After the big proxy event, several things happened that left the community at large in a state of mixed feelings.

I like to be bluntly honest and transparent in how things work and my expectations of people and my Staff.

A small, vocal handful of people felt they were being "bullied" in character, that they were being "punished" for participating (their words, not mine.) All of this because they displayed a complete and utter lack of trust in the Storytelling Staff and the business they have chosen to support.

They did not come to the appropriate channels to handle their issues, none of these were brought to myself, or to the appropriate complaints department (which is Mario by the way now), or to the person they had a problem with. Any of those three options would have been an appropriate response.

See its okay they had a problem. That is totally fine. It is okay they didn't see the greater story that might be happening there. It is totally okay they didn't "get it".

What is not okay is the way it was handled.

I'm putting this out here to the community, because as a community we have the responsibility to police ourselves. Yes we are a business, as such I hold my Staff to high standards and will whole heartedly demand they reach for, meet and exceed them, in our efforts to entertain you as members of this community.

In return though, the community must take care of itself.

Let me explain a major difference between us and other membership organizations that do similar activities. There you pay for the right to be a member, to play YOUR game. That is not the case here. Here you pay for a highly skilled Staff of people to participate in the world we create. Now we create that world by taking YOUR story and weaving it into the overarching product, but it not just YOUR story. You are not paying for that.

The money you pay us (or don't in the case of Basic Members) is for us to keep up our technology, to compensate the hundreds of monthly hours that are put into this game/site/events.

The end of the day, the majority of people have been very happy with the latest proxy event. Just like the previous one, there are one or two people who had to come back and leave the entire event with a bad taste in the taste of the Staff's mouths.

So now, future proxy events will be worked according to what we've learned from this experience.

Each of you, as members of this community, no matter who you are, have a responsibility. I've talked about it before and I will reference it in short but here is the link to the entire thing:

Cool Kids

You are all the cool kids here, but with that comes a level of responsibility. A level of trust that we, as a business, as a Staff, as Community Members, are working for the better story, are watching and paying attention and we do care about YOUR story.

Yesterday was a demonstration of the good and the bad. Open honest discussion, combined with people jumping to conclusions, assuming the worst, and deciding without any reason or logic that things were against them.

Open honest discussion, I'm a huge fan of it.

The rest, well that is just not good.

The community must police itself. The new rating system is a step towards that, but in the end, it comes down to standing up, admitting mistakes, and then working to improve them or fix them.

That is what I do, it is what I demand of my Staff. It is what I expect of you as members of this community, for here, we are not the outside world. Here, we can all be better then that.