I thought I should give Sue, as one of the Leaky admins who has come here to communicate, the same prominent space here as my own entries and Nick's comments. The following is my open letter to her from the entry "Open Letter to Sue and Doris" below, her answer to this letter, and my comment to her answer again. To make it clear who has written what, I will put Sue's words in italics, but other than that, I have not edited her words, obvioulsy:
Dear Sue
You know, my darling Sue, that whatever differences we may have had, we have sorted them out long ago. I consider you to be my friend. Maybe you have not always been certain that I am your friend - but I assure you, I am. However mad you may have been with me at times, I have never heard that you have ever badmouthed me behind my back. Ever. Whatever you had to say you said it directly to me in private pms - as you would never yell to me in public either. You are a great enough person to apologise when you think you have done wrong, and I have never ever heard that you have deliberately done anything to hurt anybody. Leaky would have been a much better place for its staff to be if the rest of the admins had taken your example in these matters to heart!
And you are aware of the fact that the Leaky News section would have sunk a long time ago if you hadn't kept it going, aren't you? I am not sure you are always given the credit or appreciation you are due over there, by the management of the site that is....... The fandom truly loves and appreciates you, though!
I say this here and now because I think that you may have been hurt and confused when so much anger and venom have been directed towards the "Leaky admins" lately - since you are sometimes included in that "admin" group too. I therefore hereby state as loud and clear as I can: Sue Upton is my friend and I have no issues with her. She is not responsible for the recent problems at Leaky described in this blog.
Here is Sue's answer of 30th of June, in the comments:
Dear Torill,
I had not known about this letter until Kimmy told me, and I have pondered on how exactly to respond, so Im sorry for the delay in responding(had the plethora of news, PotterCast stuff, and other family emergencies on top of things so Im way behind as usual) and I thank you for writing this in the first place-wow! What an amazing letter thank you!
You did of course nail my emotions and what I was feeling about all of this on the head, and I'm still amazed (and as always, impressed) with how you can see what I'm feeling inside-you are amazing on many levels but this has long impressed me. Yes indeed, I have been horribly sad, horribly upset for those who truly know me know this just was NOT what I ever wanted for Leaky, nor any of us did! truly I believe this, and because I take all of this so close to heart, all these events have torn me bit and soul, just like Tom Riddle.
I still believe to this very day the strength of the site has always been the people(ie ALL CAP PLURAL MORE THAN ONE PERSON), whether those who are still on staff or have left and the readers-we are all Potter fans and I never thought members of the website would become so disliked, have such controversy around it or that well, it would be like this. None of us did! Naive and silly perhaps, but part of me also very much wants to keep on working as hard as possible to try to improve things (and yes I actually do believe Leaky Senior Staff and a whole bunch of others honestly want to improve things, maybe not happening in the manner nor speed some may wish but i swear it's not being forgotten small comfort to some but i swear its true.)but heh other days I simply want to walk away altogether I mean just screw this, and I dont know why I get out of bed. Yes it is true, I am very conflicted at a time when it is supposed to be the best for our fandom.
I really do not want to get into commentary about others because yo u addressed such a lovely letter to me personally-hope you can understand this, and so I wish to respond solely to you.
Torill, please know I do HUGELY miss the "old days" just like Moody and Sirius reflecting on the old crowd as DD called it; I do long for what our little group had, and would very much like things to be different. I feel as if most of my playmates, Pottermates and online friends have vanished or I've simply been so freakin overwhelmed and busy Ive failed horribly and quite pitifully at maintaining the ties contact and communication to the ones I love the most. Somedays I think Kimmy is the only one who is so gosh dang bloody stubborn persistant and utterly refuses to let me slide into my turtleshell of isolation, and god bless her for that! if it were not for her, no one would know I am still here save for an occassional post or a goofball comment or giggle on pc. The rest of my friends should rightly just kick my sorry butt and I have no other words than to say Im sorry, but I am.
I was thinking the day that we got the news about the release date, and how Jo was feeling, also about how far this journey had taken me, and whether or not it was ending up in a manner and place that I would reflect on with such joy. I had always in the back of my mind rather hoped it would be our small band of Cauldron's army being together online in some mass post-reading chat, but I am not certain if that would happen or if others would welcome my presence there.
I do love my job at Leaky, and I work very hard, and am frankly very proud of all the accomplishments our entire team have achieved-past and present staff included!!!! Im sure as hell not perfect in my job, but I do try, however I am also honest and realise anyone with a bit of effort and sheer enthusiasm could easily do the same with the news, but I did appreciate your kind words, truly truly very much!
I really never ever ever ever in a million years wanted to become a "celebrity fan" and it is something I struggle daily with, for all I really wanted was for our website to continue to grow in respect love and a true appreciation of the readers and for the staff. I think of myself as being just like every one else in our fandom (yes I am sorted into the right house I think), and I bloody well know how lucky I am so I have no room to weep perhaps for the things I miss or have lost, but honestly I really wanted to and believe with my heart and soul that the fandom is for all of us-all of us. I hope that others reading these words will know that to be true, although the other day someone posted about senior staff and left my name off it, so Im not even certain if people really much notice me other than the goofball squeeing.
I think Leaky wants us to all be part of a good experience and hell yes I wish I could change things, make things better over night but I cant but again I think things can improve, hopefully it just isnt too late (i mean my love of HP isnt ending on July 21 -is yours!)
Torill, please know this: I always think with great fondness of our past communications and working together to make the forum, and while yes we did have our (few) disagreements, they were settled and I also appreciate you mentioning that as well. I still remain awed by you, same as I felt when we were always posting on the leaky comments, pre-forum days (even sharing the Cuaron love! :)) My respect for your intelligence, care, concern, and most of all heart, has not wavered one iota, no matter how things have transpired since.
I do not know what else to say in this long rambling (Torill -length ;) ) response, but I personally will always carry the laughter conversations and joy and love of Potter that brought us and all the ones Ive drifted from, together in the first place.
All best,
Sue
And this is my answer to her:
Sue - thank you so much for your lovely answer - thank you thank you for coming here and sharing your thoughts and reactions with me and everyone. It means a lot more to me than you maybe know. And of course I am totally ok with the fact that you choose not to comment on what does not concern you, but only answer my letter to you. That is all I could have hoped for or wanted, so thank you again!
Your great heart and your honesty shines through in this answer - and that does not surprise me, because you were always so real. There was never a shred of calcualation behind any of your reactions, ever.
I am so sorry that you are hurting, sorry that a predictable side-effect of telling this story of my Leaky Experiences would be to cause you pain, make you upset, sad and sorry. Because you truly love Leaky, you love the people there, you love the fandom. You have always wanted to be a part of something great and wonderful, to share, participate, contribute and then be respected, included and loved in return. And now so much conflict and dislike and corruption is happening around you at the very place you invested so much of yourself in...
