A long dense post about Money, Being Nice and Playing Fair
Jul 14, 2016 19:34:39 GMT -5
velina likes this
Post by Mr. Pooka on Jul 14, 2016 19:34:39 GMT -5
Soooo... Money and Gossip. These two things tend to pop up in (mostly) behind the scenes chatter nearly every event where there is anything to do with money present and as much as I don't like doing it I want to address the topic a little here to make sure that everything is clear and open and transparent just like how we try to do everything here in this wonderful community. Now really this is only being written for an extremely tiny minority of stalkers because most everyone around her is made of wonderful and are blessed with common sense but I felt that I should say something!
Here are two rules that end up being posted on the front page of most of our events in one form or another.
~ Please be friendly and polite. Sphinx threads are a place for fun and excitement! Rude or mean comments will not be tolerated.
~ Begging, whining, drama and trying to guilt other players is not allowed.
When I first started working on Sphinxes to help Pooka out I kind of felt that these kinds of rules were excessive and a bit silly but over the years I've come to realized that they need to be there for a reminder for (again) and extremely tiny minority of users. While 99% of this past event has been made of fun and gone fairly smoothly I have still had to quote them to a few of players, put one temporary ban on a player and banned one player permanently from Sphinxes because of them. (I do have to mention that the permanent ban did go beyond even the scope of these rules and also violated PI rules quite severely). ..but for the bulk of everyone out there these are just common sense and part of everyday practice so if your like me you may have just skimmed over them and wondered why they are even there!
Over the last couple of months there have been a few... tiny things. Each is one of those 'darn I wonder if I should say anything' kind of things and usually I err on the side of just hoping that others will behave or perhaps have had a bad day or any of the myriad of reasons why someone might say or do something that borders on the inappropriate. Now the thing is that this pile of tiny things has been adding up and there are have been a few direct confrontations where players were attacked or made to feel guilty about either purchases or winning prizes so I need to remind those very very few people to please behave! I don't want to have to add tons of extra rules about this kind of thing but needless to say these rules extend past what is posted in our threads and things like private emails or chats or conversations are all covered by these rules. The should not be hard to remember. Be nice. Don't be a jerk. If you don't like the way something is being done or being handled you can always write me here or on PI and I will ALWAYS respond and address any issue that is brought to me in the most fair and strait-forward way I can figure out how.
There are lots of sayings about being able to make everyone happy all of the time but I think most of us have the gist of it. Some players like speed games, some players like trivia games, some like to explore maps. Some like all three and more! I always try to run a variety of games and events so that there is a chance for everyone to participate and have fun and I do pay attention to who is around and what they like... so if the majority of players participating like trivia then I'm going to do mostly trivia. That certainly doesn't mean that I'm targeting the one or two players hoping they can use their awesome speed typing powers to win a prize, I'm just doing my best to spread the fun around as best I can. I'm using games to segue into the topic of money because we use the same set up. We sell customs, auction pre-mades and operate some shops and we charge real money (and that includes PG which is a variable currency on its own with a value). We also give away tons and tons of stuff. For example we worked for two months to put together our Yule event just for fun and for this community and there was ZERO opportunity to even spend a dollar. We are here to have fun and to participate and to play and to be connected to a international, multicultural, community of beautiful and amazing people of all walks of life from barely being able to afford the internet that gets them here to... well more that that! We will not tolerate any form of discrimination here concerning any topic; how lucky someone is, how good/bad players are at certain games, how much money some people want to spend or never spend, how many Sphinxes they have, where they live, what they look like, their backgrounds, their faiths, or ... I can go on but you get the point!
Now there are two things that will always have an effect on people; Money and things that happen in private/gossip. Lets start with money. Money is insidious and dark and can make people feel jealous and upset and have broken up friends and families and relationships. I causes distrust and jealousy and envy and worse. I'll give you an simple example from my own experience with money but I'm sure you have your own. I belonged to an mixed tribal (Metis and Ojibway) group of people who did misc. healing lodges, pow wow events, residential school counselling, performing and more. It was a great experience and everyone there were the best of friends and worked wonderful things together. It was funded by grants and every person got some sort of portion or honorarium for participating and everyone was happy with what they got and loved to participate. ... until one person uncovered some of the book keeping and realized that some people were getting paid more than others. In a matter of days most of the group had broken up over the inequality and are disgruntled to this day about it. Its a part of some peoples natures to just always be upset about money. One person could be super happy to sing at pow wows and make $50 a day for years but suddenly they hate everyone and everything because they find out that someone else makes $75. So again everyone was happy, they loved what they did, they felt they were getting a fair amount but any sort of inequity, real or perceived just rips into people and makes some people wildly unhappy. ...So what the heck does this have to do with Sphinxes you might be wondering if your still reading and not playing on Furvilla? Well there are always a few people who feel upset or jealous when someone wins an auction or buys a custom or spends any kind of money that they do not have. I know I've said this a half dozen times already, but it is really only a minority of players who feel this way and even fewer who feel the need to say or complain or do something about it. This tiny minority has, on occasion, gone out of their way to make others feel bad about things that should be feeling great about and I find that super frustrating because it is uncalled for and unjustified and just plain not acceptable around these parts.
