Addendum to: PISSED THE FUCK OFF
Right, so I ended up emailing back and forth with sinful_caesar ... I figured you might be interested in reading how the convo went...
I'm in blue, she's in red, BTW
Hokay, so I know you told Nicole that you were gonna email me, but color me proactive, I decided to email you first [g]
I read your convo with Nicole, so I know all that...
I know you think that I made the_chenzel_hub and chenzel_monthly because I was mad at you, but that's only partly true. Yes, I was pissed as hell at you, but I'd been thinking about making the comms for a while already.
The way you ran (can't say run, since you just changed the rules) chenzel_love I think was very good -- if there was another, more open Chenzel community. That's why I made the hub. A lot of people, I know, want a place where they can talk about Idina and Kristin as seperate people, or where they can post Kris gettin' it on with Michelle or whatever. A place where they can focus on other pairings, while still keeping a Chenzel core. But a lot of other people want a place like chenzel_love, where it's *just* Chenzel. Where they don't have to be "spammed" by Idina alone or Kristin alone, or them with other people.
It's all in their personal preference. And I think there should be a community for both. That's why I made the hub, as a counterpart to chenzel_love.
As for chenzel_monthly... that one was suggested to me, that there be a Chenzel challenge comm. I thought the idea was good, and as I said above, color me proactive... once something is suggested to me, I have to do it, so I did.
I would really, really love for the hub, chenzel_monthly and chenzel_love to be sister comms. I think the three really complement each other.
Nic
Hey thanks for emailing me! Good to get this all out in the open in a nice, civilized manner. I myself certainly never knew all this kerfuffle was going to happen, or that things were going to go this far, so I'm happy to see we're gonna find a way to calm all this down before it eclipses the fun we're supposed to be having. :o)
Can I ask one very important thing of you though? It's something that I've done while approaching your email and so I'm hoping you'll do the same for me or else we'll get nowhere. Please let's not villiafy one another anymore. I'm not out to be power hungry or to personally attack you in any way and am writing you this in totally in a tone of peacefulness, so I do hope you receive it that way. I know that you were or are angry with me, but I'm hoping you'll see me more as a person making decisions based on the group as a whole and what everyone wants, and not as a power hungry bitch who you have to spend so much energy hating. Because seriously, I'm thinking you're like me and have way better things to be spending your time on then being angry. Okay, let's go to it.
I figured you had made the three new communites as a reaction to my asking you and Nicole to put a cut on your story, mainly because of the timing of when you made them. Like I said in my post, I've been a mod for a while now and been on livejournal just in general for 6 yrs (I had a different journal before this one if you go to check my date of creation) so I have seen this kind of thing before. Someone creating a new community as an angry reaction to a mod's decision is common so I wasn't surprised by it.
After thinking about what's happened, and talking to a cross section of people within the community, and this is an important thing to remember, that I must consider everyone within the group, I shifted the rules so more things could be included. The main one about non Chenzel stories hadnt been an issue until you and Nicole wrote your fic (which, even though I told Nicole this and I knew you would read it, I want to tell you personally I think you did an excellent job on. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it!) As you now know from reading my conversation with Nicole, I asked for the cut tag because of how I had applied the rule to myself about non-Chenzel fics, and I mean totally non-Chenzel like how your story ended and like where my series was heading, that they had to be posted off-community. It was a rule, I believe, that was decided by the community at the time, so I was going with that, especially because there was no warning that the story had non-Chenzel elements in it.
You must have noticed though, even though you were so very angered by my asking you both to do this, that I tried to ask in the nicest way possible. I didnt want to demand anything, or be bitchy about it, I was just trying to impose this old rule. And like you know from reading my conversation with Nicole, her and I both realized that a disclaimer on the story would have been enough. That, in fact, that is always enough for stories with Chenzel and non-Chenzel pairings, so the reader knows what to expect. It's a real shame there was ever any confusion about that.
