In Snow/Jake's case, Jax had initially asked in private for a January strike. Then, later, she'd had a hiatus starting in November, was passed with that, but then did have the activity for that first month, avoiding a two-month strike in December.
However, at some point, I had a giant mental lapse and sincerely thought up until a few hours ago that she'd also had activity for January as well. I literally don't have an excuse for this; all I can imagine is that I somehow convinced myself that our conversation about November had happened later and... I really don't know. Come the March AC, I moved the character from the "free June" strike pile to the "free August" one, sincerely believing it was a resolved matter.
Jax would never allow me to give her special treatment above what other players receive. Us being friends has nothing to do with me being a complete moron, and since she'd thought it was three strikes before being booted, nothing was said when she'd asked for another strike and we continued on. This matter is absolutely my fault.
When it comes to the AC though, it has always been lenient; when it says "four threads/characters," that's exactly what it means regardless of thread length as long as there's at least two comments from the character in question (though I've also counted two threads with only one comment as one). Furthermore, if anyone comes to us with something like realizing they took a strike when they actually had the activity, decides to offer enough threads for a month they initially used a hiatus for, asks us about what they can do to stay in the game when they're falling behind, needs to turn in AC late, etc., we've attempted to reach a compromise with them.
Problem is, while some of that has taken place on the AC posts or hiatus pages, in some cases it's also been done over posts in the mod contact or PM/plurk/AIM as well. Obviously now we can see the issues with that and I, personally, apologize a thousand times since I'm the one who's handled it from the very beginning. When we were talking about things last night, even before the full realization of my fuck-up was revealed, the agreement between us mods was this: anything like this does need to have a record of taking place, at or near the time it happens; from now on people will still be required to have a note made somewhere publicly if some sort of problem was resolved with a mod, even if it's just permission to submit activity "late" or what have you.
As further clarification, pretty extensive notes are kept of each AC; in particular (and which I don't believe has ever been mentioned at large), records are kept where a character's threads are sparse during a month, which is where things like asking if there's any more activity for a particular character comes in- so the mistake of marking that in cases where someone actually had a lot of activity (but just happened to pick shorter threads for the AC or something) isn't made. Any time a character is in danger of taking a game-removing strike or is even in danger of a two-hiatus-in-a-row strike, I'll often contact the player to see what's going on, even possibly researching their activity myself before starting a conversation.
I have made other errors in the past, such as failing to notice that a thread doesn't quite fit the activity period in particular, or the same thread is being used over multiple months (...and especially, accidentally marking one player's character as passed but then leaving off another, leading to weirdness when the AC reminder goes up). I do try to be incredibly careful. I do look into all of the characters at risk of idling to make sure I haven't missed anything. It's just that doing AC takes something like at a minimum of six hours all together each month, and checking hundreds and hundreds of threads does mean... sometimes I miss something I shouldn't have. I realize now that making sure all of this is accountable should have been a much bigger priority; the other mods have access to the google doc I use for the AC, but that isn't enough when I'm excusing people in private without making note where everyone can see. I was concerned about people's privacy in allowing people to retroactively undo hiatuses/strikes with activity outside of the AC posts, but should have realized that it could look dodgy and found a solution earlier.
Lastly, for what it's worth, I've never considered myself the head mod or anything like that. I was originally taken on by Mal for things like organization and throwing plot ideas around, and really only stepped into more when absolutely necessity. I have had extremely major issues in my life which came to a head last summer, did contribute to the issues with the game around that time, and have more or less lead to often struggling to keep my head above water since. I have never officially been in charge. Ever. To be honest, I've only very recently started picking up the slack again, both in mod work and actually playing in the game.
Maybe I still need a break from the game / RP in general, and have for a while - I'm not sure. Because of all of this going on, compounded with this error coming to light, I may step down as soon as someone can be found willing to do the lists stuff and AC on a regular basis. We may find someone to do that and then have two people. All I can do now is apologize and promise that, to the best of my ability at least, it won't happen again. I love this game dearly and only want to do what is best for it.
no subject
In Snow/Jake's case, Jax had initially asked in private for a January strike. Then, later, she'd had a hiatus starting in November, was passed with that, but then did have the activity for that first month, avoiding a two-month strike in December.
