Skydancer -- A Democratic Bluelight *see first post for link to Skydancer's response*

All I can say, is that BL has deteriorated quite a bit since I first came here. There is a lot more anger now, and it is reflecting all over the board. I think this problem has reached its pinnacle, and something needs to be done soon, or this whole community is going to suffer.

I think C22 needs to do what is best for the community. BL is too valuable of a resource to be pissed away.
 
chr1.5 said:
I just don't think the place is running as smoothly as it once did, I have basically chosen not to post here anymore. I wasn't sour about being demoted. But I have been slightly pissed off about how the boards are loosing custom

for example right now the boards have: Members 118, guests 55 browsing the forums...

I remember checking this previously to all the changes and seeing more members and guests browsing. (more like 250 members on average, and 100 guests)

I think the management could do with a definite rethink of how the place is run.

I will also say that i think that catch-22 has let the power go to his head.
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"I wasn't sour about being demoted."

i was. this was also true for johnboy at the same time and i think i posted a thread "why" in the staff forum.

i also objected to the way the previous Admins were wiped out around Aug '03 but my opinion counted for nothing in any of these situations.

"I will also say that i think that catch-22 has let the power go to his head."

i have no doubt same is true.

i think he and Walt suffer from a sort of seige mentality or "us against the masses" mentality whereby they do all the work and noone else deserves any input because past volunteers have not always done the right thing for BL.

chr1.5 we had v v little interaction in the past but what there was was good and it is nice to see you around again. :)
 
I won't rag on skydancer too much, at the very least.. he still "comes down to our level" to post everyonce in a while.
 
DigitalDuality said:
I won't rag on skydancer too much, at the very least.. he still "comes down to our level" to post everyonce in a while.
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i certainly did not mean to do so. whilst we have had our differences of opinion i have the utmost respect for his input to BL across a large no. of yrs.

i also have a lot of affection for him, not least because he was the 1st person to ever respond to a post of mine on the old BL MDMA BB.
 
So what is going to happen now? Its pretty clear from he posts of the bluelighters in this thread that catch 22's methods aren't too popular (putting it mildly). So who can do something about it and what is going to be put in place instead?
 
Geez-A said:
So what is going to happen now? Its pretty clear from he posts of the bluelighters in this thread that catch 22's methods aren't too popular (putting it mildly). So who can do something about it and what is going to be put in place instead?
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I don't think that this thread is the place to decide that. I think that the number one priority is to get Catch to resign. Then we all decide on who, if anyone, will replace him.
 
Roger&Me said:
I don't think that this thread is the place to decide that. I think that the number one priority is to get Catch to resign. Then we all decide on who, if anyone, will replace him.
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I dont know the guy but if he is as non responsive as people say he is- I doubt this thread, or any made in his direction, will do much good. He has indicated by his post under the poll in EDD hes not interested in responses. So why would he be interested in this?:\

It would be good if he did respond to get his point of view instead of guessing what is going through his mind. He may have his reasons for acting the way he does, but we wont know until he tells us.
 
^^
As far as who should replace him, there are more than enough qualified people hanging around who were admins at one time or another. One of them was lucky enough to get his title back, and I think he is best suited to run the site in lieu of Walt... and that is TheLoveBandit. Reed is the genuine article. I don't think anyone here would disagree. On the same token, BA and Frizz are both products of the C22 regime, and in the opinion of me and many others, neither is fit for the position.
 
j22 said:
Catch 22 is a power hungry dickwad and came to power thru some sheer anomaly, after not putting in half the time and effort that about 1000 other BLers have put in, somehow people were blind enough to let him cruise to the top of the hierarchal pecking order
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actually, I remember when this all started. After he was a mod in whatever forum it was, an admin... I don't remember which, suggested that C22 be promoted to admin. At this point in time, C22 would come forward with the occasional statistical analysis of traffic in one forum or another... he actualy did good work, and I wholeheartedly supported his promotion. Funny thing is that he declined. Even funnier... I was kind of sad.

Needless to say he did in fact become an admin. Somehow he became THE admin. He managed to get rid of every single other administrator, most of the mods and rebuilt all the forums to his own wants.

J22 was right on the money. C22 NEEDS to step down right now.
 
Geez-A said:
It would be good if he did respond to get his point of view instead of guessing what is going through his mind. He may have his reasons for acting the way he does, but we wont know until he tells us.
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I would put a large amount of money on him never acknowledging this thread.

On a different note, is he really as busy, or does he do as much work as he indicates? I mean, although this is a very large forum, it's still v-bulletin, and v-bulletin is very easy to use and not very time-consuming at all for the admin. It's mostly a matter of selecting boxes in the admin control panel. If any of you want to know just HOW easy it is to use, you can check out the admin demo from the vbulletin website. Again, I don't know the specifics, maybe BL has custom hacks that need to be maintained or something else that's extremely time consuming, I'm merely pointing this out.
 