I truly wish it could have been different. I, too, would have so much wanted to be able to celebrate the last launch, the final revelation of the whole plot, the whole story, together with a huge family of Leaky friends who should have had so much to celebrate and cherish and congratulate each other for. It should have been like that, it really should, and it is such a shame that it is not.
But sadly enough, I do not believe that to remain silent in order to protect you - or anyone else of the good guys like you - from hurting would have been helpful at all at this point. You say that you believe things can change, can improve for the better and that every member of the senior staff wants this - I so hope you are right! I could wish for nothing better.
I am not so sure I can share even your modest amount of optimism, though. But I do know that if there is going to be even the slightest chance of improvement, of righting what is wrong, then we have to speak up. To be silent about our experiences of wrongdoings because it may be hurtful for some to hear about them, will only enable them to continue unchecked. You can only change what you are aware of.
You could say it should have been kept "within the family" and not made public, and yes, I would have preferred that too. I originally tried to achieve something by going to the admins and the ones directly involved only - by being descreet if you will. But that had NO effect. Then I have been silent for more than a year - and that has not done anyone any good either. Now I am talking, and good people like you are hurting...
Will it help? I don't know. But at least, there is a chance that maybe things will be taken seriously now, not just swept under the carpet and retold to be only about "misunderstandings" that no one needs to address....
A small chance. But yes, perhaps. I think an important first step towards real change would be to listen carefully to the complaints and stories of those who have left. To take what they say seriously, to talk to them in all honesty in order to learn and to grow, not in order to accuse or defend or deny. But what I have seen and heard so far are only attempts at discrediting the leavers as liars and troublemakers; and a retelling of old lies. This is not giving me much hope.
But maybe you are right, maybe there is a willingness behind the scenes that we on the outside do not hear about, a willingness to look at what has happened with honesty in order to stop abusing and manipulating practices. That would be truly great. Truly great. I wish.
Finally - my darling Sue - why do you doubt whether anyone would want to include you in a huge online post-launch "reading and squeeing together" chat??? Whatever gave you that idea? I would just love to share the first experience of the book with my online friends - the more the merrier - and YOU are definitely one of my online friends! I know for a fact - and I think you know this too if you stop and consider for a moment - that so many people out there also consider you one of the good guys. You have very very many friends Sue. Whether we are "inside" or "outside" Leaky these days should not be what matters, should it?
Again - thank you for answering me, both Nick and Sue. My next instalment here, which I am now off to write, will be my open letter to Melissa.
Saturday, 30 June 2007
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
Communication with Nick
I had planed to continue the closure of my Leaky Experience by posting open letters to Nick and Melissa next. But in the mean time, Nick responded to what I have been writing here, first on his livejournal and then in a comment to the entry below.
That changed my plans a little. I am very glad you responded Nick - now I know something about what your reactions are, and can also talk to you directly in a much more real way than I thought would be possible. Of course, I am not so happy about the content of what you have to say - but I don't think you expected me to be that either...
I will give proper space to what you said to and about me - I think that is only fair when I have been so outspoken myself. I will post the quote from your livejournal first, then your comment to my open letter to Sue and Doris below, both without any interruptions from me. Then I will respond to both, incorporating into that response some of what I had already planned to say to you.
What follows below are the copy-and-paste versions of what you posted. I have not edited anything, but of course the formatting shows up differently here than on your blog or in the comments. I have put it all in italics to distinguish clearly what are quotes from you and what is written by me.
So, here goes. This is what Nick posted on his livejournal on Jun. 18th, 2007
My Fresh Perspective
I am not posting this as a staffer of any website, but as an independent person; the thoughts I share below are my own.
----------------------
I've just recently been pointed to a blog by a former Leaky staffer named Torill (she openly shares her name there, so I don't feel it's a violation of her privacy to share it here) that was fairly recently-created (May of this year), which, despite its unassuming title, seems to have the sole intent of dragging the good name of Doris Herrmann through the mud for events that happened a year-and-a-half ago, and which greatly involved myself. Doris has taken the high road by not responding to these posts, but I--lowly though it is--feel the need to share my perspective on the story here on my blog, because I think that without my input, assumptions are being made and conclusions are being jumped to about why I had decided to seek a new leader for the then-Essay Project that are completely false. I was sent several PMs and e-mails that were written by staffers, both from those who worked on the then-Essay Project and those who worked with Therese in other capacities, sharing their thoughts on Therese. Some of these were sent on by the writers and some were forwarded by Doris. Several of the writers were very outspoken at the time among the staff in their negative opinions of Therese. The comments all expressed the feeling that Therese was often hard to get along with, and many also shared that she lacked effective leadership skills to manage the project, in their writers' opinions.
I know that for my own part, I was disappointed to find out that the website that Therese had shown as part of her credentials was only filled with essays written by her, and one by a friend (at the time, t may have changed now). I was under the impression--and I may have jumped to this conclusion completely on my own--that when Therese said that she ran this site, she was in charge of a staff of some sort and had dealt with essay submissions, but that was not the case. At the time, she had no other previous experience with leading essay projects or online staffs, so this site factored greatly into her being asked on board for the project. These details were pointed out to me in December, and were a factor in my decision to seek out a different leader for the project.
I hope that all of this has shed some light on the situation and helped to show the other side to the story.
I have disabled comments in this post because of the potential to abuse them.
--Nicholas A. Rhein
And this was posted in the comments to my last entry below:
I am not posting this as a staffer of any website, but as an independent person; the thoughts I share below are my own.
------------------------
I must say that in your capacity as a forum moderator and as a staffer in the Essay Project, you had very little opportunity to witness first-hand whether or not Doris lied about anything, since you weren't privy to that information. What you were privy to was gossip, as you say: "Too many stories have surfaced for anyone to be able to deny this pattern now. For those who have heard all the stories about your lies, such a denial will amount to nothing less than the enabling of abuse." I, on the other hand, was very much privy to the truth rather than twice-told tales of dubious intent, and I NEVER witnessed her lie to the staffers or to myself, and to this day consider her one of the most principled people I know. I would also like to clear up one point that is, in fact, a lie on Torill's part: "I have no grudges against you for approaching Melissa and trying to become her friend so that you could get a more influential position at Leaky." Given that you were not privy to this information, I do understand why you have it wrong. I was in those e-mails, however, and know for a fact that it was they who approached Doris asking her to be project coordinator (Doris was the first person who immediately sprang to mind), and I approached her to be my co-administrator on the forum, not the other way around. I'm not sure why you think it was the other way around, but my immediate impression is that you listened to gossipers who claimed it to be so. Most Sincerely, --Nicholas A. Rhein
Here is my response:
My initial reaction after having read this thoroughly - was utter confusion. I didn't know what to think, and whether I understand you at all any more. Your two versions of the story - the one you revealed to me in January/February 2006, and the one you are telling now, especially in your Livejournal entry, do not add up. Either you lied to me then, or you are lying now.