We will continue doing Sphinxes even if we make no money at all. I have tons of friends here and will hang out with them until the end of time no matter what! Friendship and community are not about making money they are about connections and love and just plain talking to people who make you feel great. There are people here who when I see their name lit up on PI or hear them skyping with Pooka, well it just brightens my day every time. Anyone here and reading this probably qualifies as one of them, (-8 and you will always have a place here including a place on our couch if the need every arises, (-8 ...but we do work towards making some money and it changes our lives for the better here and we will continue to do so in the future. Now a few players need some justification for wanting to make money and here's a few good reasons. First and obviously, it pays for the tools we need to make Sphinxes happen like image hosting and internet and computers and tablets and more. More importantly it buys us the time to be here. I do not mention this kind of stuff ever, except to a few very close friends, because I never ever want this to be a factor in anyone's decision making, but we do not have any money in real life and Sphinxes provide us a boon that raises us up beyond just surviving. Last year for example we lived on just over 10K dollars. Some people might think that is a lot of money and some people might just be wondering how? If you doubled our income from last year we would still be considered way under the poverty line for Canada. Now don't mistake having money with being happy or feel any odd compulsion to take pity or be jealous or anything at all. We have what we need and we are extremely easy people to please, (-8 I only mention this because the money we make from Sphinxes really does amazing things to help us out. It is the reason we have an air conditioner right now and not dying due to the local heat warnings. It is the reason that I just went out to buy some groceries and am not worried that the smelt fishing was bad for two years in a row or that the blueberries virtually didn't happen last year like we'd hoped and counted on. It's what we will use to buy a new (by new I mean old and used) truck soon to replace our current van with keeps breaking and has rust holes that I can literally see outside through. I don't want or need to know what anyone else makes or lives on because its none of my business nor is it anyone else's either but I mention ours only because we are at the center of this thing and sometime live under a bit of a microscope because of it. I don't mind myself, I'm happy with what I have and who I have to share it with. There is no judgment on my part if you live in a van, your parents basement, a hospital room, a mansion on a hill or a cool steampunk zeppelin. (although if you live in a cool steampunk zeppelin I really really hope you give me a few details cuz it sounds awesome!)
Every time any person spends any amount of money on Sphinxes EVERYBODY wins. That auction price buys you tons of things whether you paid for it or not. Its a part of the tablet that makes you the prizes you win or the stockings full of toys or the image hoster that shows off your pretties or the hard drive that stores your files so you can add a new pet or costume. If you cannot or do not wish to spend any money that is completely absolutely fine and good (always has been and always will be!) but please remember that the players who can and do are investing in making this whole community better for everyone.
On that note a couple of players have suggested setting up a Patreon just because they want to fund the things we do here but I've never been a fan of just taking money/donations like that. I feel better making sure I have something tangible to give in return for every investment... like a lovingly crafted premade or built to order custom.
Now for part two, private conversations and gossip. Yes I know I'm still typing but we're getting to the end I promise... No family or community is immune to this kind of stuff but I'll try to be brief. If you are ever unsure about how something has happened, why someone has something cool that you don't, wondered how we make prize decisions you can just ask. You can ask me publicly in our forums here, you can send me a mail, you can write me an anonymous letter if you want. Cut out letters from a newspaper might be a bit overboard and freak me out a bit but I'll still take it and answer it. We make every effort to make sure that everything we do is transparent and fair for everyone in all cases and I am never offended by questions! ...but sometimes when things are decided or a rule calling is created not everyone knows exactly how it is done or why and sometimes that leads to speculation and incorrect assumptions by a few select people. First off don't be worried we don't have any silly PI 'no speculating rules', (-8 but I do simply promise that everything we do is to make the most people happy and be the best option for this community and is fair for everyone involved!
I will give one behind the scenes example and I hope for anyone curious about how we do things this will help! I'll use the Shadow Lord Bribery as an example. Its fresh in peoples minds, it involved money and there was a lot of personal investment in it for those who entered and all the final decisions where made by Pooka and I so I think it will stand out as a good example.
