A Mid-Year Resolution

Merlin's Beard!

I've been reflecting in the past day or so all of the upheaval we've seen in the Wizard101 community in the past two months or so. It's been snowballing. It's lead to a lot of hard feelings and some people totally writing other wizards off.

I'm not pretending that I was not part of one of these recent events. That's part of why I'm writing this entry. I'm hoping that because I WAS a person who was unfortunately forced into one of these problems that someone else played out publicly, that others might give my suggestion strong consideration: we need to resolve to regroup and move forward.

I hope we can make this our Mid-Year Resolution: to make the rest of 2011 more positive than some moments of the first half of 2011. Many good things happened from January-July, but lately we've had a bit of an implosion, and there is plenty of time to halt it before it gets worse.

If you'll bear with me, I'd like to make a bunch of points/observations that won't exactly connect dot-to-dot but hopefully in the end if you consider them as a whole you'll agree to join me in the resolution.

• The bulk of the problems in the past two months has taken place among the Twizards. Not that I blame Twitter or Twizards, it's just that we happen to be a group of people who like to utilize Twitter to spread the news about what we are doing in-game or on our sites and projects related to the game.
• If I were a player who was new to the game and/or "Twizarding" - joining the Twitter community with a feed specifically for my Wizard101 play and/or to discuss my blog/project, I would run from all of us. I would run far and run fast. I would see all of the problems being publicly aired amongst the parties. I would see different Twizards appearing to take sides. I would see that these matters could and should be resolved strictly in private (some ways to do this are via e-mail, Skype, IM chat in Skype or Google chat). I wouldn't want to get involved because heaven forbid I tick someone off, all the Twizards will know about it and I'll have 125 community leaders and/or popular players to explain myself to if I want to keep credibility.
• Every single problem that the Twizard/close-knit player/blogger/site owner community has had endured lately is legitimate. I don't seen any true pettiness. I'm not saying the things we aren't agreeing upon aren't worthy or should simply be shrugged off. But making things public compounds the problem.
• One thing I tell myself over and over, and I'd like to see us adopt as sort of a mantra: I can probably like you even if I don't like everything you do. That doesn't apply 100% of the time. Sometimes I have to say "I can be civil to you even though you have treated me in a matter that is reprehensible, for the sake of not providing a source of gossip in the community." 

Is there any way that we, as a group of players who is involved in Twitter, Diary of a Wizard ConnectX, the blogging/official fan site community, to move forward with a more positive representation of the good things about our community? Not that we all have to be Pollyanna or pretend that everything is double rainbows 24/7. Just tone things back so that, if we read over our collective Tweets for a day, we wouldn't see things that would scare off a new Twizard.

Here is one example: Last week there was some discussion on Twitter about a well-known official site that is blocking mention of another official site. It was suggested on Twitter that all official sites return that behavior. I suggested we not stoop to that. That way it continues to be a reflection on that one site, not all of the official sites. Can we take all of this type of conversation off Twitter? Or do it via DM?

Final thoughts:

• What should our Twitter/Twizard feeds be about? Our accomplishments of the day (level obtained, badge earned), cheering for rare drops, publicizing a blog post, or sometimes an IRL thing such as the end of the school year or a great test score? Or who has ticked us off and who we are writing off?
• Do we want to be the core group of Twizards that do nothing but infight day after day, and thereby become irrelevant to the casual player who wants to be part of the Twizard community, or run a blog for their own personal enjoyment?
• Can we take a step back and see that we are fortunate to have discovered Wizard101 relatively early in what is sure to be a long, long life as an MMO, to be "founding community members" to some degree, and with that in mind build our identities as positive community members? I don't want any single one of us to be remembered as a person who started off as a fun and positive person but who left the community, or made themselves irrelevant, through negative behavior. No, we will not agree with each other all of the time. But can we resolve to address our disputes in private?
• I have been involved in a several private conversations in the past few days about modeling good sportsmanship/behavior in-game. Let's model that same behavior in the way we treat each other in social networking which can be observed by all Wizard101 players.

See you in The Spiral!