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[Canvasian]

To Selroth, I don't care wither or not RAWR reclaims tittle of 'official' or not. What I don't want is a group telling people about draconity.org, and what it's about. They don't need to know and I don't like having a steam group representing us holding up a great big Draconity.org flag over it's head. RAWR was made to be quiet about that and just be for games. If you want to make some /other/ group on steam the official draconity.org group, I'll be fine with that, but don't give them the address to the forum on the group's profile page, and don't tell them in such detail who we are!

Say you have a friend on steam that you rather NOT have know all about the delicate things about your draconity. They come across you being in this 'draconity.org' group, and get curious and visit the forums. No, it's not malicious, but they WILL see your posts on draconity.org talking about your awakening, or dreams, or other delicate conversations and know way more about you than you cared to let them know in the first place. Not all of us walk around going "Hi! I'm a dragonkin, you can know everything about me by going to this website" no thank you.

I'd be content with some 'official' group set up like this:

***
Draconity Official Group

A steam group for dragonkin and friends of the community
**
(Note is just says 'Draconity' not 'Draconity.org')

Something like that is fine, there's no address to the forums, you're not publicly announcing too much about us, and most importantly friends won't go to this website and snoop through our posts.

I can understand why you might not want to advertise draconity.org / let everyone you know see the more personal stuff that might be posted here... but I don't think it'll be an issue. If someone is going to go through the trouble of sifting through your friends list, then finding someone who belongs to the draconity.org group, and is curious enough to actually sign up for the site... then a group that mentions "draconity" like you were talking about, but doesn't necessarily say "draconity.org" is no safer. If someone is curious enough to go to draconity.org and sign up to take a look, they're going to be curious enough to google "draconity" when they see it, even if there's no url attached to it. And if they google "draconity", guess what the first result is? Draconity.org. It's not that hard to find the place. The application process seems to filter the trolls out pretty well. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

[Airy]

Near To The Sky's suggestion sounds like it could work.

I'm not familiar with steam or dorg; I have heard of RAWR, but with being on dial-up I haven't bothered to join.

But my thoughts might be somewhat like Canvasian's.  And if someone is so interested in you that they're going to go through all the trouble of logging into draconity.org to search your back posts and they will use it against you, you have a bigger problem in your claws than RAWR or DORG.  And I don't think you could call that person a friend. 

[Rossenod]

To Rossenod: I made the RAWR group FOR draconity.org it's rather hard to do such a thing like that without confusing people from draconity as to who I am, also I should be allowed to use my name where I want. My point is there is some places we don't want to advertise the forms on, in video game social networks is not somewhere we want to advertise this place in.

...Snipped.

Bolding Mine.

With all due respect, Dafydd, what you want and what we want do not necessarily match up.  I noticed in your response to Sillydraco that you mentioned DA and other art sites.  Well, I have Draconity.org listed as one of my favorite sites on my accounts on both DA and FA, and I will not be taking the links down, because I want them up, I want people to know what my favorite sites are.  What you want is totally your decision, but what we want is not your decision, (nor is what we do your decision) because you do not and indeed cannot speak for everybody here.

To Airy:  Dorg is short for Draconity.org, it's an abbreviation some of us have come up with over the months for use on MSN.

[Dradolan]

Just thought I would mention a few things, but I wont get involved in this whole thing because I am not involved with RAWR and I loath Steam to the pits of hell (it should like burned, be skinned, be ripped apart and be filled with viruses so everyone can hate it).

I am not sure whether you are aware of Roc's Asperger's syndrome. I only known him for a few years and I know how obsessive he can be with certain places, games, hobbies and explaining what he is thinking and doing. He was only trying to be a stronger member of the site, trying to help because he was doing something he thought was alright. Which when you are obsessed with something you tend to over think and do something without consideration of others (in a lot of cases) especially when you have little control over it.

If you knew all that, forget I said anything.

[Rocangus]

Alright... It seems as if I messed up. I was recommended to start this group my a member on these forums, whose name I choose not to mention. Drado is pretty darn right: I just wanted to help the community. I didn't think through it very much, but I did ask Sel and he thought it was okay.

Anyway, the group hasn't gone anywhere; it seems as if people are perfectly happy with RAWR. So, as of right now, I decide to remove the group, although I'll wait for confirmation from the parties involved in this fraud.

