Leaving The Site Fights
Walking away from the net's largest voting and visiting
competition or any traditional voting and visiting competition
is amongst one of the 
tougest things you will ever do. It is
all the more difficult because those outside of the site competition
community have very little idea of the time or emotional committment
that long term involvement with vote and visit competition requires. The
decision to leave Site Fights is not one that
any one should make lightly. I hope this page helps those
unsure about walking away, those who have already decided to
make a departure, and those who are thinking
of joining ZOID CITY Community
and Community Competition. This page is designed primarily
for those who have been with the Fights at least a month and who
have waged at least one serious campaign. Those who spend
a week or two with the Fights and don't reenter have less to
lose and simply drift away.
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Ideally you should leave Site Fights,
while you can still feel the pain of being there, and before the
pain becomes unbearable. Site Fights should hurt because the time committment
involved takes away from other parts of your life on the net and
real life activities. It is a sign that those committments and activities
still remain for you, and you can pick them up. If you are a high
level fairie, hunter, or deputy or a team assistant or if all of
your friends are part of Site Fights, leaviing is going to
be much 
harder because
you take off into a void. If you leave because you can not
handle the time committment of Site Fights, because the pain is
unendurable, you are apt to leave quickly and painfully. Fighters who
burn out after several days in the War Zone or who lash out at
that point, have caved in under pressure. They let down
their team mates, team leaders, supporters, and themselves. It is
much nicer if you can walk away rather than run.
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Even after only a few weeks of fighting, the prospect of an
empty mailbox filled me with dread. I can only imagine what it
feels like to withdraw after a twelve week campaign. The trick to
jumping free of Site Fights is to spread a safety net under yourself.
If you enjoyed receiving and sending reminders join a mailing list.
Ghostletters
is a good choice if you enjoy fiction. For straight letter writing realtalk@yahoogroups.com
is an excellent list too. Visit Yahoo Groups and
Topica for more mailing lists. Note: many email
lists are dormant. Look at the list volume on Topica and sign up for several lists since
only a few will pan out.
Another fun activity on the web is Active Worlds, a
visual MU**, a real time game in which you can build. If you are active in such ladies' groups as
LOTH or
RAOK why not increase your activity. Join a committee. If you haven't yet joined a ladies'
group, why not start now.
If you wish to try a different kind of web site competition,
I recommend ZOID CITY Community and
Community Competition ZOID CITY is a learning community
of web site builders first and a competition secondarily. Start
searching for these substitutes a few days before leaving the fights
so as to have them in place when you go. Having somewhere else
to go makes quitting a lot less scarey.
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The most graceful way to leave Site Fights is to top out. If
you are more than three or four points behind in the War Zone or
Dome your campaign is over unless you choose to re-enter. You
can simply not email your team leader when the week is over. At
lower level a fourth or fifth place finish is required to sever
your relationship with the Fights. Team managers routinely manipulate
the number of fighters in rounds so that you stay even if you do
nothing. If you want to leave you may need to, email
your Team Manager and request a "drop by request."
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There
are as many reasons for leaving Site Fights are there are fighters who
do so. Exhaustion, and family committments are the main reasons I
have seen in supporters' email. For the ordinary fighter, Site Fights is not
a supportive environment. Fighters must learn accidentally or through
a mentor about vote exchange. Fighters expend twenty hours a
week unpaid labor, and when their campaigns end, they have nothing.
There are no messages in a mailing list archives, or structures
like those built on multi-user real time games and no messages on a web
board or in usenet. Defeated fighters vanish
without a trace. Rarely does so much labor yield so few results. In
addition, Site Fights staff routinely lie to fighters. The Site
Fights site does not contain a decent, truthful FAQ. The ten point
scoring system leaves you with no idea of how many votes you really
have and how many you need. Teams appear and disappear with players
informed only after the fact. Quite frankly, Site Fights are exploitive
and you deserve better.
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The
answer is NO. Yes, the Site Fights staff
can deprive you of your official status as a wee one, fairie, hunter,
peeper, or deputy, but those titles were never theirs to
give, and they are little more than titles, especially in
the case of fairies and wee-ones. First, the Site Fights is a
public place. You can sail through team rosters, visit sites and sign
guest books. 
Any one
can do that. You don't need an OK from the Site Fights brass.
You may not be able to use official Site Fights graphics or their name
but you can wish fighters luck and the graphics on this page are available
for your use instead. As for working for DPatrol, there are similar
jobs available through Geocities and Fortune City if that kind of
work is to your liking. Also if you find a site in violation of Site
Fights guidelines, make up your own web page about it and let the
world know. Site Fights can't stop you.
Also, as a former fighter you have an ability to navigate the Site
Fights site, that is unmatched by nonfighters. You are free
to travel and visit sites and team rosters without the pressure of dusting
assignments or vote exchange.
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The answer is
unfortunately YES in theory. There does
exist something called a site ban. If you are site banned,
you will not be able to enter any part of the Site Fights site at
all, and will be unable to bring the web page up on the screen. This is
called a 403 error. It is a possibility if you have a local
provider with one IP number. If your internet service provider is
large enough to use relative addressing or if you are in a large city,
locking you out of the fights with a 403 is likely to lock out a lot of
other people or is likely to be very difficult to do.
It is still a possibility and if it does happen to you,
please email me.
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Yes. I
now run my own competition that
competes directly with Site Fights. I am also a former Site Fighter
and a veteran of two four week campaigns. My first campaign taught me that
I coded better than my team managers who rejected my help. It
also ended quite acrimoniously. My second
campaign taught me that even with good team leadership, the Site
Fights still functions as an exhausting 
and exploitive treadmill. Yes, I would
like to help others off that treadmill, but jumping off a treadmill
is never easy. Sometimes it takes an outstretched arm and a safe place to
hit the ground. That is what I hope this page provides.
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