User blog comment:VegetaPrinceOfSayains/My personal opinion/@comment-25052433-20140803154648

From what I have seen since being on this wiki, the two biggest problems that users continue to bring up against the admins is the chat room and deleting pastas.

Now as for the chat room, personally it made no difference to me if it stayed or went. I didn't come here for chat rooms, I came here to read and write stories. However, that is just me. I am can tell from the public outcry over the chat room, that it clearly meant a lot to a lot of people. I have seen several blogs where people stated that they were leaving for that very reason.

Next of course, is deleting pastas. Now, no one is ever going to be cool with their pasta being deleted. It stings, it sucks, and it makes you wonder what went wrong. Of course, I totally agree that we need to focus on quality writing here, and if a story is bad, well, there really isn't any other option for the admins.

So, what can we do?

Personally I would suggest that the admins give the users a voice. When reading through the rules and FAQS on the admin boards, there is without a doubt a under-tempo in the writing. What I gleam from that tempo is that the admins have adopted into a "my way or the highway" attitude. The general accent of the writing seems to carry a whisper of apathy, if not agitation.

Now, this is just my opinion on how I translated the under current of the wording. I could be totally off base with this, and if I am, take this as an apology paid forward.

So, to remedy this, the first thing we need to think about is, who takes ownership of this group? Is this the admin's house, and the rest of us are just allowed to play here? Or do we look at this from a more progressive point. It's our house, and the admins work to ensure our house stays clean and forward moving?

I would say a bit of both. However, what appears to happen that causes the most friction, and leads to rage induced blogs like the very one that started this thread, is lack of communication between user and admin.

The chat room was removed because the admins wanted it gone. That caused a big problem with people on this site. It was going to cause any issue no matter what, since apparently people loved this chat room, but was there a better way to do it that would have served the overall community better? Honestly, the only way we could have ever known that, would be to communicate it out further, and actually give the users a voice, rather than just reading their comments.

Deleting pastas is another issue that could probably be solved with better communication. On the FAQs it states that it would take too long to explain to each writer why their story was deleted. Well, quality does take time folks. If our goal to is really become the 5-Star destination for internet based horror writing, then maybe we need to take that extra time.

So, my advice would be to create a new "admin" type job here. I would call it the voice. Either an elected user, or perhaps a group of them. Pick from people that are active on the site and contribute well. They could serve as a grievance officer almost, someone that could take the complaints straight to the admins without having to worry about getting blocked or banned. Furthermore, this voice-user could have actual sway towards any changes that the admins are thinking of enacting, like when the chat room was taken down.

Anyway, that is my 2-cents. I only post this long diatribe because I keep seeing people bringing up the chat room after it's been gone for this long. Clearly it meant a lot to folks.