(OLD) Contest Unfair Infractions Here

[Roger Gowelle]

It sure as **** is gratifying to see that literally every concern and grievance with the staff that I had that led me to resign - a tendency for unilateral action, cronyism, acting on personal vendettas - has been completely justified and true. It might be easy to dismiss complaints against the existing staff because so many of them reach right for "corruption" which is admittedly a bit laughably strong and dire, but cronyism is a very real problem with the current staff and I said so at the time and I think the string of resignations that both preceded and followed my own has been pretty indicative of some endemic issues with the current site staff.

Basically: you guys suck and it's really fun to watch people call you out.

I'd say there's basically a no asshole/pretentious ****lord rule in place and I think slowly, even without a single bit of 'moderation' (i.e. infractions all over the place) being done except where absolutely necessary; those who fit the qualifications will reveal and weed themselves out just out of aggravation. Mere intellectual honesty is all that's necessary. Personal vendetta and cronyism is just pure fabrication and you know it. I think comparing your ****ing mod resignation to world crises speaks for itself.

http://pastebin.com/AYMmKQGk

 

[Garo]

I'd say there's basically a no asshole/pretentious ****lord rule in place and I think slowly, even without a single bit of 'moderation' (i.e. infractions all over the place) being done except where absolutely necessary; those who fit the qualifications will reveal and weed themselves out just out of aggravation. Mere intellectual honesty is all that's necessary. Personal vendetta and cronyism is just pure fabrication and you know it. I think comparing your ****ing mod resignation to world crises speaks for itself.

http://pastebin.com/AYMmKQGk

Oh man you really got me with that pastebin of a public post I made, damn I sure wish people couldn't see something that I posted openly, don't even know how I'm gonna cope with the shame of freely offered thoughts and ideas.

You'll note that I never compared my resignation with world crises. I offered those up to illustrate the mental place I was in - one aggrieved by the really dour state of the world and fraught with existential fears - and then to explain how my position here was creating more anxiety and more difficulty in my life than it was anything else. You can call it pretentious all you like - I'm actually very glad to have been able to read it again and am very satisfied with the way I conveyed my thoughts in that message. Choosing to remain dedicated to the things that make me happy rather than the things that frustrate me and create problems in my life is pretty healthy.

Say what you will about me; I could not care a single iota less than I do. I am a profoundly contented - potentially even happy - person these days, and though I'm far from a perfect person, I can say beyond a doubt that one thing I am not is an asshole.

Can you say the same?

I'd think saving pastebins of year old blog posts and then attempting to throw them in a person's face as some sort of misguided "gotcha!" speaks for itself.

 

[Curmudgeon]

we're better than this. stop.

 

[Roger Gowelle]

Can you say the same?

I'd think saving pastebins of year old blog posts and then attempting to throw them in a person's face as some sort of misguided "gotcha!" speaks for itself.

Nope. Certainly not at this point

 

[Justac00lguy]

I fully agree with the SB ban. Yeah and don't call me biased since I've actually stuck up for DM and played devil's advocate for him multiple times during conversations in the staff chat (ask any of the staff).

First off, this kind of warning isn't an infraction - it's a new system we have where we give a zero point infraction so we can keep on top of shoutbox bans and the offenses more easily. That brings me back to the topic, I don't think what DM did is a cardinal sin, but constantly he makes these kind of remarks in the SB. I don't know whether he's trying to be funny or just creepy at this point; however this isn't the kind of behavior we want, so it was completely justified. Many others have been punished a lot worse than DM for similar behavior in the SB (albeit maybe on a higher level, hence the more severe punishment).

We, collectively, have discussed what to do about this for the past week. This isn't a spur in the moment type thing - I want to make this fully clear. I said a few days ago: "if he continues, warn him". So they were my words, not Seth's, Kitsu's, or Repentance's. Like I said, there have been times where I have clashed with other staff members about DM or disagreed - so if you have a problem, don't target the other three, message me.

On the case of Kitsu. Yeah he has done some things and trust me we have discussed them and addressed them in the chat and he's been warned about those incidents. Kitsu doesn't have a free pass and nor do any of us. If you feel like bringing up anything about the current staff, if you feel like one of us is mistreating our position, then bring it up. I don't want anyone to think we can get away with anything. I just wanted to address that there have been several conversations, quite heated as well, about some of these recent incidents.

Edit: Also please, this isn't a warzone, keep the rude and sarcastic comments out of this thread.

 

[Emma]

I fully agree with the SB ban. Yeah and don't call my biased since I've actually stuck up for DM and played devil's advocate for him multiple times during conversations in the staff chat (ask any of the staff).

