Statement regarding Marisa the Magician (aka Marisa Kirisame)

[Caligari87]

Is it really the case?
The thing is, hesitation in staff's decision making over this ban was caused due to Marisa being a part of this one big family that formed, like, ~20 years ago, while I was a toddler (may get numbers wrong, but again, I can't know everything).
And your moderator disputes are primarily internal. From what I have gathered, a majority of your team don't make decisions on their own or too worried about their public image and damage control.
What can us regular users say about that? Users like me that joined a couple of years ago and can't help but feel like a passerby, a stranger? Nothing in particular. Except maybe that hiding information and waiting for so long for Marisa to make a public statement when it was becoming apparent that she wouldn't bother? It's well known already.

All internet community moderation is by nature dictatorial. You can't open every ban to a vote (or whatever) because nothing would ever get done. So yeah, a lot of stuff does happen internally. At the staff level, we do talk about stuff and try to come to consensus (though, ironically not as much lately as I would like). We also like to think that moderators are capable of making individual decisions if necessary for critical issues.

For the most part, moderation is actually fairly lax, especially on the forums. 90% of it is fixing a user account or kicking a spambot a couple times a week. I chalk that up to a mature community that is capable of self-regulating and having a sense of unity. Moderators only rarely need to step in to break up fights.

At least that's how it used to be, for most of my memory.

I don't think that policies are necessarily the problem. We have pretty solid rules which mostly address outlier situations, not daily occurrences. What troubles me more (and what I think is actually the root of the problem in this case) is the nature of disagreements and moderation when it does happen, and the fact that the community has seemingly fractured into smaller and smaller backstabby chunks where everyone protects their own viciously and starts to see the others as enemies. This seems especially tied to the rise of Discord (fucking irony of ironies in a name, that one). Moderators are not immune to this unfortunately, and I think it's carried over into how we treat problems when they crop up now. We're shooting from the windows instead of talking on the sidewalk.

What I'm hoping for is to find some path which turns this place back into a community, instead of just a street where people only come out their front doors to glare at each other and put up signs. Seeing the various "please follow our project on [literally any other site]" in project threads feels like a death knell, a fundamental fracture the likes of which I've never heard in my nearly 20 years of calling this board "my internet home."

So yeah, I'm interested in how people feel. Because right now I feel like if we just try to let things blow over and keep trucking on the same road we've been following for the last five years or so, I'll end up leaving too. I don't want to leave.

[dpJudas]

If you read my post you'd know that's not the case. If I were purely against the admins I'd be anti Caligari87. My posts show that's not the case.

I did read your post. There you summarized my post incorrectly. After all, if I'm the devil's advocate, the admins must be the devil.

Please read my post as only a comment to mikolah's post. You will not get me to comment on the Marisa situation itself because, frankly, I have nothing to win by doing so and everything to lose. Anyone getting themselves involved with this will only get their names linked to something nobody wants to voluntarily be part of.

However! It pisses me off when the thread devolves into some kind carte blanche for trash talking Rachael, Candice and Weasel. Candice in particular has done what exactly here? Last I checked she worked hard getting the servers back online that a lot of people in the larger doom community depend on and this is the reward? She got promoted too quickly? Is that her crime? So she talks a bit too happy tone in a joking manner to Mikolah and now there's a screenshot of it on the forum! Seriously, wtf! Like wise with Rachael - yeah sure she often shoots first and asks questions later, but again, that doesn't mean that she's the devil! Should she stop doing that? Yes perhaps, but the way that has been presented in this thread is frankly the style that belongs in hell holes like Facebook and Twitter.

If you really want change in the community this kind of smearing shit has to stop. When I joined this community the very FIRST thing that happened was that I was immediately label as Team ZDoom by half the community, whether I wanted to or not. Just the act of committing code to ZDoom meant that I was disliked already. I was an enabler of Graf or something along those lines. If you think the solution is that Rachael steps down, then exactly how do you imagine the community servers should be run instead? The people in the leading positions today got there because put in a lot of work maintaining the plumbing of what is the ZDoom community. How do you want to vote in people instead? What if they don't actually do the admin/mod work required? Most people only last as mods for a very short time because frankly it is a shit job!

