Regarding recent site events.

As many of you know, there's been some recent events that have greatly upset some members of Alacritis. Here, I'd like to give my own personal words and invite people to message me if they have issues of their own. Other staff can also give their words here if they would like.

The first thing I'd like to say is that we are human. Most of the time, we as staff are professional and level-headed in dealing with all of you. Perhaps we make mistakes at time, and perhaps we get a little too testy at times, but given how much we all spend here and, quite honestly, the amount of drama, complaints, and arguing that we see here, I don't find it surprising at all that sometimes we might get a little annoyed - especially when our unanimous decisions are being argued and questioned repeatedly. I won't argue that I can get a bit irritated at times, but let's be honest; who doesn't? If you look over all of our dealings with members we have been more than fair, even on occasions when the member has treated us horribly, and I think it's extremely unfair to claim that we bully or attack our members.

Secondly, I'd like to say -- that while we encourage you to be true to your characters, that we are not an entirely free-form writing site. We have restrictions, rules, and a set of staff that monitors what goes on for a reason. We do not allow wolves to randomly kill children or to inflict harm on others that might not deserve it (obviously you can do as you please with NPCs, but we have always restricted your interactions with other players' characters). I'm growing very weary of people telling us that certain aspects of the site are restricting their characters, because that is exactly why we have a rule page with over a dozen sections. Yes, we do want to restrict your characters -- in that their actions can't terribly affect the lives of others without good reason. We already allow maiming & character claiming (though we do give members the option to petition staff if the maim is too severe or they feel they are being bullied), and we feel things as severe as deathmatches warrant much more serious consideration. Having no restrictions whatsoever on characters would greatly decrease enjoyment of the site for the majority of the members as it would simply be too stressful to play on here if you could not say or do anything or post anywhere without the risk of your character being disabled or killed because of it.

I'd also like to talk for a moment about "keeping IC things IC." While this is the ideal, we all know perfectly well this isn't the case. We can't solely consider in-character events when talking about serious aspects of the site, such as deathmatches. For example, if Wolf X kills Wolf Z in a siege (they had only been trying for a maim, but the player of Wolf Z decided they were tired of their character and saw it as a good way for them to die), will we allow Wolf Z's mate to try to avenge them in a deathmatch? While to the wolves it obviously looks as though Wolf Z meant to kill them, this could be severely abused.... and we do have to take these things into consideration when deciding what kinds of things should or should not be allowed.

I'd also like to address the "well this was allowed in the past" complaint, especially in regards to fights and deathmatches that had previously been allowed. It isn't ideal that some things have been allowed in the past, and that we don't allow them now, but I would like for you all to understand that an entirely different staff team ran the site just a year or so ago. We have taken a lot of things into account regarding nearly all of the site changes, and we're adjusting to finally having a large staff team that communicates with one another in regards to decision-making. So please keep in mind that just because something was allowed a year ago, it doesn't mean it will be allowed now, and we would appreciate not being called out for inconsistency when most of the current staff were not part of the team when some older decisions were made and many of those decisions were not written down for us to make reference to.

So yes -- things might have been allowed once that we do not allow now, and vise versa. We honestly are trying to be fair and steadfast in what we decide but I feel more often than not, we get complaints and people getting angry because X happened in the past. It is only inevitable that the site will change over time and so will the rules and what we do and don't allow.

The bottom line is that staff decisions are final. If you don't agree with them, please only discuss this with staff. The entire staff team spends countless hours working on this site for you, not for ourselves, and for our decisions to be consistently belittled and argued with gets exhausting.

Quickly I'd also like to address the overall atmosphere of the site. I am saddened when people feel like others are constantly striving to screw them over behind their backs in regards to packs, challenges, etc. I don't know how to fix this negative atmosphere but if anyone has any ideas to reduce hostility and to harbor a more fun, inviting atmosphere, I'd love to know and discuss with you!

NOTE: Huge snowstorm coming my way, might very well knock out power for a few days, so please contact any other admins or staff members if you need to as it's been declared a state of emergency where I live and you likely won't be able to reach me.