Geez-A said:
I dont know the guy but if he is as non responsive as people say he is- I doubt this thread, or any made in his direction, will do much good. He has indicated by his post under the poll in EDD hes not interested in responses. So why would he be interested in this?:\

It would be good if he did respond to get his point of view instead of guessing what is going through his mind. He may have his reasons for acting the way he does, but we wont know until he tells us.
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imo this thread, and the lack of support for Catch, makes his position untenable ( note there has not been unqualified support for Catch from any of the mods, admins etc ).

i cannot conceive of any response from Catch that would enable him to retain his position. most likely it would be flamed into oblivion.

re the future it will be in large part up to Skydancer but i would suggest the job allocated to Catch is beyond the resources of any 1 individual.

i, personally, would like the admins, collectively assume the responsibilities of Catch with a Board of Directors ( maybe anonymous ) overseeing them.

re who gets to vote on all of this --- i believe a good starting point would be senior mods & admins ( plus me ). this could be discussed in one of the private forums.
 
At it's current state, i couldn't care less about bluelight. It shouldn't be run as a business with post count quotas. People that have been banned shouldn't be let back.

Basically bluelight.ru has become c22light.nu
 
^^^ Right on. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but now I get it. It seems the overall mentality of BL is gone. This used to be a great place to discuss things, but now its just a place to bullshit and make enemies.

Much like real life politics, this place has allowed quite a few assholes to rise to the top, and overall this place is very 'cliquey'.

New members are discouraged, all the veterans are old and jaded. Its good to see that xtcxtc still has his head on straight.

I feel bad though, for what was originally a great idea, has been ruined by a certain few fuckwads.
 
xtcxtc said:
i also objected to the way the previous Admins were wiped out around Aug '03 but my opinion counted for nothing in any of these situations.
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Speaking as one of those admins at the time, for what it's worth here's my take on the situation.

Catch-22 was made admin at the same time jakoz and myself were. The three of us were mods of various forums, and spent a good deal of time in the austnet #bluelight channel. Or more specifically, the #midgetporncentral channel which was set up as a private channel to be used for mods/admins only. This channel wasn't officially a bluelight channel, but we pretty much used it as one.

I don't remember exactly how it went, but it ended up that johnboy was talking to the three of us about becoming admins, and we eventually accepted (after much discussion between us all). At the time the structure was much more simple than it is now - basically that admins were a collective body who made final decisions, and mods ran the forums. Pretty much as simple as that. All staff would discuss problems, issues, and ideas in the private staff forum (midget porn central), and the admins would use an email distribution list (and later on a forum too).

Because of the open nature of the adminstration of the site, we would talk in the IRC channel about how we personally saw bluelight, and which way we saw it going. Some of the discussions involved ranking other staff members by their usefulness as percieved by us, and talking about people who were expendable. Not conversations I'm very proud of, but at the time that's all they were - conversations. We were just the noob admins and couldn't actually do anything about it anyway. And I certainly didn't hold any ambitions to try.

Around June or July of 2003, I got wind that Catch-22 and Johnboy had been in discussions about changing the structure of the staff. I had been less and less invloved in these closed doors conversations, and so I didn't actually hear anything about these plans from Catch-22 or johnboy themselves. Their plan was to sit themselves and skydancer as the only admins, and demote the remaining admins to "supermods". My problem with that was that the title "supermod" held no credibility, and was really just a glorified janitor position for cleaning up after trolls in all forums. I figured that I'd rather drop back to being a bluelighter than take that slap in the face for the hard work I'd been doing, which is exactly what I did. I made my opinion known to the other admins, but agreed not to bring it out to the public. But I guess if I were ever going to then now would be the time... ;)

Anyway, for some reason I was left on the admin email list for a few weeks after I removed my powers. This email came from Johnboy on the 29th July 2003:
Time has come for a shake up in the admin system of Bluelight. A few
Admins have left recently but there is still a need for change. It all
comes down to this: there is no real reason why so many people should have
full admin power. Having many people with full rights and access has
always been a liability, but, for a time, it was felt we needed this to
ensure the smooth running of the site. If a problem poster was spamming
multiple forums there was little an individual mod could do about it, so
more Admins were seen as necessary. Now, with the new systems of warning
and temporary suspensions, there is less need for Admins to always be
around.

I don’t think I need to go over the reasons why a large team of Admins
that don’t communicate with each other is a liability. The record has
shown what can, and does happen when this is the case. This is why Walter,
Catch and I have been working towards placing the right amount of access
in people’s hand without giving them access they don’t need, and could
potentially abuse.

As of now the following changes have been made:

Abygale has been returned to Bluelighter status as we have not heard from
her in months and her current email is bouncing. Pleonastic has recently
retired himself. Big Trancer is now a Super Moderator.

