A Response to a Response

Listening to: City and Colour - Save Your Scissors

On Thursday, I got a very lengthy accusatory PM from one of the admins of
LibriVox. In itself, that would not be that unusual, or unexpected, I
suppose. But it did come two weeks after my resignation of my admin
position and my withdrawal from LibriVox, and that was unusual, because I
considered the matter over, resolved and well past.

The message was accusing me of vindictive and offensive behaviour in the
forums and in my blog.

The blog part of the ire seemed to be a single post where I had briefly
summed in public what I had said, and been bothered by, in private, that I
hadn't just left LibriVox, but told 'outside' people why I left.

The thrust of my forum offence was said to be an update I made to my 20,000
Leagues thread, based on file collection change that was made by the MC,
who is above a BC in the cat process. This, in particular accused me of
being a liar.

This is an exact quote of my entire update:

"UPDATE (05/09): Due to a decision of the administration, all completed
files are now to be sent to
http://librivox.prolegomena.org/

The upload password for this space is: public

Be advised that I cannot access the files at this space, thus I will now be
unable to provide feedback or proof-listening. Your work will, assumedly,
be later exposed to the open proofing process.

When your work has been uploaded, please post to advise, so that I may
update this Master List."

I had trouble finding the words to respond. It was a very far ranging
message, that was missing a lot of key information, but contained mainly
untrue accusations. Perhaps I should have just ignored it, because I'm
going to be the ultimate scheming villain now to the admins no matter what,
it seems.

Still, the thing was, I hadn't lied, I wasn't bitter, and I sure wasn't
ever plotting against anyone, and yeah, okay, I'm a bitch, but get your
damn reasons right.

This what I said in response later that day:

"I think you have misunderstood my LUTS update.

It was a decision of the administration to develop a useful alternative to
YouSendIt.

I was advised by a reader by PM that he had uploaded his chapters to your
space. From your post, he believed that was what he was supposed to do with
completed chapters. So, readers were going to use it anyway.

It's true that I cannot access files on your server. I know they go into a
folder, and so on, but I couldn't download his file. The connection kept
failing and I repeatedly got the message the server will not allow resumes.
This was the same problem I was having with YSI Beta, so it's not your
server, so much as how some servers and my dialup don't want to get along.
Annoying, but still fact.

Because the readers will use it anyway, it is more efficient than YSI, and
as you are the one who will be uploading in to the catalogue, it seems
obvious to keep the files in one place. This is why I sent my own files to
the space as well.

Since I had always proofed and edited my own BC chapters, I had to tell the
readers that this change in procedure would mean that I couldn't give them
the usual feedback they would be expecting based on past interaction.
However, that they would probably get proofed and possible feedback later
from someone else.

That's all the update was supposed to mean; I tried to be very brief in the
master post because people glaze over at the length of that already.

As for the rest...

I've tried to explain the accent thing so many times now, but it seems to
be one of those either you agree or you completely disagree issues, and
discussion, at least discussion in the form of typed text, was not helping.
It's interesting that you begin by saying you "regret" having an accent.
Right there is the difference. You shouldn't be sorry for who you are,
especially when it's things you had no choice or control over.

The Dracula situation would not have been that significant, except what
underlaid it, and what followed. Criticism, even criticism that is against
policy, can be ignored, but the tone of this particular criticism was
discriminatory, and I didn't feel that was something that should have been
ignored. In the discussion following my admin forum post--in posts, and
PMs, and messages--I discovered that the admins were aware they were not
following the LV policy, but they did not find fault in this. In fact, they
were very comfortable with it. Some of the things said and done were also
discriminatory in themselves. Some of the messages that were meant to be
encouraging said that, if we want to please everyone, we have to allow
intolerance.

At this point, I quit because it was the only thing I could do.

My blog post is simply my perceptions at that moment, of being
disillusioned with a public organisation, of which I had previously donated
to with incredible enthusiasm. My experience revealed a gap between LV
ideals and practice, and, yes, I very much did not like what I saw in that gap.

I did feel it would be abandoning my readers to a harsh fate to walk away
from the projects I was BCing. They, like I, had donated time and effort in
good faith, and I didn't want them to feel, even for a moment, that their
contribution was not appreciated. Of course, this was going to be somewhat
uncomfortable for me, but too bad, the situation was not their fault, and
they were not going to get fallout if I could help it.

I haven't used the forums or PMs to rail against the administration. I
haven't posted, here or elsewhere, correspondence, public or private. I
haven't named individuals, or suggested certain people as the problem or
the solution. These things would have been grossly inappropriate, and that
would definitely be trying to end things unpeacefully.

All I have done is try to finish out my BC projects, and my posts there
have been, I think, completely neutral and polite. Aside from what you
thought of my LUTS update, but I have tried to explain that.

We're all just people. Imperfect, but trying to do the right thing.
Unfortunately, as it happened, we had completely irreconcilable differences
on what the right thing was.

Aside from endorsement, I felt far too self-conscious to record. I had to
orphan things. I should have told you that I couldn't continue with the
lovecraft project, but at the time I was overwhelmed and then forgot to
drop you a note.

Finally, I didn't want to leave anyone in the lurch by walking away from my
BC projects. I don't like leaving things unfinished, and I didn't want to
give my MCs needless headaches either. You already have all the complete
chapters for LUTS, and if you would rather have someone else take over
coordinating duties, that is not a problem. I actually wanted to make this
as painless as it could be, and I have tried my best, as I know we all have.

Be well,
Marlo"

It is so profoundly weird to get a condescending call to end an enraged vendetta that you never detta'd...or raged. Or thought about...