If you want anyone to take the suggestions for meaning change seriously, maybe stop coming here and tell everyone on the admin team is the devil and salute with saying this is the last I'm going to post on the forum because you planned on leaving anyway. That's just disingenuous and holier-than-thou as fuck. That wasn't trying to improve anything. That was just being toxic.

[cyber_cool]

What troubles me more (and what I think is actually the root of the problem in this case) is the nature of disagreements and moderation when it does happen, and the fact that the community has seemingly fractured into smaller and smaller backstabby chunks where everyone protects their own viciously and starts to see the others as enemies. This seems especially tied to the rise of Discord (fucking irony of ironies in a name, that one). Moderators are not immune to this unfortunately, and I think it's carried over into how we treat problems when they crop up now. We're shooting from the windows instead of talking on the sidewalk.

This is indeed true. I reckon that one of the things you can do to prevent that is to be more open about every decision that staff makes, and be open for discussion, not just among yourselves; everyone should be able to influence outcome of the situation. I am not the first to say that and definitely not the last.

About Discord, it's unfortunate, but I guess there isn't much to be done about that. People need to be a part of certain group, especially when connections between members of this group are strong, but the larger the community is, the looser are these connections.

What I'm hoping for is to find some path which turns this place back into a community, instead of just a street where people only come out their front doors to glare at each other and put up signs.

We all know that in order for that wish to come true radical changes have to be made (but not everyone admits it). Changing policies that govern handling of such scenarios to be more open, more swift and objective. Omitting this BS talking behind a back. Letting people talk about it freely instead of locking up threads.
It's less likely that people will be angry at moderators when they are not making decisions "somewhere else", like a secret government and shit.
And no, everyone will not immediately go and harass, flame you, start campaigns against you for banning somebody. If they do get carried away too much, issuing a warning or banning them is completely justified.

[Graf Zahl]

stuff

Finally someone who shows some common sense here.

To be blunt, I have considered it waste of energy from the beginning to try to appease all the drama queens who voiced their "opinion" here.
I really don't know what all these people expect to happen by attacking the very people who are trying to hold the community together. If they were gone, everything here would be history - and I cannot shake off the feeling that this is what some people actually want.

[Scripten]

Actually I'd prefer if more people chimed in; This is a community after all, and I don't want this discussion to be only driven by a dozen people with highly-vested interest.

Thanks for this Caligari. I'd been holding off on adding my thoughts because I've never been a particularly active member of the community and while I've done bit parts in various projects and shared some of my work, I've not really achieved any sort of notoriety here or in any of the other regions of the Doom websphere. That said, I've been here for well over half my life (for better and for worse); hell, I remember Hotwax and a lot of the rest of the old guard, if only in barest passing.

I think this might be among the most genuinely serious examples of internet drama here or in the community at large, though I'm sure I've missed things. To my understanding, there are effectively three points of context here that are relevant:

1. Marisa has a history of... uncomfortable sexual advances on several members of the community, both past and present, and action was not taken to address that sufficiently (alongside some of what appears to be victim-blaming, IE TerminusEst). In April, that culminated in what appears to be an entrapment scheme where Marisa was implicated in egregious behavior where she a) continued sexual interaction with someone she thought was a minor, b) received CP from said actor without ending contact or reporting it (to the mods/admins or to actual literal authorities) and c) admitted to sexual contact as an adult, with a minor, in the past.
2. Upon finding out about that contact, the admins/mods, collectively and individually, did a number of things, some understandable, some less so, and a few which most of us (myself included) feel went beyond remotely acceptable. To avoid rehashing, this seems to consist of flexing hierarchical power over certain people involved in calling out and spreading information about the situation (kicks, bans, etc), some overly inflammatory language regarding accusers and other members of the community (including those who were not involved in the initial accusation), and diverting accountability to the community.
3. Even while all this way going on, the admins/mods were shunting discussion and spread of info off to banland, meaning that those not in the know were unable to make informed decisions, ask about the situation, or otherwise be involved in something that was really owed to the community at large to engage with, imo. My position is that even us less central users deserve to know when such serious accusations are made, and to be presented with what information is available - fear of pitchforks be damned.

