airmax1227

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.

We will begin with the first challenge, in a manner befitting my introduction:

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Legend (Hard)

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Good luck to Lunatic, I eagerly await your response, you just got served sir. While the world has had a good run, I consider you a worthy opponent and look forward to this ultimate battle for the fate of humanity.