Ethics.. A tough question

[Deanne]

Lots of comments. lol ozzy, you can think of the story with reversed names if you want. err0r outed you, because he decided to run things with his sweatheart instead. and I already been

 

Warrior first no one gave me that pass in confidence. It would be like err0r and ozzy. err0r knows ozzy pretty well, and probably knows what ozzy loves. It wouldn't be too surprising if err0r suddenly realized ozzy's password, especially considering ozzy made his password only 5 letters long, and the one thing he loves most.

 

err0r I respect your point of view about the whole it's not that hard to make a group, and it's really not. The biggest issue that confronted me on that one was the ideals of the members. For some reason the 'room' itself became like home for alot of people--like a personification of a much loved member of the family. There were memories of this or that, which people often brought up. Early on it was decided that having our room taken over was wrong, but we wanted to show show grace and kindness in return, and continue to support our room no matter who tried to take it away from us. Looking back I don't agree with this set of choices, and this is probably where I would make changes in my path, if I could go back and do so.

 

Yet even with this philosophy, as the years went by, a few people did try to just start a new group. But the majority of the room condemned them for this, and accused them of trying to split the room up. The philosophy of that particular group was to be long suffering and to turn the other check. Most tried to overcome the wrong they felt had been done to them, by showing kindness in return. But eventually most of the good ones just lost heart and stopped coming around, or they were banned for speaking their mind. The unbanned ones showed up every now and then to see if things had gotten better, and the banned ones snuck in under new names, and tried to continue chatting like that until they were discovered and rebanned.

 

It isn't like this decision jumped up in one day. It was the accumulation of what I now consider a series of really bad choices. After three years of having the room taken over by a new person, and 2 years after having the first group shut down and supporting the new persons group.... There just was no real reason left to open a new site, and there was no room to base that site on anyways, as the new person had first taken over the orginal room. Plus the system had gone to subscription by that time, so we didn't have the people willing to pay to run a new room to attract new people to a new group, and again, there just weren't really any new people around to attract anyways, as hardly anyone wanted to pay the subscription. And all the old members were stubbornly standing faithful to the room they had always used, despite having had it taken away from several years prior.

 

I agree whole heartedly that the best route to take would have been to start a new room right after the very first room was taken over. But as a group we all chose not to do that out of some misplaced sense of loyalty to the room itself. In the end, that was my route of preference also. I spent upwards of two months trying to convince the owners to let me post the link to a new site, so that people would have a choice of where they wanted to hang out, and how they wanted to be treated. He refused to post that link, even though I attempted to post it dozens of times. Finally I attempted to just post a simple note for people to email me if they were interested in chatting in a new group, but those posts were also rejected. I tried reasoning with him, but he simply would not losen his hold over the site.

 

So yes, I did spend several years, trying many other ways to deal with the situation, but eventually was faced with the following situation. Now knowing the history, I would like you to consider the situation also.

 

You see a site you have poured your heart into, and people you care about deeply being ripped apart. The option to make a new site causes most members to see you as a divider, and so you realize making a new site will not fix what is happening anyways, due to the faithful philosophy of the members to stand by the room no matter how badly they are treated.

 

One day after much anguished thinking, a light bulb goes off in your mind, as you see a word flash against the back of your eyes. You know in your heart that it is a password. And you realize also who's password it is. Being more than a little doubtful of this, and hardly believing it could be true you try it out, just to set your mind at ease that its just fantasy, and not really the real password. But it works.

 

Now you are faced with a whole new situation. You are now watching a site and people you care very much about being treated terribly, and have spent the last 3 years watching things get worse and worse and worse. Yet suddenly you have the ability to really do something about it--to end that terrible treatment. Do you:

 

A: Ignore the knowledge you have, and watch the wrong treatment continue.

B: Use the knowledge you have to end the wrong treatment.

 

When I cut through all the other wrongs and rights, this is where I was left standing..right in the middle of these two choices.

 

Like I said to start with, depending on which day it is, you will get two opposite reponses from me on whether my decision was right or wrong.