Or you have completely changed the events around in your mind during the time that has passed, and honestly do remember it like you describe it above. Then we really are dealing with something that may be termed "The Art of Denial". But then you cannot have read very thoroughly what I have written on this blog, because that ought to have jogged your memory. And I would be very disappointed to learn that you had written the livejournal entry above, describing my blog, even stating what you think its sole intent is supposed to be - without having read my blog properly first...
No matter how I look at it, it doesn't add up.
Those of you reading this who have read my earlier entries, and followed all the citations and quotes I have presented there, may be a bit bored by the following. Because I am going to go through some of the evidence yet again. If the above really is about denial - if you really have forgotten Nick, and convinced yourself that the lies are the truth, then I want to try and wake you up. I used to think of you as my friend. When I left Leaky in January 2006, I wrote this to you in my farewell letter, cited in The moderator experience post far below:
thank you Nick, for being so approachable, supportive, fair and among the least defensive and power-hungry people I have ever met!!
- and I meant every word! You may not believe this, but one of the things I have grieved the deepest through all of this, is the loss of you as my friend. I remember when you first came on board the old comment threads of Leaky, calling yourself Malecrit, determined to see if you could rile us Potterfans up a bit. Then we engaged in some real, invigorating and fun discussions, and then you shed that provocoative disguise and signed up as Scabbbers - sharing in the great experience that was Leaky in those days. For me, as for many others, you were a large part of what made it great. When you created the forum and agreed to invite me on as a mod, I couldn't have been happier. Even though I sometimes wanted to pull out all the hairs on my head from sheer frustration when you hopped along and started new things before you had thought them through properly, I always thought of you as one of the really good guys. I trusted you without reserve. I think you know that.
And here you are now, claiming that my sole intent with this blog is to "drag the good name of Doris Herrmann through the mud", repeating the old lies against Therese yet again, this time with your name under them. I really really want to ask "What happened to you" - even if I will never get any answer...
So let me see if it is possible to wake the old Scabberino up again, then. If sleep or enchantment or denial is what this is about, that is. I honestly don't know anymore...
You say: I must say that in your capacity as a forum moderator and as a staffer in the Essay Project, you had very little opportunity to witness first-hand whether or not Doris lied about anything, since you weren't privy to that information. What you were privy to was gossip.
The information I had about what Doris said against Therese, the information I set out to investigate by approaching all those of the old EP staff who were supposed to have said she was often hard to get along with, as you call it now - doing that investigation with your explicit consent, remember - that information came to me through - you Nick. You were my source. I have been very explicit about that, stating very clearly where I had my information from, by citations. From chats with you. And now you say: I, on the other hand, was very much privy to the truth.
So which is it, the information you shared with me back then - gossip or the truth? It can't be both Nick. And if it was gossip, then you were the gossiper.
You say: I--lowly though it is--feel the need to share my perspective on the story here on my blog, because I think that without my input, assumptions are being made and conclusions are being jumped to about why I had decided to seek a new leader for the then-Essay Project that are completely false. I was sent several PMs and e-mails that were written by staffers, both from those who worked on the then-Essay Project and those who worked with Therese in other capacities, sharing their thoughts on Therese.
Here it is implied that before Therese left, shortly before New Years Eve 2005, you had received mails and PMs from staffers, those who worked on the old EP project included, and that this is why you wanted to seek a new leader for the then-Essay Project.
If this is the truth Nick - then what on earth were you playing at when you contacted me on January 8th, and during our chat said the following things to me (see the citations in context here: http://torill-underthemagnoliatree.blogspot.com/2007/05/lies.html)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I worried privately that Therese might not be a very good manager, as many of the EP staff shared complaints or worries about her leadership and her way of working with them
(...)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: At least two of the EP staff shared complaints with Doris.
(...)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: They had been yelled at, apparently, in private messages, about things
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: (....)Doris could fill you in more, I do not know the details
If they had indeed written to you, or you had seen the pms and e-mails in question yourself - why didn't you tell me this when I asked, why didn't you cite from them or at least tell me the contents properly to convince me? Why did you claim instead that you did not know the details?
When I contacted you again after several of the staff had told me they had no complaints against Therese, on the 14th of January, you were even more explicit about not having seen these things yourself, and that your information came from Doris:
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: ****, ****, and **** have all sent Doris PMs from Therese that they considered inappropriate, to my knowledge
torillgrnhaug: Nick, have you seen those?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: No, I haven't, but Melissa has
(....)
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Let me see if I can find my conversation with Doris about it
torillgrnhaug: ok, I'll wait
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Doris says that, according to her conversations with the EP staff, none of them liked Therese--this is as of December 27
torillgrnhaug: none of them?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Other than you
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I'm not sure if she was exaggerating or not
torillgrnhaug: and the pms that **** has sent to Melissa - has Melissa said that to you, that she has seen it?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: No, she hasn't
Then you agreed that it would be a good thing to approach the EP staff and ask them whether they had actually ever said any of these things to Doris. You agreed to that even after I had said this:
torillgrnhaug: because, what I fear, is that Doris may b lying
torillgrnhaug: I don't want that to be true, but it sounds like it.
If the version above is true, why didn't you protest vehemently here? Telling me nononono, Doris is not lying, they have written to me, I have seen those pms, you must believe me. Instead you gave your consent to my investigation:
torillgrnhaug: is it ok if I do investigate, and ask them directly, at least **** who appears to be not at all easy to intimidate to me?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Yes, that's fine
But if the version in your livejournal were the truth, Nick - then to send me out on that kind of investigating quest, instead of just forwarding me the pms you now claim you were in possesssion of - that would have been really really cruel as I see it. Really playing a very nasty game with me. Especially since you were the one who initiated all these discussions of what happened when Therese left, by approaching me on your own accord on tne 8th of January, telling me about your concern for me. A concern I believed was genuine:
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: I wanted to ask you first if you have any questions about the essay project
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Anything at all that I can answer
torillgrnhaug: what kind of questions do you mean?
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: Stuff that we might not have filled you in on
scabbersakapeterpettigrew: And I will try afterwards to explain why Therese left, to the best of my knowledge, because I am not sure, but I think that is weighing heavily on your mind
If you at this point had documentation that you neither told me about nor showed me - then saying to me I will try afterwards to explain why Therese left, to the best of my knowledge is a cruel lie - because then you were very far from explaining to the best of your knowledge.....
