Can we clarify whether this alteration changes whether a Diatribe ban is included?
Diatribe is also a project of the society. It is managed directly by the national committee without any separate project manager (the person who runs a larp project is technically the “project manager” in the project agreement with NZLARPS - they are typically also the head GM).
The committee has delegated authority in relation to bans on Diatribe to Derek, who the committee appointed as sheriff. So, does this alteration imply that it’s up to Derek to decide on whether to ban Adam from Diatribe if Adam is expelled from Diatribe? Or is the ban from Diatribe still going to be decided at the meeting?
I wish to resign my membership of NZLARPS effective immediately - I am happy for the remainder of the NZLARP membership fees I have paid to be left in the hands of NZLARPS for use by the community.
I have been talking to members of the community and feel that the friendship I based my membership upon has become overshadowed by confusion and crossed messages. I have never had issues with any project managers before Teonn and hope that I never have this sort of issue again. It is not something I seek out. I understand the stress it has put the community under and for this I apologise.
I realise that the national committee and our community members have their own lives and I am not happy about taking up their time with the committee meeting on Wednesday. I do not believe that spending people’s time in this manner would be in the best interest of the community.
I am happy to provide the national committee with any information I have at my disposal that will help them with their investigation should they wish to continue with it. I will also attend on Wednesday should my presence be requested or required if the meeting goes ahead.
I hope that my resignation gives the community time to consider the situation fully and in an environment that is less emotionally tainted.
I am sorry for the events that led up to this and I apologise for my lack of clarity and hope in the future we can put this all behind us.
And in response to the post that disappeared (having been overtaken by events):
Adam’s resignation makes the point moot. He’ll be able to attend whatever games will accept him, just as any other non-member can; he just won’t be getting an NZLARPS membership discount.
I really hope so too. It would be great if we can turn the page on this aggravation in a community that’s generally so constructive.
Personally, I know that you and I haven’t always gotten along but I genuinely don’t hold any ill will against you, especially considering what you’ve said here.
Some people in the community are still very upset about past interactions with you though, and understandably so. Apologies are good but they don’t fix hurt feelings immediately. Just bear that in mind going forward, as it means that it will take some time with no aggravating or disruptive interactions in real life or online before attitudes may change. Time heals all wounds, so long as we don’t keep opening them up or making more of them.
Ok, from what I can tell, Adam is not barred from any event unless the GMs make themselves a target and personally ban him.
Something they can do anyway.
From personal experience Teonn, has received 7 months of abuse and intimidation because the Teonn GMs banned a player. Teonn is the first game to stand up to the bullying and we got it in the neck. Is any GM going to make themselves a target by personally telling Adam he is not welcome at their game?
Could some one please tell me how the society deals with a member that is nothing but grief?
I fully understand I’m opening myself up as a target for the members who think that Adam is hard done by and somehow his rights have been imposed upon.
Where the hell were you all when the Teonn GMs were getting it in the neck from toxic attack? Teonn came within a whisker of being cancelled because we couldnt be bothered dealing with the bullying and intimidation any more. We didn’t hear from you guys then… Where were you all? Come on , speak up. Where the hell was your support when we needed some back up?
How about we support our elected committee and trust them to do their job.
Stop undermining them! As a society we have a problem with a Member who is not behaving properly and something needs to be done. Slapping someone with a wet bus ticket because the whiners and complainers are worried we might hurt someone’s feelings just ain’t good enough. No one was worried about the Teonn GMs and how they felt about being bullied and intimidated.
Could the people who step up and do the hard jobs,like the GMs and the committees, please get some support from the society. It isn’t easy and we’re tired of being undermined from the people that believe in 8th chances and beyond.
[quote=“tigger”]Ok, from what I can tell, Adam is not barred from any event unless the GMs make themselves a target and personally ban him.
Something they can do anyway.
From personal experience Teonn, has received 7 months of abuse and intimidation because the Teonn GMs banned a player. Teonn is the first game to stand up to the bullying and we got it in the neck. Is any GM going to make themselves a target by personally telling Adam he is not welcome at their game?
Could some one please tell me how the society deals with a member that is nothing but grief?[/quote]
It can support GMs in their choices of who to admit in their games, by e.g. backing those who want to ban bullying, litigious players, and refusing to act as a forum for those players to try and re-impose themselves.
It can make sure other GMs are informed of such behaviour, so they can make their own decisions.
It can, if a rule of the society is breached or the society is brought into disrepute, eject them from the society.
But that’s all it can do. NZLARPS is an incorporated society, not a legislature, and not the larp-police.
Hearing about it by rumour, mostly. One of the problems here was that people attempted to deal with this quietly, so as to avoid disruption. Which means that to people who don’t habitually attend or have a hotline into Auckland committee meetings, its just a few lines in the minutes.
You have my full support in deciding who attends your games. Its up to you, not NZLARPS. And if I ran games in Auckland, I’d be seriously considering whether to impose a ban, simply to avoid similar hassles.