Now, as a bit of an aside, my first reflective thought on this topic is that I won't do something like it again ever without a much needed fix. Not the bribery itself but the investment of character. I asked people to get right into it and wonder what it would be like to feel as if they were all yours and that was a mistake on my part. There as been no particular problems to speak of but I think I unfairly built an attachment to something that, in the end only one person was going to win. Alright, aside over. Now the actual judging took us literally days. We read and studied and mulled and drew up lists and made choices and pondered repercussions and weighed options we debated. What were the actual bribes like? How much work was put into the presentations? Did certain players have a good track record for following through with promises? Was there money involved? ... and on and on. I hate choosing any sort of winners and we work the same picking the traditional Heb contest winners. ... but in this case it came down to a few names that we managed to finally agree on with piles of pros and cons but we still had a problem. Some of the entries were just to amazing and intriguing to let some of the entrants walk away empty handed. Weeks of work was piled into some of them and we both wanted to see more and encourage that sort of investment in the RP forums or even just in some other players lives. So we eventually manage a list like I mentioned but it had two extra names. So we made the decision to give out to very special bonus prizes in addition to the three main prizes. Now this had its own catch... we certainly couldn't take bribes for these bonus prizes and we couldn't let the players who offered so much feel like they paid for something that someone else got for free. So we made the decision to proceed with our list but would refuse to take any of the actual bribe offers with the exception of some roleplaying promises. I didn't think that this needed to be mentioned to anyone because by their nature its just polite and proper to keep all types of transactions private. So we decided we would NOT take and money/bribes so we could give out MORE prizes. That's just how we do things around here. Making people happy and having fun is the number one Golden Rule and that includes us as much as everyone else. Now if you were paying attention above to what we live on, if we were to just take money into account we could have made more than 10% of what we lived on all last year just from bribes but didn't and won't in the future if it means making just one person feel uncomfortable with our choices. Making money has its place here but it is not our decision maker. Fairness for all and providing joy and fun is what we live for here and what we are always striving to maintain.
Now my last comment is again there is not much new here for most people. This isn't meant to target anyone one individual but is a culmination of a bunch of little things that just added up to enough that I felt compelled to say something about it. People have bad days, people can say the wrong thing, people can come to the wrong conclusions and people can make mistakes. I absolutely have. ...but we can all live, learn, grow and move on. However you view this community it this is a strong, helpful, wonderful, beautiful, talented, amazing and warm group of people.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program of fun, love and community!
Here are two rules that end up being posted on the front page of most of our events in one form or another.
~ Please be friendly and polite. Sphinx threads are a place for fun and excitement! Rude or mean comments will not be tolerated.
~ Begging, whining, drama and trying to guilt other players is not allowed.
When I first started working on Sphinxes to help Pooka out I kind of felt that these kinds of rules were excessive and a bit silly but over the years I've come to realized that they need to be there for a reminder for (again) and extremely tiny minority of users. While 99% of this past event has been made of fun and gone fairly smoothly I have still had to quote them to a few of players, put one temporary ban on a player and banned one player permanently from Sphinxes because of them. (I do have to mention that the permanent ban did go beyond even the scope of these rules and also violated PI rules quite severely). ..but for the bulk of everyone out there these are just common sense and part of everyday practice so if your like me you may have just skimmed over them and wondered why they are even there!
Over the last couple of months there have been a few... tiny things. Each is one of those 'darn I wonder if I should say anything' kind of things and usually I err on the side of just hoping that others will behave or perhaps have had a bad day or any of the myriad of reasons why someone might say or do something that borders on the inappropriate. Now the thing is that this pile of tiny things has been adding up and there are have been a few direct confrontations where players were attacked or made to feel guilty about either purchases or winning prizes so I need to remind those very very few people to please behave! I don't want to have to add tons of extra rules about this kind of thing but needless to say these rules extend past what is posted in our threads and things like private emails or chats or conversations are all covered by these rules. The should not be hard to remember. Be nice. Don't be a jerk. If you don't like the way something is being done or being handled you can always write me here or on PI and I will ALWAYS respond and address any issue that is brought to me in the most fair and strait-forward way I can figure out how.