Maybe your intent has been to defend Doris as your friend by making yourself out to look like the one having all the pms and mails, make it look as if she had nothing to do with it. This could be seen as heroic, because if your livejournal version is to be accepted as the truth, you do look bad now. At least to me.
It is still not enough to clear Doris' name completely, though. The conversation she had with me where she reassured me how no one saw Therese as trouble, I had to believe that ... after she had forwarded to Therese the PM you wrote about getting rid of her - this is still lying, and not in a very pretty way either..
But I do not believe your livejournal version Nick, no matter what motive you may have had to write it. As late as 18.02.06, you sent me large parts of the YIM conversation you had with Doris on December 27, 2005. Here it is clear that your judgment on Therese was based on what Doris said, not on any mails or pms you had received (PFG is paperflowergirl - Therese - and I suppose the words in [brackets] were added by you?:)
(20:10:40) Doris: I also have asked her [Melissa] for TLC [e-mail] accounts [for the EP] - but - I will also tell her that I think PFG is a mistake for this project -
(20:10:48) Doris: as she is running away staff
(20:10:54) nickrhein: That's fine
(20:10:59) Doris: and pushing your forum mods to the point they hate that project
(20:11:13) nickrhein: Gah, I wish I knew what were going on with my own staff
(...)
(20:12:44) nickrhein: That's fine, then--if we discuss replacing Therese, then I will not stand in the way
(20:13:24) nickrhein: If she's as troublesome as you say, then it seems like we may need to replace her after all
(...)
(21:43:20) nickrhein: I'm writing you a PM--about Therese, and about the fact that I'm thinking she ought to be replaced, because I ultimately trust your judgment on her.
- None of this is the main thing though. The main reason why the content of either one of your two versions are not believeable, is of course because all the old EP staff members have - repeatedly - denied to have ever complained about Therese. Even after they were sent all the documentation cited in the entry "The lies" below, they have stood by this. This is what really needs to be explained Nick - if they had the courage to speak to you or Doris or both of you about how bad Therese was - why then should all of them have wanted to withdraw their complaints about her after she had left Leaky? What is this supposed to be about - coercion, threats, blackmail? It doesn't stand to reason.
This is also one of two main reasons why I do believe the stories that have surfaced recently about Doris' lies and manipulations - the stories you claim are gossip. It is as Gina said in the comments - she believes what I say because she has had similar experiences herself. I believe her when she talks about lies and manipulations, because I know that Doris is capable of those, sadly enough.
The other main reason is because the stories are actually not gossip. Gossip is when you spread around stories based on hearsay, what you have heard and think maybe happened to someone. What we have now are specific stories told by different people, who all tell of their own, first hand experiences. They do not only pass on what they have heard somebody else say. Some of them are people I know and respect. And yes, based on my own experiences, the stories are all too believeable.
Getting very long now, even for me, but I think this was necessary. Before I shut up for now I finally want to talk about the "Golden Perch" - the "site" you claim factored greatly into Therese being asked on board for the EP project.
You say on your livejournal:
I know that for my own part, I was disappointed to find out that the website that Therese had shown as part of her credentials was only filled with essays written by her, and one by a friend (at the time, t may have changed now). I was under the impression--and I may have jumped to this conclusion completely on my own--that when Therese said that she ran this site, she was in charge of a staff of some sort and had dealt with essay submissions, but that was not the case. At the time, she had no other previous experience with leading essay projects or online staffs, so this site factored greatly into her being asked on board for the project. These details were pointed out to me in December, and were a factor in my decision to seek out a different leader for the project.
Therese was "asked on board" in May or June 2005. From what it sounds like in the quote above, you were at that point convinced that she had experience from being in charge of staff running an essay site, dealing with submissions etc. This is a bit surprising.
Yes, Therese did tell us about her dreams and her visions in the old Essay thread in the Room of Requirement forum. She posted a link to what she had made as a visualisation of her dream. It was a page titled "The Golden Perch" - with a very beautiful layout that she had created - at least I thought it was beautiful - showing what she had in mind. But she did not in any way present this as something already run as a public Essay site. She said very clearly that she knew this was a project that would be too big for one person alone, and that she couldn't create or run something like that on her own. She hoped she could to do it in co-operation with Leaky. There weren't several essays posted on the site - as I remember it, none - but she may have posted parts of something essay-like on there, as examples.
But maybe you did misunderstand what she was talking about in that essay thread. Maybe you did think it was more finished than Therese claimed it to be. I think what you say about this in your chat with Doris that you forwarded to me, is a bit confusing. But maybe this is precicely because you were a bit confused about it yourself at that point, about what the page "The Golden Perch" had actually implied.
(Doris talks about a communication with Therese, where Therese honestly says that she has had no prior experience with essay journals. Italics mine)
(23:20:57) Doris: ok - sorry - I thought you said she had done this before?
(23:21:08) nickrhein: Nah, she hasn't
(23:21:20) Doris: you told me she had a forum
(23:21:39) nickrhein: There are people in the EP who know how to write good essays and to some degree how to critically analyze them
(23:21:42) nickrhein: Oh, she had a site
(23:21:49) nickrhein: It's offline now
(23:21:54) nickrhein: The Golden Perch
(23:21:59) Doris: but she told us - look at the post
(23:22:04) Doris: that she had never done it
(23:22:08) nickrhein: Yeah, I don't know why she didn't mention it
(23:22:18) nickrhein: In her thread in the RoR she talked a lot about her site
(23:22:19) Doris: I asked her specifically
(23:22:33) Doris: I just caught that comment - but you never saw the site did you
(23:22:47) nickrhein: That's a large part of why I took her on, because she seemed to already be doing an HP essay project of sorts
(23:22:50) nickrhein: No, I did
(23:23:13) Doris: Was it functioning then? And why would she tell me she had never done a site
(23:23:21) nickrhein: It looked like an impressive start
It did look like an impressive start - an sketch of something that could have been great. But she never claimed that she had actually finished or opened it, let alone hired staff or accepted essay submissions..... And no, it does not exist as an essay journal now. It never did. Which is to our loss, I think.
Sunday, 17 June 2007
Closure of the Leaky Experience - Open letters to Sue and Doris
It has been a while since my last entry now....
I wrote down my story of all that happened on the road in my HP fandom journey and thought that would be enough to get started on what I really want to say here under the Tree. But I think I still need to say a few more words to close the door on the Leaky Experience for myself. The time since my last entry is too telling, I cannot fool myself.
I think I will do it in the form of "open letters" to Sue and Doris and Nick and Melissa. I want to finally write down and make public the thoughts that have been haunting me since the beginning of 2006 - it is time for me to get them out of my head now - I need the space in there for other things!
So, for want of a true pensieve, let me use this place to deposit my recurring dialogues with the Leaky admins. This entry will contain my open letter to Sue and Doris - I will post the letters to Nick and Melissa later.
