Introspective

I haven’t forgotten – I’ve been sick. In fact I still am. This damned cold/flu just won’t go the hell away. Anyhow – enough about me…

Building Blocks
I feel like there is giant gap in the membership. Maybe gap isn’t quite the word, but that’s all I can really equate it to. Let me explain:

There are three types of DJB member these days:

1 – The Newbie. This is a person who just joined, has joined fairly recently, or joined but isn’t all too active (at least not enough to know how things work in the DJB). These people ask a lot of questions, do a lot of things ‘wrong’ in the scope of the DJB procedure, but generally keep things interesting.

2 – The Sophomore. These people have been around long enough to know the rules and procedures. They follow them for the most part, and stay marginally active. These people answer a lot of questions, correct some mistakes made by newbies, and make the DJB machine function with their activity. Some of these people have contributed rather positively to the community, though there are quite a few troublemakers in the group.

3 – The Veteran. This is a broad range of members who are all too familiar with how things work in the DJB. They are divided in their activity, with some being inactive mostly and others picking up the slack. They tend to think they can get away with anything, and they’re usually right. These people are usually sarcastic, opinionated, a bit full of themselves, occasionally helpful but often can’t be bothered.

Sad to say but even I fall into the third category. This blog is solid proof. The part that truly annoys me about the third category has to be the “sarcastic, opinionated, a bit full of themselves” bit. These people tend to toot their own horn about how great they are for the DJB when in fact they haven’t done a damned thing. Some have done a couple good things and are playing those up as the greatest contribution to the club since the invention of the Internet.

With myself as an example – there are things I have done for the DJB, and there are things I continue to do for the DJB, that are shaping it into a better experience. You may not see my name attached to the memo or news post but doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing something on it. In this way I’m not quite like the stereotypical member presented in the third category. True – I have a bit of self-promotion here and there – but a lot of what I’ve done I haven’t really said anything about. That’s why there’s a huge article on the DJBWiki on me. Yeah – I’m there in the Influential Members section, and for a reason. I’m chock-full of ideas, and most of them never see the light of day because I tend to think well beyond my own capabilities. Depending on other people is probably the worst thing I do, especially when I trust them to follow my vision without doing much follow up.

Another rather particularly disturbing fact in my representation of the third category is when people are looking for help but the vets can’t be bothered. I saw some newbie say they aren’t going to bother with one of the key pillars of activity because no one would help him understand it better. It should NEVER come to this. Sure – some people are borderline retarded at reading the simple rules, but even still there are factors to consider, such as language and educational barriers.

There are notable exceptions to these categories, though their kind is few and far between. There is hope, however. If people change their attitudes a little, the health of the club could be improved. In a perfect world, the whole club would be full of #2’s... For now, 1’s need to strive to become 2’s, and 3’s need to re-evaluate their reasons for being here.

Myself included.

Spreading Thin
A lot of why the vets become so jaded is what I’m experiencing now – I’m nearly spreading myself a bit too thin. From Real Life interests to inter-club dealings I feel like I’m doing a lot without the time to spare. So far in just the DJB I’m:

- Administrator of the Forums
This might not sound like much, but just think: any time there is any change in leadership, I have to manually change their status around on the forums. Anytime someone wants any change there, I’m the one to do it. I'm the one often editing people's posts for spelling or grammar, or just flat out deleting messages that are really pointless. My editing doesn't leave a trace, and I don't keep track of what I do, but I'm usually fixing a handful of posts a day.

- Administrator of the DJB Wiki
Again, might not sound like much, but I’m heading up the newly formed Tribune. We’re supposed to expand the rules, templates and general ‘help’ files. I need to get a dependable staff assembled soon. I know a few people I want on it, mostly for their current level of dedication. I'll have to work more on this later this week.

- Advisor to the DC
This is unofficial, but rather an often occurrence. Some members of the DC include me in their conversations, asking my opinion on a range of topics. Not really all too time consuming, though I tend to throw in my 75 cents worth. Recently one topic was on education of the membership in an area I'm rather familiar with. It was a simple proposal offered, but what I had to say about it begged for the course to be expanded into a series of courses. Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen.

Outside of that there’s a host of RL things I’m trying to keep on top of. Work consumes 45 hours of my week. Sleep begs for 56 but is lucky to get 48. Time with the dogs and my wife kills about 35. That leaves me with about 4 and a half hours a day on average to do EVERYTHING else, including play games (either alone or with friends), work on DJB stuff, talk to internet friends, or look into some of my other interests like all those swords I collect or the latest “Weird Al” news.

Luckily a lot of my time at work seems to be relaxed on an average day, allowing me to do some of this while I’m supposed to be working. This blog entry? I’m typing it at work. A vast majority of my personal-interest research? I check things at work. Most DJB Forum administration? You guessed it.

My point here is that I do make an effort to devote the time, but when it comes down to using this little time I have to do the stuff that newbies want, I’ll get frustrated. I’ll ignore people or act a bit irrational because I’m just not in the mood to deal with things that other people are supposed to be doing. I know this is a flaw of mine, and I’m quite sure it’s one that others share.

It’s half the reason I stopped being HRLD. I didn’t have the time to devote to the DJB. I’m finding that I’m slowly getting back to that point.

Reflections

In an update from last time, the people are listening, and I thank them for their support.

Today is the anniversary of a dark day for Americans, and the tension of the subject is what I wish to avoid. Instead I'll discuss another upcoming rememberance, a subject that has a tad more relevance for this blog. As we approach the one-year anniversary of my leave from the Dark Council, I find that a lot of the same problems that plagued the leadership still exist.

