04-23-2025, 10:14 PMsköldpaddor Wrote: Those last couple of paragraphs, I absolutely agree with that. I think that a LOT of the time, people develop these grudges and ideas about people and teams and groups and they never once bother to verify those ideas or determine whether any of those things are true. Like, in the past couple of months, I've been told that people "hate" me and...I don't even remember the last time I talked to these people! I don't have any CLUE what I could have done to make them hate me, but somehow, I'm just on some list due to...I guess something that's being passed around behind closed doors, and because it's all secluded back there, no one bothers to confront the issues, no one bothers to talk things out, they just spread things around in the shadows.

I do hate to see us lose our ability to joke around and move on. And I definitely don't think it has to be positive all the time. This is something where I absolutely sanitize a lot of my own responses, because I think that leadership should try not to actively provoke people or fire back with the first aggressive thing that comes to mind in the moment.

It's definitely hard. Because like, as you said, when there are a few bad actors, and it appears as if no one is calling them out or making any effort to stop them from causing harm, it feels like well...it can't bother them that much, or they'd say something.

I think that one thing we tried to make clear this week as Head Office, at any rate, is that our locker rooms and affiliated spaces absolutely do impact our broader community. Locker rooms should be a place where people can join and be welcomed in without immediately having to be initiated into a circle of drama and petty beef that they have no connection to, and that is not directed at Hamilton or any one room in particular, that's just my own opinion of locker rooms as a whole. And that's a hard thing to navigate when a community is as well-established as this one. There's over a decade of history here, and there's bad blood that's just as old, and I think that we should all do our best to just let go of that and not pass it on to future "generations" of users as soon as they walk in the door.

You’re absolutely right about how quickly grudges and rumors spread without anyone actually checking if they’re true. It’s really frustrating to watch how people get labeled for things that may not even be relevant anymore. The worst part is how people can end up on some ‘list’ without ever understanding what they supposedly did wrong. And no one ever talks about it directly, so it just sits there, building up tension and division without any resolution.

The shift in how people communicate now, with everyone carefully choosing their words, is part of the problem. While I understand the need for respect, it feels like the space has become too sanitized. This is a fake hockey forum, after all—it’s supposed to be a place where people can show a bit of personality, have some fun, and not feel like they’re constantly walking on thin ice. Right now, it feels like we’ve lost the kind of energy that made the forum unique. Instead of being able to have real conversations with all the messiness and flaws that come with them, everything feels overly polished and controlled. We need more room for personality to come through, even if it means disagreement or letting some rough edges show. That’s what made the site feel alive in the first place—without that, it feels more like a performance than a genuine community.

When you talked about locker rooms, I completely agree. New users shouldn’t be walking into a space where they’re automatically dragged into old drama that they have no part in. The history here is undeniable, but it’s not something that newcomers should have to inherit. It’s frustrating to see them get caught up in conflicts they don’t understand or have any part in. And it only makes it harder to create the kind of environment where people can connect and move forward. This kind of ongoing drama just keeps repeating itself without anyone addressing the root cause.

Looking ahead, I agree that accountability is important, but the way it’s been handled feels like it’s not giving entire communities a fair chance to show they’ve changed. The problem isn’t in holding people responsible, but in how whole teams or groups can end up stuck with a reputation that no amount of growth or change can shake. This kind of labeling just perpetuates the same cycle, and it’s draining to watch. When the focus stays on old issues, it prevents any real progress or healing from happening. We need to focus on addressing these deeper issues so that communities aren’t continuously defined by the mistakes of the past.