Dear Sue
You know, my darling Sue, that whatever differences we may have had, we have sorted them out long ago. I consider you to be my friend. Maybe you have not always been certain that I am your friend - but I assure you, I am. However mad you may have been with me at times, I have never heard that you have ever badmouthed me behind my back. Ever. Whatever you had to say you said it directly to me in private pms - as you would never yell to me in public either. You are a great enough person to apologise when you think you have done wrong, and I have never ever heard that you have deliberately done anything to hurt anybody. Leaky would have been a much better place for its staff to be if the rest of the admins had taken your example in these matters to heart!
And you are aware of the fact that the Leaky News section would have sunk a long time ago if you hadn't kept it going, aren't you? I am not sure you are always given the credit or appreciation you are due over there, by the management of the site that is....... The fandom truly loves and appreciates you, though!
I say this here and now because I think that you may have been hurt and confused when so much anger and venom have been directed towards the "Leaky admins" lately - since you are sometimes included in that "admin" group too. I therefore hereby state as loud and clear as I can: Sue Upton is my friend and I have no issues with her. She is not responsible for the recent problems at Leaky described in this blog.
Dear Doris
It is difficult to write this in "you" form - difficult to know what to say to you that would make any real sense to either of us. I would have loved to be able to say "Why?" but I do not expect that question to ever get an honest answer. Maybe not even you know what the honest answer would be?
I want to say that I started out thinking that you were one of my friends as well. I had no reason to think otherwise. You came in and shared the Potter experience with the rest of us, offered your time and your work and what I thought was your personality. You seemed to be of just the right kind: friendly, engaged, reaching out, sharing. We chatted on YIM, you told me stories from your childhood and your marriage, how you took relatives in after the hurricane in New Orleans, how you used Harry Potter and Leaky to engage the children in your classroom. When you were made an admin I was very happy, I really thought you would make a great difference for the better at LL.
Even now I find it hard to believe my own story below when I read the entry about your lies. It is very far beyond anything I expect from the people I deal with, and I never expected it from you. Were all you were and did before this a lie as well - only pretence?
It is unbelieveable to me how you coldly showed Therese that quote from your chat with Nick where he talks about getting rid of Therese - just so she is to understand "where you are coming from as an admin" - and then later pretended to know nothing when you talked to me. How you assured me that no one thought Therese was trouble. How you told me that you believed she was kind since I thought so much of her..... And this line: you know Nick and you know me....
And all the time when you said these things to me you knew you had already sent Therese that PM. Where she gets it spelled out for her in no uncertain terms that you and Nick discussed how you might have to get rid of her.....
It has occured to me lately that people may say that I cannot know for certain whether it was you or Nick who lied. Just to make it clear once and for all: Nick did show me the whole conversation that you quoted from in your pm to Therese - and the accusations that Therese was bullying her team did originate from you, not him. You just edited that part out.
I am so tempted to ask Why??? and How could you??? even if I know this is pointless because I will get no answers. I am so tempted to delve into all kinds of speculations about your motives, even though I know this is not very worthwhile either - because I do not know you. I may guess, I may have hunches, but I know that I do not really know.
I do know that there is a pattern though. In your admin capacity, you do resort to lies far far too often when a conflict occurs between you and your staff members. Too many stories have surfaced for anyone to be able to deny this pattern now. For those who have heard all the stories about your lies, such a denial will amount to nothing less than the enabling of abuse.
Yes, abuse, there is no other way to describe your lies in my opinon. The effect they have had and still do have on people is what makes this harsh word appropriate. To you, they are perhaps only a matter of self defence, of being able to deflect what you see as unresonable blame or criticism or opposition or even competition. Perhaps you lie because people scare you and you feel that they are out to get you. Maybe you think you are never good enough and need to boost the impression you think you must make on others. Maybe to you it is the others who are the abusers, attacking you or undermining you in so many unreasonable ways that you feel like you have no choice but to do what it takes to neutralise them. In order to save not only yourself but Leaky and the "Leaky Spirit" as well. No less. Of course, this practice is the exact thing that will undermine the "Leaky Spirit" if any such thing really exists these days - but you may not understand that.
I don't know. Like I said, I don't know how you think or feel. I am just trying to imagine the least cynical reasons for your lies that I can think of. They may be utterly wrong though.
You know - your ambition is not evil. Your wish to be in the limelight and have your share of the Potter glory is not evil either. I have no grudges against you for approaching Melissa and trying to become her friend so that you could get a more influential position at Leaky. This is very often the way it happens when people are given influential positions in organisations. Things happen to a large extent as a result of informal connections, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.
But when people start to feel that you see every sign of disagreement or criticism on their part - and there will always be disagreements and criticisms, trust me, some of them even petty - if you see this as dangerous or mean attacks on you that must be squashed by any means possible - then people may start fighting you for real, call you powerhungry and paint everything you have ever done in the worst possible light. If you are never willing to take ownership of whatever mistakes or blunders you or the other admins make - and there will always be mistakes because no one can be perfect all the time - but instead try any excuse, lie or blame to direct the attention away from yourself and onto someone or something else - people may start to use everything they know about you against you and find nothing to excuse or like or even believe. You will have created the very enemies you feared, that were not your enemies to begin with.
And all this is truly sad, utterly tragic - because it is so unecessary. Leaky was a fun place to be, it was not a place haunted by wolves or dangerous rebels....
Sigh. I will stop this rant here. I just needed to say this, myself. I have no idea if this feels even remotely relevant to you, and it will probably have no effect whatsoever on anything at all....
No matter what your motives or reasons may have been or still are, though: the effect of your lies in themselves is abusive and destructive. Someone with the power to do so should stop you, because it is very unlikely that you will be able to stop yourself. I certainly do not expect anything I say here to have any such effect on you. You probably think I am just being plain mean for making all this public in an online blog.
I wrote down my story of all that happened on the road in my HP fandom journey and thought that would be enough to get started on what I really want to say here under the Tree. But I think I still need to say a few more words to close the door on the Leaky Experience for myself. The time since my last entry is too telling, I cannot fool myself.
I think I will do it in the form of "open letters" to Sue and Doris and Nick and Melissa. I want to finally write down and make public the thoughts that have been haunting me since the beginning of 2006 - it is time for me to get them out of my head now - I need the space in there for other things!
So, for want of a true pensieve, let me use this place to deposit my recurring dialogues with the Leaky admins. This entry will contain my open letter to Sue and Doris - I will post the letters to Nick and Melissa later.