I would like to make this very clear, the reason the procedure to ban was started was not because of a ban from Teonn or an issue with those GMs, that was just part of the issue, along with many other things along the way. And to make it clear the ban from Teonn was not because a couple of players’ characters got killed.
The catalyst for starting the procedures was bring the society into disrepute. So I hope that no one starts having a go at the Teonn GMs.
[quote=“Lizifer”]The Auckland and National committees were aware of the situation, they knew what was happening and chose to take an action.
Maybe the members should have more faith in those they elected.[/quote]
Faith is for suckers. We’re a democratic society, and that means oversight and involvement by the wider membership. But we can only do that and support them (and GMs like Tigger) if they directly tell us what is going on.
I understand that the Committee is planning to deal with future incidents like this through a code of conduct. Hopefully they’ll be putting that out for consultation soon, so we can all see what’s proposed and decide whether it provides an effective solution consistent with the purposes of the society.
Edit to add: This isn’t intended as an attack on either Liz or the Committee. I have a great deal of respect for the members of the National Committee, and I know they didn’t do any of this lightly. But at the same time, we shouldn’t give anyone a blank cheque.
[quote=“tigger”]Where the hell were you all when the Teonn GMs were getting it in the neck from toxic attack? Teonn came within a whisker of being cancelled because we couldnt be bothered dealing with the bullying and intimidation any more. We didn’t hear from you guys then… Where were you all? Come on , speak up. Where the hell was your support when we needed some back up?[/quote]I’m going to go with - I didn’t know about it. Up until, what, a week ago? all the information I had was that Adam had been excluded from the game and was making a pest of himself at committee meetings about it. Not that he’d been abusive, not that he’d been trying to get money back from the campaign. FWIW I think that the information that has been made public shows that anyone who’s in a position of responsibility in Auckland and at the national level has been getting hammered by the worst side of stepping up, and that sucks for all of you. But it’s hard to be sympathetic about stuff you don’t know about.
[quote]It can support GMs in their choices of who to admit in their games, by e.g. backing those who want to ban bullying, litigious players, and refusing to act as a forum for those players to try and re-impose themselves.
It can make sure other GMs are informed of such behaviour, so they can make their own decisions.
It can, if a rule of the society is breached or the society is brought into disrepute, eject them from the society.[/quote]
(This is not an attack on you, Idiot, I’m sorry if quoting you above makes it seem that way)
I’m sorry, isn’t this what the committee just tried to do? And has now been screamed into submission by people who don’t have the whole story? This is their first ever attempt to discipline a player for multiple instances of disruptive, bullying, deceitful behaviour and now the precedent has been set that no, they have to give everyone “another chance” even if they’ve been getting “another chance” for five years already. The committee didn’t attempt this lightly. They were trying to protect their GMs, the players. But apparently that’s unacceptable.
I play a couple of games a year, advise people on makeup, and usually stay well away from politics. But maybe I shouldn’t have. I apologize to the committee that I haven’t spoken up sooner. But, and this is somewhat telling, I didn’t want to because I didn’t want to have to deal with Adam.
If I was to run a larp, I know I’d be scared to ban him. Hell’s bells, I’m nervous enough posting this. Why has there not been full disclosure of every disruptive action Adam has been involved in? Because the self-confessed and self-proclaimed troll loves to troll. People have kept quiet in self-defense, because they’ve seen what’s happened to those who have spoken up. Funny, that sounds an awful lot like bullying, doesn’t it? And now we’ve just castrated the committee. We have set the precedent that it’s NOT ok to eject a bully from the community. We’ve said that the individual GMs will just have to put up with the retribution for saying ‘no, you can’t play my game’. Well done us. I count myself in there, because I didn’t say anything earlier.
[quote=“tigger”]Ok, from what I can tell, Adam is not barred from any event unless the GMs make themselves a target and personally ban him.
Something they can do anyway.[/quote]
There is nothing to stop the committee voting sanctions on Adam if they wish, but they offered him the chance to resign and he took it.
If the committee wish to vote sanctions against him, they can.
I would suggest, if they feel strongly about his attendance, they could rule that he isn’t allowed to attend games unless invited by a GM. This would mean that his wife Zara could run a game and he could attend without her being driven out of nzlarps as a by-product of the sanction against Adam.
Adam is not welcome at any larp that I run. I have seen his bullying over the years, every single time he apologizes, plays nice for a while then returns to being an intimidating bully. Whatever the council decides, whatever provisions are made, people need to publicly see him for what he is.
One thing we can’t allow is for him to push GM’s to a point where they don’t want to run their larp because of him again.
[quote=“theotherphoenix”]I’m sorry, isn’t this what the committee just tried to do? And has now been screamed into submission by people who don’t have the whole story?[/quote]Did I miss something? There have been several people who asked for more information, several people who said that they didn’t think this was something to be done lightly but that they’d wait for the committee meeting before talking about it, and one person asking was it really necessary. (Did I get my count right?) And lots of civility, at least in the public forums. And the action of meeting to arrange a ban was rendered moot by Adam’s resignation - which was officially requested in the notification of the ban. (I dunno if the committee is still planning to meet to talk about this, but they officially got what they asked for when this got raised.)
