A discussion about the Council.

I originally made this reply way longer and it also covered the topics of moderation on these forums, it was a reply to Ephitos' thread about moderation and the Council. As the entire thread was removed once I had made my reply and I was told through a PM that necromancing threads is not appropriate and that there will be no discussions about moderation in the open forums I decided to remove the parts about the mods from my reply and post the rest here:

I have read through this entire thread and not once have I noticed Ephitos acting neither childish nor offensive - at least not more than others. I do think he makes quite a few valid points aswell as others who have replied in the thread. I apologize if I make any faulty assumptions on how things work nowadays here or online, all I will write is my point of view on how things worked before I went on the break I am now on. Also excuse me for my english, I am a bit worn and my writing can get weird when i am not entirely alert. Blame being swedish if you wish.
Here's my thoughts:

----

I think de-railing or disrespecting a thread (do note that I do NOT include arguing against opinions in a civilized way) should be against the rules and that people who repeatedly do this should be warned and ultimately have posting rights removed.

----

It has been rather obvious to me at times that if you air your discontent with the Stormwind Council you are no longer treated as an equal. To me it has many times seemed like some "core" realm members and guilds are treated differently than others. We might have a sort of class society in the community that goes something like this:

1st class - Core people who have been here for a long time. These can behave pretty much any way they want without consequences. Usually these people are leaders or officers of succesful guilds and/or organisations and have not had OOC disputes with the Council.

2nd class - New players or nice players who just do not air opinions that are negative about the 1st class. These must be careful not to be cast down to
3rd class, hence they shall not in any way anger the 1st class.

3rd class - The outcasts that are not recognized as worthy members of the community. Most of these have done the mistake to criticize the 1st class openly or believe they can behave like them. These must be careful not to state their opinions as that will get them banned and ignored, or flamed and treated disrespectfully.

This also makes Ephitos ways of including a discussion of the Council in his post relevant, even though I would agree that it had been smarter to make two separate threads.

----

In several replies people have claimed that if you do not like the Council or how they RP you can just not RP with them and do your stuff and be happy. As this is true for most players it is not for some (or wasn't when I was properly around, I am glad to hear rumours that it has changed) - especially not for a guard guild like the Shields. We were constantly nagged by several players, both IC and OOC, on how we must obey the councilors and the Laws the Council made up for Stormwind. Our players could also not RP they way they wanted to if that meant that they wanted to be corrupt or bad guy guards as that would make people ICly complain to the council and produce a conflict.
Had I been in charge of the Shields for a longer time I might have made our own laws and had us enforce those on the inhabitants of SW (no difference than having the council make the laws and having us enforce them, really) and pretended IC that no Council existed. What I think would have happened is that the Council would have removed our guard rights and those in the community who were not on "our side" in the matter would simply have ignored that we were guards, perhaps even ICly declared that we were not as we did not have any Guard Rights. It would have been a very uncomfortable situation for us and it would have made our "job" so much more difficult.
Hence we were practically forced to accept the Council and RP with them, no matter what we think of them.

This is a worse matter for me than if the Council, as Ephitos suggested, would not arrange events.

----

I also heard of a situation that had me very annoyed. A friend of mine and a few others wanted to bring life to Dalaran, make a Dalaran Council and populate the city to create a loller-free RP haven. A wonderful idea, in my opinion, that every roleplayer should support. However my friend gave up on it as he was flamed for it. He himself claims several members of the Stormwind Council, among others, had told him that what he did was not in the lore and that he could not simply elect people to a council and pretend to run a city.
Aka he was not allowed to do the exact thing the SW council have done. They also tried to rule over his RP as if they had some kind of OOC authority which they, as I have already given them a friendly reminder of, do not have. Everyone is free to RP any kind of character he or she wants with any background story and goals he or she wants - unless it is an obvious lore violation like vampire princesses that are the daughters of Thrall. Trying to rule over other's ways to have fun in a game makes me sick.

After this little tale I must ask you, fellow members of the forums: Do the Council really provide the realm with RP? Is RP their main goal or is it something else?

----

Do read my post as thoughts from the top of my head and do not take anything personal. Also do not accuse me of whining or playing any kind of silly card as I do not - I simply state my opinions on the topics of the thread.
Also if I am banned or the thread is locked because of this post my point is proven, especially as I have not seen in any rules that it is not allowed to be negative about the Council openly. Show me the rule that states this and I will make my apologies.

When a topic/post is locked or moved it should stay that way.

Not a new topic, nothing new is being added here, and nothing good will come of this.

Moving on.