I know people are already aware of this, but I will say it myself so there will be no doubt.
I find I must leave FSTDT, and I don't know if I'll ever be back.
I used to love this site. I really did. I did what I could to help keep it running the way that myself and others liked, by encouraging rational discussion about all sorts of topics. There were always periods where there'd be more or less rationality on average, but it was the best place for it that I could find, especially that was able to talk about such a wide variety of topics. Things would often get heated and flames would fly, but it was almost always able to be resolved through rational discussion.
This is no longer the case. Somehow, over the course of months or years as membership slowly changed as people came and went, the community as a whole shifted. Because it was gradual it went largely unnoticed, only becoming visible when the forum would get hit by a shitstorm. I don't know when rationality went out of vogue. I don't know when it became perfectly fine for large numbers of forumites to outright admit to not having rationality and somehow expect to not have any dissenting opinion on such allowed. It used to be that we would tackle the points people actually made in a topic, quoting it and pointing out mistakes or showing how it doesn't say what they mean; now people outright admit their arguments are based on "chasing shadows of strawmen", that the opposition is actually correct, but patting themselves on the back for being the victor in throwing the most insults, having the most dickish behaviour, and getting away with the most rules violations.
I love rationality, but the amount of it on the forum has been dropping at an ever increasing rate. I hate argumentation so bad it can't even be called argumentation, I hate outright contradictions within individual posts, I hate people railing against someone for some perceived slight while engaging in far worse behaviour to do so, yet all of that has been on the rise. I remember when facts and logic won debates, now it's shifting to whomever can make the best passive aggressive, completely non sequitor personal first. I do not know why this has happened, as I've even tried to fight against such when I noticed it, but here we are.
I still do not know what people feel I have done wrong that they feel justified in attacking almost every aspect of my being. I don't know what slight I committed that made people rely on talking as though I'm not there when I've been participating. I do not know when people felt my questions and concerns were not even worth and "I'm not gonna tell ya 'cause you're a doodie-head."
I've asked people why they were attacking me, yet no one bothered to respond with anything beyond more attacks. I even had to face all of this from a fellow moderator, who again never had the decency to address any of my questions or concerns. I don't know why people feel I would put up with this sort of nonsense when many know quite well that I didn't put up with it from my relatives, whom I had been quite close to.
If you've actually bothered to read this far instead of going "TL;DR" then I thank you. I will miss many people here. There are also many I will not miss at all, some of whom I would have missed had I not seen them cheering for my leaving and having moderator status removed. As everyone should be aware, the last bit of problems started
here and eventually moved over to
here, which then later spawned
this. If you actually want to understand my reasons for leaving you cannot just say "tl;dr" and expect a synopsis, as far too much happened for that. Those threads and the IRC (the logs of which can be found in various threads) are not the only reasons I'm leaving. There was never an official rule made against this, and considering how important for understanding I feel it to be I will post
part of the conversation from the mod room. Sandman, if you feel I overstepped my bounds I apologise and understand fully if you remove it, but as I said I do feel it has an important piece to why I no longer feel welcomed in this community, and wish to at least give people the opportunity to see it.
I would say I will miss coming here, but it's unfortunately already a past event. I miss what this forum used to be like (even when Skyfire, Julian, or FMG were causing problems), and I still wish I knew what I did wrong to be as insulted and slighted as what seems to be half the forum has been directing at me, but I can tell that on the whole I am not welcomed (for whatever reason) and instead of taking the abuse I will simply make my exit.
~Oriet