Respect

Respect is something that is truly lacking in the club. Written personal attacks are on the rise, with influential members getting harassed on a daily basis. I’ll admit this is nothing new… I received the same treatment for nearly all of my time as Herald – but it is inexcusable. I’m hoping that the now released wiki project will help form the realization that these high ranking members, the same ones who people are criticizing about ‘resting on their ranks’, have done or are doing more for the club than many others.

On the contrary there is also something to be said about humility. Those that lack the mental constitution to keep their accomplishments low-key are just asking to be ridiculed. I know I have bolstered myself up as being something great, but my occasional outburst is nothing compared to the constant showboating that may spark the hatred of others.

There is not much I can do to change the minds on either side. I think people need to just drop the subject on both sides. The problems are rather trivial, and there’s no need to make it personal.

On another note, I find that a lot of the problem with respect in the Brotherhood comes from either the lack of information provided or the abundance. If a Council member has a large project they’re working on, one that they know is going to take a long time, they usually keep it quiet. If this secret project consumes so much of their time that they have very little room for anything else, they are accused of “doing nothing” and the torches and pitchforks come out as the masses demand the Council member’s removal.

At times a large project is announced in the beginning stages, and the Council member underestimates the timeframe. This leads to missed or extended deadlines, or a prolonged period of time between updates that were not anticipated. Again they are accused of “doing nothing” and the torches and pitchforks come out as the masses demand the Council member’s removal.

During both of these times it’s common for the DC to get blasted with trivial criticism, but such is often from people who talk big but fail to produce. Plainly put – if you say you can do better, prove it. Don’t complain about how things are – improve them. Unless you’re doing that, keep your negative, non-constructive criticism to yourself.

Responsibility

Even though I’m not directly in charge I have just as much responsibility and overall power as I did when I was on the Council. Up until recently I was working directly for the Grand Master, carrying out whatever tasks he thought fit to give me. Now that I’m part of the SCL office I have an elevated state of responsibility, and the impact was rather insignificant to me until recently, when it was pretty much thrown in my face that people expect me to be some sort of leader. Two instances really brought me to the state of understanding: One on IRC and one in the Forums/IRC.

The first I mentioned last time. Having OPS means you’re in charge. Now I really understand what impact that has, even if people view me as some sort of joke.

The second comes from … well it’s in relation to what I was saying earlier. If you’re always seen strutting your stuff, people will eventually react negatively. This is exactly what happened, and though the victim’s backlash against me wasn’t appropriate it was understandable. Truth is – not everyone gets along. If they leave it private it’s none of my concern. If someone decides to take the arguments public, then it is my problem.

The remarks against this person were uncalled for, but whining about it was also rather immature. Asking politely to have something removed would have been received a lot better than going off on me in some sort of emotional tantrum.

Podcasting

The entry of ‘Words’ you’re reading was supposed to be my first podcast version of this commentary, but I just can’t bring myself to record my own voice. Aside from that the subject matter in this entry isn’t one I want to record as the first. I don’t want it to start off with me complaining about the club as a whole.

Plus, Blogger doesn’t have built in podcast file support, and I’m not about to use my personal bandwidth to host a file. Perhaps I’ll make one anyhow… but that is to be determined later.

Is This Thing On?

It doesn't matter where I say something - I feel like people aren't listening.

IRC
I try to be there as much as I can, though it seems like my time there is somewhat wasted. Sure I'll get into a good round of shooting the bullshit and hell I might even enjoy it, but it seems like there's just so much dead time there. Everyone is always "quiet" or "away". If people DO talk it's usually just sarcasm or general crap. I'm not saying I'm innocent. I'm well known for my bizarre interjections, but there needs to be more of a purpose to this communication. Meetings seem to be a thing of the past, though in hindsight I don't really see their purpose after the inital establishing of the DJB as its own entity, free of the chains of the EH.

This brings up another point that's kind of pissing me off lately. An incident came up with someone being a real jerk in the main channel. I have ops there, but I'm not sure what I can and can't do. Some say I just shouldn't have ops because I didn't really do anything. These are the same people who didn't really ASK me to do anything.

I was watching the conversation and though he was saying some pretty frustrating stuff he wasn't flat out attacking people until much later into his rant - which is where I stepped in. The majority of his bullshit fell under the general concept of Free Speech. He could say all he wants about how he felt on a situation as long as he wasn't offending someone (in the channel) directly. People might have been uncomfortable but they had every right to speak up as well. I'm aware he needs to be banned now, and I'll take that into consideration in the future.

Wiki!
Guess what? This was the Secret Project I've been working on for a couple months now. I hope you all enjoy the framework I helped build. Overall I made something like 250 unique articles, though I'll admit most of them are 'stubs' or tiny, somewhat insignificant articles that hold very little data. However, they were very important since they included nearly all the Acronyms in the Acronym category, all the Ranks, and a restructure of all the charinfo box templates.

I'm glad this is public now only so that I'm not the among only few people adding crap to the pages. The frustrating part for me (up until I created the Getting Started guide) was trying to get people to conform to the structure I was trying to put in place.

One specific person was being kind of a jackass about it, so I had to enforce my power. I hate doing that. I want people to have fun with this stuff - not shy away from it because they might get yelled at. Still - push my buttons and you'll get it back much worse.

Forums
I've posted a few topics lately - some in the DC only area - that have received zero responses. I swear, it's times like this when I wonder why the hell I bother writing anything down. I also threw an e-mail out to the Summits asking about their GJW stuff but again, no reply at all.

All in all the Forums stuff is going along nicely. The reconstruction is done for now, the Trash Can was cleared, Briana's Bar was reset and I can't think of any more I could do aside from clear the Spam Boards.

This Blog Thing
I haven't checked today but I don't recall seeing any comments. This makes me wonder if I'm the only one reading this thing. I imagine there's like 3 people... Oh well. If anything they can use this when I'm gone to show how active I really was as a DP.