So aside from the conclusions in-text above, there are some other things that stuck out to me. Plus, I have some context from other communities I've been involved with in the past. In no particular order, those are below:

• Firstly, I think it's largely being overlooked (save for a few folks, notably Tapwave) that the person who entrapped Marisa did so under transphobic false pretenses with obvious bad faith intentions and their own laundry list of terrible actions/actual fucking crimes. Marisa's responses were undeniably extremely wrong (and frankly, disgusting to me) and her expulsion from the community was wholly justified. (More on that in a second.) But also, the person who was initiated this situation actually literally engaged in soliciting and distributing CP, which is a federal-level crime across most of the globe. Marisa treating it as "shota" is plainly screwed up, and brings into question where we as a community can draw lines with others' (in)ability to distinguish fantasy from reality; absolutely no denial there, nor that the other things she admitted to were any less egregious. However, the positioning of her as a "groomer" is very clearly an alt-right tactic meant to paint trans folks with a broad brush and to implicate the "woke" Doom community in predatory behavior (which is not something I believe to be true, despite the poor handling of this situation). Marisa's behavior does indeed mark her as a predatory person who is unsafe for children and the community at large to engage with; I don't believe that the rest of the people who are being criticized (the admins/mods and the other FP folks) are complicit in that specifically.
• On that note, though, the handling of the situation: I want to say, first off, that I get where the admin/mod team are all coming from. Even those of you who did the things I saw as being the least understandable. Everyone's reaction to this situation is something that can be empathized with for the most part. I don't think anyone is lying about their motivations nor about their dedication to trying to make this community a good and safe place to be. I believe that Marisa's ban happened in a relatively reasonable timeframe, even. That said, a lot of the criticism that is being leveled is valid and well-supported. I've been a part of two communities which have both dealt with major community members being implicated as predators; those being Sonic Retro and SRB2 - which does unfortunately look bad for a fandom that also includes Chris-chan, but I digress. Anyway, the thing is, as soon as the ban happened, all of the information that the admins/mods had access to should have been made public, immediately. That way, any children (we have several I know of right now, and many of us started here as kids) would at least have forewarning of potential future issues, and us users who lack inroads to the exclusive VIP lounges can make informed decisions. And yes, I do mean this in cases where you (admins/mods) are not sure of the allegations yet. Retracting a statement in light of new evidence is not worse than never having made that statement in the first place; not here.
• We're not a court of law that requires insulation while passing judgement, and while avoiding harassment of marginalized people is important, protection of minors in the community is paramount. Transparency with the whole community is grand, but the information in this case was a matter of actual safety. That's really the least of what should have happened, and it does seem odd to me that it wasn't really something that was listed out as a misstep in the (genuine) apologies I've seen. Granted, my memory ain't perfect and maybe I'm wrong here; if so, take this as tacit endorsement of such a change in process going forward.

Overall, I don't really know exactly what I am planning to do going forward. I have a decent opinion of most of the people involved in the various flame/kick/ban wars and it truly sucks to see people I respect going at one another over something where the real blame lays with two (or so) truly bad actors: Marisa (for the predatory behavior and admissions of prior predatory behavior) and the person who entrapped her (for, and I cannot fucking stress this enough, committing felony solicitation and distribution of CP). I'm also pretty turned out by the way people are focusing on the situation as a means to soapbox about moderation issues to the exclusion of the inciting incidents at hand. I don't think we should ignore that unwanted sexual advances have apparently driven several prominent people out of the community, nor that we apparently have alt-right fuckheads actually victimizing children in the process of trying to entrap marginalized people in their own bad behavior (even if, in this case, the person who was targeted was indeed predatory). There are changes that should be made to policies, sure, but the rot here is in a totally different place, and the community should be collectively working toward excising that, wholesale.

