Closure of the Leaky Experience: Open Letter to Melissa, Part Two

First part of this letter to be read here. This part picks up directly where that one ended.

Was our request to have our texts created for the Essay Project withdrawn a "petty and horrible" act, as you called it in your answering letter to us?

It is clear that we had the legal right to do it. According to copyright laws, any work done for an organisation that is substantial and original enough to be viewed as an independent creation (the compiling of information already out there does not count, neither do mere ideas,) is the property of the one creating it, as long as no clearly stated or signed agreement to the contrary exists. No such clearly stated agreement existed between us, so the bulk of the texts we wrote for the Essay Project did belong to us - even more so since all our work was unpaid.

But perhaps it may still be seen as "petty and horrible" to claim our legal rights under copyright laws to have our work withdrawn from Leaky. I am the last one to argue that what is legal is always nice. You certainly thought it was not at the time, as is evident from your answer to us:

We are under no - repeat, NO - obligation to change a word or submit to any requests you make. You left before you made such requests, denying any right to request anything of Leaky ever again. Further, you did the work for Leaky. It stays for Leaky. Whether you signed an agreement or something to that effect or not, all laws of common sense and righteousness says this was work for Leaky. But you want to be immature about it, and cost your colleagues, who you so often claim you valued so much and were so good to, this extra work simply to be spiteful?

Your chief argument seems to be that no matter our reasons for leaving your site, we should still feel honour bound to uphold Leaky and in no way inconvenience your staff or cost them any extra work. The reason why I say this, is because this inconvenience is something you come back to repeatedly as the reason for what you seem to feel is righteous anger:

I won't allow you to cheat this hardworking staff, who don't bolt the second things don't go their way (leaving a nasty PM in their wakes), out of their valuable time. Everything that needs doing has been done, by me.
(...)
I am deeply, deeply disappointed that we ever made a judgement call to have people so capable of pettiness on staff. This simple, unnecessary busy work that it took to rid our site of your "intellectual property", mindless and effortless as it was, was time I didn't need to spend - was time I could have been working on other areas of Leaky that actually need the attention and aren't the result of adults having hissy fits.

Just to clarify here: our letter to you was politely worded. I don't think it qualifies as a hissy fit. But if you still think that it does, or if you feel that my quotes are taken out of context, and therefore misrepresent what you originally said in any way, just let me know. Then I will post this whole conversation in the full, consisting of our request letter, your answer that I have quoted from so far, and the couple of letters to and fro that followed after that again. (A couple of quotes below will be from these later letters.)

The "simple, unnecessary busy work" you describe, refers of course to tweaking sentences and wordings in our texts a bit, enough to make them no longer recognisable as ours. That was all it took to satisfy copyright laws. It did not mean actually starting on scratch to create anything afresh. We sent our request letter to you on the 26th of February 2006, your answer was receieved on the 27th of February. Then you had done everything that was needed already. So the work involved was not an insurmountable hindrance. Irritating perhaps, inconvenient, sure. Not the thing you would want to spend an evening doing. But not in any way devastating for the project. Scribbulus did go online shortly afterwards and is still very much in existence.

When what it all boiled down to was one evening's work of - in your words - "simple", "effortless" and "mindless" editing and rewording, was it then petty and immature of us to make this grand gesture of claiming "intellectual property" and "withdrawal of our permission" under copyright laws, for something one could argue was of precious little consequence?

I am not going to argue that point, but leave it up to anyone who reads this to decide for themselves what they think. Also leave it up to you to decide for yourself what you think now, whether you have changed your mind since then or not.

I do want to argue your idea that what we did was motivated by spite, though. We had two major reasons that played an important part when we decided to do this. One was because - as I have touched upon in my narrative below - we at this point discussed the possibility of creating an online essay journal ourselves. Then we could have risked accusations of plagiarism if we had used some of our own work, because it would have seemed like we had stolen things from you.

I will grant you this: if we had left Leaky under normal circumstances, you could have had a case against us. You coud have called us disloyal and spiteful for taking our work from you to launch somewhere else just when you were about to go online with your essay section, and indeed accused us of using copyright laws to hurt you.

Because one could of course argue that there is a certain kind of implicit agreement in existence between a webmistress of a faniste and her volunteer contributers - the deal is that both parties are supposed to do the work they do for the fans, not for any personal gain, and therefore willingly share their work.

But we did not leave under normal circumstances. The main reason why we no longer wanted to have our work and our names connected to Scribbulus or even to Leaky, was because of the evidence suggesting so very strongly that Therese had been subjected to an ugly game behind her back, aimed at - or so it seemed - pushing her away from the project she had worked so hard for, a project that in very many ways was her baby. And that this evidence was not taken seriously when it was presented to the admins, first Nick, then the rest. Not taken seriously or even looked into when it was presented to you.

