AW.com and Why I Left It
(Not my place to be)
By Idealist [19/May/00]Pink Village Councillor since February 1999, Idealist, leaves AW and PV. Read her story.
Have you ever felt done wrong, and getting angrier and angrier about it? I have, and I finally got my fill of it in AW. And the only thing I could really do is to leave Active Worlds. My leaving had nothing to do with Pink Village (in fact, being a part of Pink Village made it harder), but it had and does have everything to do with Active Worlds in general, and the powers that be there -- particularly activeworlds.com [AW.com] that lets the tyrants rule.
As a member of the Alpha World community, I often spent time at GZ (Ground Zero). To my horror, I wasn't able to speak my mind without getting kicked and banned from the world.
There's nothing more irritating to me than authority that misuses and abuses its power. To my dissapointment and anger, AW.com has repeatedly demonstrated that they not only condone that abuse and misuse, but they even highly support some of their citizens as "Peacekeepers" (PKs) -- when it's clearly an oxymoronic name for those that have nothing better to do than to watch others' comments and SHOOT whenever the comment they see (hear?) is something that they feel is "inappropriate". What happened to teaching people of the "mute" function, to use if they don't like what someone says? And guess what happened to me when I said publicly that some PKs are nothing but Nazis? I told the truth, yet I got kicked more.
Granted, nothing can ever even come close to the real-life horror of Holocaust, but the idea of eliminating people is the same in real world as it is in AW GZ. The attitude of some PKs seems to be: "we will eliminate you if you don't fit into what we believe is the right way to be and the right things to say."
I have seen and felt the kicking and banning without objective rules or reasons. It didn't just happen to me, it happened (and no doubt continues to happen) against many others too. I saw some of the so-called "Peace"keepers to waltz in, take one look at someone's comment, and kick. NO sense of Community Spirit of discussing what the comment meant, or to wait and see what people say back -- just pure self-centered decisions on the part of the PKs to kick because the comment they saw somehow sounded "bad" to them.
And many PKs have NO sense of the fact that some of us are slower typists, or that some of us have more lag than others. M0e once justified his kick of me as "your comment was out of place." WHAT did that mean? Out of place because I said something that was a bit lagging, or was it offensive to all, or just "out of place" in his (or AW.com's) "eyes"? If it was offensive, how so? With no warning or discussion, I, or anyone else, could just be GONE by some PK's whim.
I used to think it was just the "no swearing" rule that we had to follow (ridiculous as the rule is, given that "swearwords" are very subjective and PKs don't really bother with words that aren't in English, and given that NONE of us are the babysitters of some children of mostly U.S. parents), but I came to see the truth. I could have "followed" those "rules" almost to the letter (especially if someone explained to me exactly what words were swearwords), but the truth is, there is more to the nazi behavior than that.
The truth is that the "Peace"keepers who feel like banning or kicking people, will and can do so at their whim. There seems to be NO attempt to rule the PKs themselves (and the high-and-mighty leader, m0e, just claims that he only does what he's TOLD to do -- think about it. How many Nazis have we heard of who claim innocence when they take part of, and are instigators of, brutality?). I received a letter from Tom Fournier, who I suppose is THE authority in activeworlds.com, saying something like (paraphrasing): "well, we know that it's not a perfect situation, but the PKs do more good than harm, so we do not plan to change anything". Well, thanks a lot, Tom. Meanwhile, you have a bunch of nazis running around asserting their power when they really don't need to.
I cannot and will not stand by an organization or a company that is that biased. I invite all of you to leave aw.com until they do change their policy of giving some of their citizens the power to kick and ban, but I also am realistic enough that most of you won't do it -- after all, why would you, if you never saw the injustice that goes on. Meanwhile, enjoy Pink Village, I will miss it (and you citizens and friends) very much,
Idealist
saying good bye, and "Peace"