As for the other posts of yours that you had issues over me saying something to, I dont know if you'd like to talk to me about those or not, but I'm just gonna say alil something quickly so you know it wasnt a personal thing, and so you know what happened. Firstly, you have every right to say whatever you want on your own livejournal, that's what you have it for, but you must know that if you make a post public where you say things of a cruel nature about someone that they can read it. Now I'm no fool, I knew you all weren't singing my praises. But you ask can anyone, I have never spoken one bad word about you or anyone else in the chenzel community to anyone online, publically or privately. Its a hurtful thing to do, and yes of course, when people get angry they totally need to vent, I know all about that. But I'm hoping next time you need to vent you maybe email me and say "Hey! What the hell!" and let me explain before assuming things about my actions and character. And even after reading what you said, I still get that you were angry and confused, so I'm willing to push past my own intial reaction of being defensive and know that that was a rant, and not meant for my eyes even though it was posted publically. What I am hoping to do after reading that though is explain to you what you where assuming were bitchy or god-like actions on my part as being my attempt at keeping rules that the community had run on before, and see that I'm now willing to adapt the rules to the changing population of the community. Maybe through me doing this you'll see that your assumptions about me where incorrect. If not, that's alright, but at least I'll know that I explained these things to you and you'll have all the information, both sides of the story if you will, like I now have from you.
Okay, what was with my concern with when you made the video requesting post. I'm alil gun shy with that because of previous experiences with my friends and my girlfriends who mod big communities and from being on wicked comms for the last 3 yrs. Let me explain-- LJ abuse is like a dog with a bone, when they found out no age verfication was being done on vintage_sex, the 6000 member community my girlfriend mods, the community has to now do an age verification process where every single person has to send in an email to my girlfriend saying their legal age, and then list it on their user info and she has to check it each person. She gets at least a dozen people a day on there signing up. Obviously nothing like that would never happen to chenzel_love, mainly because we dont post full frontal nudity or have 6000 people on it, but its an example of how far LJ abuse will take things. As for the video thing, its actually a total paranoia. You were right to be peeved I'll admit that, and this is where if you coulda emailed me and talked to me about it, it would have helped. I could have told you how the first year on wicked_fanfic they would kick you out if you had a screencap from one of the bootlegs from wicked. That's how anal they were about videos on there. You know in my post where I mentioned being run outta comms for wanting Dee and Kris together? That was one of them. There were some people on there who were, well, less than supportive when a friend of mine wrote her first IdiKris story and posted it there, and that's what made me realize we needed a comm of our own. So hence my phobia with the video thing. But, its bullshit, because with youtube everything is avaliable to us now, like everything (i think, i have all my stuff downloaded so i dont look very often, but when i have i've been like 'why do i have anything on my harddrive!')
To make peace with you over the video thing, if you come onto AIM I have a vast wicked collection and I love giving it away. I think the trade list stuff is crap, so all you haveta do is ask. So you can totally ask me for stuff. And this is what I mean too, you shouldnt be mad at me, I'm a good person to know! I like helping people and sharing and chatting and reading fic, so let's stop with the angry. :o)
I can't exactly remember what else you were upset with me about, I know Nicole mentioned that you and her thought that my Idina/Taye rumours/Krisitn in NYC fic inspiration post wasnt Chenzel enough, and that you wanted to be able to post about them seperately, now you can see I switched up the rules to include that. pinksummerrain asked me about something kinda similar to that a couple of weeks ago, and i was thinking about it myself because of how lazy I get with checking glitter sometimes in regards to uncoming appearances, what have you, so its a nice lil thing to have added on. I just wanted you to see that the way you were assuming things and me to be wasn't necessarily how it was. I wanted you to see that this is an open community, that I am willing to have changes and input, and that I'm here to be interacted with.
I wish you all the luck on your new communities. Here's where I am at with what you've done with them. The one community, the one thats not for challenges, I think what you wanted to have happen on there is happening on chenzel_love now. And with the challenges one, it's so bad that this kerfuffle happened, because now there are these other communities that feel, to me, at odds with all the work I've done on chenzel_love.
