’t machines! We are humans. Acting like a big unmovable company while not being even remotely that isn’t helping.
Over the years we have seen that even though the scale of the first Infinity project has been lowered, it seems to still be a bit too much for I-Novae to take and there is absolutely no free time for anything else. We know and we are still here. If you think about it this has been ok for us for all the time we have been here.
I went around for almost two years now telling everyone new that fact so they would have the needed context and could sympathise.
Maybe I am wrong here but to me it sounds what really should have been told to be clear is something like:
“We have heard your concern and criticism, yet we are over our limit and are already doing our best. Even though you might think that your suggestions are helping it is forming up to be a source of pressure we can not handle anymore. We have and will decide how to handle things and would like you to stop talking to us in such a manner anymore.”
This direct communication has not happened, the most I have heard is telling people when things are obviously out of focus, yet always when it comes to game suggestions, not criticism in other fields.
Of course this isn’t just one sided and it is best if both sides could come closer to communicating on the level of eachothers. Yet if communication is failing so hard that the necesary information is not coming trough to even facilitate that, then it is a hard situation to resolve.
Other topics like the loosing of community members are in my oppinion indirect effects of that same pressure. Loosing current and potential community members is something scary that puts pressure on them to resolve.
Same goes for the appearance of how is being talked on the discord. I-Novae wants to hold a certain standard and is scared of us community members jeapardising all their other work by scaring away people. Something else scary that puts pressure on them to resolve.
This all coming together with dayjobs, personal things, financial thoughts and general overload and it’s not hard to end up with a sub-optimal situation like this.
What happened was that @TheCoach tried to suddenly enforce limits, which happened to align with what I-Novae wanted all along on the 28th of February 2020.
The way it went down almost nobody liked and Coach has been clearly reprehended for that by I-Novae. He agreed to not having acted well there. If it can be called abuse of his powers, that is debatable. Now I can see that some don’t believe that he is fit for the role and that he is learning or even capable of learning. I think that is going a bit too far giving him no chance to proove himself.
Reading back it surely didn’t make sense how it went down. New standards should have been announced by I-Novae or the community moderators in unison and publicly. Only then, afterwards, a transgression should have been moderated by pointing to that announcement. Similar to how we handle suggestions here.
Additionally the tone was not appropriate and not in context with how the tone of the conversation was before Coach acted.
Some important information. Like Flavien showed, Coach did only delete one message. It is important to not exaggerate from both sides. Be it what anybody said or did.
It is also important to release facts and Information as well as statements clearly and not drip feeding them, leading to confusion and rumors.
Another Information is that Coach has in fact been clearly reprehended, even if it is not publicly visible. He already has shown signs of following the input from I-Novae of first escalating to them before taking further action.
There have been complaints about how critic talks to people on discord brought forth by people to I-Novae. It’s in their hands how to handle that or what actions or inputs to give us community moderators. As such it also their responsibility to handle the situation well.
I myself can confirm that it is hard to not accidentally offend Chee. I treated him like any other community member but still offended him. It’s not just a one sided thing, I want to say with that. It is ok to be different but the differences between the community members have to be considered when moderating. Still, people also should be held to the same standard.