However, at some point, I had a giant mental lapse and sincerely thought up until a few hours ago that she'd also had activity for January as well. I literally don't have an excuse for this; all I can imagine is that I somehow convinced myself that our conversation about November had happened later and... I really don't know. Come the March AC, I moved the character from the "free June" strike pile to the "free August" one, sincerely believing it was a resolved matter.
Jax would never allow me to give her special treatment above what other players receive. Us being friends has nothing to do with me being a complete moron, and since she'd thought it was three strikes before being booted, nothing was said when she'd asked for another strike and we continued on. This matter is absolutely my fault.
When it comes to the AC though, it has always been lenient; when it says "four threads/characters," that's exactly what it means regardless of thread length as long as there's at least two comments from the character in question (though I've also counted two threads with only one comment as one). Furthermore, if anyone comes to us with something like realizing they took a strike when they actually had the activity, decides to offer enough threads for a month they initially used a hiatus for, asks us about what they can do to stay in the game when they're falling behind, needs to turn in AC late, etc., we've attempted to reach a compromise with them.
Problem is, while some of that has taken place on the AC posts or hiatus pages, in some cases it's also been done over posts in the mod contact or PM/plurk/AIM as well. Obviously now we can see the issues with that and I, personally, apologize a thousand times since I'm the one who's handled it from the very beginning. When we were talking about things last night, even before the full realization of my fuck-up was revealed, the agreement between us mods was this: anything like this does need to have a record of taking place, at or near the time it happens; from now on people will still be required to have a note made somewhere publicly if some sort of problem was resolved with a mod, even if it's just permission to submit activity "late" or what have you.
As further clarification, pretty extensive notes are kept of each AC; in particular (and which I don't believe has ever been mentioned at large), records are kept where a character's threads are sparse during a month, which is where things like asking if there's any more activity for a particular character comes in- so the mistake of marking that in cases where someone actually had a lot of activity (but just happened to pick shorter threads for the AC or something) isn't made. Any time a character is in danger of taking a game-removing strike or is even in danger of a two-hiatus-in-a-row strike, I'll often contact the player to see what's going on, even possibly researching their activity myself before starting a conversation.
I have made other errors in the past, such as failing to notice that a thread doesn't quite fit the activity period in particular, or the same thread is being used over multiple months (...and especially, accidentally marking one player's character as passed but then leaving off another, leading to weirdness when the AC reminder goes up). I do try to be incredibly careful. I do look into all of the characters at risk of idling to make sure I haven't missed anything. It's just that doing AC takes something like at a minimum of six hours all together each month, and checking hundreds and hundreds of threads does mean... sometimes I miss something I shouldn't have. I realize now that making sure all of this is accountable should have been a much bigger priority; the other mods have access to the google doc I use for the AC, but that isn't enough when I'm excusing people in private without making note where everyone can see. I was concerned about people's privacy in allowing people to retroactively undo hiatuses/strikes with activity outside of the AC posts, but should have realized that it could look dodgy and found a solution earlier.
Lastly, for what it's worth, I've never considered myself the head mod or anything like that. I was originally taken on by Mal for things like organization and throwing plot ideas around, and really only stepped into more when absolutely necessity. I have had extremely major issues in my life which came to a head last summer, did contribute to the issues with the game around that time, and have more or less lead to often struggling to keep my head above water since. I have never officially been in charge. Ever. To be honest, I've only very recently started picking up the slack again, both in mod work and actually playing in the game.
Maybe I still need a break from the game / RP in general, and have for a while - I'm not sure. Because of all of this going on, compounded with this error coming to light, I may step down as soon as someone can be found willing to do the lists stuff and AC on a regular basis. We may find someone to do that and then have two people. All I can do now is apologize and promise that, to the best of my ability at least, it won't happen again. I love this game dearly and only want to do what is best for it.