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In Reply to: Why the above post was deleted posted by Coordinator on November 13, 2004 at 14:10:35:
"Growing up" and moving on is something even coordinators do. We've recently had a few who've done just that and resigned, citing irreconcilable differences or incompatibility. Some admitted to having goals which were not necessarily compatible with our site mission (see above). Carol, Acheick and Kathy are no longer with our staff.
These recent events have caused no small amount of noise and concern. There are now some emails circulating with content which does not accurately portray events which have actually transpired. Rather than answer them, as they were not addressed to me, and I have no time or wish to get drawn into arguments, I will state my perspective. These opinions are my perspective, and I hereby preface everything with "in my opinion."
In my opinion, the polarization that is apparent on our boards reflects what is happening in society on a macro scale. We have had coordinators identifying with opposite sides of the political spectrum in more and more extreme ways, and showing a marked increase in their intolerance for others of different persuasions. This intolerance has come from all sides, conservative right to liberal, to left-leaning. Each side has complained to us about catering too much to the other. And those in the middle seem to have succeeded in offending just about everybody.
As a result of this polarization, plus some personal grievances, some coordinators fell out with each other and resigned. But not before a small amount of transgression of coordinator rules and abuse of privileges had taken place: heated words were exchanged, private personal grievances were aired in public, and posts were made contravening the rules and guidelines of the chat boards.
To be honest, much of what happened has left me puzzled. It is probably because I have a whole different temperament about these things, and in real life, I am used to working with a diversity of opinions and succeed in bringing people together on professional projects, who are bound by professional rules and codes of conduct.
Still, the thing to remember is that this site has come as a result of people volunteering their time, to provide a service to the public. These volunteers, have graciously given of themselves because they are in a position to contribute truthful helpful information, having once been in TF cult. Yet sometimes, because of our cultic past, even a volunteer project like this one can start to remind us of our life in TF. After the repercussions of giving our lives to a mistaken cause, the last thing some of us need is to take on yet another cause. We need to take care of ourselves first because we deserve to be selfish after so much forced and unnecessary giving. So it's been a tricky balance for each of us - to be pro-active for a "cause" yet feel a sense of owning our own lives. We each have found some amount of healing through working on this project, as well as re-opened old wounds and subjected ourselves to more pain when what we needed to do was move on.
What we probably needed but didn't have was a 3rd party in-house therapist. Behind the scenes, words like "follow-up mail" are never used. To "counsel" gives some of us the shivers. I laughed when someone suggested passing out tracts about the FCF, because that's the last thing those of us who've been litnessing and postering for 2 decades want to do. (Don't get me wrong, information tracts about the FCF operation are a necessary thing and I'm glad someone put that together!)
So I'd like to finish off with my sincere thanks to our departed volunteer staff who gave of themselves, despite the enormous costs to their personal lives. we couldn't have come this far without their contributions. exFamily.org is here to stay, and perhaps the recent changes in personnel were for the better. Our team is now more focused on what we were here to do - putting up information and articles. I will continue to develop scripts, as time permits, and "provide tools which enable convenient access to [the] information" on our site and elsewhere.
We would also like to thank all our participants on the boards, who've contributed to the wealth of information in our archives, who've boldly explored extremely painful issues, asked unaskable questions...
At the risk of giving anyone the shivers,
God Bless!
