[Shujin]

I think this is a typical case of everyone turning in circles without going anywhere if we try to find the "perfect GM". 

People tend to talk about THE community, but in reality, that term in itself is wrong when applied to SL2s people, I believe. We are a bunch of small communities sharing the same social environment and interaction which by definition is a society. This is important to distinguish because each small community of the collective needs a different kind of representative, which in the end is a GM or in some cases eventmin. People of another community will rarely agree with who YOU trust. Equally, you will feel frustrated when the "other" community gets a representative with the enablement of some sort. This is very human, cause it makes you feel misunderstood and unimportant or makes you fear that bias WILL happen, which can't ever be 100% avoided.

A bit of rambling of the minifight going on here, skipable:

Much like the "Perceived Activity of Admins", can't be judged by people, people will not be able to judge a person who would be able to take care of their needs if they do not have spend extensive time with that person, or atleast perceived them as reliable in some form. This also goes for Eventmins, or RPers. People can call some of them bad simply upon perceiving like a tiny fraction of what they do, hear it by word of mouth and almost always entirely out of context. 

Sometimes its simply a misunderstanding, we are writing most of the time no gestures or mimic to support a jest, People of different educational standards write. While some perceive a text as cold and brash and even an attack, it might just as well be a neutral stance and structured like an essay to emphasize that the matters are important to you. Others do not write essays but write with their heart on their tongue, try to joke in as cynical satire to the situation and again others are just not good at getting their points across without rambling (hi). 

None of these options are bad but its obvious that people usually tend to default to their own way to communicate and quickly misunderstand the intentions of the others text and taint it by their own perception of things which derails the conversation.
And sometimes the truth needs to be said, without covering and hiding behind flowery words. The overall situation of SL2 is ugly. Very, very ugly. We all know that and many people feel strongly about it one way or another without truly knowing what they want, only that things can't stay how they are. It doesn't help that the real world is being absolute bonkers at the moment too, and many have lots of stress that they carry into the community too, to unload one way or another. Some healthy others not so much and pick themselves some targets they can complain about just to have this feeling of unison and distract themselves from real issues and just vent. Many do not even mean it in an absolute 'evil' or 'malicious' way and simply ramble about their current discontent with something, a situation or a person in that moment. I feel most here acted pretty mature though and the past half-year or longer even in which I mostly silently follow the forum/discords shows that we all are more or less on the same page, we need to stop flailing around about everything that we don't like and focus on some of the positives, allow change to happen.

I like to call the communities of SL2 Dragons. They roar and spit fire all the time, but what they do whats the most unhealthy thing for the game, is that they hoard grudges like dragons do their treasures. As you local Shiva I think we all should simply...

Let it go... Which leads me back on topic. 

So with so many individuals forming different groups who all want a piece of the cake, understandably I am no different, how would we even go about Representatives?

Aside from many valid points that have already been made about structure (mods, for tiny things, isn't a difficult task and many of the community can do that.) What I think is most important on GMs is:
-1.) How mature they are, and able to communicate. Mostly with the already established team.

-2.) A bit diverse group that 'caters' to different communities a bit. Mostly to get more 'insight' and cover more interests.

-3.) The ability/willingness to be as fair and neutral as possible. That everyone has their favorites can't be avoided and if that's a danger in a specific situation, that specific GM has to step back and let others less involved ones take care.

-4.) Having a stable and strong personality, its a thankless job which ultimately will always earn you a more or less bad raputation, the more you show your face. Cause its impossible to always satisfy everyone, always. And people hold onto bad things much longer than good things. I have my personal gripes with Dyst for example, but I can assure you that she certainly isn't working with malicious intent and tries her best to make things right, that she sometimes steps on toes can't really be avoided. She is also just Human. Cut her some slack.

-5)I believe we should give people fair chances to try it out. The current team should decide if they are able to work with them, if they are capable of catering to at least some of the community and do not increase their workload unintentionally. No one starts as the perfect GM.

I agree that a change of structure with minor 'gms' or mods might be more useful in the long run. Let people work themselves into it and choose how much they CAN take care off. In theory the structure already exists unoffically with GMs splitting the work.


Another thing about transperency and the complaint thread. I think an offical open complaint thread shouldn't be a thing ever. It will explode and derail and a hell hole to manage. However, and old big online pen and paper community, I used to be very active in had a "Support" system.
Support-Cos (usally always atleast 2) were a social aspect of the Admin front, that specifically sat down with people that had some gripes with each other, privately only with the people involved. I used to be one of those and they technically function as Arbitrators between groups that had some beef, or were unhappy with a situation. Be in RP or OOC. They were the first instance to sort things out and try to find a concensus everyone was okay with, and only when that failed the actual GMs were taken in.
I know some of the GMs do it, which can be a lot. So maybe some people who specifically cover these things would lessen the load on the current GMs too and it would be transperant enough (for those involved) while avoiding emotional implodes. This also included problems with GMs.

Frankly. Most issues could be solved if we would swallow our pride sometimes and just talk it out, with someone neutral in between. It worked wonders in that game I used to play.