Dear Sue
You know, my darling Sue, that whatever differences we may have had, we have sorted them out long ago. I consider you to be my friend. Maybe you have not always been certain that I am your friend - but I assure you, I am. However mad you may have been with me at times, I have never heard that you have ever badmouthed me behind my back. Ever. Whatever you had to say you said it directly to me in private pms - as you would never yell to me in public either. You are a great enough person to apologise when you think you have done wrong, and I have never ever heard that you have deliberately done anything to hurt anybody. Leaky would have been a much better place for its staff to be if the rest of the admins had taken your example in these matters to heart!
And you are aware of the fact that the Leaky News section would have sunk a long time ago if you hadn't kept it going, aren't you? I am not sure you are always given the credit or appreciation you are due over there, by the management of the site that is....... The fandom truly loves and appreciates you, though!
I say this here and now because I think that you may have been hurt and confused when so much anger and venom have been directed towards the "Leaky admins" lately - since you are sometimes included in that "admin" group too. I therefore hereby state as loud and clear as I can: Sue Upton is my friend and I have no issues with her. She is not responsible for the recent problems at Leaky described in this blog.
Dear Doris
It is difficult to write this in "you" form - difficult to know what to say to you that would make any real sense to either of us. I would have loved to be able to say "Why?" but I do not expect that question to ever get an honest answer. Maybe not even you know what the honest answer would be?
I want to say that I started out thinking that you were one of my friends as well. I had no reason to think otherwise. You came in and shared the Potter experience with the rest of us, offered your time and your work and what I thought was your personality. You seemed to be of just the right kind: friendly, engaged, reaching out, sharing. We chatted on YIM, you told me stories from your childhood and your marriage, how you took relatives in after the hurricane in New Orleans, how you used Harry Potter and Leaky to engage the children in your classroom. When you were made an admin I was very happy, I really thought you would make a great difference for the better at LL.
Even now I find it hard to believe my own story below when I read the entry about your lies. It is very far beyond anything I expect from the people I deal with, and I never expected it from you. Were all you were and did before this a lie as well - only pretence?
It is unbelieveable to me how you coldly showed Therese that quote from your chat with Nick where he talks about getting rid of Therese - just so she is to understand "where you are coming from as an admin" - and then later pretended to know nothing when you talked to me. How you assured me that no one thought Therese was trouble. How you told me that you believed she was kind since I thought so much of her..... And this line: you know Nick and you know me....
And all the time when you said these things to me you knew you had already sent Therese that PM. Where she gets it spelled out for her in no uncertain terms that you and Nick discussed how you might have to get rid of her.....
It has occured to me lately that people may say that I cannot know for certain whether it was you or Nick who lied. Just to make it clear once and for all: Nick did show me the whole conversation that you quoted from in your pm to Therese - and the accusations that Therese was bullying her team did originate from you, not him. You just edited that part out.
I am so tempted to ask Why??? and How could you??? even if I know this is pointless because I will get no answers. I am so tempted to delve into all kinds of speculations about your motives, even though I know this is not very worthwhile either - because I do not know you. I may guess, I may have hunches, but I know that I do not really know.
I do know that there is a pattern though. In your admin capacity, you do resort to lies far far too often when a conflict occurs between you and your staff members. Too many stories have surfaced for anyone to be able to deny this pattern now. For those who have heard all the stories about your lies, such a denial will amount to nothing less than the enabling of abuse.
Yes, abuse, there is no other way to describe your lies in my opinon. The effect they have had and still do have on people is what makes this harsh word appropriate. To you, they are perhaps only a matter of self defence, of being able to deflect what you see as unresonable blame or criticism or opposition or even competition. Perhaps you lie because people scare you and you feel that they are out to get you. Maybe you think you are never good enough and need to boost the impression you think you must make on others. Maybe to you it is the others who are the abusers, attacking you or undermining you in so many unreasonable ways that you feel like you have no choice but to do what it takes to neutralise them. In order to save not only yourself but Leaky and the "Leaky Spirit" as well. No less. Of course, this practice is the exact thing that will undermine the "Leaky Spirit" if any such thing really exists these days - but you may not understand that.
I don't know. Like I said, I don't know how you think or feel. I am just trying to imagine the least cynical reasons for your lies that I can think of. They may be utterly wrong though.
You know - your ambition is not evil. Your wish to be in the limelight and have your share of the Potter glory is not evil either. I have no grudges against you for approaching Melissa and trying to become her friend so that you could get a more influential position at Leaky. This is very often the way it happens when people are given influential positions in organisations. Things happen to a large extent as a result of informal connections, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that.
But when people start to feel that you see every sign of disagreement or criticism on their part - and there will always be disagreements and criticisms, trust me, some of them even petty - if you see this as dangerous or mean attacks on you that must be squashed by any means possible - then people may start fighting you for real, call you powerhungry and paint everything you have ever done in the worst possible light. If you are never willing to take ownership of whatever mistakes or blunders you or the other admins make - and there will always be mistakes because no one can be perfect all the time - but instead try any excuse, lie or blame to direct the attention away from yourself and onto someone or something else - people may start to use everything they know about you against you and find nothing to excuse or like or even believe. You will have created the very enemies you feared, that were not your enemies to begin with.
And all this is truly sad, utterly tragic - because it is so unecessary. Leaky was a fun place to be, it was not a place haunted by wolves or dangerous rebels....
Sigh. I will stop this rant here. I just needed to say this, myself. I have no idea if this feels even remotely relevant to you, and it will probably have no effect whatsoever on anything at all....
No matter what your motives or reasons may have been or still are, though: the effect of your lies in themselves is abusive and destructive. Someone with the power to do so should stop you, because it is very unlikely that you will be able to stop yourself. I certainly do not expect anything I say here to have any such effect on you. You probably think I am just being plain mean for making all this public in an online blog.
Friday, 1 June 2007
Corruption Continues
How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Twelve
I really have no words to express my state of mind as I wrote that letter to the admins, described and quoted from in the instalment below. But I was trusting enough to think that with this kind of documentation, something would be done. I didn't believe Melissa was the kind of leader who would allow any of her staff to be abused. I was sure she would take actions against it, now that she knew.
I can't even begin to tell you how sad I was when I realised that I was wrong in this trust. Remember, I used to love Leaky. It was my first home on the net. I was proud of its successes and anxious about its failures. I had been so proud to be part of its staff, and had fully believed in the idea of the "Leaky Spirit" of friendship, inclusiveness, fun, maturity. The backstabbing of Therese was so utterly, totally against this Leaky Spirit that I had a very hard time adjusting to the fact that it did happen, and that the people responsible for it continued to be in charge, unchecked, and even continued to talk about the Leaky Spirit in the same way as before. As if nothing at all had happened.