The following Admins have also been placed in the “Super Moderator” group:

Day4night, Raverdave and Sebastians_Ghost.

You will have the power to close/edit/move threads in all forums. You will
no longer have highest level admin powers. Your titles will be changed to
Super Moderator.

For most of you this will mean zero change in your day to day activities.
If there is anything you are currently doing that you can’t do as a Super
Moderator let us know and we’ll see what we can do, but I’d be very
surprised if there was.

The FIST system will be implemented soon. When FIST is in place, you will
be able to react to situations by giving out Super suspensions to problem
users. Super moderators will not be able to permanently ban people

Here is a preliminary explanation of the role of a Super Moderator:

Super moderators will focus on the daily operations of Bluelight and help
enforce established policy. They should have a regular presence around
the forums and aid in the resolution of routine disputes or issues. Super
moderators can perform the basic moderator functions across all of
Bluelight. They can assist the regular moderators by offering advice,
answering questions and responding to urgent topic reports. A Super
moderator may also focus on performing specific task that are approved by
the administrators.

One of the main reasons for these changes has been the inactivity of many
Admins so let’s be realistic about what we do and don’t do. In fact we
would like to hear from all of you as to how you see your role at
Bluelight. If we don’t hear anything from you we can only assume that you
no longer wish to be a Super Moderator. This is one thing we will be
firmly enforcing from now on; the level of commitment that a mod has to
keep up with to not lose their slot will apply to Admins as well.

So that's the changes. Posts outlining the new position of Super Moderator
will shortly be made in A&F and MPC. You can access the Super Moderator
control panel from here:

http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/supermod/

Please let us know if there are any bugs with the interface.

Cheers

johnboy
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Now I'm only speculating here, but I have a feeling that this idea was more Catch-22's than johnboys, or at the very least johnboy wouldn't have been for it if he'd known how much the new exclusive powers would go to Catch-22's head. I'm sure jb will correct me in no uncertain terms if I'm wrong... ;)

---

But that's about the extent of my knowledge from the other side. I don't know exactly what's happened, but given the trend I've seen from the limited trickle of information that actually gets through nowadays, I can tell it's gone the unfortunate way I expected it to.

Therefore I support xtcxtc with whatever direction he sees fit for this site.
 
man look at all the dissent. I cant speak with much authority because i was only ever a meetups moderator. and i choose to only aplly for that positions becausse i saw the suble changes occuring in the board and i wanted to meet as many bluelighters as i could before i quit. it saddens me that something like bluelight which has played a large roll in my life for 5 years is nothing more than a soap box for powerhungrey banned members. the old admins and moderators are the only reason i stayed around. there exstensive knowledge of there choosen moderatorships was helpful and convinent. and they belived in the community they helped shape a world i wanted to be in online. its a shame that ever intellegent person was either demoted or outright banned. the community is dead and even the general knowlege of the board and harm reductionist messures seem lessoned. i wish we were still a board where exsperience drive and compassion landed you a modship instead of taking a money shot in the face from c22.


i miss the olden days

-phil-
 
I've been accused of being overly "pro-Bluelight" by some, and I have to say that I am to an extent. However, I don't like how we're currently run by what amounts to absentee landlords. I don't like to see how suggestions supported by a large number of staff are consistently ignored and to be honest, I don't really feel that we as moderators are appreciated for the work we do. I spend a metric fuckton of time on this site and while I don't expect praise or anything of the sort, it would be nice to know our input matters. It makes me sad that a lot of old regulars have left the site, but there is still enough people to keep me here and try to do my best to keep the forums I'm involved with entertaining without beind heavy handed. Bluelight has been a big part of my life for five years and I don't see myself leaving anytime soon.

I just want to be treated with respect by the admins as well as for them have an open ear for what the staff has to say. I don't think that's too much to ask.
 
Roger&Me said:
Same thing with me. I would still be a mod now under my old username if BL was a democracy.

In addition, there's a whole legion of people that hate Catch-22.
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I get the feeling most of us here would still be mods if this was a democracy, I too was summarily removed :D

--- G.

p.s. though, to his credit, it took less than one minute from my refusing to grovel to being unmodded, you really have to admire that kind of dedication to despotism
 
xtcxtc said:
did you read my opening post >>

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
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I did read your post and I'm familiar with the Winston Churchill quote but it doesn't change the fact that I don't want bluelight to be a democracy. I'm sorry but I don't think people like Dupuerto are worth as much as skydancer and catch22 and I think its a load of shit to try to put them on any sort of even level.
 
Representative democracy does not work that way, skywise, and you know it. Unless you think you are equal to Bush or Blair or whoever your elected despot may be, in which case you are deluded.

It's not perfect, that in part refers to the fact that someone ultimately has to run the thing from day to day. It also means, more positively, that those people will be HELD ACCOUNTABLE for their actions.

That is the only major difference between what has been proposed and what is currently the case: accountability.

--- G.
 
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