Sunday, September 30th, 2007
Issue: 42   Editor: MadamNyxxie


Franny Being Franny KillMeAgainFranchise
After reading the article about the Winter Hill Gang mutiny in the Buzz last week, I felt as if it was rather biased. This surprised me because as a former Buzz staff member, I can vouch that the Buzz normally researches as many sides to a story prior to publishing. Apparently, I was not online when JustDrew was writing the article and so, my comments weren't included. As we all know, there are two sides to every story; here’s mine.

In said article, I was called a dictator. A dictator does indeed have the attitude of "my way or the highway." Maybe to a point this is true about me. I have certain ideals and visions of what a crew should be, and I do firmly believe that I don’t want my crew members to be unhappy so I offer to kick them at their request if at any time they are unhappy. The last thing I want is for someone to feel trapped. However, where I differ is a dictator never changes what he is doing; I do. When council members say they want something changed, I, like most people, am defensive. However, after the dust settles, I look at things a little closer. At that time I make an informed decision to do one of three things. Some examples…

Council complained I was doing all of the recruiting and some those I had recruited were a bit lame. I fought this as the more people who have say, the more likely it is for someone to slip through the cracks. However, after thinking about it, I changed my mind and said that council should vote on applicants as more eyes may catch something I may miss. So result number one is I give in to council suggestions.

Scenario two involves council saying we should raise our taxes. Again I fought this tooth and nail saying not everyone is good at making money. I don’t want them giving it all to us. After the dust settled, we already had one of the highest taxes. I actually messaged all crew bosses to see where we fell. So I thought about it as the crew bank could use some help. I decided to raise but not as high as they wanted and randomly give away a couple of gun and protection upgrades per day. So result two is compromise. Probably the best idea for any conflict.

Scenario two involves how my council was set up. We had teams with each team having a captain who was council. This process allowed council to get to know at least a portion of the crew very well, something that is hard when you have 100 members. It also made tax collecting easier to track. When the idea to scrap this came up, I fought it. I still continue to fight it, as to me, this is a major part of what made WHG, the WHG.

Maybe its me but that doesn’t look very dictatorial to me.

When we were taken over the last time, some ex-members came in and said they wanted to help. I wanted to see what they had in mind. Their first move was scrapping the team concept as well as replacing the entire council other than myself. I felt this was unfair as those council members had worked hard to get where they were. Some last round that had the position since last round, and others proved themselves this round and moved into council positions that were vacated voluntarily. While I disagreed with this, I still didn’t speak up as I wanted to see what would happen. According to our Gunchip site stats, it appeared less people were buying bullets than ever before.We had opened up our forums allowing spam which made for fun but still not many participated in discussions so activity was low. Basically, the way I saw it, we had turned into exactly what some people in the Bootlegger community, thought we were the whole time. We had become an OTF crew who couldn’t do shit unless we relied on others. Morale of the majority of the crew seemed low to me as well, although a small handful of extremely loyal members seemed happy and were still doing things. Maybe it's me, but overall this didn’t look like the right direction. It's possible there were things going on I didn’t see, but this is what I did see.

So when I regained my boss position, I posted that I wanted to make some changes but wanted to wait until I knew they were right. Three of these changes are what upset members and led to my eventual demise.

1- I was definitely bringing back the teams concept if for no other reason than morale. However, I made some changes to the team concept to make it more productive. These changes were actually originally used by one team captain, Bloodcrow, on his own. He had an active team and they bought bullets and brought in income for the crew. So I was going to follow his example and utilize his methods on all of the teams. I was waiting to post the changes I was making to the concept until I had all of the spots filled. Also all council was going to be reviewed monthly and if they were not meeting expectations they would be replaced.T hat leads me to the other 2 items.

2- I brought back one of the old underbbosses as underboss. He had done plenty last round to earn his position and I felt he didn’t deserve to be treated the way he was. However, if he didn’t perform up to the new standards I would be forced to replace him. (Council review another compromise I made).

3- I demoted one of the most loyal, active, and giving members of the crew council. At first glance most people would say, "you did what?!?!?!?" And it did kill me to do it. BUT my reason for it was he was a poor negotiator. He insulted a boss of another crew during a discussion about a property. The insult may or may not have been justified depending on your point of view. However, I always say regardless of what people say to you, you respect them during negotiations. Otherwise the negotiations just tank. Of my 3 changes, this is the one I can understand members being upset about, however, I don’t want to have to dig us out of holes that we get put in even by one of the most loyal and giving members in the crew. I told him when we expanded teams, if he could prove he could keep his mouth shut, I would promote him back up. I mean, hell, he earned it possibly more than any other member this round.

Every move I made, the entire time I ran the crew, was what I felt was best for the crew’s safety as well as the standards and ideals I had for the crew. I was open to change if it had been brought up. Contrary to the article’s report, not one member expressed any disappointment with the changes, except the one I demoted. Perhaps if they had, I would have looked at things and changed them again or asked them to compromise and try the new team concept for a month or 2. And if it didn’t achieve what I wanted it to, I would change my mind again.In fact, the only reason I was upset and feel the crew back-stabbed me is that I was blindsided and no one had mentioned they didn’t like said changes.

Anyhow, I hope you have a better understanding of me and how I run my crew.You can now form an unbiased opinion as you have both sides of what happened.

To all interested. I will be bringing back WHG as an UG crew in the future and we will be back on the stats down the road.Might be a few months, might be a year, but we will be back when the crew is what I designed it to be. However, as a UG crew, let me assure all crew bosses, WHG will not “take” a crew.We will not kill for it. I think you all know that’s not my style. We are a defensive crew not an aggressive crew.So if you see an UG member in your crew that member is loyal to you as well as me.He will not do your crew harm, nor will any member of my crew.I will run this crew the way I have always run my crews, in the fairest way possible.All I ask is that when I do get a crew spot that you allow said member to leave your crew with your blessing.

To interested members, watch for recruiting ads.

Until next time, this is Franny Being Franny.