No, it has nothing to do with religion :). 

You see, I used to be a minister with Fortune City.  It was wonderful.  I got the chance to meet and work with some wonderful folks, be a part of a growing community.  But I left for a number of reasons.  Mostly, because in my ever-so-humble opinion, the staff at Fortune City is for the most part inept and homophobic.  I know, you're might be wonderin'  why my site is still here.  It's because of you, my site visitor.  I have no desire to leave ya' in the lurch until I find an extremely stable site that's worth referring you to.  I'm not going to start playing "guess the URL for today" game with my visitors.  You may already have experienced the inabilty to connect and are being met with the frustration of updates not being done (it's been a nightmare just getting this page loaded!).

So here is my resignation letter that was posted on the minister's board as well as the village's discussion board, in it's entirety (NOTE: comments in [ ] are added for clarification):

You know after stewin’ on this for a few days, I’ve decided that it was necessary for me to speak out.

For any relationship, regardless of the type, a basic level of mutual respect and communication must exist in order for the relationship to be effective and successful.

Since becoming a minister however, the respect and communication has only been a one way street.

The following is a list of behaviors that I find to be unacceptable:

--Very little notification of downtime--

This is one of our biggest embarrassments. It’s one thing to say to a citizen, "I realize how difficult it is to update your site right now, but please realize that this is only temporary" and over the course of a weekend get no information from FC staff of what’s going on (even though they were there!). When it was requested (by our mayor no less!) that an email of apology be sent out, the response was basically a no because not all citizens experienced the problems.

A system status page MUST be built and made available to all citizens. This must be established on a server that will be visible regardless of whether FC is available or not. This page MUST be updated the minute there are problems and with expected times that the issue will be resolved, even if there is no possibility of a guaranteed up time. Any news is better than nothing.

--Lack of responses to "our" emails--

Do we [ministers] not get any priority here? Although not all of us have had this problem, how often do we need to read that someone hasn’t received a response to their submitted sites not being deleted on time? Nor when a valued citizens encounters problems (you know, the site in your district having major problems and is a valued site) and not even a minister can get a response?

--No visible hate policy within FC--

Now this is an area in which FC can excel, and just doesn’t take advantage. It is inevitable, that folks who have a problem with lesbians/gays, people of color, etc. will post their hatred on our boards or sites. But we have nothing outside of our ministers guide that states that FC completely finds this type of behavior unacceptable and will take appropriate action. It is unacceptable that someone can post this type of hatred and our only recourse is to "catch" the posting within a time window. So what’s our alternative, to leave a posting like that up until it’s caught by FC Staff? We specifically try to make The Village a safe place, specifically for Lesbian and Gay youth who experience enough trouble in their lives, without having hatred show up on the boards.

--Proposed chat guidelines for ministers are 98% unrealistic or unacceptable--

Those of us who have experienced chat at its best and worst. I understand the desire to have ops identify themselves. However, this leaves us completely open to attack by the continual troublemakers. If we have a chat schedule in place, it is not necessary to identify ourselves. If we switch due to time constraints, we know who took our places and such. We cannot in good faith identify ourselves when we know that we will all have our sites visited, "droppings left" in our guestbooks or discussion boards, or even attacked via ICQ if our number is listed at our site (which is something that is requested of us when we sign up to be ministers). The fact that we can have our ops taken from us if we are too "strict" is another area of concern here. If this happens to us, this is in effect removing our ability to be an effective part of the minister team. What happens when we fulfill our obligatory time in chat and we don’t have ops? We try to boot folks with kindness?!? Let the tougher guidelines that were written by Lady Gwen [if someone said something racist, homophobic, or obscene, they were to be booted] stand as is. Even though they don’t fall within "typical" chat guidelines, shouldn’t we strive to be "extraordinary"? To create a safe haven for all?

--FC Webrings that are "officially" recognized--

As a user of free services, I don’t place all of my "cookies in one basket". Why? Because things happen to computers, it’s inevitable. I have no desire to have my webspace, email, webring, discussion board (if available), guestbook, etc. in one place because of this. It’s extremely important to me that some of my service be available. By placing them all within FC, and given the reliability issues since January, I don’t want to be a part of a webring that ‘s on an unstable server. I wouldn’t ask the members of my district to settle for anything less.

If we as ministers were to approach our positions in the same fashion as FC staff has, we would asked to correct our behavior. If we didn’t we’d be asked to leave. However FC staff is not held accountable for their actions or lack of (by us as ministers that is).

My only recourse at this point is to resign. I have very little faith that things will change

All Best,

The Gayly Wave

The Aftermath (not in any particular order)

Shortly after we (3 ministers for the village, 1 from the bally district) resigned, we were informed (in a mass mailing to all ministers) that Micha was given the ability to track hate related postings more easily than what was in place before, so that hate postings could be tracked.

A hate policy is still not in place. FC staff stated that we never asked for it other than it being in the minister's handbook. This isn't true.

A system status page is still not in place.

FC accused us of wanting to sue others for their hate postings (Um, hello, like hate speech is illegal? I don't think so).

The remaining village minister, not understanding the reasons for our leaving, accuses us of not informing her.  This was after posting once on the minister board wondering if we [ministers] were all "patsys" and then upon finding out the other 3 ministers were resigning, before we had done so, posted on the minister's board that we were doing so, basically giving us no other alternative than to do so that nite.

I received an email from Andy, the community producer for FC, saying "we do our best".

I received an email from Lady Kythera, minister in charge of ministers, stating that we didn't "have to have FC webrings" which is in total contradiction from what the community producer has previously stated.  He is the one who sets the policy.

Lady Gwen (one of the other resigning ministers) is accused of having an "agenda". Hmm....let's see, could it possibly be making it a safe place for all citizens by making chat a clean environment?  Or could it be wanting an actual publicly stated hate policy so that Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transexuals, People of Color, etc., know that they don't have to deal with folks who are harrasing them?  In my book, when a Lesbian/Gay/Transexual/Person of Color is told they have an "agenda", that isn't the actual issue.  Catch my drift?

This is all I have to say about the issue.  Until I am able to provide my site visitors with an extremely stable environment, It will stay here.  I will set-up mirror sites that will test a server's reliability until such time that I can buy my own space.  You'll be notified of these site locations in the what's new sections.

Until then, gentle visitor, this page will serve as a reminder, that acceptance and understanding, are not present within the internet community.  Hate is still within our midst.

--Lisa

gayly_wave@hotmail.com

P. S.  Please know, that if any response to this is directed to my guestbook, it will be deleted.  I'm notified every time an entry is made.  Unless you are a part of a group of folks whose messages I will never see due to the email filtering I have set up, you can send me an email. I'll get it.  :o)

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The Gayly Wave.
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