There are lots of sayings about being able to make everyone happy all of the time but I think most of us have the gist of it. Some players like speed games, some players like trivia games, some like to explore maps. Some like all three and more! I always try to run a variety of games and events so that there is a chance for everyone to participate and have fun and I do pay attention to who is around and what they like... so if the majority of players participating like trivia then I'm going to do mostly trivia. That certainly doesn't mean that I'm targeting the one or two players hoping they can use their awesome speed typing powers to win a prize, I'm just doing my best to spread the fun around as best I can. I'm using games to segue into the topic of money because we use the same set up. We sell customs, auction pre-mades and operate some shops and we charge real money (and that includes PG which is a variable currency on its own with a value). We also give away tons and tons of stuff. For example we worked for two months to put together our Yule event just for fun and for this community and there was ZERO opportunity to even spend a dollar. We are here to have fun and to participate and to play and to be connected to a international, multicultural, community of beautiful and amazing people of all walks of life from barely being able to afford the internet that gets them here to... well more that that! We will not tolerate any form of discrimination here concerning any topic; how lucky someone is, how good/bad players are at certain games, how much money some people want to spend or never spend, how many Sphinxes they have, where they live, what they look like, their backgrounds, their faiths, or ... I can go on but you get the point!
Now there are two things that will always have an effect on people; Money and things that happen in private/gossip. Lets start with money. Money is insidious and dark and can make people feel jealous and upset and have broken up friends and families and relationships. I causes distrust and jealousy and envy and worse. I'll give you an simple example from my own experience with money but I'm sure you have your own. I belonged to an mixed tribal (Metis and Ojibway) group of people who did misc. healing lodges, pow wow events, residential school counselling, performing and more. It was a great experience and everyone there were the best of friends and worked wonderful things together. It was funded by grants and every person got some sort of portion or honorarium for participating and everyone was happy with what they got and loved to participate. ... until one person uncovered some of the book keeping and realized that some people were getting paid more than others. In a matter of days most of the group had broken up over the inequality and are disgruntled to this day about it. Its a part of some peoples natures to just always be upset about money. One person could be super happy to sing at pow wows and make $50 a day for years but suddenly they hate everyone and everything because they find out that someone else makes $75. So again everyone was happy, they loved what they did, they felt they were getting a fair amount but any sort of inequity, real or perceived just rips into people and makes some people wildly unhappy. ...So what the heck does this have to do with Sphinxes you might be wondering if your still reading and not playing on Furvilla? Well there are always a few people who feel upset or jealous when someone wins an auction or buys a custom or spends any kind of money that they do not have. I know I've said this a half dozen times already, but it is really only a minority of players who feel this way and even fewer who feel the need to say or complain or do something about it. This tiny minority has, on occasion, gone out of their way to make others feel bad about things that should be feeling great about and I find that super frustrating because it is uncalled for and unjustified and just plain not acceptable around these parts.
We will continue doing Sphinxes even if we make no money at all. I have tons of friends here and will hang out with them until the end of time no matter what! Friendship and community are not about making money they are about connections and love and just plain talking to people who make you feel great. There are people here who when I see their name lit up on PI or hear them skyping with Pooka, well it just brightens my day every time. Anyone here and reading this probably qualifies as one of them, (-8 and you will always have a place here including a place on our couch if the need every arises, (-8 ...but we do work towards making some money and it changes our lives for the better here and we will continue to do so in the future. Now a few players need some justification for wanting to make money and here's a few good reasons. First and obviously, it pays for the tools we need to make Sphinxes happen like image hosting and internet and computers and tablets and more. More importantly it buys us the time to be here. I do not mention this kind of stuff ever, except to a few very close friends, because I never ever want this to be a factor in anyone's decision making, but we do not have any money in real life and Sphinxes provide us a boon that raises us up beyond just surviving. Last year for example we lived on just over 10K dollars. Some people might think that is a lot of money and some people might just be wondering how? If you doubled our income from last year we would still be considered way under the poverty line for Canada. Now don't mistake having money with being happy or feel any odd compulsion to take pity or be jealous or anything at all. We have what we need and we are extremely easy people to please, (-8 I only mention this because the money we make from Sphinxes really does amazing things to help us out. It is the reason we have an air conditioner right now and not dying due to the local heat warnings. It is the reason that I just went out to buy some groceries and am not worried that the smelt fishing was bad for two years in a row or that the blueberries virtually didn't happen last year like we'd hoped and counted on. It's what we will use to buy a new (by new I mean old and used) truck soon to replace our current van with keeps breaking and has rust holes that I can literally see outside through. I don't want or need to know what anyone else makes or lives on because its none of my business nor is it anyone else's either but I mention ours only because we are at the center of this thing and sometime live under a bit of a microscope because of it. I don't mind myself, I'm happy with what I have and who I have to share it with. There is no judgment on my part if you live in a van, your parents basement, a hospital room, a mansion on a hill or a cool steampunk zeppelin. (although if you live in a cool steampunk zeppelin I really really hope you give me a few details cuz it sounds awesome!)