This was - the way we saw it - what constituted a deal breaker. Before this happened we were both very happy to work for Leaky, and wanted nothing more than to see the essay journal we dreamt of creating being published under the Leaky umbrella. But no implicit agreement between webmistresses and volunteers of fansites has ever meant that people must suffer lies and scheemes against them, and still be expected to remain loyal and share their work. This was the reason why we felt fully entitled to reclaim our work in order to be able to use it elsewhere.

What shocked me the most with your letter, and what I still to this very day have great difficulties getting my head around, is the fact that you seemed to think in the exact opposite manner. You seemed to think that leaving Leaky and then reclaiming our work, no matter the reasons for doing this, was what constituted the deal breaker. It is very difficult to understand the following quotes in any other way :

All pretence 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. Therese, have had only two instances in which to gather empirical evidence about you: the day you left, and this. And in both instances you have shown pettiness, churlishness, childishness and impatience, and qualities verging on mean spirit. I had reserved judgment after the first instance because of the stressful situation under which it occurred, and was actually considering weighing the evidence recently afforded to me (...) I had actually considered wasting valuable time on making these determinations, on someone who, when the going got slightly rough, up and left and did so leaving a mean note behind - not because I thought you were owed it, but because I never really had a chance to figure out what went on, and thought it totally possible the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and that you really were as nice as other people were saying you were.

No more. (...) Leaky will spend its time on the people who respect it, and no one else. You have insulted the site deeply, and personally.

You, Therese, left on the very day we were supposed to talk about what was going on - at the time I thought that act driven from tiredness, stress, etc., and tried not to believe it was from simple disrespect. Now I know differently.
(...)
No Leaky staff memeber shalll respond to any further inquiry in any official capacity. (...) This matter is now closed.

I am not going to say anything more about the possible pettiness, childishness or meanspiritedness of our request to have our work withdrawn than I have done aleady. But what about the possible childishness etc. by "up and leave as soon as the going got rough"?

Yes, to anyone reading your email conversations with Therese concerning her role in the Essay Project, her resignation may seem somewhat sudden and abrupt. Because during that conversation, it did seem that you were about to reach some sort of agreement, even though the atmosphere was rather tense. Then Therese suddenly sends her resignation letter, with a pm copy to her fellow staff members, saying she will not work for Leaky anymore because she has been subjected to powergames and negative talk behind her back. This is the pm you keep referring to as "nasty" and "mean" in your letter.

But when Therese decided to "up and leave", she had received the pm Doris forwarded to her that I have quoted earlier (at the end of this entry). This pm shows that she was subjected to "negative talk behind her back", and that two of the admins, Nick and Doris, actually did discuss among themselves the need of getting rid of her.

At that point, Therese believed you had received a copy of this pm too. That was what Doris had told her. In that light, your conversations with Therese do not look good. You took her to task for being stubborn and obtrusive and not wanting to accept Doris as a leader (which she did, and said repeatedly that she did...) You talked to her about how giving up some control and hand it over to Doris would actually be very liberating since it was all in the friendly spirit of Leaky where everybody only wants to help (this is paraphrasing, not quoting). If you had talked like this to her while all the time knowing about this pm where Nick says to Doris that he really thinks they ought to get rid of her, then this conversation would have been a rather nasty sort of game to play, definitely.

Therese thought you did know, and did play with her. Therefore she decided to leave instead of waiting for more of this. And telling her colleagues about her reasons for leaving, yes, she did that too.

But which is the meanest and nastiest - engage in powergames against someone - or tell your fellow staff that these kinds of games against you are the reason why you are leaving?

I am willing to believe, though, that at the point when Therese left, you actually did not know. That Doris had lied to Therese about this, and never showed the pm from Nick to you. This is possible, yes. Then Therese's sudden departure and her talk of "powergames" might have come as a total suprise to you, and you may well have found it annoying and strange.

But what is still very difficult to understand, is your attitude that seems to imply that leaving Leaky in anger for whatever reason, is an act that will forever forfeit anyone's rights to have anything investigated, to be ever reached out to in order to clear up possible misunderstandings, to be ever approached again with the hope of repairing an unhappy conflict - or even only in order to continue a conversation that seems to have been broken for reasons not understood by one of the parties....

You said: You, Therese, left on the very day we were supposed to talk about what was going on - at the time I thought that act driven from tiredness, stress, etc., and tried not to believe it was from simple disrespect.

If this is true, if you really did wonder at the time whether this was an act driven by stress and tiredness only - then why didn't you contact her? You had her email address. And you did reply to her resignation, you sent her a short note accepting it immediately, without any questions. Why? Why not simply ask her: what on earth are you talking about, what power game, who's talking about you behind your back? Then you could have found out. But she had "up and left" ....