Please, and I'm hoping that you're able to see that I'm not trying to be mean and that I'm being cool here, take this the way I mean this which is in the kindest of ways. I can't do the sister community thing with you mainly because I'd feel obliged to do it with femslash100, or saffic or flickacross or all of the other great fic journals and communities where I know the mod. It'd definitely be a case of if I did it for one person I'd haveta do it for everyone, to be fair, and when you have 175+ people on your friends of list you just can't do that on the comms you mod. As for the promoting, I wouldnt feel right about you advertising the non-challenge Chenzel community, chenzel_hub is it? I'm not gonna be a Nazi about it, obviously, I dont want you all to see me as this evil awful demon whose trying to ruin everything, so if you insist on the crossposting references and stuff I won't be able to stop you, but its a community with the exact same intent as chenzel_love, and promoting it on there would be basically taking all the work I've done over the last year, gathering people and writers and graphic makers and readers from all over and all the other mod work on that comm in general and using it as an easy way to find your target audience. On LJ that's an act of disrespect to the community and mod, so that I can't swallow. Like I said, this isnt me being mean, this is me being protective of the work I've done, and the people who've gathered together on chenzel_love. More than anything I'm encouraging us all as a group to stay together and find a way to work through our differences and find solutions which I think we have with the new rules being what you asked for and what you have on your own community. As for the challenges community, I cant wait to read the results of the challenges, so of course, people are more than welcome to post their stories on chenzel_love if they'd like the wider readership to take it in. The promotion of the community is already kinda done, that post was up there for days. I took down that post because I knew you had made the communities out of spite against me, and that's not what I wanted to see when I came back from that weekend. But I've stuck to that decision because there are so, so, SO many comms out there that become overrun with promoting that alot of the times people won't join if they come and see nothing but promotion posts. In fact if you look at most comms' rules, most say no promoting. I didnt have it on the chenzel_love user info page mainly because in smaller comms its an assumed politeness thing to ask before doing it, and I hadnt updated to include the rule since the comm got so big.
The spirit in which you created these comms has left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth and it's gonna take me awhile to be okay with them, I have to admit. But I'm hoping that you and I both can get over our assumptions of one another and realize that we're both not out to destory one another's communities or each other, while also respecting the other and the work we've done. I'm going to keep this in mind while interacting with you from now on, and I hope you do the same for me. Above all, let's not allow our anger get the best of us.
Okay, that's it. I hope I explained myself enough, I know this was long but I wanted to make sure you knew exactly what was going on. If you have any other questions you wanna ask, please do. I'm hoping that because I extending some olive branches to you, that you'll be okay in responding back.
Thanks again for emailing,
Chelsea.
Jumping right in, here are the issues I have with your
reply to my email.
To reiterate a point from my previous email, chenzel_monthly was created on a suggestion, so there could be a place focused on Chenzel challenges, where the challenges and replies to the challenges wouldn't get lost in the hubbub of a general community, like chenzel_love. the_chenzel_hub was created as a response to the fact that there was no leniency on posts that did not include both Idina and Kristin.
I love chenzel_love, and totally respect what you've done with it, building a community like that from the ground up, and I love being a part of chenzel_love, but the fact is, you didn't create Chenzel, just the first community focused on it. There are other aspects of Chenzel outside of your own opinion, and it's impossible to be at the whim of your discretion when something is okay until suddenly it's not.
For example, graphics of just Kristin or just Idina were removed, but in the exact same post that you said they weren't allowed, you posted pictures of Kristin alone and Idina with Taye, with wishful thinking of what they *might* be thinking about each other. That doesn't even constitute a rumour.
People are having fun on chenzel_love, I realize that, and I'm not trying to take away from that or threaten you with a new community; I'm simply trying to offer a wider variety of ways to to enjoy Chenzel without offending the original community, since it's obviously stringent in content.