This does not change that is was unfair. Kitsu still manipulated the conversation, left out content that showed it was taken out of context with others doing the same thing. It still showed how no one got the joke until I explained it. Yet I wasn't singled out, he was. Kitsu openly lied to us claiming there was a discusion specifically about this case the time it occured when there couldn't have possibly been one in the amount of time that passed between the incident to his infraction. Kitsu's grudge against DM is not a secret and the entire staff knows about it, they ought by now after Kitsu was caught red handed abusing the discourage user feature against him without telling anyone or asking if it was okay. There is absolutely no way the staff would have consented to him personally giving out any infraction, even zero point, he wished against DM under any circumstances given his extreme bias. So you are either lying about previously agreeing to let him do it, or you all made a terrible error in judgement that you should have seen coming.

First off, this kind of warning isn't an infraction - it's a new system we have where we give a zero point infraction so we can keep on top of shoutbox bans and the offenses more easily. That brings me back to the topic, I don't think what DM did is a cardinal sin, but constantly he makes these kind of remakes in the SB. I don't know whether he's trying to be funny or just creepy at this point; however this isn't the kind of behavior we want in the shoutbox, so it was completely justified. Many others have been punished a lot worse than DM for similar behavior in the SB (albeit maybe on a higher level, hence the more severe punishment).

I stand by what I said that far worse behavior is being ignored. Some happened today and not a thing was done. DM was singled out specifically. We shouldn't even be doing this to anyone at all because this is being way, way too strict. Most of the people ont he staff now were against this kind of over-policing in the past and trying it now is just very extreme hypocrisy and degrades them all. The restrictions should be relaxed immediately. This will help alleviate the problem of playing favorites too since everyone will have a longer leash.

We, collectively, have discussed what to about this for the past week. This isn't a spur in the moment type thing - I want to make this fully clear. I said a few days ago: "if he continues, warn him". So they were my words, not Seth's, Kitsu's, or Repentance's. Like I said, there have been times where I have clashed with other staff members about DM or disagreed - so if you have a problem, don't target the other three, message me.

Previous discussion doesn't make it any less wrong. This doesn't make the staff look better, it makes them look worse. It shows you've been hyper focusing on someone for a week that is not even a problem all while disregarding other people who have been doing far worse who never get any punishment whatsoever. You've conflated non-issues with him, taking issues that he's being too sexual, when other people make sexual references all the time, and no one thinks twice at that. You're not doing a convincing sell that this is not a vendetta, because this has been handled terribly. You allowed a person who is undeniably out for DM's blood take the charge in "cracking down" on behavior that isn't even a problem that you are completely making up. In no way does this look good and in no way is a justification.

On the case of Kitsu. Yeah he has done some things and trust me we have discussed them and addressed them in the chat and he's been warned about those incidents. Kitsu doesn't have a free pass and nor do any of us. If you feel like bringing up anything about the current staff, if you feel like one of us is mistreating our position, then bring it up. I don't want anyone to think we can get away with anything. I just wanted to address that there have been several conversations, quite heated as well, about some of these recent incidents.

Yet you still let him do this and are defending his actions even though he was already caught manipulating SB conversation and lying about there having been an active mod chat discussion about that specific incident at the time it happened giving the okay to do it, despite the fact that no other staff member was online at the time, if they were, they would have loaded up the site to actually check for themselves as they should realize, with Kitsu's grudge against DM, that his claims should not be taken at face value and you'd have to confirm before telling him okay. Given that no one checked to confirm before it was issued, there was only two things that could have happened. The more likely one that he lied about there having been a conversation at all, or the rest of you were horribly irresponsible at taking his claims at face value and not actually checking the SB archive yourselves. Either way is pretty damning and it doesn't look good for any of you.

 

[Shroom]

Matt, how did Kitsu manipulate the SB conversation? By showing the relevant bit? Should he have posted the entire day's worth of SB??? Azure Sage even said that it made him uncomfortable regardless.

DM is not the only person who has been "singled out" for this behavior. Blue Canary, TriforceKing, and spitechoatic, to name a few, have received similar SB bans for doing similar things.

 

[Emma]

Matt, how did Kitsu manipulate the SB conversation? By showing the relevant bit? Should he have posted the entire day's worth of SB??? Azure Sage even said that it made him uncomfortable regardless.

It made it look more direct and forceful than it actually was and it took out the context that explained that he wasn't the only one making fun of it and that most people didn't even understand his original joke which makes including the first part completely pointless because you cannot justify an argument that a joke no one understood is even a problem. Considering I was the one that had to explain the joke, you cannot rationally deny that DM was not singled out.

DM is not the only person who has been "singled out" for this behavior. Blue Canary, TriforceKing, and spitechoatic, to name a few, have received similar SB bans for doing similar things.