 

Ultimately and in all honesty, at the point in time when I was faced with these final two choices, I really don't regret the choice I made. In all likely hood, regardless of how many think it was the wrong choice, I'm not one to stand passively by and watch wrong treatment continue..I do what I can to end it. Trying the least invasive methods first, and moving onto more invasive methods if the gentler ones don't work.

 

What I do regret now is to standing passivly by and allowing selfish people to steal, and take things that others worked so hard to build. It is not right to stand by and allow wrong treatment to be done to ourselvse or to others.

 

In ending, ethics are tough things to deal with. How we view an issue is an accumulation of internalized values and morals. Often there is no easy right or wrong response, but rather people can only judge the situation based on what they have been taught or learned all their lives, often without realizing the full history of choices that have occured to bring the person to one specific choice--often a choice that consists of choosing between the lesser of two evils. Sometimes it isn't a matter of letting the world conform us to its pattern of right or wrong, but it is standing firm in what we really believe in our heart to be the right choice at the time.

Edited October 26, 2006 by Deanne

[Deanne]

lol xxageration. I didn't go away for years I went away on a 2 month vacation and returned to find the room taken over and all old owners de-ownered by a person one of the owners convinced us to let host. Then shortly after, the owner who convinced us all to host that person who took over the room decided to close our group down on us, and send all of our members to the persons group who took over our room. (confusing I know) But looking back, we were scammed I think--and just too 'nice' to fight back.

 

**Edit**

I gotta say, all this is just one more reason I'm glad msn is finally gone. Onto better days.

Edited October 26, 2006 by Deanne

[Webagent007]

its verry hard hearing only one side of the story, I would want to hear both.

 

I'm sure ozzy would never dump err0r without any reason

[err0r]

yeah he luvs meh and all meh err0rish wayz

[Guest X-Fusion]

No, hes not around enough anymore to throw you out. He's been with his g/f to much.

[Ozzy10]

who else would put up with me and my ozzmatising lol

[Guest XploziOn]

It's Ozzmatized not Ozzmatised, Ist time i've ever said it but here goes

 

YOU GIT..

[err0r]

you know how those foreigners are with spelling things

[Deanne]

its verry hard hearing only one side of the story, I would want to hear both.

 

I'm sure ozzy would never dump err0r without any reason

 

Hi Webagent. I don't blame you for acknowledging this is only one side. I'm sure the other side had her reasons to justify why she took over that room to begin with also. The thing is, she didn't just dump one owner, but about a dozen of us owners all got dumped. There was lots of talk at the time about her saying she did it for 'security reasons', that having so many owners was dangerous, and that with the bots coming in it was safer to just have a couple owners running bots, and the rest as hosts. Plus alot of our owners were away for a couple of months out of each year. It all worked out good for us, we all knew each other. We knew the ozzy hosts were mostly away during their summer months, and the usa hosts were away during their summer months etc.. So all of us owners coming and going maybe also added to her sense that she was the one there all the time, and thus the room should really belong to her...especially because she was quite often the one to re-open it if it happened to close.

 

Anyways, while the example here does come close, it does have it's limitations, and does not exactly describe the whole situation. In the real situation, there were also 4 key players, instead of only 3 etc. I simply put it into an example format here, in hopes that it would be easier to understand, because it really was a very long and confusing situation., but also a situation that seemed to keep getting brought up..

 

Anyways, here the situation again, minus the ozzy and err0r characters..

 

Our original room was shared by several of us owners, and whenever it closed who ever opened it would share the gold pass from regedit. Things went along great, for several years. Then a new chatter showed up in our room, and stuck around. Eventually one of the owners suggested that we make this new chatter a host, because she was in the room all the time. So we couldn't see any reason not to, and we hosted her up. Things went along fine for a while, and I left on a long 2 month vacation.

 

Anways, while I was away on vacation, apparently one day that new host decided that because she re-opened the room more than most others, that the room now belonged to her because of that. She somehow got in close with one owner, and I think convinced him also that the room would be better off with less owners, I'm not sure how it all happened.