[quote=“theotherphoenix”]
I’m sorry, isn’t this what the committee just tried to do? And has now been screamed into submission by people who don’t have the whole story? [/quote]
What I’ve seen here are people asking for more information on the situation. This is a good thing[size=50]TM[/size]. People should care about this stuff. Asking for information shouldn’t be taken as taking sides, though it can certainly be seen that way when you have been bullied without support for long enough. Granted, there may have been screaming elsewhere I haven’t seen/heard (given these threads were news to me…)
Conflict like this is difficult to deal with. Thanks to everyone involved so far for dealing with it as well as you have.
[quote=“theotherphoenix”][quote=“IdiotSavant”]It can support GMs in their choices of who to admit in their games, by e.g. backing those who want to ban bullying, litigious players, and refusing to act as a forum for those players to try and re-impose themselves.
It can make sure other GMs are informed of such behaviour, so they can make their own decisions.
It can, if a rule of the society is breached or the society is brought into disrepute, eject them from the society.[/quote]
(This is not an attack on you, Idiot, I’m sorry if quoting you above makes it seem that way)[/quote]
Not a problem; I’m aware everyone is trying hard to be constructive in a difficult situation (likewise, I should apologise if what I said earlier to Liz was a bit confrontational; I’ll go back and do an edit when I’m done here).
They tried to do a bit more than that, by not just supporting GMs in their choices, but trying to impose choices on GMs. And that is bound to make people uncomfortable, especially when it is unprecedented.
And that is a problem. As for the answer, its solidarity. Those running games in Auckland who don’t want Adam at their events should take the opportunity to speak up and declare him unwelcome, as Vanya did.
(Wellington GMs: do we want to take such a move? It would be mostly symbolic, given both geography and the sorts of games we run here, but that doesn’t make it meaningless)
Probably because it is potentially defamatory, and people are aware enough of that to be cautious.
Have we? Adam has been forced to resign his membership, and the Committee has made it clear they will not allow him to reapply for five years. He jumped, rather than being pushed, but he’s still out. The Committee has also made it clear that they support GMs who want to ban players, and aren’t going to act as an appeal court on such matters. And now we have that precedent, we’re unlikely to have to put up with such time-wasting in the future.
Probably because it is potentially defamatory, and people are aware enough of that to be cautious. [/quote]
I think this is where we trip up massively. We need to find a balance between transparency and defamation. If people are afraid to speak up when they are frightened, or have been bullied, or any other uncomfortable encounter because they’re going to get slapped with ‘defamation’, then that is a problem. Further to that, it’s counter to democracy. A democracy where you’re too afraid to speak up is not a very good one. I have been in committee meetings where I have been too afraid to speak because Adam was there, and I was afraid of his reaction. Not being transparent, and not reporting out-of-line behaviour because of ‘defamation’ or ‘slander’ hanging over our heads is part of what got us into this mess.
I am still concerned that Game Masters will be too intimidated to speak up and ban him, even though they might want to. Solidarity on a forum is a nice first step, but Game Masters are still on their own to go and tell someone (who has a history of reacting badly to things like that) that they’re not welcome and expose themselves to the backlash. More to the point, this leaves new game masters or people new to the community, who will not know the background off of which to make an informed decision on his inclusion, vulnerable. No, the society is not ‘the larp-police’ but it does have the right to protect its resources (projects) and the responsibility to protect its members. Sure, let’s agree that making their choices for them isn’t the right thing to do. But as a society and a community, we will occasionally run across destructive people, or people that are in some way chronically detrimental to other people’s experiences of the community. And it’s not a good situation at all where people are too afraid to speak out, and too afraid to act, to remove the disruptive force. What ends up happening in that kind of situation is that something that people do for fun (play or run larps) becomes not fun, and it becomes easier to not do it (not attend or run games) than to remove the disruptive influence. That is not good at all.
I believe it’s been vehemently established that the project owners have the right to decide who attends their events. As am I the sole Project Owner of Chimera, that will be my decision to make.
Email makes these things a lot easier. And again, its much easier of you know that NZLARPs has your back, and that other GMs are taking similar action.
We can warn GMs when they apply for project funding, so they are at least aware of the issue and can make a decision. I’m sure the Auckland Committee can compose a suitable, factual, non-defamatory warning (along the lines of “A number of GMs have chosen to ban Adam P from their games because…”) and a statement saying that they will support the Project Owner in whatever decision they make. It could also offer to be the emailer of bad news should a GM decide that they don’t want the hassle of dealing with him (though that really would be taking one for the team).
Obviously, we can’t do very much about GMs running outside of NZLARPS, and don’t have much of a mandate to impose ourselves on them.
