Struck a Nerve?

Struck a nerve?

Yep, I think so, several in fact.
We are constantly on a fight against scamming, spamming, cheating and harassing of others. Is the balance easy to find? Heck no, but in my opinion, staff is doing one heck of a job within given boundaries.

First of all, we are a game site, and not a baby sitting site. Our job is to keep the site as nice a place to be as possible, and not to spend countless energy trying to babysit only one or just a few accounts that either are or want to act like unruley children.

Do we have a problem with newbies? No, every one of us was a newbie at some point in time, and our wish is to give everyone an enjoyable site without having to hand it to them on a silver platter. Yes, we get irritated that some think that newbies should be ousted simply because they tend to do newbish stuff like underbidding on items in trades or asking 'how to' questions. Perhaps you could send a link to a helpful marasite rather than sending them a 'how dare you bid on my precious pixels' or 'why didn't you read my lookup, my blog, my last 17 forum posts, my marasite and my mind before you bothered to write to me?' Yes, the trivial reports are irritating when we are working on other things constantly..

Oh, and then the forum posts that want to pass judgement on what staff does or demands on what staff needs to do before this site is playable for you? Scream that an account you reported is still a viable account.. You do not have a clue what has gone on behind the scenes at all, it is not your concern how we have handled someone elses account, your main concern should be how we have handled your account, even in adverse situations.

We do stand by our 48 hour protection if in fact you are really scammed and not just taunted a bit. We do not have a button that will make everyone think and say things just as we would like, and there are always going to be some that try to push the boundaries. You push certain boundaries and others push certain other boundaries.. what makes one right and the other not right?

This thought does stretch all the way to the reports I see that 'so and so' is doing 'such and such' and since I got in trouble so should they. There is a tremendous difference between 'donate to me because my dog died' and 'if you have blue roses for sale, please let me know so I can buy them for my memorial to my lost loved one'. I also see a huge difference between 'give me' and 'would you trade' with a lot of grey area in between that is in fact hard to judge someone's actual intent. We should not have to call it all begging, but it seems we must because again, some are so determined that others should not dirty their mail with such trivial requests.

Sure, pressing the report button is easier that returning a mail that simply says 'no thank you', and that is fine. It is when the report button is pushed and the return mail chews the offender up one side and down the other and the forum post quoting the mail to prove how badly you were wronged to everyone else that it becomes irritating. Yes, we do want to change inappropriate pet names, also, and we do not catch them all. Please, make sure they are actually inappropriate, though. I really do not care if 'TinkerbellSucks' unless the name is telling what she sucks and it happens to be more than just hot air. I would really rather deal with the 102 accounts that jimbobjanedoe just made to get all the eggs, pumpkins, holly, turkeys (name the holiday giveaway) than to have to deal with your 'begger' that you have already strung out to dry or the pet whose name is a bad word in Pakistan or the Himalayas.

And I guarantee, I really don't want to have to tag all those multi accounts, either.. there is more time spent tagging than staff gets to spend playing the site.
For those of you that want a tagging system to protect other players, perhaps we should post our admin notes on the lookup of every account instead of privately in the back of the account? I am pretty sure that we have dirt of some type of most of you that really think it should be that way.

Am I rambling, yes I am and I don't think I touched on even a small percent of what I wanted to. In closing this episode, I will first give my disclaimer, and then my suggestion.

Disclaimer: This is from my own personal thoughts, and any person or people that may think they have seen themselves depicted here, you possibly did, but you were not the only one. Every one of the scenarios was based on actual happenings by usually more than one member. This has not been approved by other staff or anyone else connected with Mara, it is all a product of my personal frustration.

Suggestion: If you think you can run a site better, please go give it a shot. The log out button for this one is on the left side of the page. When you get it just right, come and let me know the site to check out. I probably have more than a handful of 'perfect referrals' for just the right site.