Thread:Berserkchart486/@comment-2089817-20151117215118/@comment-4869113-20151118051427

Sei, I'm not arguing that you're arguing just to argue. I very much understand your concern for the Fanon, because you do care about it, almost as much, if not more, than Ten himself who has devoted several years of his life to maintaining it. You've said it yourself countless numbers of times, and it's why I truly believe that you keep trying to emphasize your points. They make sense, Sei, and I can't say that I truly disagree with you. I have gone on other pages and asked how they've made sense; I can show proof, I've helped tons of users here on chat, and helped them conceive ideas. It's what I do when I can. I love doing it, and I will never stop.

But, that's where our agreement comes to an end. Because, everytime we've made these rules, these applications, and these attempts to govern quality, we lose the kindred nature of the fanon. We lose some of the people that could have potentially become the greatest users on the site. We lose some quality contributing members. Like I've said before, had we had apps, I would not have been on Naruto Fanon, and I would've never become as good as I've become. Ten said this best: an individual must focus on improving, and then collectively we will get better.

As an example, I'll use Erin. When he arrived, this dude couldn't even make a page, nevertheless an article. His articles were easily one sentences, and I can say with certainty, had we had ANY type of examination, he would've failed every time. But, now, Erin is becoming one of our premier users, and he's getting better. Is he perfect? No, by far he isn't. But, he's improving, because he has people leading by example. He has characters like Zenjou, Sannoto, Dan Inuzuka, Raido X, Seireitou, Ryun, Sayuri, Soutenchiro, etc. that he can look at and see what a good article is.

Now, there will be some people that won't "conform" to our standards. But, we have to accept that and say that's okay. Absolute Release, if the dude said "I wrote it just to write it", we have to say "Oh, alright." Hopefully he'll take our advice, but we can't force the guy to do that. We can make a rule inhibiting him from creating it, because he's expressing himself, and it's not our place to tell him that he can't do that, or to factually declare his character as bad.

I think that's the issue here; we have a majority of users that use this site that believe nothing is wrong with it, then we have a few veterans that think it's going downhill. But, these new people, and the veterans that see no issue with Naruto Fanon, outweigh those that perceive it as an issue. So, for the mentor metaphor? If a group of students vote against the mentor's martial art method without trying it, that's fine, because regardless of how experienced the mentor may be, several minds are collectively smarter than one. And as members of this community, even as veterans, we have to hold everyone's voice equal to our own. That's what it means to be in a community; to respect means to hold to standards, but if our standards are not congruent with the community, then we have to respect our peers to admit that we may be wrong.