I also think it would be silly for chenzel_love to be a sister community with a community like femslash100 because it's competely broad in its topic, whereas chenzel_monthly is strictly Chenzel, so really, there's no comparison.
Also, the_chenzel_hub does not have the same intent as chenzel_love, its intent is to be more broad.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, "There were some people on there who were, well, less than supportive when a friend of mine wrote her first IdiKris story and posted it there, and that's what made me realize we needed a comm of our own."
Quite obviously, I know what it feels like to have a friend's (and my own) work unsupported and you did the exact same thing I'm doing now, in creating a place that could be more open to the idea of Idina and Kristin as separate people, who can have separate relationships, but with Chenzel at the heart of it.
The fact that there is inconsistency with how chenzel_love is being run and there was no way to find out if something wasn't okay until it was posted and deleted, bothers me. To post about it on the community would be inappropriate, and yet, there was no email address to contact you at.
Nic
I haveta say your response saddens me alot. It was not what I was expecting at all.
I have a feeling we could go back and forth with this for a really long time, and not get anything resolved. I've got to stick by what has already been said in my email. I've taken alot of things into consideration, and the community rules are open as you and others asked them to be, so I never once was trying to be controling or unreasonable.
I can't be a part of any continual back and forth, it's taking up too much energy and yielding no viable results between us. So I'm gonna stand by my intial statements, if any of them offended that was not my intent. I don't know what else to tell you. Your two major concerns were answered. I did what you asked and adjusted the rules accordingly. My unwillingness to promote communities is justifable, a common LJ practice. I even went beyond that and explained my actions for the three times I asked you to check your content under the old rules, which is something most mods on LJ won't do. But I can't spend every day explaining everything I do, not with you so on the defense and so ready to pick apart everything I say. I asked that you approach me the way I approached you in that email, with an open mind and all I got was a list of more things I was to explain to you. Obviously, we can't really go much further than this. But I am starting to think that no matter what I do, only being totally submissive to whatever you want will make this concern go away, and that's just not fair, not to everyone else on the community or to me.
If you're as unhappy with the chenzel_love community as you seem to be, then maybe some time away from it would be good for you. I'd like for you to be apart of it, that's been my goal through all of this. I, as a mod, have always hated the thought of banning people, and that's why no one's ever been banned from chenzel_love or any of the communities, or even from any of my boards or mailinglists I've run over my 13 yrs online. So I'm gonna do here what I've had to do in the handful of times in the past when a situation hasn't had a resolvable end, and say you're still welcome if you respect the community. I'd suggest focusing all this energy on something else, your new communities, your fanfiction. Directing it all towards me is producing nothing good.
I am personally very sorry this wasn't a resolvable problem, and even though I'm think you don't believe anything I say at this point, I mean this. I have no idea how you got to this point of upset, but I'm hoping now that you have your own community to control and do with what you like you'll be able to have a better sense of peace.
I don't know what you plan to do at this point. Please do keep in mind, that in chenzel_love, even though you might not respect me, as a community member you must respect all the others and the rules we've agreed upon. If you feel like you don't want to do this, no one is forcing you to stay in a bad situation, least of all me. But I won't allow you to use my community as a sounding board for any issues you have personally against me. So please make sure your posts are respectful.
I'm considering this as resolved as it's going to be, so I wish you good luck on your endeavours and again I'll say sorry we weren't able to find a sense of resolution. Maybe in the future. But as for now, this is all the time I'm gonna spend on this.
I must agree, we seem to be going in circles. I'm sorry you feel that we can't work this out, but may I simply say that perhaps we would have an easier time if you did not assume to know my motives, as your emails have suggested. I must also point out, to set the record straight, that I never once asked your to change the rules of chenzel_love, and I never wanted you to. I wanted the rules to be more clearly defined, that's it.
If you wish to continue contact, my inbox is open, so to speak. If not... I supposed I can simply wish you well, and hope that my apparent offense of your sensibilities does not affect how we both behave on chenzel_love.