I sent the letter not only to the admins, but also to all the members of the old Essay Project. I wanted to give them a chance to speak up should they feel that I had skewed the information or indeed misunderstood something. They did not protest anything. Instead some of them wrote to me and expressed support and sympathy. This told me that I had not overreacted or misunderstood. None of the admins came back to me with any questions or protests either. Doris contacted me shortly before I sent the letter - when Nick had receieved all the documentation - and asked me to schedule a chat with her, which I did. The date for this chat was set till after I had sent the letter, and she never showed up.
Therese and I kept in touch for a while, discussing ways to continue the essay project outside of Leaky. We wanted to build on the substantial material we had created already. But Leaky's Scribbulus, which would contain most of our written material, was about to be launched. We were concerned with the risk of being accused of plagiarism if we published our own work after their launch. So we checked the legal implications - did we have any rights over that material, even after we had left Leaky? We found that yes, as long as no explicitly stated agreement existed between us and Leaky, saying that anything we created would belong to them, the copyright of all our independently written work was still ours. We were never employees.
Of course, had we left the site under normal circumstances, we would never have even contemplated pulling our work, or thought about any legal implications. But after the backstabbing of Therese, and the admin's failure to repair that in any way, we no longer felt any loyalty towards Leaky. So we wrote a letter to Melissa where we withdrew our permission to use any of our written work in their new Essay Project Scribbulus.
I am still not sure how wise this was. Our own essay journal never happened, for various reasons, none of which being difficult or corrupted people. Melissa did comply to our request by changing the wording of our texts enough to make any potential later accusations of plagiarism impossible, even though she protested that these texts were our intellectual property. Except that she insisted that all the threads in the new Essay Forum should still be posted in my name, with my old avatar and everything - even though the whole content of my original posts were rewritten. I never understood the reasoning behind that, but did not find it worth arguing over.
But Melissa also seemed to experience our request as something particularly meanspritied. Apart from telling us what she had changed in our texts and how, the gist of Melissa's answer to us was that she had never ever in all her time at Leaky been so disappointed in someone. The reasons she presents for this are that Therese, in addition to her request to have her work withdrawn from Scribbulus, did not "stick around the extra 12 hours" needed to "talk things out" before she left shortly before New Year's Eve, leaving a "nasty pm" behind. Melissa says that "in both instances you have shown pettiness, churlishness, childishness and impatience, and qualities verging on mean spirit."
Melissa used this opportunity to declare that "All pretense of "inquiry" into the circumstances regarding your departures are hereby ceased. You have, by this action, wasted all that work on you and your friends's behalf." She says that she "was actually considering weighing the evidence recently afforded to me - of which there is equal for and against your/Torrill's claims, especially since the case for you was so spotted in empty pockets, subjective holes, and biased interviews" but now this will not happen. Melissa tells us how she will not spend any more time on Therese who, among other things, she describes as someone who has "insulted the site deeply, and personally."
I of course cannot say whether Melissa would have actually "weighed the evidence presented to her" if we had not made this claim of ownership to our own work. But both Doris and Nick received copies of this correspondence, and whatever else it did, it told them in no uncertain terms that no investigation of the lies against Therese would take place.
Perhaps I should not exaggerate the importance of the events I was a part of - it is always tempting to do that. But I cannot help speculating on whether the fact that Doris got away with her corrupted way of dealing with Therese, even though it was all thoroughly documented, was what opened the gates for this kind of practice to be used so often later.
Because Therese was not to be the only victim. Even as I was in the middle of the process of trying to persuade Nick to take some action based on the evidence I gave him concerning Therese, I heard of how Doris also attacked Bel. Bel had admin status at this point - or at least she had access to the admin control panel to do admin work for the site. Her "promotion" to this admin status was never announced with the kind of fanfares that followed Doris' appointment, though.
Nick told me how the "conflict" between Bel and Doris weighed heavily on him, as he thought of them both as friends. He described going between them and trying to make them reconcile. And he told me how Doris had presented him with the same accusations against Bel that she had done against Therese: someone had complained to her how Bel had yelled at them in private conversations....
Bel was my friend though. I talked to her often. With her unassuming attitude and quiet work for the site without craving for either glory or recognition, I found this idea just as unlikely as the idea of Therese being someone who would be abusive of others.
I went straight to Bel and told her all about these accusations. She was truly shocked. She told me how she went through all her saved YIM chats and pms to see if she could have said something to somebody that they might have experienced as unfriendly or yelling, but could not find anything. I went back to Nick and tried to persuade him to investigate this as well. Now that he had seen how Doris had lied against Therese, he could not take Doris' accusations at face value. He had to go to the person Doris named as the complainer, and ask them directly.
I don't know if he ever did. Bel eventually left the site as admin, and only stayed on in her capacity of Floo Team member - responsible for the forum supposedly owned by the Lexicon at the Leaky Lounge. Doris stayed.
Then there was Puffin, one of the original mods like me. She had to take a hiatus for a while, due to personal issues and severe computer problems. She had cleared this with the admins, and received nothing but support and reassurances. When she was ready to come back - this was after I had left - the forum had changed software and was now using a system with a slightly different mod control panel. Puffin was told by Doris that all the other mods had gone through a "retraining" procedure. Until Puffin had done the same, she was told she could not come back as a mod. She did go through several "training sessions", but according to what Puffin says, she missed one of them. Then she was eventually sacked.
One could argue that a forum manager is in her rights to set the standard of what kind of training any mod must have to be allowed to function in that capacity. But I know from other mods - Lilly, Gina - that no one else was required to go through the kind of "retraining" procedure with Doris that Puffin was forced to do. Lilly had also been away for a longer period of time and came back to the new control panel, but was never asked to do any "retraining". Again, a lie.
And now, with the explotion of stories from staffers who have left Leaky recently, to be read on Ian's blog and on other places you can find links to from there - it seems the corruption has not been limited to these cases only. It seems to have continued, grown and spread out to become what seems like a common practice whenever something occurs that may look like a conflict.
This is all so sad - because it all seems so unecessary. The staff at Leaky is not a bunch of rebellious anarchists - they have all wanted to work with dedication for a site they loved. When Doris was made an admin responsible for "picking up the adminstrative slack", she was welcomed by all. Why does she believe she must rule through corrupted methods? Why is this allowed to continue, and why are the ones reacting to it, protesting or leaving or losing their loyalty to Leaky because of it, described as the problem instead?
I really have no words to express my state of mind as I wrote that letter to the admins, described and quoted from in the instalment below. But I was trusting enough to think that with this kind of documentation, something would be done. I didn't believe Melissa was the kind of leader who would allow any of her staff to be abused. I was sure she would take actions against it, now that she knew.