[Dafydd_Edward_Dragon]

To Canvasian, Airy, and Rossenod; steam encourages players to look at other player's profiles and their groups. I've come across lots of websites and clans using such a feature on steams. People often use it looking to see if there's clans one could join that friends or friends-of-friends are in. The page rather resembles that of a clan website to go join. If you say 'Draconity.org' you're directly suggesting there's a website to go to. If you just say 'Draconity' by itself, it may well simply be the group name and nothing more, not suggesting there's any specific website out there. For the same example the existing group RAWR, we don't have people googling like crazy trying to find some website attached to it. It doesn't suggest that there's a website, and most people won't bother to go looking. If you put up a great big "OUR WEBSITE IS RIGHT HERE" they will click it to go see.

To Rocangus, I wish this didn't blow out of such proportion. I was talking to Selroth PRIVATELY, and was hoping to talk to you first, but it seems we had to go and bring it here and start this great big debate without you for some reason. I spent all day trying to contact you while explaining what my big issue was in the first post Selroth put up.

I don't know what your plans were, but I admit I was hurt and confused as to why you put up the group, invited friends, and even called it the official draconity group, yet not tell anybody from either RAWR nor Draconity.org. I only found out from a random friend telling me about it and eventually looked. I also was hurt by that, I made RAWR for draconity.org, and after running it for so long, got no recognition for it so badly that someone else set up a group with identical purpose to mine as if mine never existed suggesting all my work was absolutely worthless. I was ready to delete RAWR right there and then since it apparently wasn't good enough for anybody.

You're more than welcome to keep the DORG group, just drop the '.org' from the name, switch out a different logo that doesn't give the address, and change the character so it doesn't so clearly suggest there's an actual forum or website, just that it's a 'group'. That's all I wanted from the first moment I found out what's going on.

[Rocangus]

Hm... I understand Dav. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause this at all. It's not much of a point to keep a tiny group with 4 members when there's another one, almost identical, about, having many more members. I guess it will be best for everyone. Although, I'd like to see people be in the RAWR group chat more often. That's what I think is less fun about it, and the actual cause to all of this.

I know the IRC is to have this function, live chat, but that's just a small wish I have. More members in the group chat.

[Aurelia]

I couldn't reply to this earlier because I was at work and I can't switch around with various quotes, etc in a reply when doing it on my phone...or at least not easily!

While I haven't been able to reply, it seems as though it's been resolved anyway.  I agree with Roc that the best thing is to take the newer group down - it doesn't seem to be serving a purpose and as I said in my earlier post, I didn't know why it had been set up to start with when we already had RAWR.

Just to address a couple of other points that were raised though, primarily about people seeing the website details and wanting to join to spam the forums...

I didn't join the dorg steam group because I didn't want my steam profile to have a link between the "steam me" and "draconity me".  Just like I don't put website links to draconity.org on my profile pages in temping agencies for jobs, or other places that are "seperate".  I talk to friends about otherkin/therians/furries just as I would with other things, but I can't see any need to have a link to something on steam that is going to scream out about draconity.  That's why I liked the RAWR name (granted, it is a little negative, but in gaming it can be good to have an agressive group name) even though I didnt have any part in choosing it.

At the end of the day, people don't go on steam to search for websites.  If someone is interested in dragonkin/draconity or otherkin in general, they'll google for it and find us that way, or by word-of-mouth from friends/site members/etc, or through one of the banners we have on other affiliated sites.  If someone stumbles across the draconity.org information on steam it's not going to be because they were looking for it and I think the possible negative repurcussions to individual members (not the site necessarily, the application process weeds spamming out enough) who could then get abuse/teasing/etc from steam members, outweighs the possible possitive of helping any other dragonkin find this site.

The other point (very much related to that last point) I wanted to touch on is about how some members don't want that information shown on their profiles elsewhere.  Obviously everyone has the option of not joining a steam group which advertises draconity openly, the way that I didn't join it, but when creating a group you have to think of the group as a whole.  There will be people who don't want to have a link to their draconity shown on their steam profile, and yes there will be people who don't mind that information being shown, but I guarantee there won't be anyone saying "I'm not joining that group unless you put the draconity.org name, logo and full details about dragonkin all over it!!!!!".  Which means, the way to have everyone happy about joining is to not mention the site details or whatever on there.  Noone is going to refuse to join if the draconity.org name/logo/etc isn't on there, but people will refuse to join if it is.

Anyway, as I said at the start of this post it seems like this is all a bit of a moot point because Roc has said he will take the group down.

Dafydd: I'm sorry the RAWR group thread(s) isn't stickied like it used to be, that seems to have slipped through the cracks on the move.  If anything like that happens just give me a nudge about it and I'll fix it - I didn't realise that it wasn't stickied until you said so here.

