Changes In Forum Administration

[Caligari87]

Hey everyone. It's been a hell of a day so I'm going to try and keep this relatively brief.

What Happened
As detailed and discussed extensively in the previous announcement thread, one of our prominent community members was accused of predatory sexual conduct. Unfortunately, we (your staff) handled the situation poorly. We burned several bridges and made a lot of people understandably angry, and you've let us know in no uncertain terms that something needed to change.

It should be noted that everything in that announcement remains true. Marisa is gone and will remain gone.

Some people were given bans or warnings as a result of that thread. One of those was PillowBlaster. By way of explanation, we received three independent complaints about his post, alleging bigoted language, and the person handling those reports (not me) made a judgement call. In the thread, I made a point to review that action. Two other such bans were reversed previously.

Where We Are Now
In light of community sentiment over the situation, Rachael, WildWeasel, and Candice have all voluntarily stepped down from their administrative and moderator positions. Ownership of the forum and discord has been transferred to myself.

The rest of the moderation team has not changed. All current board policies remain in-place for now.

I am downgrading the ban on PillowBlaster to a warning. He has not caused problems in the past, so I believe his post was simply a result of poor phrasing and not ill intent. Should he wish to return, I only ask that he chose his words more carefully next time.

What's Going To Happen
Moving forward, I want this community to heal. I've spent twenty years calling this place home, and I'll be damned if it falls apart now. That said, I know it's going to be a long road to rebuild all this burned trust. I'm committed to more transparency. I want to hold regular moderator rotation cycles where the community can weigh in on who they trust to be responsible. I want people to feel like they're respected and safe here.

For the time being, our former admins will be "on call" while we go through the transition process. Rachael (EDIT: and Candice) is going to assist with site backend, and Weasel will continue to pay the bills. They won't be involved in community moderation, however I'm not going to exile them either. Like I said before, this isn't a coup.

Of course, I can't do it alone. The next few weeks will be bumpy, so I need your patience and understanding. I have a real life and a job, so I'd like to ask the remaining moderation staff to be vigilant, yet levelheaded. I'm probably going to make mistakes along the way, but I'm going to be honest and open as much as is humanly possible.

Above all, let's remember why we're here: We love this game and all the wonderful things that we and our friends create for it. I hope we can come together and move past this.

[Eric_]

Best of luck, Cali. The best advice I can give you right now is that other communities are your friends. If you run into another situation where nobody is comfortable making a sound call - reach out. We're in this together, and with the communities so much more intertwined than they used to be, it's rare that a problem is ever exclusive to just one userbase. Chances are good that other people have also had to make the same tough decisions, and they probably have unique perspectives which can help shape a more complete view of the situation.

They won't be involved in community moderation

I do want to ask how you intend to guarantee this moving forward. With backroom after backroom coming to light, "not going to exile them" and "this isn't a coup" isn't the most reassuring language. I don't doubt your resolve, but I would like to know if there's any way you can ensure that they won't be weighing in on decisions and discussions as so many ex-staff were found to have done in the incident.

[NachtIntellect]

In light of this, I might come back here in full capacity, I had avoided the forums in recent years due to various things that I won't go into detail here. I know where I can likely apply myself here, is there any change to the Zdoom discord server at the moment?

Also I do apologise and don't take this seriously but I can now keep my Caligari praising wallpaper and shrine, for reasons this is a joke I was paying attention to that 1 thread and found myself amused, whether or not you will be good for the community as is now remains to be seen.

[Ichor]

I do want to ask how you intend to guarantee this moving forward. With backroom after backroom coming to light, "not going to exile them" and "this isn't a coup" isn't the most reassuring language. I don't doubt your resolve, but I would like to know if there's any way you can ensure that they won't be weighing in on decisions and discussions as so many ex-staff were found to have done in the incident.

Marisa was just the catalyst that revealed the much bigger core problem, and that is (or was, I suppose) the banning of people not really for breaking the rules, but for saying the wrong thing and offending the wrong person or people, even if it was intended to be innocuous. What is totally fine one day can be outrageous and scandalous the next. And I've seen many cases (not so much here or Doomworld or other Doom forums) where someone was banned or fired, (or "cancelled" as it's called today) for something that was said years or even decades ago. This sort of thing has caused too many people to fear saying much of any opposing thing lest they get banned or worse. "Treading on eggshells" as one person put it in the other thread. And while this situation seems to be resolved, there is still that nagging fear that won't go away anytime soon, as evidenced by Eric_'s post here.

Nice avatar, by the way.

