You're hoping to achieve that the community as a whole admits that it's been plotting against you or your movie. That it voted and argued in bad faith and let personal problems repress fairness of speed competition and joy from superplay. And you've been hoping to achieve this by completely refusing to admit that you did at least something wrong.
I've been through countless arguments on this site, and in lots of them I managed to settle down the controversy. I can tell you from direct experience that it can only be done by using two methods: reason and compromise. When one wasn't succeeding, I tried the other, and most of the time both.
I haven't seen a single argument won by ignorance. Every time ignorance was involved, there were victims. And once you see victims, be sure there's been some ignorance. Reason and compromise don't create victims. Reason helps when someone is just wrong, and compromise helps when someone is just different.
If the community did something wrong, it only makes sense to admit this when there is a real, honest will for armistice from both sides. I know this situation inside out, I've seen it from all possible angles, and I can tell what each side did wrong.
- You've made a movie that you view as perfect in all possible aspects. I also consider it perfect, as I described in the submission thread. A lot of other people also really liked it. It objectively had those features we always try to inspire in movies. It was a very good product, objectively.
- When it was submitted, there were a few No votes, whose count was objectively quite low compared to the Yes votes. Under no rule or guideline this amount of No votes could lead to rejection or publishing the movie in Vault. The overall feedback was objectively good, which reflected the quality of the product. Silent No votes could not possibly harm or damage the fate of your movie. They were just noise.
- You presumed those No votes were left in bad faith, by people who have no objective reason to dislike your product. You presumed that since the movie is perfect, everyone should like it. And if someone doesn't, they're being irrational and/or biased.
- You got upset by whatever low amount of No votes was there. You somehow felt that not just some of your joy and proud towards your movie have been questioned, you felt that the entire point of all your work has been disqualified. This was already wrong. Aside from this noise and whatever subjectivity and irrationality stood behind it, there was nothing to really disqualify, as I described above.
- You called the silent No voters out and canceled your movie, hoping that people's minds can be read and their subjective feelings can be fixed by administration, or by boycotting their disagreement.
- This led to people seriously asking themselves if that movie was actually such a big deal, since even the minor noise couldn't be tolerated. Those who just disliked it were forced to post, those who liked it were forced to support it, and those who didn't really care were forced to participate. I say "forced", because you boycotted the few No votes that were there, protesting against them. Protest alone kills a whole lot of the joy that could otherwise be there if no one overreacted.
- This was the critical point. People who disliked it started to evaluate things harder, and some of them got distracted from the movie itself by your overreaction. This played a huge role in overall bias and irrationality involved, making things worse. They started questioning not only the movie, but also the activity around it, finding flaws in your actions and arguments. You're calling them haters.
- People who remained honest and expressed why they enjoyed MrWint's movie more, you confused with attackers and started attacking their points back. You thought that they weren't honestly disagreeing with your artistic choices, but that they were attacking the movie for no objective reason. It's been pointed out lots of times that while the overall product quality can be objectively good, it's absolutely impossible to also please everyone with it. There will always be people disliking it, for whatever subjective reasons. This is reality, this is okay, we allow it until it leads to abuse. If subjectivity is being abused maliciously, we take actions.
- You tried to make dislikers shut up, haters tried to make you shut up, the conversation lost its goal and everyone was just repeating the same things over and over, which was the reason why moderators asked everyone to calm down.
- You interpreted this as moderators also wanting you to shut up, protested against it by repeating the same things over and over. This led to locking the thread and caused your current signature.
- Meanwhile, your movie was published with logos not as beautiful, even strange. I don't know if you asked yourself why it was done that way, maybe you did and ended up blaming haters. I also asked myself whether I should step in as a senior publisher and ask for a nicer reencode. I haven't done it exactly because there was no will for armistice from any side.
- There have been some hard situations behind the scenes as well, I did everything I could to help resolving them, but I don't want to disclose anything.
Back to my original point.
When someone is not wrong, just different, you can't convince them by using reason. They are different, their heritage, mentality, tastes are different, their reasons are different. In such cases you can only convince them by making compromises. Note that it does not mean giving up. No one should give up, no one should become a victim. Compromise means both side make concessions.
When someone is just wrong, you can't convince them by repeating the same words over and over. Society doesn't work that way. People call this ignorance, and ignorance helps no one. When someone is just wrong, you have to dig deeper and deeper into objective aspects of the problem, finding reasons behind problems and possible solutions, for as long as needed. Only then you can convince someone logically.
Conclusion.
People severely followed misconceptions, argued in bad faith, protested in unhelpful ways. Everyone was wrong and no one remained 100% sane, otherwise it'd be already resolved, wouldn't it? We as a community can acknowledge that our vision was distorted by personal dislikes and we overreacted. You should also acknowledge that you overreacted and refused to tolerate harmless noise of No votes, and then repeatedly attacked those who disagreed with your artistic choices. Both sides looked ignorant to each other, and there was no solution, because there was no compromise. It's up to you to sign this apology.
You seem to be avoiding damage there, but you still take a lot of it in that room, was it the best place for a trade-off?