I've been part of the RAWR group for.... a little under a year, I think.  So, not very long really.  But I havent actually done anything since joining because I'm not sure what it's for - am I missing the events that are planned, etc?  Maybe it would be good to start a new thread about it (with a link back to the old one for reference) giving details of what it is, what it does, etc etc for anyone who wants to join or has joined and doesn't know how things work.

As for what Roc has said about not enough chatting going on - maybe the time difference is the reason why that's happening?  Perhaps a thread to discuss how to make/keep the RAWR group active and fun would be a good idea?

[Kiantis]

I'm one of those that have joined the new group.
Mostly carelessly, without thinking much (which is the same way i did with RAWR - in fact i'm not active even there).
And yes, there is the publicity problem. I acknowledge it. I understand it's better to not have direct references. And i approve to remove the new group, whatever i may say in the next words.

What i'll say next is what i think about the concept of draconity being publicly known.
[link to new thread]

[Rocangus]

Alright, I'll take the group down this very moment. Mine that is. I didn't think through it, just went on blindly. A bad move. Now I have learned another lesson, and I shall keep it in mind from now on.

[Dafydd_Edward_Dragon]

Thanks Aurelia for better wording most of the things that really had me all up tight about this whole thing. Rocangus, you're welcome to do things to the RAWR group, just say the word and I'll give you whatever tools you need for it. Though general users have a lot of power to begin with, if a feature you need is missing, I'll add it for you, and anyone else that wants to contribute.

Steam has a problem of that posts in groups like announcements and events don't seem to ever get messaged to players of the group, they have to actively go to the group and check for updates. This gets rather annoying. I reccomend in place of trying to use Steam's built-in steam community system, we make a Gaming section on draconity.org, with a subsection for Steam (that way if we make draconity groups in other systems like Microsoft Live, PS3, etc. we can add them), and any annoucements we post there, and on steam give a summary of it. Do note not all members in RAWR are from draconity.org, it's more open and loose than the forums are, so if we post things like "TF2 game this friday" or whatever, make a summary in RAWR, but don't post URLs to draconity.org forum posts.

As for the chat, I try to go there time to time, but I generally only have steam running if I'm going to be playing a steam game, and if I'm playing a steam game, I don't chat because I'm in a game, it's generally a catch 22 that way. Them making that new interface kinda made it worse too as it has higher system requirements and is even more bulky. So making posts in Draconity and RAWR are more effective to get messages around.

Rocangus, I'm sorry if I seemed particularly bitter at you. over the year's I've grown a little more paranoid and the like as too many times in the past I have been back-stabbed or double-crossed by people. Many large community projects I worked on have been stolen from me or sabotaged by people. I shouldn't have suspected you for it, but all the wrong things happened at the right time to start making me think such.

For a summary recap, here's the details, please comment if there's any changes or admendments we should do:

-Draconity.org group was removed
-RAWR will remain running and extra admins will be set up
-A new 'Games' Board will be put up with a 'Steam' sub-section for RAWR
  -Once said board is up, I'll make a RAWR intro post that will be stickied explaining what it is, how to join, and what it's all about
  -Optionally, we can make a poll about changing the name if desired (I didn't vote for 'Really Aggressive Winged Reptiles either, that was just the winner. However the Acronym is locked in steam, so without making a new group, the new name still needs to be R.A.W.R)
-RAWR will continue to not make any references to Draconity.org, meerely state in it's vague way it's for 'dragonkin' with no farther details than that. It can be voted on if any more (or less?) detail should be issued by it's user's
-And finally, to avoid things like this happening again too much, any future draconity.org extention projects, we should make announcements of such before they are launched on any external sites. This does not mean you can't link to draconity.org on sites you use, but anything that is specifically draconity.org related will be posted about before construction. For example if we wanted to make an extention for other game systems like Live, or PS3, or so forth

If there's anything I missed or should be changed, let me know.

[Rocangus]

Sounds fair all of that Dav. I'm not angry at you, I was simply rushing it without checking with the whole forums. A bad mistake, something I don't want to do again.

Sometimes, arguments, small arguments, has strengthened my relation to people. I don't know why, but it's something I have noticed.

[sillydraco]

yay im glad everyone is happy now! also, i apologize if i came off as a little rash :3 although i would like to see more about that SL group! SL just isnt fun unless youre playing with friends!

[J'Karrah]

If you guys don't care about that, then I guess you wouldn't care about me slapping the Draconity.org logo on all sorts of groups or websites, dragging a banner along all sorts of places without anyones consent.

I could go on SL and make a draconity.org group let anybody join and it's charter links to this website, why not since no body seems to care. Post it on role-play websites, video game websites, artwork sites, just use the logo and website address everywhere without consideration that I'm representing the community by doing so affecting the image of what this community holds, getting people curious what the heck it is wither or not they may be interested in dragons or otherkin in any extent.