Did I shudder when I said you shouldn't doing this to anyone? At least not as strict as it's been done here. And that's still not accounting the people that have done worse that have had no conquences. the constant mocking in the SB of MD threads, and the people active in them, certain people disagree with for instance that no one has done anything about.

 

[Shroom]

Did I shudder when I said you shouldn't doing this to anyone? At least not as strict as it's been done here. And that's still not accounting the people that have done worse that have had no conquences. the constant mocking of MD threads, and the people active in them, certain people disagree with for instance that no one has done anything about.

So let me get this straight. You don't think Canary, a person who kept talking nonstop about "perky man boobs", masturbating with a broom, uncomfortable erotic fiction, and various other sexual acts in the shout box with no context, and who was repeatedly asked to stop, should have received any form of punishment? And the shout box is an appropriate place for that?

You don't think that people who have been repeatedly asked to stop making sexual comments that make other people uncomfortable (not even talking DM here) should receive any form of punishment, and should continue to be left in the shout box to keep harassing people?

 

[Emma]

So let me get this straight. You don't think Canary, a person who kept talking nonstop about "perky man boobs", masturbating with a broom, uncomfortable erotic fiction, and various other sexual acts in the shout box with no context, and who was repeatedly asked to stop, should have received any form of punishment? And the shout box is an appropriate place for that?

You don't think that people who have been repeatedly asked to stop making sexual comments that make other people uncomfortable (not even talking DM here) should receive any form of punishment, and should continue to be left in the shout box to keep harassing people?

As long as the staff continues to ignore open ridicule of other people constantly being committed by a select few in the SB on a daily basis? Yes. None of what you just listed is worth punishment if you refuse to do anything about the ridicule. Until that time, it's never going to look like anything but hypocrisy and selective punishment against those who are more politically convenient to target.

 

[Jamie]

As was made clear by JC, the ban and warning was a result of repeated comments; comments that DM himself recently noted he only made to prove a point (like, he literally just said that in this thread). We have logs of probably 10 comments made by DM that were crossing the line that I believe he did make to prove a point. Kitsu wasn't trying to manipulate shoutbox logs, he just posted the part he felt necessary probably as soon as he saw it. You are way over exaggerating here.

Since when was hypocrisy an argument against anything by the way? Let me humour you and pretend Kitsu is really as bad as you make him out to be; does that make DMs offenses better? No, it doesn't.

And I'm sure now you're gonna call JC biased too, right? This is almost painful to read.

 

[(◕‿◕✿)]

As long as the staff continues to ignore open ridicule of other people constantly being committed by a select few in the SB on a daily basis? Yes. None of what you just listed is worth punishment if you refuse to do anything about the ridicule. Until that time, it's never going to look like anything but hypocrisy and selective punishment against those who are more politically convenient to target.

It's better that we don't do anything and let some members sexually harass other members than sb ban them/infract them, because we aren't preventing some sort of ridicule that you keep insinuating is just constantly happening, but seemingly no one but you sees it?? What the actual ****??

 

[Jamie]

As long as the staff continues to ignore open ridicule of other people constantly being committed by a select few in the SB on a daily basis? Yes. None of what you just listed is worth punishment if you refuse to do anything about the ridicule. Until that time, it's never going to look like anything but hypocrisy and selective punishment against those who are more politically convenient to target.

The day that saying you want to drink milk from perky man boobs after 3-4 consecutive verbal warnings from multiple staff including myself all within the course of about 3 minutes...the day that that doesn't get you SB banned is the day I quit my job here. Your point is really silly. You can't just pretend ****'s not happening because there's bigger **** happening within the ranks. There's police brutality not being addressed all over the world, should people stop policing? God no.

 

[Justac00lguy]

This does not change that is was unfair. Kitsu still manipulated the conversation, left out content that showed it was taken out of context with others doing the same thing. It still showed how no one got the joke until I explained it.

No.

Every time we message someone, or formally warn them, we omit part of the conversation and highlight the relevant bits. I've done it numerous times when giving warnings or infractions and havn't gotten a single complaint. Though I guess if Kitsu does it then it suddenly becomes about manipulation.

Yet I wasn't singled out, he was. Kitsu openly lied to us claiming there was a discusion specifically about this case the time it occured when there couldn't have possibly been one in the amount of time that passed between the incident to his infraction. Kitsu's grudge against DM is not a secret and the entire staff knows about it, they ought by now after Kitsu was caught red handed abusing the discourage user feature against him without telling anyone or asking if it was okay. There is absolutely no way the staff would have consented to him personally giving out any infraction, even zero point, he wished against DM under any circumstances given his extreme bias. So you are either lying about previously agreeing to let him do it, or you all made a terrible error in judgement that you should have seen coming.