[BROS_ETT_311]

drama queens who voiced their "opinion" here.

Please, stop it. Can we please stop regarding this debacle as drama?

and I cannot shake off the feeling that this is what some people actually want.

The fundamental problem about the situation was that it was initially regarded as just that, "drama", which then prompted the mod staff to treat it as such by playing damage control. Considering the severity of the claims directed at Marisa, which were incredibly damning in both nature and volume, and further compounded by the rapid succession in which they arose, well...the first response shouldn't have been to write it off as a "smear campaign".

That's it, that's the problem. All the mod staff can do at this point moving forward is not make that mistake again, the rest is petty superficial bullshit.

[cyber_cool]

I'm also pretty turned out by the way people are focusing on the situation as a means to soapbox about moderation issues to the exclusion of the inciting incidents at hand.

Well, I am sorry to not meet your expectations, but improper moderation is what allowed this incident to escalate and cause more damage that it could have.
Also not everyone has got connections or even a solid opinion on Marisa. But these people can still discuss the other aspect of this situation.
Let's try to take action, and not shit out walls of text that don't change anything.

[Hellser]

That's it, that's the problem. All the mod staff can do at this point moving forward is not make that mistake again, the rest is petty superficial bullshit.

Wholeheartedly agree. The damage is done, all we can do is start to improve ourselves - not just for us, not just the ZDoom Forums, but the entire Doom community.

[Scripten]

I'm also pretty turned out by the way people are focusing on the situation as a means to soapbox about moderation issues to the exclusion of the inciting incidents at hand.

Well, I am sorry to not meet your expectations, but improper moderation is what allowed this incident to escalate and cause more damage that it could have.
Also not everyone has got connections or even a solid opinion on Marisa. But these people can still discuss the other aspect of this situation.
Let's try to take action, and not shit out walls of text that don't change anything.

I wasn't talking about you exclusively, or directly at all, but rather addressing points from further back in the thread regarding the dual points of bad faith actors and predatory sexual behavior being swept aside to make potshots regarding the quality of character of particular people, including those in the admin/mod teams, which is as subjective as it is unhelpful. My point was that focusing on the latter to the exclusion of the former ignores just how serious the initial situation is.

Rather than deriding what I said as "shitting out a wall of text that doesn't change anything", I would ask that you reread what I wrote, because you're missing the crucial points that I provided both criticisms of the moderation process in the community as well as actionable responses to ensure this doesn't happen again. You also seem to miss that I am one of the people in the community who hasn't "got connections", despite my fairly long tenure here, and that part of my criticism was also about sweeping away information and discussion in the interest of curtailing "drama", as opposed to focusing on community safety and transparency.

[Eric_]

For #1: I'm not sure how to approach this. I've seen a lot of anti-Rachael and anti-Weasel sentiment over the years. Some of it deserved, some not. All I know is that I'm not interested in staging a coup of any kind, so any change in leadership would need to be a mutual decision. Also there's the question of site management in general, and whether or not that could be separated from community leadership / moderation decisions.

Sorry, I'm going to force the issue again. Rachael has operated following the exact same abusive routine for at least 13 years now (She is Eruanna in the IRC log, and SoulPriestess in the Doomworld thread archive contained here). This was not a one-off blowup or momentary lapse of judgment. She is doing exactly as she did 13 years ago, treating her users like children that she begrudgingly tolerates on the best of days, banning peers who disagree with her, and slinging insults, attacks, mockery, and threats at her critics. There has been absolutely no change in her behavior in over a decade. I don't know which of you told her to shut up and stop making it worse for herself, but it's very apparent that's what happened because after her stiff apology she has been here in no capacity at all for the "dialogue" she claimed she wanted. You had to stop her from banning everyone who posted in Marty's thread in the first place, too. This wouldn't be passable behavior for the freshest moderator, never mind the very top of the staff who handpicks everyone under her. And what a good job those handpicks have been doing, hello Vordenko, I see you still have no answers to my questions, hi Candice, who are you again? Why were you allowed to antagonize Kinsie in this thread? Would you like to tell us more about how you "cheated" to get into staff despite knowing nothing about the community?

