An Apology
Hello everyone
It has come to my attention that I have screwed up in a major way. Because of this, I need to apologise, explain and hopefully start to put things right.
On Sunday, I made a post expressing my disappointment in the lack of participation in the recent anniversary contest and announcing a roll call of sorts. My post was badly worded, and did not get across all that I intended. Let me start with the ultimatum and work backwards. Yes, I said that any member who did not respond by the end of August would be removed from the membership list. There are two options when you become interested in a Live Journal community. You can either watch it, or you can become a full member. A full member allows you to post. That is the only difference in the Daniel_vala community. All our posts are available for non-members to see. In no way was I going to stop anyone from reading the messages. Membership to the community is open, so if anyone felt they’d been wrongly removed they could freely rejoin
But why did I make this post in the first place? To be honest, it wasn’t just the lack of contest participation that disappointed me. In spring, I organized a month long ‘Spring Time is For Lovers’ challenge. The aim was to get someone to post every day during April. There are only 30 days in April, yet I was unable to get all the days filled. Some people kindly took on extra days, which I appreciated, but we still had some gaps. We also had some folks who signed up and then were no-shows, which didn’t help matters. These two events put together resulted in my frustration. Unfortunately, I didn’t even mention the spring event in my post, leading people to think I was being petty over only the contest.
The roll call post has now been locked. I will not remove any member unless I see the account has been deleted. And, in future, I will give a 24-hour warning when I do a removal of multiple deleted accounts.
The issue of my participation in the community also came up, and I want to quickly say something on that. Basically, I have not written anything for any of the fandoms in which I have an interest in almost 18 months. I think the last time I posted anything of a non-admin capacity here was during the spring challenge. It’s not been for lack of trying, but the creativity just isn’t flowing. It’s frustrating and I think I’m going to have to force myself to participate in some writing exercises.
Next, yes it is true that a long time ago I put out a request for folks to help in areas such as tagging posts. Some people responded and I dropped the ball. I had it worked out in my head, but I never got any further. One issue in my life is that I’m easily distracted. I’m not going to call it Adult ADD because I have not sought out any medical advice for it. But I do have a tendency to get side-tracked. It happens in all aspects of my life, even in conversations. I’ll drift off in the middle of a sentence. I have fanfics that are unfinished, cross-stitch projects that are incomplete. I come up with projects for the home but somehow I never follow through and complete them. This is what has happened with my request for help. I got sidetracked and never revisited the issue or followed-up.
So, where do we go from here? Firstly, please, if you have a problem with the community or with the way I’m running it, tell me. Live Journal has a way you can contact me via message. If I’m not aware there’s a problem, how can I fix it?
Secondly, as owner and moderator, I need to make some promises to you. I realise I need to regain your trust as the community leader. I screwed up, offended some people, and for that I’m sorry. I’m wary of reaching out for help again, feeling that it would serve me right if no one responded. I do intend to run some more monthly challenges. Would it help if I gave you all more notice so you have longer to come up with something to post? I’ve also got some other ideas, which I’ll explain in another post. I’ll work to focus my mind, not just on my writing, but also on bringing this community current.
I realise some members may feel I’m adding fuel to the fire. Some members, on the other hand, may think there’s nothing wrong. I can’t please everyone. But I do need to make sure the majority of you are comfortable being members of this group. Because, let’s face it, a community is nothing without its members.
Finally, I’m going to screen the responses to this post. Why? Because I think your responses will mostly be directed at me. I’m the main one who needs to see them. I want you to feel you can be honest with me. Like I said, if there’s a problem, I’d like to know about it.
Again, my apologies to those who were upset over my last message. It was not my intention to offend anybody.
Matt