You're literally arguing about a format we use when we give every warning and infraction. If you're using this against Kitsu, use it against me and all the staff every time we quote examples from the SB or threads.

Also constantly preaching Kitsu is biased in every single point you make does not really strengthen your argument, especially when the argument is completely redundant anyway.

I stand by what I said that far worse behavior is being ignored. Some happened today and not a thing was done. DM was singled out specifically. We shouldn't even be doing this to anyone at all because this is being way, way too strict. Most of the people ont he staff now were against this kind of over-policing in the past and trying it now is just very extreme hypocrisy and degrades them all. The restrictions should be relaxed immediately. This will help alleviate the problem of playing favorites too since everyone will have a longer leash.

Can you give examples of people acting creepy and spamming the SB over the course of the week and not getting banned? Like I said, this isn't one decision, and it wasn't a spur in he moment type of thing. It has been talked about for a week now. I said, if he continues to act like this, "warn him", and I completely stand by that statement. Quite a few members recently have been banned for this kind of behaviour - though their's were probably on a higher level - why don't you stick up for them too? I'm sorry, but saying we're "too strict" only seems to apply when something happens to you or someone your close to. You have never voiced this concern before, which further proves that point.

Previous discussion doesn't make it any less wrong. This doesn't make the staff look better, it makes them look worse. It shows you've been hyper focusing on someone for a week that is not even a problem all while disregarding other people who have been doing far worse who never get any punishment whatsoever.

Ok many assumptions and things wrong with this. First off, "previous discussion" does not allude to in anyway "hyper focusing" on someone. It simply means there was a previous discussion that we had. There has been around 4 times when a specific quote, or conversation, has been brought up this week regarding DM's behaviour in the SB. The first two times we kind of let it slide while the 3rd time I said we should give him a warning if he continues and he was warned the 4th time. We were actually incredibly lenient to let the three cases previous slide.

Let me make it clear though, when someone brings up a quote or incident on the forums, even if it is multiple occasions, it does not mean we're "hyper focusing" on someone or that we have an agenda against said person. It merely means that they have been involved in multiple incidents during that time frame. What do you suggest? We ignore it? Wouldn't that mean that we're being biased towards that member then? Either way we don't win and someone is going to complain. Let me give an example for you though to try and explain my point: There's a new member who openly trolls the forum and let's say 8 incidents are brought up in the staff chat over the course of the week, are we "hyper focused" on him or are we simply doing our job?

You've conflated non-issues with him, taking issues that he's being too sexual, when other people make sexual references all the time, and no one thinks twice at that. You're not doing a convincing sell that this is not a vendetta, because this has been handled terribly.

First off, I didn't say he was being sexual, I said his comments are creepy and I believe they make people feel very uncomfortable, which is much worse than making a sexual innuendo. Though please enlighten me, when have we not punished someone for excessive creepy behaviour in the Shoutbox?

You allowed a person who is undeniably out for DM's blood take the charge in "cracking down" on behavior that isn't even a problem that you are completely making up. In no way does this look good and in no way is a justification.

Please stop with this complete nonsense. I have disagreed with Kitsu on multiple things, even on the topic of DM. Ask him or any of the staff. He isn't some kind of tyrannical Admin that you make him out to and we all obey everything he says. Hell even Kitsu and Repentance disagree on a lot of things. Please don't insinuate that I don't have my own mind, I have been incredibly fair and lenient with DM over the past few weeks and have often played devil's advocate in his favour. Though I guess the one time I don't I'm suddenly letting someone take charge.

Yet you still let him do this and are defending his actions even though he was already caught manipulating SB conversation and lying about there having been an active mod chat discussion about that specific incident at the time it happened giving the okay to do it, despite the fact that no other staff member was online at the time, if they were, they would have loaded up the site to actually check for themselves as they should realize, with Kitsu's grudge against DM, that his claims should not be taken at face value and you'd have to confirm before telling him okay. Given that no one checked to confirm before it was issued, there was only two things that could have happened. The more likely one that he lied about there having been a conversation at all, or the rest of you were horribly irresponsible at taking his claims at face value and not actually checking the SB archive yourselves. Either way is pretty damning and it doesn't look good for any of you.

"Manipulating the PM" has been addressed, so you can tick that one off. "Talking about someone in the chat excessively" has been addressed, so you can tick that one off too. I've also made it quite clear that his ban wasn't biased and that other people have been punished for similar things. So what exactly is your point? Is it just all about Kitsu? Because I was the one who originally said "warn him if he continues" a few days ago before Kitsu suggested any action. Not to mention Krash was one of the first people to agree with the warning in the staff chat. So I'm kind of lost now, what exactly is your point?

 

[Beauts]

I think I can say with good authority that all of this is bull****.