Nic
So? What's the verdict? [g] What do you all think about it?
I'm in blue, she's in red, BTW
Hokay, so I know you told Nicole that you were gonna email me, but color me proactive, I decided to email you first [g]
I read your convo with Nicole, so I know all that...
I know you think that I made the_chenzel_hub and chenzel_monthly because I was mad at you, but that's only partly true. Yes, I was pissed as hell at you, but I'd been thinking about making the comms for a while already.
The way you ran (can't say run, since you just changed the rules) chenzel_love I think was very good -- if there was another, more open Chenzel community. That's why I made the hub. A lot of people, I know, want a place where they can talk about Idina and Kristin as seperate people, or where they can post Kris gettin' it on with Michelle or whatever. A place where they can focus on other pairings, while still keeping a Chenzel core. But a lot of other people want a place like chenzel_love, where it's *just* Chenzel. Where they don't have to be "spammed" by Idina alone or Kristin alone, or them with other people.
It's all in their personal preference. And I think there should be a community for both. That's why I made the hub, as a counterpart to chenzel_love.
As for chenzel_monthly... that one was suggested to me, that there be a Chenzel challenge comm. I thought the idea was good, and as I said above, color me proactive... once something is suggested to me, I have to do it, so I did.
I would really, really love for the hub, chenzel_monthly and chenzel_love to be sister comms. I think the three really complement each other.
Nic
Hey thanks for emailing me! Good to get this all out in the open in a nice, civilized manner. I myself certainly never knew all this kerfuffle was going to happen, or that things were going to go this far, so I'm happy to see we're gonna find a way to calm all this down before it eclipses the fun we're supposed to be having. :o)
Can I ask one very important thing of you though? It's something that I've done while approaching your email and so I'm hoping you'll do the same for me or else we'll get nowhere. Please let's not villiafy one another anymore. I'm not out to be power hungry or to personally attack you in any way and am writing you this in totally in a tone of peacefulness, so I do hope you receive it that way. I know that you were or are angry with me, but I'm hoping you'll see me more as a person making decisions based on the group as a whole and what everyone wants, and not as a power hungry bitch who you have to spend so much energy hating. Because seriously, I'm thinking you're like me and have way better things to be spending your time on then being angry. Okay, let's go to it.
I figured you had made the three new communites as a reaction to my asking you and Nicole to put a cut on your story, mainly because of the timing of when you made them. Like I said in my post, I've been a mod for a while now and been on livejournal just in general for 6 yrs (I had a different journal before this one if you go to check my date of creation) so I have seen this kind of thing before. Someone creating a new community as an angry reaction to a mod's decision is common so I wasn't surprised by it.
After thinking about what's happened, and talking to a cross section of people within the community, and this is an important thing to remember, that I must consider everyone within the group, I shifted the rules so more things could be included. The main one about non Chenzel stories hadnt been an issue until you and Nicole wrote your fic (which, even though I told Nicole this and I knew you would read it, I want to tell you personally I think you did an excellent job on. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it!) As you now know from reading my conversation with Nicole, I asked for the cut tag because of how I had applied the rule to myself about non-Chenzel fics, and I mean totally non-Chenzel like how your story ended and like where my series was heading, that they had to be posted off-community. It was a rule, I believe, that was decided by the community at the time, so I was going with that, especially because there was no warning that the story had non-Chenzel elements in it.
You must have noticed though, even though you were so very angered by my asking you both to do this, that I tried to ask in the nicest way possible. I didnt want to demand anything, or be bitchy about it, I was just trying to impose this old rule. And like you know from reading my conversation with Nicole, her and I both realized that a disclaimer on the story would have been enough. That, in fact, that is always enough for stories with Chenzel and non-Chenzel pairings, so the reader knows what to expect. It's a real shame there was ever any confusion about that.
