To be clear, for my part, I don't think there was any intentional bias in Chatsubo moderation. At the same time (and I'm sure mods here, and anyone who has modded a communication medium for a community of which they are also a member can attest to this) it can be difficult to keep a perfectly objective perspective on people's behavior when you have a history with them, good or bad.
Also, Jade, I think Havo has addressed most of your general arguments, but to address a couple of things about myself specifically:
I can't speak for others involved in the genesis of Backstage, but I was actually not a target in any real way of any of the more negative aspects of Chatsubo. For me the problem was that it was extremely frustrating having the overall utility of the forum pretty much disappear due to the drama. I didn't have my feelings hurt (and while there is a perception that Backstage's rules are here to prevent hurt feelings, that isn't exactly accurate - I'll get back to that in a moment*), I was just pretty pissed that I could hardly use the forum for anything interesting anymore. At least, that's my recollection - it has been 4 years. Also, again not speaking for anyone else, I don't recall trying to bully anyone into anything (I won't deny - as I don't actually remember - that I probably reached out to Cosmo at some point about taking moderator action. I think that's a fairly reasonable first step for someone concerned about how moderation is handled, and we have a whole section for it here.) - though I feel as though if I displayed the level of megalomania (albeit apparently passive-aggressive megalomania?) you imply, I would probably much more interesting.
Finally, the idea that the folks who started Backstage purposefully 'killed' Chatsubo overstates, I think, our influence (leaving aside the fact that it utterly misstates our goal). For myself, I don't think I was particularly well known in the community at the time (and I'm probably not particularly well known now), and I don't think that the RP community had at that time anyone who wielded the kind of influence it would take to purposefully swing everyone from one place to another. I'm frankly not even sure what forces lead to Chatsubo declining as rapidly as it did - though for my part I mostly stopped using it because it stopped generating useful content (perhaps a warning, for Backstage).
The folks who are talking about the 'Go use Chatsubo' comment: I understand where the perception of it is coming from, I do. And I apologize if I didn't express myself clearly enough. But my point is that I see a lot of people who are unhappy with Backstage in it's current form
or any form it is likely to take (even if we do modify some guidelines) and I don't see them willing to put any effort into finding any solution for that, other than rants here. It takes maybe 4-5 really active people to make a forum useful, and after that it tends to snowball. That's all it would take - enough people to have a conversation. It seems like there are at least that many people who would like an alternative to Backstage. Hell, I would probably post, if I saw somewhere else becoming active, if only because as an admin here I sometimes find myself avoiding posting in threads lest it make it awkward later when they might need to be moderated. Starting a forum (or restarting one) is not trivial, but it isn't so much more difficult than, say, starting a semi-successful Eve corporation.
*Getting back to the idea that the rules are there to prevent hurt feelings for a moment: They may have that effect, but they came from looking at what tended to go wrong in threads in Chatsubo (the things that tended to lead to derails and flamewars drowning out useful content) and working backward to remove those things. The general idea was that it meant making it so when people spoke up, they wouldn't have to worry about being attacked or immediately shut down.
All o the history and interpersonal conflict aside, the two recurring things I'm seeing in this thread are that in some ways the rules are having the opposite effect (people feel too constrained by them to post) and that the even larger problem is that bittervetting is making people feel, well, pretty much like we were trying to avoid in the start. Neither of these sound like super easy problems, moderation-wise, but it might be something we can address, and I hope people have some ideas about it (and I appreciate the ideas that have already been posted.)