[Vyticoz]

To echo what Eric is saying, yeah, there's no way of actually keeping Rachel and Weasel from leveraging their positions as server owner and backend admin to force moderation decisions. They could easily do irreparable and permanent damage to the forums, and I don't mean in the community sense, I mean in the physical(online?) sense. Or they could just decide to not pay the bill this month and there goes the forums forever. Although that's probably always been a little bit of a concern, it's much more of an issue now because it's all too easy to become jaded and eventually toxic and vengeful after something like this happens. Now, would they actually be so spiteful that they would destroy an entire community that they've spent the last 10-15+ years developing? Most rational people would think not but when people go thru situations like what Rachel and Weasel are going thru right now, it's all too easy to get consumed by petty anger and spite.

I guess, my point is, despite your assurances, Cali, you can't keep that promise. So I wouldn't bother making it.

[Eric_]

They could easily do irreparable and permanent damage to the forums, and I don't mean in the community sense, I mean in the physical(online?) sense.

I think if either of them considered that a valid option, they would have already taken it earlier at the height of the outrage. I previously said that Rachael had not changed in the slightest, but there does seem to be one small thing I can credit her with - she didn't blow up the forums on her way out this time.

[Vyticoz]

I think if either of them considered that a valid option, they would have already taken it earlier at the height of the outrage.

This is true but give it time. Like I said, they might let themselves get consumed by petty anger and spite until it festers into something malicious and suddenly they start thinking "Maybe nuking the forums is an option." Maybe they'll be humbled by what happened and learn from it and grow. Drawing from past personal experiences tho, I'm not hopeful.

[Sgt. Ham]

With all the crap that led up to all this happening (coupled with the stuff years prior), it's really depressing to see one of my favorite websites for this game wind up like this. Although I probably won't be using this site all that much anymore, I'll still wish the best of luck to you, Cali, in your efforts to rectify this site's ugly past and bring about a new and better era for Doom modding.

[DoomKrakken]

This is likely the best possible way it could've been resolved. Thank you Cali.

While I'm glad the community will most likely improve going forward, I'm not pleased at all with how it went down... as in, I take no pleasure in the fact that people had to be removed from power and/or fall from grace before such change could take place. What happened next, while necessary, was still unfortunate.

[The Toxic Avenger]

It's the best resolution, but it sucks that all of this had to happen to get here.

[Armaetus]

This is the best possible action to take in regarding the debacle that has happened recently. Thank you.

[Caligari87]

They won't be involved in community moderation

I do want to ask how you intend to guarantee this moving forward. With backroom after backroom coming to light, "not going to exile them" and "this isn't a coup" isn't the most reassuring language. I don't doubt your resolve, but I would like to know if there's any way you can ensure that they won't be weighing in on decisions and discussions as so many ex-staff were found to have done in the incident.

It's a valid concern. As far as forum permission goes, Randi and myself are the only Founder-level users with full software access. No one but one of us can demote or promote the other or anyone else. Now, Rachael has "hardware" access so she could delete or hack the database. Weasel has the checkbook so he could just pull the money. Until such time as I'm able to take those things over (if ever), that possibility will remain. But they could have done those things already, and didn't. At the moment, I have no reason to believe they will. I'll be constantly evaluating that.

As far as soft pressure / influence goes, I have no intent of allowing it. If Rachael or Weasel comes to me and says "I think you should ban/promote/demote this person/post/conversation", I'm going to say "it's not your place to tell me what to do anymore." Short of giving someone else access to my passwords so they can audit my behavior and messages directly, you'll just have to trust that I have the resolve to stick to my guns. And even if I went that far, there's no reason to say I couldn't use an alt account for those kinds of interactions.

But it still goes back to what I said in the other thread: All internet community moderation is by nature dictatorial. No matter what you do, there's always that one person who pays the bills or has the password to the database, who holds the keys to the kingdom. There's always an ultimate power, and an ultimate level of trust required.

All caveats given, I believe the proof will be in the pudding (as the saying goes). Either the community improves, or it doesn't. Part of that is on all of you collectively being good neighbors to each other, and part of it is on me being benevolent and truthful in my actions and words.

I don't expect your trust. But I'll do my best to earn it.

[Jeimuzu73]

Sorry 'bout the mess you've got to clean up, Cali. Other than that, good luck heading the new management.

[Eric_]

Short of giving someone else access to my passwords so they can audit my behavior and messages directly, you'll just have to trust that I have the resolve to stick to my guns.

I think it would be satisfactory to know that they are excluded from internal moderation channels. My primary concern is Rachael strongarming her way around the room to drive conversations where she wants them like she has done so many times before. The only people who should have implicit access to moderation discussion should be the active staff.

[Caligari87]

That has been taken care of, yes. They no longer have access to the moderation subforums here, or the staff channels on the discord server. Any backend/infrastructure concerns (such as software updates) will be handled directly through me.