What happened on IR

Originally Posted on Mackie's Facebook account. Reprinted here for folks without access:

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Hey guys, I drafted this to post on a message board and then decided it wasn't worth, so I'm just putting it here for people who are online to read. Feel free to post your questions in the comments, and I'll (or someone else) will try to answer them:

Well, most of the STs left in a great exodus this evening after some chaos. As one of the STs I feel I should explain things just so players understand. I'm biased, I fully admit it, but here's what I can tell you:

Recently, one of the STs, Audrey, was running a scene when an argument broke out about White Wolf's stabilization rolls, which are hard to understand--check them out in their various incarnations over, like, every core book. The ST made a ruling and was trying to move on, but one of the characters, played by JaimeH the head admin, decided to contest the ruling. Also no big deal. It happens.

The Head ST of the venue, SeanD, was called in to mediate. He chose to side with Audrey and backed up her decision -- which was to actually go along with Jaime. This caused a big scandal to go on and arguing to last for more than an hour, at which point no one wanted to be in the scene or run it. Audrey noted to Jaime that she felt she'd pulled rank there and that she really needed to cut it out because it was fun for no one involved, albeit worded strongly.

The next day, Audrey was informed she was going to have to be in an inquisition with JohnC, JaimeH's fellow administrator, who had also been in the scene with JaimeH and Audrey -- though it was noted after looking at the logs that he, for once, didn't do what I'm about to mention him doing in several scenarios --and who has in the past blindly supported any argument Jaime makes until someone points out they're both wrong and making several bullet-pointed responses as to why, and who has also been Jaime's best friend for several years. When Audrey asked for Sean to be in the scene, she was told no, because he "wouldn't be impartial."

Cue a conversation between John and Sean. Sean asked how come he couldn't be a part of the inquisition, John said he was partial and biased. Sean noted that John was also partial and biased. John said Sean "would just have to trust him." Sean said he'd really prefer if one of the other STs (none of us had heard this information yet) could stand in as a judge, since they'd be more impartial. John said we were all too good of a friends for him or Jaime to "just trust us." When Sean called bullshit, and noted that MichaelB was in fact a lawyer who could be impartial to the scenario and had no investment in either side and he'd prefer having him on board as a less partial judge, John fired him. Meaning Sean, not Michael.

Sean posted the logs to the rest of the STs. Note, most of us STs have just put up with this sort of thing for years. One by one, in a show of solidarity due to having had to put up with similar stuff in one form or the other, we sent in our resignations. Then as those who were a bit later to the game got around to it, they found all their accounts (player and ST) banned. And soon regular players with no association to any STs other than having them on other messengers for questions were finding that their accounts were already banned.

Now one of the players has informed me that the stuff is back up but with a cleaning notice to it, noting that it will be up this evening.

That's all. I wanted to let everyone know what was happening.

Now, for some straight up facts:

No, none of the STs read logs if they could help it as far as I'm aware. I know I at least only did when forced to because of a player (or, more commonly, admin) complaint, wherein I would only look at the logs from the day and time of the complaint. JaimeH reads the logs constantly, and will contact the STs and whine if she hears other players talking poorly about her characters, claiming "this is a lie" or "this is gossip." If an ST tries to protect the other player noting that gossip happens in real life, she'll start crying about how it's just no fun for her anymore and how she might as well just close down the site because if she's not having fun then it's just work. She pulls this card often, as well as how she has to be the boss even though running the site was such a detriment to her health, etcetera.

JohnC once publicly cussed out Jaime and called her something along the lines of a, I'm going to go ahead and asterisk it, "****ing ****", so fill that in as you will. He posted his resignation publicly. The next day with a very insincere apology -- as noted by players and STs alike -- he was reinstated full honors, just so he could do nothing but XP once a week and get fullXP on it.

As any player in their venue can attest except for Jaime's husband and Jaime's best friends from her town, it takes them up to 4+ months to reply to anything on your thread. If you're Jaime's husband or Jaime's best friends from her town, it will take two days. And if they play in your venue as an ST -- aka Jaime, John, or any of their particularly close friends -- and you don't respond to their thread post within 24 hours, you will get someone on your behind asking "Why isn't my XP done yet?"

John and Jaime both want extremely special characters. No big deal -- who doesn't want their character to be special in some way? The problem with this is that they often want their character to be special, and if it doesn't work out 100% the way they want it, they will terrorize the ST to try and get them to "change it back" and "retcon the past few months" to get their character back the way they were. Examples of this include first changing into a Changing Breed, finding out that they can no longer play house due to rules already in place before the first change, and then asking to retcon the First Change...two months after it had happened...as a "joke played by Luna".

Arguing that they don't like the particular development of a venue "because it goes against what was initially set up" when what was initially set up was by a guy who then promptly cheated the system to give himself a bunch of otherwise banned things and got fired a few months into his job for doing so, wherein I (the ST writing this) then took over and ran the venue for one and a half years and had been developing it in the direction it was going the entire time -- but it was against what the initial guy had decided upon, so it was wrong, and I had to either "reset to venue" or "just do it their way." I and my fellow STs decided to reset the venue.

Some STs who were not intending on resignation arrived at the site to find themselves banned by association by both Jaime and John...and so promptly tendered their resignations via email, decrying the act of banning them before they even knew what happened as the final straw to the ST abuse.

I hope this post was not too out of line, and, if necessary, I can go through what remaining logs I do have (I admit to mass-deleting the logs I'd had sent to me every week in a fit of extreme joy after I sent in my resignation, but I have friends who have theirs and I've got some stuff in my Trillian folders). I do not have anything concerning the JohnC item, as that was all on the last forums a few months ago and was deleted and/or lost in the move, and evidence of them not responding to thread posts for months -- namely because vampire closed down months ago and I hadn't thought to save my vampire's thread at the time.

Whatever the case, I'm not seeking to tell people not to go back (though I'd like to), I'm simply presenting some things that really -did- happen to me -- there is likely more that happened to the other STs -- and presenting things as I read them in the logs given to me. Anything that talks directly about me is something that really honestly happened.