[WaifuApple]

For starters, I would like to apologise for the GM-based chaos in the forums and the part I may have played in it. The timing with two seperate bans and all probably put sour taste in a few people's mouths from the inside and caused me no end of stress thinking I'd made people mad / frustrated / question my allegiances or something like that. The people around me (and those in the general server for a little) can probably attest to my internal panic when that thread of mine was suddenly swarmed on, I didn't expect such a quick, active response there.

(I'd like to also apologize for the amount I go visible and invisible in any logs of commands I run as an eventmin out of sheer paranoia that the game spawned me in visible to the world again, that still terrifies me, but alas-)

I can't entirely say whether or not things are truly going to look up from here, because at current everything is just words on a screen, but I'd like to be confident from it all that things will translate well to action. Talking enough with Balthie and such has given me at least the confidence that there are good intentions, since people haven't entirely been sure on that. I was in no doubt that the GM team communicates with one another and such, since things would be notably different in ways I'd be able to predict somewhat otherwise.

Truth be told, many cases of harassment in this game have started based on one person doing something questionable (that likely should have been reported) and people not being comfortable with / not trusting the GMs to actually do anything about it, which in turn would lead to them instead taking to a more... toxic behaviour to those individuals, which would then spread. In sense, it was a problem that allowed itself to breed. Usually, talking to a member of the community about the person they're harassing will bring up this context and a whole list of things that have happened. It's usually not malicious, as such, just the only way people take to dealing with people they've been given a reason not to like. Uncivil and all, sure, though. As such, I feel there may ALWAYS be a bit of a need to explore deeper. See what the reason for this harassment is. You should probably still punish the harasser, but you might also find a rabbit hole deeper that probably shouldn't go unpunished either, just because nobody told you. Rarely ever black or white enough otherwise. Be careful with how you proceed in that regard.

Now, there is not much else I can point out, except the mention of future GMs and needing to make sure whoever we get is a good fit for the role. I would like to refer to what I saw back from Slydria about not having an idea on who to suggest (and their ensuing suggestion at what it was.) You as GMs have, until recently, admittedly seemed quite hands off towards a good chunk of the community, so I'm sure people will be worried in that part about only considering the needs of certain sides of the community purely because that's who you know closely (and therefore actually have any reason to suggest). Sounds like an accusation of bias, I know... but trust me I'm not trying to accuse you of anything that isn't inherently just normal.

For this reason, I'd want to suggest hearing out the wider community for suggestions on who THEY think would be good. Ultimately the GM team and Dev get the final say and all that such, but it will at least give people a sense of feeling that they have some say over who they feel they can trust to look over them. Some names might come up more often than others in different bigger circles, as usual, but it's not entirely about being a popularity contest, and more about just getting those names out there to be considered if they might otherwise be overlooked!

All this aside, I would like to extend my thank you for what was a rapid shoot from post of concern wanting changes and for things to be different, to a post with information, clarification, and ideas on what we can expect to come. I will admit when I made that post I expected either a firestorm, for things to get ignored, or something other. I know, not the most positive outlook, yeah, yeah-

But hey, it does mean I get to be even more impressed about being proven wrong so quickly and with such an amount of expressiveness, too. It's been a lot more word from you guys than anyone can attest to being used to, so I hope we get to hear more in the way of communication in future. I'll be interested in seeing how the heck you pull off a newsletter, especially in months where not much might be going on.

Think at some point it was mused that the event team wanted to do one too, so if there's not much content for that, could always saddle us along with you for that part, heh- (you don't have to it was just an idea, it might be a terrible idea)