 

Anyways, that new host had a dsl connection so the room rarely closed on her, giving us very little opportunity to re-open it again ourselves, and regain the gold pass. The few times we did manage to re-open the room ourselves, it closed eventually because none of us other owners had a dsl connection, giving that new host plenty of opportunity to open it herself again. I'm not 100% sure what all happened, as I was away on a 2month vacation when she first took the room over. I just returned to alot of outraged ex-owners, and found myself an ex-owner also. Some had been banned and were too exasperated to even discuss it, and others just said 'let her go she'll get tired of it soon.'

 

As I said, as a group we talked about starting a new room, but no one liked the 'feel' of that, or the potential it had to set one room against the other. Everyone wanted to maintain a sense of unity and compassion, and forgiveness. We decided to do what we felt was the 'right thing', and continue to use our room..even if she was now running it, and none of us were owners anymore. We really weren't all that concerned anyways, because we still ran the group which was attached to that room, and she was sweet enough to make some of us hosts again in the room also lol. We kind of got used to working with her, and hoped eventually she would remember that we were owners before she ever knew the room even existed. But she never seemed to think of that.

 

Where things really started to go sour, was a bit later, when that new host decided to open her own group and advertise it in the room she had taken over from us. And then things got even worse when one of our managers(the same manager who first asked us to make that new chatter a host lol) decided to de-manager all of us in our group, and send our members to that take over hosts new group.

 

So there we all sat, trying to be nice, but now we didn't run our own room, and our group was closed down, and all our members were sent to her new group.

 

You have to understand, while this was all going on, we tried to see the humor in it and not become too angry and unforgiving. Alot of us old owners moved over to her new group also, and tried to continue helping out there. I was one who decided to move over, and show patience instead of anger. She made some of us hosts there, and so long as you didn't disagree with her sweetie, we didn't run too much risk of being banned. Eventually a couple of the old owners got close enough to that new host, and so comfortable in their positon as hosts, that they didn't want to risk jeaporadizing their host postions, and refused to even acknowledge that there were any issues with the situation. But the things the new hosts sweetie did were hard to take, and they grew worse and worse as more time went on. One after of the old owners began to speak out and one after another ended up banned, or leaving because they couldn't take it anymore.

 

It really was a bad choice on all of our parts to decide to stick with the room, and our members, instead of just starting over right from the start. I think the time delay between things happening worked against us though. We all settled into her 'ownering' our room, and by the time our group got closed, we had all kind of gotten used to her...so it wasn't such a stretch to move over to her group, instead of opening a new one, which would have just caused a split (like everyone was worried about) and caused bickering and fighting..something everyone wanted to avoid.

 

But anyways. It was quite the scam I think, and quite the smozzle. I didn't realize until I took over the group myself last spring, that the new host who took our original room away from us, and the owner who first suggest we make that new chatter a host, and who then closed our group and sent all our members to that new hosts new group were actually close friends. It really made me think that it was a set up of some type on their part, but maybe it was just all an unfortunate coincidence also. I really don't know.

 

In support of the host who took over our room initially, I still think she would have come around eventually and decided to work with all of us old owners. Except she got involved with a man who likes to horde control all for himself, and who doesn't use it rightly either. He's really led her down a wretched path, and was ultimately the one behind keeping all th old owners out. But then, I also have to wonder if she is just one of those people who easily manipulated us into feeling sorry for her, and going along with her. I really don't know, but I continue to hope for the best from her, and think that deep down she is a good person who got led astray by a power hungry man.

 

What I have learned though, is that when friends come up against lovers, friends look out I don't think you're going to win. At least none of us did. So ozzy and err0r don't worry too much lol, unless one of you has a power hungry sweatheart out there, encouraging you to get rid of the other!!

 

At anyrate. Thats all I have to say about this, and I hope that it doesn't get thrown at me too many more times in the future.

 

 

Edited October 26, 2006 by Deanne

[Guest Gina]

This is better than a freaking soap opera!

 

Deanne,

 

Don't question what you did. Listen to everyone's opinion, but just remember it is easy to say what you would do if you are not actually experiencing it. When faced with a tough situation, weigh the pros & cons & then act. Also, remember actions that you take may come with reprecussions or benefits. If you feel like what you did was a mistake, learn from it & move on. If you feel like you didn't do anything wrong, then great,... don't question it...