As for the other posts of yours that you had issues over me saying something to, I dont know if you'd like to talk to me about those or not, but I'm just gonna say alil something quickly so you know it wasnt a personal thing, and so you know what happened. Firstly, you have every right to say whatever you want on your own livejournal, that's what you have it for, but you must know that if you make a post public where you say things of a cruel nature about someone that they can read it. Now I'm no fool, I knew you all weren't singing my praises. But you ask can anyone, I have never spoken one bad word about you or anyone else in the chenzel community to anyone online, publically or privately. Its a hurtful thing to do, and yes of course, when people get angry they totally need to vent, I know all about that. But I'm hoping next time you need to vent you maybe email me and say "Hey! What the hell!" and let me explain before assuming things about my actions and character. And even after reading what you said, I still get that you were angry and confused, so I'm willing to push past my own intial reaction of being defensive and know that that was a rant, and not meant for my eyes even though it was posted publically. What I am hoping to do after reading that though is explain to you what you where assuming were bitchy or god-like actions on my part as being my attempt at keeping rules that the community had run on before, and see that I'm now willing to adapt the rules to the changing population of the community. Maybe through me doing this you'll see that your assumptions about me where incorrect. If not, that's alright, but at least I'll know that I explained these things to you and you'll have all the information, both sides of the story if you will, like I now have from you.
Okay, what was with my concern with when you made the video requesting post. I'm alil gun shy with that because of previous experiences with my friends and my girlfriends who mod big communities and from being on wicked comms for the last 3 yrs. Let me explain-- LJ abuse is like a dog with a bone, when they found out no age verfication was being done on vintage_sex, the 6000 member community my girlfriend mods, the community has to now do an age verification process where every single person has to send in an email to my girlfriend saying their legal age, and then list it on their user info and she has to check it each person. She gets at least a dozen people a day on there signing up. Obviously nothing like that would never happen to chenzel_love, mainly because we dont post full frontal nudity or have 6000 people on it, but its an example of how far LJ abuse will take things. As for the video thing, its actually a total paranoia. You were right to be peeved I'll admit that, and this is where if you coulda emailed me and talked to me about it, it would have helped. I could have told you how the first year on wicked_fanfic they would kick you out if you had a screencap from one of the bootlegs from wicked. That's how anal they were about videos on there. You know in my post where I mentioned being run outta comms for wanting Dee and Kris together? That was one of them. There were some people on there who were, well, less than supportive when a friend of mine wrote her first IdiKris story and posted it there, and that's what made me realize we needed a comm of our own. So hence my phobia with the video thing. But, its bullshit, because with youtube everything is avaliable to us now, like everything (i think, i have all my stuff downloaded so i dont look very often, but when i have i've been like 'why do i have anything on my harddrive!')
To make peace with you over the video thing, if you come onto AIM I have a vast wicked collection and I love giving it away. I think the trade list stuff is crap, so all you haveta do is ask. So you can totally ask me for stuff. And this is what I mean too, you shouldnt be mad at me, I'm a good person to know! I like helping people and sharing and chatting and reading fic, so let's stop with the angry. :o)
I can't exactly remember what else you were upset with me about, I know Nicole mentioned that you and her thought that my Idina/Taye rumours/Krisitn in NYC fic inspiration post wasnt Chenzel enough, and that you wanted to be able to post about them seperately, now you can see I switched up the rules to include that. pinksummerrain asked me about something kinda similar to that a couple of weeks ago, and i was thinking about it myself because of how lazy I get with checking glitter sometimes in regards to uncoming appearances, what have you, so its a nice lil thing to have added on. I just wanted you to see that the way you were assuming things and me to be wasn't necessarily how it was. I wanted you to see that this is an open community, that I am willing to have changes and input, and that I'm here to be interacted with.
I wish you all the luck on your new communities. Here's where I am at with what you've done with them. The one community, the one thats not for challenges, I think what you wanted to have happen on there is happening on chenzel_love now. And with the challenges one, it's so bad that this kerfuffle happened, because now there are these other communities that feel, to me, at odds with all the work I've done on chenzel_love.