Every time any person spends any amount of money on Sphinxes EVERYBODY wins. That auction price buys you tons of things whether you paid for it or not. Its a part of the tablet that makes you the prizes you win or the stockings full of toys or the image hoster that shows off your pretties or the hard drive that stores your files so you can add a new pet or costume. If you cannot or do not wish to spend any money that is completely absolutely fine and good (always has been and always will be!) but please remember that the players who can and do are investing in making this whole community better for everyone.
On that note a couple of players have suggested setting up a Patreon just because they want to fund the things we do here but I've never been a fan of just taking money/donations like that. I feel better making sure I have something tangible to give in return for every investment... like a lovingly crafted premade or built to order custom.
Now for part two, private conversations and gossip. Yes I know I'm still typing but we're getting to the end I promise... No family or community is immune to this kind of stuff but I'll try to be brief. If you are ever unsure about how something has happened, why someone has something cool that you don't, wondered how we make prize decisions you can just ask. You can ask me publicly in our forums here, you can send me a mail, you can write me an anonymous letter if you want. Cut out letters from a newspaper might be a bit overboard and freak me out a bit but I'll still take it and answer it. We make every effort to make sure that everything we do is transparent and fair for everyone in all cases and I am never offended by questions! ...but sometimes when things are decided or a rule calling is created not everyone knows exactly how it is done or why and sometimes that leads to speculation and incorrect assumptions by a few select people. First off don't be worried we don't have any silly PI 'no speculating rules', (-8 but I do simply promise that everything we do is to make the most people happy and be the best option for this community and is fair for everyone involved!
I will give one behind the scenes example and I hope for anyone curious about how we do things this will help! I'll use the Shadow Lord Bribery as an example. Its fresh in peoples minds, it involved money and there was a lot of personal investment in it for those who entered and all the final decisions where made by Pooka and I so I think it will stand out as a good example.
Now, as a bit of an aside, my first reflective thought on this topic is that I won't do something like it again ever without a much needed fix. Not the bribery itself but the investment of character. I asked people to get right into it and wonder what it would be like to feel as if they were all yours and that was a mistake on my part. There as been no particular problems to speak of but I think I unfairly built an attachment to something that, in the end only one person was going to win. Alright, aside over. Now the actual judging took us literally days. We read and studied and mulled and drew up lists and made choices and pondered repercussions and weighed options we debated. What were the actual bribes like? How much work was put into the presentations? Did certain players have a good track record for following through with promises? Was there money involved? ... and on and on. I hate choosing any sort of winners and we work the same picking the traditional Heb contest winners. ... but in this case it came down to a few names that we managed to finally agree on with piles of pros and cons but we still had a problem. Some of the entries were just to amazing and intriguing to let some of the entrants walk away empty handed. Weeks of work was piled into some of them and we both wanted to see more and encourage that sort of investment in the RP forums or even just in some other players lives. So we eventually manage a list like I mentioned but it had two extra names. So we made the decision to give out to very special bonus prizes in addition to the three main prizes. Now this had its own catch... we certainly couldn't take bribes for these bonus prizes and we couldn't let the players who offered so much feel like they paid for something that someone else got for free. So we made the decision to proceed with our list but would refuse to take any of the actual bribe offers with the exception of some roleplaying promises. I didn't think that this needed to be mentioned to anyone because by their nature its just polite and proper to keep all types of transactions private. So we decided we would NOT take and money/bribes so we could give out MORE prizes. That's just how we do things around here. Making people happy and having fun is the number one Golden Rule and that includes us as much as everyone else. Now if you were paying attention above to what we live on, if we were to just take money into account we could have made more than 10% of what we lived on all last year just from bribes but didn't and won't in the future if it means making just one person feel uncomfortable with our choices. Making money has its place here but it is not our decision maker. Fairness for all and providing joy and fun is what we live for here and what we are always striving to maintain.
Now my last comment is again there is not much new here for most people. This isn't meant to target anyone one individual but is a culmination of a bunch of little things that just added up to enough that I felt compelled to say something about it. People have bad days, people can say the wrong thing, people can come to the wrong conclusions and people can make mistakes. I absolutely have. ...but we can all live, learn, grow and move on. However you view this community it this is a strong, helpful, wonderful, beautiful, talented, amazing and warm group of people.
Now back to our regularly scheduled program of fun, love and community!
