Hey Dartians! Thank you for taking your time to read this post, and
hopefully what follows is an interesting and informative thread.
While
I appreciate the passion of DuhHamburgler, I wanted to post an official
campaign thread that reflected my thoughts and views that is a bit more
my style. The last couple of days I spent time getting caught up with old friends
and answering some questions, and today I want to officially kick off my
campaign with a better outline of who I am and what my intentions are.
Firstly
I want to address the issue that I'm just swooping in to win an
election, and that I don't have a particular commitment to this site or
its community.
I did touch on this a bit
in the other thread, so I'm going to repeat what I said there: My
reentry into the community is a fair criticism, though it's not
entirely unlike what occurred on DDO. I was a semi-active member there,
criticized for a lack of experience and activity, and then I was asked
by my peers to run for president. I agreed, and then spent the next 6
years doing everything I could for that site. That's what is happening
here, and if the community wants to give me the opportunity, I will keep
my promise as I did then and always do, and dedicate myself to seeing
Dart improved. This is also under much better circumstances than DDO,
where my workload was far greater and there were much greater
complexities involved in the management of that site. For Dart, I can
keep my efforts much more focused, and I am very enthusiastic about the
prospects of that endeavor.
To reiterate,
this is something I have a passion for. I took a break after DDO,
but I was asked to do this because I have a certain set of skills, and there
are some that believe I can utilize that set of skills to improve this
site. The idea that I'm some unknown person just suddenly appearing isn't entirely accurate either. I have maintained close relationships
with several members here during my hiatus, and while I haven't been active
directly on the site, I have a decent awareness of its issues and
community concerns. In that sense, I'm not just coming out of nowhere, I
know many of the people here, and while it took another member to seek
me out to ask me if I'd like to contribute something specific to the
site to bring me back, I don't necessarily believe that is a bad thing.
I'm here to help Dart, that's where my passion and interest is, and
when asked if I'd like to come back to achieve that, I answered the call
and so here I am. Certainly another benefit of that is that I can enjoy
the community and my interest in debate as well though, so while it
took the incentive of my interest in working on a substantial project to
motivate me, my motivations are multifaceted.
I
believe that the only thing that needs to be asked though, is do we
believe that Airmax can commit to something, is he able to do the job,
and does he have the experience to excel in that role. I believe the
answer to all of those questions is obvious given my history.
Furthermore, regardless of my absence, I still have good relationships
with members that are crucial to my agenda and the agenda of the
community.
I hate to be melodramatic and I
might embarrass Whiteflame with this anecdote, but I'm going to do it
anyway. Whiteflame and I go way back, we worked together on DDO for a long
time, and very few (if anyone) knows that Whiteflame was the last man
standing with me as we tried to save DDO. The entire focus in those last
few days was all about deleting spam and Whiteflame was the guy by my
side helping me with this. In the end though, as we fired our last few
remaining shots towards the advancing Ad spam zombie hoard, we both
finally knew it was over. We shrugged, and both said without saying to
each other 'It was a pleasure serving with you'. The lights flickered
out as we made our way out of the last vestige of civilization, unable
to look back at the sad graveyard of what once was the great DDO.
Whiteflame
and I served in the trenches together. He knows how I think, I know how
he thinks. I don't need to spend anytime building a relationship with
him, it's already there, and instead of spending any time building a
rapport and working out our differences, we both know how each of us
likes to operate. This doesn't mean there wont be disagreements, and he
knows that I can be eager to express those disagreements, but it simply means that I can spend 5
minutes on explaining my philosophy and we are done. I'm also well acquainted with a lot of
other members of the community, which naturally helps, and to those I
don't know, I just haven't had the chance to become your buddy yet, but
it will happen.
With that said, I'll reiterate my philosophy from the other thread:
I don't think my general philosophy will come as a surprise to anyone.
Should I happen to win the election, my goals will be similar to what
they were when I was on DDO. I would encourage a similar moderation
policy, which is decidedly laissez faire to encourage activity, but
draws a line. Doxxing and harassment aren't acceptable and I'm sure the
current moderation team feels similarly. We can discuss further details,
but I think most understand my position on this. Thankfully, I already
have an established relationship with the current moderators and I look forward to
potentially working with them, and sharing my perspective that I've
built from nearly a decade of considering the challenges of working with a
community like Dart.
I want to take a moment to say that it's important that we all keep things in perspective. To my supporters, I appreciate your support, but I want you to voice your support in positive ways. We can run an exclusively positive campaign that focuses entirely on the benefits that you and I can bring to Dart without the need to attack our opponents in any way. Of course there can be vibrant disagreement, but we don't need to frame anyone who feels differently in any way negatively.
RM is a good guy, and he's passionate about debate in general and Dart specifically, and that makes him a worthy candidate. Naturally there are areas we disagree, but those areas shouldn't create a perspective that regardless of who wins, we can't work together to the betterment of everyone. I want everyone to keep this in mind, especially my supporters, that our time on this platform should be fun, and we can have fun in a positive way when it relates to this process, without the need for that fun to be harmful to anyone else.
This election should be fun, and I'm here to have fun while running, and assuming I win, have fun while we work on improving Dart in all the ways that I can. But I find it discouraging if this process becomes overly hostile, and while some drama and contentious argumentation is great for the site, let's keep things within the perspective that this doesn't need to be taken that seriously. None of this should be personal, and all the candidates should be able to simply enjoy the process.
With all that said, I
want to talk about Site Development, since this is where my main
focus and passions are going to be directed.
Phase one: Topical, Integration and Preparation
Phase two: Specified Marketing
Phase Three: Regularity and Growth
