Staff Status Update

[Fire Wraith]

This is just to let everyone know what's been going on. Many of you have already noticed that Bella isn't in discord now, and a few have asked what's going on.

The short version is that real-life stress has been weighing on her increasingly heavily of late, and as such, she's going to be taking an extended break from the CD staff. This is a hobby that we all do for fun, and while there are non-fun things that the staff takes care of to make this possible, our personal capacity for dealing with that can vary - and we'd much rather someone step back from it, and focus on the fun parts and personal self-care/real life concerns, than burn out entirely or worse. She will still likely be playing in the interim, when she can be, so please don't bother her with any staff issues or requests.

The rest of the staff, including the Admins and SDMs, are going to reshuffle and reassign duties to make sure that nothing gets left forgotten or ignored. This reassessment is probably long overdue, as many of our ad-hoc procedures as far as handling requests have been showing a lot of strain, and as a whole we the Admins haven't done a good job in addressing this.

We also wanted to take a moment to address a number of complaints that have come in related to Bella or the Admins as a whole. First, we hear these and take them seriously. We're not perfect, and we're going to make mistakes, and hearing about them is important so we can work on improving. In particular, Bella wanted us to let everyone else know that it was never her intention to be deliberately curt, rude, or snappy with anyone, and apologizes if anyone took offense in interactions where she may have come across as such. These and other things are matters that she and the rest of us can and will be working on, and hopefully once other sources of stress have settled down she'll feel ready to help out again. And specifically to the extent that the rest of us have let things slip or get missed or forgotten, I'd like to apologize as well on behalf of all of us, and remind you all that you absolutely can let us know directly if something is getting missed.

I'd also like to note that we absolutely do want feedback on things. Even if something isn't a matter we can act on immediately, or is something more fundamental or tonal, it helps give a sense of where things are at. It also tends to help that we know sooner rather than later, because even if someone wants to vent to us (including about us), that's better than bottling it up or keeping it among friends, which tends to lead to it exploding later in a much messier manner. We have a firm policy of no retaliation against players (or staff) for those complaints, so if anyone does feel like they have been, or is worried about such, you can let myself or one of the others know and we'll keep an eye out for it.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to myself, Vincent, or Edge.
Thanks!