**Open disclaimer; I’m ranting my own personal opinion.  Nobody else has proof-read my statements and my words are not endorsed or approved of by any Sl community.

But, anyway… Y’all know I volunteer for NCI, right?  New Citizens Inc, the volunteer help group in Second Life which provides some basic instruction, general help, and free sandboxes.  It’s a great community.  Help is practically constantly available.  Support at our sites takes care of most valid questions and griefings.  Personally, I owe the whole community a great debt for helping me get my start in SL and continuing to enjoy the service nearly every day. (^_^)

I guess, the problem being, it’s a BIG community.  With that comes a very broad cross-section of online personalities, not excluding the most entitlistic and outspoken jerkoffs ever to rest their flabby butts behind a keyboard. (=_=)

It’s more than frustrating to many people I see in the community.  We try to keep an open environment.  The community’s lands are all public access.  The groups are free to join.  But, that openness has been showing its faults quite strongly lately.  We have or hangers-about in the plaza and sandbox who just milk the environment for every drop of drama they can find.  Dare we ban them, they either come back in an alt or use the group as their soap box to go on about how their “rights” have been violated.  (>_<)

The genuine butt-nuggets are the ones who come back with some claim that we ban “everyone” or “anyone with an opinion” or worse “anyone an officer dislikes”.  Of course, this “everyone” is likely to be their small circle of drama-mongering frenemies who tolerate each other just enough to focus their collective attentions to where they’re least welcome. (=_=)

And, they’re not exactly griefers.  They seem convinced that they’re in the right.  As if it’s their entitled right to swear in a G region, mouth off about nearly everything, fuel drama with discussions about religion and/or politics, or even go so far as to chase off people validly requesting help in the area just so they could continue their drama-mongering hack’n slash at each other.  It’s all subtle enough to be within our guidelines, but, if I witnessed enough of it I’d be more than ready to cite our A-hole rule and just ban them for the cumulative strife they’ve espoused. (>_<)

It’s frustrating.  Frustrating to the point of helpful and productive members resigning.  Made all the more tough by our inability to please everyone, everywhere, and all the time.  I’m sitting here wondering what can I do.  I’m currently burdened by a number of outside situations (family, job, and such) which prevent me from being present during these dramatic peaks.  So, best I can do is rely on the community.  But, of course, the most reliable members wind up being the most derided and treated like enemies of the people. (._.)

The community can’t just shutter the works.  NCI is too much a positive influence on the grid to be allowed to cave under the load of A-holes targeting it.  But, people can only handle so much.  Every incident puts people one step closer to the edge.  Particularly in NCI staff.  Joining staff is not an easy task.  There is no application.  It’s based on a trust relationship which grows over time.   When any one member is lost, the impact can be disarming. (._.)

Best I can do is continue to have faith in the community and particularly in our volunteers.  They’re all doing what they can to make things right.  I just wish that the A-holes someday look in the mirror and see why they’re getting ejected, banned, muted, and reported.  Really, people, quit blaming others for your crap-hole of a personality disorder!  (._.)