While I personally don't care about either group, and I don't want to stir anything back up since it seems things have been resolved in this particular instance I did wanted to mention something about this particular statement and something I think everyone should always keep in mind when posting on ANY forum. 

It doesn't matter what the general membership thinks about "official" uses of the domain name and site title on satellite or spin-off groups.  It does matter what Selroth thinks because he legally owns the domain name, thus he holds the copyright/trademark use and enforcement rights for the name "Draconity.org."  That has been proven many times on much more prominent cases of copyright and trademark infringement regarding urls and domain names for big name corporations, companies, and groups.  The group on Steam that Roc made had Selroth's permission to use the name.  It's a legally authorized use of the name.  If someone were to do as suggested above and just start randomly creating other websites and groups using the "Draconity.org" name (as opposed to just posting a link to this one) Selroth would have the option of taking legal action to stop it.

Selroth is under no legal obligation to ask the permission of the membership for anything with regards to the use of the name, how the site is promoted, or how it is operated.  He does so as a courtesy.  Anyone who doesn't like how the site is managed, where the name is allowed to be used or how the site is promoted is free to leave.  I'm sure that should any member truly wish it, all old posts would be deleted upon request but even that would be done as a courtesy, not a legal requirement.

Again, I am glad the situation seems to have been resolved to everyone's satisfaction, but everyone needs to keep in mind that membership does NOT imply ownership or even partnership in the eyes of the legal system.  Yes, successful sites take the desires and opinions of the general membership into careful consideration when making decisions for the site/forum/group, but in the end, the final, legal decisions always and ultimately remain with the site owner.  Members make their positions clear by either keeping their membership or leaving.

[Aurelia]

We're not going to set up a games board just to have a place to put a couple of threads about RAWR.  The whole point of moving the games boards off the site originally was to keep it a separate entity.

The multimedia boards that are already in place are more than sufficient to make a thread about RAWR (what it is, what it involves, how to join, etc) that we can make sticky, and another thread to discuss how to improve the way people are notified about events in RAWR (the latter thread doesn't need to be sticky as it's something that can be discussed now and not something that will need to keep going on - but we can sticky it if needed).

...(snipped)...

-And finally, to avoid things like thishappening again too much, any future draconity.org extention projects,we should make announcements of such before they are launched on anyexternal sites. This does not mean you can't link to draconity.org onsites you use, but anything that is specifically draconity.org relatedwill be posted about before construction. For example if we wanted tomake an extention for other game systems like Live, or PS3, or so forth

If there's anything I missed or should be changed, let me know.

No.  As J'Karrah has pointed out, Sel doesn't have to ask permission from members here for the draconity.org name to be used anywhere, as he owns the name/domain.  I can understand what you're trying to say - that you don't want someone stepping on your toes again in the future - but you can't make a statement dictating to the owner of the site how they can or can't use their own domain name.

Sel likes to discuss things openly with members here, the dorg steam group is the first time I've known him do something without making a thread to ask everyone's oppinion before doing it.  Sel is not irresponsible, nor are any of the staff here.

If you were merely suggesting that as an option then I appologise for sounding harsh.  But the way you wrote it, and ended it, read as a dictation.  I am tired though, so I point to the first part of this paragraph if I have misinterpreted it.

So, in a recap from me:

* Draconity.org steam group was removed
* RAWR will remain running and extra admins set up (just reiterating what you said there, as it's your call)
* 2 posts will be made, one stickied about RAWR (what it is, how to join, etc) and another to discuss how to make it more "active".  Obviously more posts can be made at any time, if needed.
* RAWR will continue to not make any references to Draconity.org, meerely state in it's vagueway that it is for 'dragonkin' with no further details than that. It can bevoted on if any more (or less?) detail should be issued by it's users.
* Groups for other platforms can be discussed openly by whoever decides to set them up.  But, as with RAWR, those groups are run and maintained by whoever sets them up, not draconity.org, unless we have specifically asked for them to be.  So it's up to the creator if they want input from members here.  The exception to that being if someone uses the draconity.org name/logo/etc without permission, in which case we would step in regardless.

This whole situation has been very unfortunate and I'm really, REALLY, tired right now so I may be missing things out from what I want to say, or not be as coherant as I'd like.  But the bottom line is the issue is resolved; the dorg steam group was removed and RAWR threads will be re-implemented back on the forum.  Everything is back as it was, all is calm and I'm off to bed because I have to be up in not-very-long to go to work :/

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