Please, and I'm hoping that you're able to see that I'm not trying to be mean and that I'm being cool here, take this the way I mean this which is in the kindest of ways. I can't do the sister community thing with you mainly because I'd feel obliged to do it with femslash100, or saffic or flickacross or all of the other great fic journals and communities where I know the mod. It'd definitely be a case of if I did it for one person I'd haveta do it for everyone, to be fair, and when you have 175+ people on your friends of list you just can't do that on the comms you mod. As for the promoting, I wouldnt feel right about you advertising the non-challenge Chenzel community, chenzel_hub is it? I'm not gonna be a Nazi about it, obviously, I dont want you all to see me as this evil awful demon whose trying to ruin everything, so if you insist on the crossposting references and stuff I won't be able to stop you, but its a community with the exact same intent as chenzel_love, and promoting it on there would be basically taking all the work I've done over the last year, gathering people and writers and graphic makers and readers from all over and all the other mod work on that comm in general and using it as an easy way to find your target audience. On LJ that's an act of disrespect to the community and mod, so that I can't swallow. Like I said, this isnt me being mean, this is me being protective of the work I've done, and the people who've gathered together on chenzel_love. More than anything I'm encouraging us all as a group to stay together and find a way to work through our differences and find solutions which I think we have with the new rules being what you asked for and what you have on your own community. As for the challenges community, I cant wait to read the results of the challenges, so of course, people are more than welcome to post their stories on chenzel_love if they'd like the wider readership to take it in. The promotion of the community is already kinda done, that post was up there for days. I took down that post because I knew you had made the communities out of spite against me, and that's not what I wanted to see when I came back from that weekend. But I've stuck to that decision because there are so, so, SO many comms out there that become overrun with promoting that alot of the times people won't join if they come and see nothing but promotion posts. In fact if you look at most comms' rules, most say no promoting. I didnt have it on the chenzel_love user info page mainly because in smaller comms its an assumed politeness thing to ask before doing it, and I hadnt updated to include the rule since the comm got so big.
The spirit in which you created these comms has left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth and it's gonna take me awhile to be okay with them, I have to admit. But I'm hoping that you and I both can get over our assumptions of one another and realize that we're both not out to destory one another's communities or each other, while also respecting the other and the work we've done. I'm going to keep this in mind while interacting with you from now on, and I hope you do the same for me. Above all, let's not allow our anger get the best of us.
Okay, that's it. I hope I explained myself enough, I know this was long but I wanted to make sure you knew exactly what was going on. If you have any other questions you wanna ask, please do. I'm hoping that because I extending some olive branches to you, that you'll be okay in responding back.
Thanks again for emailing,
Chelsea.
Jumping right in, here are the issues I have with your
reply to my email.
To reiterate a point from my previous email, chenzel_monthly was created on a suggestion, so there could be a place focused on Chenzel challenges, where the challenges and replies to the challenges wouldn't get lost in the hubbub of a general community, like chenzel_love. the_chenzel_hub was created as a response to the fact that there was no leniency on posts that did not include both Idina and Kristin.
I love chenzel_love, and totally respect what you've done with it, building a community like that from the ground up, and I love being a part of chenzel_love, but the fact is, you didn't create Chenzel, just the first community focused on it. There are other aspects of Chenzel outside of your own opinion, and it's impossible to be at the whim of your discretion when something is okay until suddenly it's not.
For example, graphics of just Kristin or just Idina were removed, but in the exact same post that you said they weren't allowed, you posted pictures of Kristin alone and Idina with Taye, with wishful thinking of what they *might* be thinking about each other. That doesn't even constitute a rumour.
People are having fun on chenzel_love, I realize that, and I'm not trying to take away from that or threaten you with a new community; I'm simply trying to offer a wider variety of ways to to enjoy Chenzel without offending the original community, since it's obviously stringent in content.
I also think it would be silly for chenzel_love to be a sister community with a community like femslash100 because it's competely broad in its topic, whereas chenzel_monthly is strictly Chenzel, so really, there's no comparison.