By the time you wrote this angry letter, you had received all my documentation about what happened around the time when she left, Doris' forwarded pm included. But this doesn't seem to matter to you, you are still not willing to revise your first impression of someone "bolting the second things didn't go her way" no matter the possible alternative explanations you are given for this behaviour. You were perhaps willing to say "bolted because of stress" - but when she has the nerve to claim ownership to her own work, that slightly patronising explanation is out too.

The impression that you really do seem to think leaving Leaky abruptly in a way that annoys you, does constitute a moral deal breaker no matter the reason, is even stronger when reading this:

I had actually considered wasting valuable time on making these determinations, on someone who, when the going got slightly rough, up and left and did so leaving a mean note behind - not because I thought you were owed it, but because I never really had a chance to figure out what went on, and thought it totally possible the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and that you really were as nice as other people were saying you were.

Of course you had a chance to figure out if you had really wanted to, see above. Many chances, she hadn't gone incognito or changed her mailaddress. But why did you think she was not owed it, if you thought it totally possible that her leaving was due to a misunderstanding, and she was a nice person? Because leaving Leaky in anger, in and of itself, no matter the reason for the anger, is unforgiveable? Because telling other staff about your reasons for leaving, thus exposing a conflict, is unforgiveable?

But in my book, anyone should be owed an investigation of lies against their person from one of your trusted and powerful admins, no matter how angry they were when they left. Even if that anger should have beeen proven to be unreasonable, which is not the case here. Justice is not supposed to be granted only to the ones you like, or the ones loyal to you.

What is more, and what I think it is remarkable that you, as the leader of Leaky, did not understand at the time - and perhaps still do not understand? - is that it was more at stake here than Therese's individual good name. A lot more. You talked about us "hurting Leaky deeply and personally" by withdrawing our permissions to use some texts in an isolated project. But by choosing not to investigate some very serious and specific claims presented to you of corruption in your organisation, because it concerned someone you decided were not owed it - then you actually risked a much, much greater damage to Leaky.

Even in the couple of furious letters you sent to Therese with copies to me, you said about the evidence I had sent you: "of wich there is equal for and against your/Torill's claims" and "with the evidence that is absolutely level in credibility from both sides, I'd be doing at least half the people involved here a huge disservice if I decided that one lied and the other didn't. With further investigation maybe we would have come to the truth -"

So even when you were at your angriest, you did think there was a possibility - a 50% possibility - that something very ugly had happened in your organisation, and that with further investigation, truth might have been discovered. But you decided that Therese was someone who had shown pettiness, churlishness, childishness and impatience, and qualities verging on mean spirit - because she had left in anger, told other staff of the reasons for her anger, and then claimed ownership to her own work - and therefore she was not worthy of justice. So you decided to not undertake that further investigation you thought necessary to decide the truth and be sure to do no one a huge disservice.

This would have to mean, that you were willing to chance a continued corruption to exist in your organisation, rather than having to inconvenience yourself on behalf of someone you didn't like in order to be able to stop the corruption you admitted there was a 50% chance existed.

But the case was and is, Melissa, that you were not supposed to inconvenience yourself on behalf of Therese alone - you were supposed to inconvenience yourself on behalf of Leaky. On behalf of the organisation you were and are the leader of, and on behalf of all your staff. Because if some of your chief admins, someone given considerable control and power over the rest of your staff, in fact had been using extensive lies and manipulations against Therese, lies involving the names of the whole of the old Essay Project staff - and this was not stopped by you - then you were in effect allowing these methods to be used again. You were allowing the corruption to continue and to grow.

The emails where you stated that no furhter investigation into the alleged lies should be undertaken because of Therese's "pettiness", were sent not only to her and me, but also to both Doris and Nick. They conveyed a very strong message about your politics and priorities, about what kind of practice you would be likely to turn a blind eye towards in the future, no matter the evidence presented to you, providing it happened to someone who annoyed you.

And in light of the latest development, in light of all the stories that have surfaced now about continued lies and manipulations in your organisation, it seems that this is exactly what happened. The corruption has continued, you are still turning a blind eye, and no one is held accountable.



(A lot of these stories of later corruptions have surfaced in the comments on Ian's blog And on may 23, 200711:42 AM, Gina - your former head mod - had this to say over there about the continued lack of accountability: I can tell you that I know of four - and possiby a fifth - manager that has gone to Melissa directly about how Doris conducts things. Melissa (rightfully) bears the brunt and responsibility of Doris' actions because she enables and endorses Doris' behaviour and treatment of the staff. When approached by these known four/possible fifth (and I count myself among their lot) Melissa has said that Doris does a lot of work, she is aware of "situations" but, in short, nothing would cause her to remove Doris from her position. If there is no accountability - then what is there?)