I can't even begin to tell you how sad I was when I realised that I was wrong in this trust. Remember, I used to love Leaky. It was my first home on the net. I was proud of its successes and anxious about its failures. I had been so proud to be part of its staff, and had fully believed in the idea of the "Leaky Spirit" of friendship, inclusiveness, fun, maturity. The backstabbing of Therese was so utterly, totally against this Leaky Spirit that I had a very hard time adjusting to the fact that it did happen, and that the people responsible for it continued to be in charge, unchecked, and even continued to talk about the Leaky Spirit in the same way as before. As if nothing at all had happened.
I sent the letter not only to the admins, but also to all the members of the old Essay Project. I wanted to give them a chance to speak up should they feel that I had skewed the information or indeed misunderstood something. They did not protest anything. Instead some of them wrote to me and expressed support and sympathy. This told me that I had not overreacted or misunderstood. None of the admins came back to me with any questions or protests either. Doris contacted me shortly before I sent the letter - when Nick had receieved all the documentation - and asked me to schedule a chat with her, which I did. The date for this chat was set till after I had sent the letter, and she never showed up.
Therese and I kept in touch for a while, discussing ways to continue the essay project outside of Leaky. We wanted to build on the substantial material we had created already. But Leaky's Scribbulus, which would contain most of our written material, was about to be launched. We were concerned with the risk of being accused of plagiarism if we published our own work after their launch. So we checked the legal implications - did we have any rights over that material, even after we had left Leaky? We found that yes, as long as no explicitly stated agreement existed between us and Leaky, saying that anything we created would belong to them, the copyright of all our independently written work was still ours. We were never employees.
Of course, had we left the site under normal circumstances, we would never have even contemplated pulling our work, or thought about any legal implications. But after the backstabbing of Therese, and the admin's failure to repair that in any way, we no longer felt any loyalty towards Leaky. So we wrote a letter to Melissa where we withdrew our permission to use any of our written work in their new Essay Project Scribbulus.
I am still not sure how wise this was. Our own essay journal never happened, for various reasons, none of which being difficult or corrupted people. Melissa did comply to our request by changing the wording of our texts enough to make any potential later accusations of plagiarism impossible, even though she protested that these texts were our intellectual property. Except that she insisted that all the threads in the new Essay Forum should still be posted in my name, with my old avatar and everything - even though the whole content of my original posts were rewritten. I never understood the reasoning behind that, but did not find it worth arguing over.
But Melissa also seemed to experience our request as something particularly meanspritied. Apart from telling us what she had changed in our texts and how, the gist of Melissa's answer to us was that she had never ever in all her time at Leaky been so disappointed in someone. The reasons she presents for this are that Therese, in addition to her request to have her work withdrawn from Scribbulus, did not "stick around the extra 12 hours" needed to "talk things out" before she left shortly before New Year's Eve, leaving a "nasty pm" behind. Melissa says that "in both instances you have shown pettiness, churlishness, childishness and impatience, and qualities verging on mean spirit."
Melissa used this opportunity to declare that "All pretense of "inquiry" into the circumstances regarding your departures are hereby ceased. You have, by this action, wasted all that work on you and your friends's behalf." She says that she "was actually considering weighing the evidence recently afforded to me - of which there is equal for and against your/Torrill's claims, especially since the case for you was so spotted in empty pockets, subjective holes, and biased interviews" but now this will not happen. Melissa tells us how she will not spend any more time on Therese who, among other things, she describes as someone who has "insulted the site deeply, and personally."
I of course cannot say whether Melissa would have actually "weighed the evidence presented to her" if we had not made this claim of ownership to our own work. But both Doris and Nick received copies of this correspondence, and whatever else it did, it told them in no uncertain terms that no investigation of the lies against Therese would take place.
Perhaps I should not exaggerate the importance of the events I was a part of - it is always tempting to do that. But I cannot help speculating on whether the fact that Doris got away with her corrupted way of dealing with Therese, even though it was all thoroughly documented, was what opened the gates for this kind of practice to be used so often later.
Because Therese was not to be the only victim. Even as I was in the middle of the process of trying to persuade Nick to take some action based on the evidence I gave him concerning Therese, I heard of how Doris also attacked Bel. Bel had admin status at this point - or at least she had access to the admin control panel to do admin work for the site. Her "promotion" to this admin status was never announced with the kind of fanfares that followed Doris' appointment, though.
Nick told me how the "conflict" between Bel and Doris weighed heavily on him, as he thought of them both as friends. He described going between them and trying to make them reconcile. And he told me how Doris had presented him with the same accusations against Bel that she had done against Therese: someone had complained to her how Bel had yelled at them in private conversations....
Bel was my friend though. I talked to her often. With her unassuming attitude and quiet work for the site without craving for either glory or recognition, I found this idea just as unlikely as the idea of Therese being someone who would be abusive of others.
I went straight to Bel and told her all about these accusations. She was truly shocked. She told me how she went through all her saved YIM chats and pms to see if she could have said something to somebody that they might have experienced as unfriendly or yelling, but could not find anything. I went back to Nick and tried to persuade him to investigate this as well. Now that he had seen how Doris had lied against Therese, he could not take Doris' accusations at face value. He had to go to the person Doris named as the complainer, and ask them directly.
I don't know if he ever did. Bel eventually left the site as admin, and only stayed on in her capacity of Floo Team member - responsible for the forum supposedly owned by the Lexicon at the Leaky Lounge. Doris stayed.
Then there was Puffin, one of the original mods like me. She had to take a hiatus for a while, due to personal issues and severe computer problems. She had cleared this with the admins, and received nothing but support and reassurances. When she was ready to come back - this was after I had left - the forum had changed software and was now using a system with a slightly different mod control panel. Puffin was told by Doris that all the other mods had gone through a "retraining" procedure. Until Puffin had done the same, she was told she could not come back as a mod. She did go through several "training sessions", but according to what Puffin says, she missed one of them. Then she was eventually sacked.
One could argue that a forum manager is in her rights to set the standard of what kind of training any mod must have to be allowed to function in that capacity. But I know from other mods - Lilly, Gina - that no one else was required to go through the kind of "retraining" procedure with Doris that Puffin was forced to do. Lilly had also been away for a longer period of time and came back to the new control panel, but was never asked to do any "retraining". Again, a lie.
And now, with the explotion of stories from staffers who have left Leaky recently, to be read on Ian's blog and on other places you can find links to from there - it seems the corruption has not been limited to these cases only. It seems to have continued, grown and spread out to become what seems like a common practice whenever something occurs that may look like a conflict.
This is all so sad - because it all seems so unecessary. The staff at Leaky is not a bunch of rebellious anarchists - they have all wanted to work with dedication for a site they loved. When Doris was made an admin responsible for "picking up the adminstrative slack", she was welcomed by all. Why does she believe she must rule through corrupted methods? Why is this allowed to continue, and why are the ones reacting to it, protesting or leaving or losing their loyalty to Leaky because of it, described as the problem instead?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)