Also, the_chenzel_hub does not have the same intent as chenzel_love, its intent is to be more broad.
I think you hit the nail on the head when you said, "There were some people on there who were, well, less than supportive when a friend of mine wrote her first IdiKris story and posted it there, and that's what made me realize we needed a comm of our own."
Quite obviously, I know what it feels like to have a friend's (and my own) work unsupported and you did the exact same thing I'm doing now, in creating a place that could be more open to the idea of Idina and Kristin as separate people, who can have separate relationships, but with Chenzel at the heart of it.
The fact that there is inconsistency with how chenzel_love is being run and there was no way to find out if something wasn't okay until it was posted and deleted, bothers me. To post about it on the community would be inappropriate, and yet, there was no email address to contact you at.
Nic
I haveta say your response saddens me alot. It was not what I was expecting at all.
I have a feeling we could go back and forth with this for a really long time, and not get anything resolved. I've got to stick by what has already been said in my email. I've taken alot of things into consideration, and the community rules are open as you and others asked them to be, so I never once was trying to be controling or unreasonable.
I can't be a part of any continual back and forth, it's taking up too much energy and yielding no viable results between us. So I'm gonna stand by my intial statements, if any of them offended that was not my intent. I don't know what else to tell you. Your two major concerns were answered. I did what you asked and adjusted the rules accordingly. My unwillingness to promote communities is justifable, a common LJ practice. I even went beyond that and explained my actions for the three times I asked you to check your content under the old rules, which is something most mods on LJ won't do. But I can't spend every day explaining everything I do, not with you so on the defense and so ready to pick apart everything I say. I asked that you approach me the way I approached you in that email, with an open mind and all I got was a list of more things I was to explain to you. Obviously, we can't really go much further than this. But I am starting to think that no matter what I do, only being totally submissive to whatever you want will make this concern go away, and that's just not fair, not to everyone else on the community or to me.
If you're as unhappy with the chenzel_love community as you seem to be, then maybe some time away from it would be good for you. I'd like for you to be apart of it, that's been my goal through all of this. I, as a mod, have always hated the thought of banning people, and that's why no one's ever been banned from chenzel_love or any of the communities, or even from any of my boards or mailinglists I've run over my 13 yrs online. So I'm gonna do here what I've had to do in the handful of times in the past when a situation hasn't had a resolvable end, and say you're still welcome if you respect the community. I'd suggest focusing all this energy on something else, your new communities, your fanfiction. Directing it all towards me is producing nothing good.
I am personally very sorry this wasn't a resolvable problem, and even though I'm think you don't believe anything I say at this point, I mean this. I have no idea how you got to this point of upset, but I'm hoping now that you have your own community to control and do with what you like you'll be able to have a better sense of peace.
I don't know what you plan to do at this point. Please do keep in mind, that in chenzel_love, even though you might not respect me, as a community member you must respect all the others and the rules we've agreed upon. If you feel like you don't want to do this, no one is forcing you to stay in a bad situation, least of all me. But I won't allow you to use my community as a sounding board for any issues you have personally against me. So please make sure your posts are respectful.
I'm considering this as resolved as it's going to be, so I wish you good luck on your endeavours and again I'll say sorry we weren't able to find a sense of resolution. Maybe in the future. But as for now, this is all the time I'm gonna spend on this.
I must agree, we seem to be going in circles. I'm sorry you feel that we can't work this out, but may I simply say that perhaps we would have an easier time if you did not assume to know my motives, as your emails have suggested. I must also point out, to set the record straight, that I never once asked your to change the rules of chenzel_love, and I never wanted you to. I wanted the rules to be more clearly defined, that's it.
If you wish to continue contact, my inbox is open, so to speak. If not... I supposed I can simply wish you well, and hope that my apparent offense of your sensibilities does not affect how we both behave on chenzel_love.
Nic
So? What's the verdict? [g] What do you all think about it?