There will never be trust again as long as Rachael is in any amount of power. Her behavior, staff decisions, and moderation culture have been singlehandedly responsible for myself and many others not associating here anymore, and both you and wildweasel know we're not bad people. I understand she has ingrained herself to an extreme degree. It will be painful to remove her. This is by design, because for all her talk of the piper coming for people someday, she sure as shit knew it would come for her as well. I cannot provide an all-encompassing plan, but the bare minimum apology right now is to remove her from any administrative capacity. This is not a complete solution - as long as she remains the website owner, she will be God-Emperor by default and at best her influence will be hidden from the public eye, just the way she likes it. Make efforts to reach out and find someone else. There are thousands more people in the Doom community than there have been in the past. Step down from your towers, interact with the people you had ambitions of lording over, and ask for help. Rachael has never improved in the slightest. This was the tiniest fucking issue, almost a matter of semantics, and look where her policy has gotten it now. This will happen again. Your team will have to tackle a problem that isn't just solved with petty bans again someday. You are going to have to learn to communicate with your users and cooperate with your peers, not bully them out of the space and claim the problem solved because you pushed it away. I'll reiterate - there is no reason for anyone to tolerate this treatment anymore. Rachael still runs this like it's 2010 and all the communities are walled factions that are constantly at war with each other. That's simply not true anymore. This all sparked as a collaborative effort between nax, Marty, myself, Tapwave, a lot of people, from a lot of places, and not all friends, and most without any history with Rachael, all coming under a common banner: to see this forum made respectable again. To be able to refer to wildweasel with respect and dignity as a long-standing, 20-year+ veteran who's carried this community on his back and still lives up to the legend. To be able to say that yes, Cali is my trusted peer, I trust him not just as a fellow moderator on the Hideous Destructor Discord but also as an administrator here, and I don't have to ever second-guess his intentions or allegiances. To at least be able to say that I know who the moderators are and that I have any reason to respect them as a user.

If that's too much to ask, then this forum is truly doomed.

[cyber_cool]

Rather than deriding what I said as "shitting out a wall of text that doesn't change anything", I would ask that you reread what I wrote, because you're missing the crucial points that I provided both criticisms of the moderation process in the community as well as actionable responses to ensure this doesn't happen again. You also seem to miss that I am one of the people in the community who hasn't "got connections", despite my fairly long tenure here, and that part of my criticism was also about sweeping away information and discussion in the interest of curtailing "drama", as opposed to focusing on community safety and transparency.

I am sorry (for real this time) if it came out rude, but I wasn't talking about your post specifically aswell. I am trying to read everything, but it's the same points getting repeated, without any actual suggestions or call for actions. Most of the posts here are just "oh no this is awful", but no ideas how to actually improve.
"If you criticize - suggest something else" - it was said by many people.

Anyway, I won't be getting in Eric's way now, as he is unearthing quite a history here.

[Tapwave]

stuff

Finally someone who shows some common sense here.

To be blunt, I have considered it waste of energy from the beginning to try to appease all the drama queens who voiced their "opinion" here.
I really don't know what all these people expect to happen by attacking the very people who are trying to hold the community together. If they were gone, everything here would be history - and I cannot shake off the feeling that this is what some people actually want.

It truly pains me that you cannot see the intent is to hold the community together. We want your work to be respected, as well as the work of all the developers you work with. What we are lamenting is that the administrative team has been more concerned with their public image and their influence over others than they have creating a solid community around your efforts.

We are extremely frustrated because we feel your work and Randi's work and the work of all other contributors is being sullied by this. You deserve better. Please don't make this a "colored names versus all of our users" situation. None of us have anything against any of the devs, and we'd much rather the dev team sees what is happening and can make informed choices about who they want to entrust their project to.

[Graf Zahl]

In that case, posting stupid videos on Youtube will create the exact opposite effect than you want to have.
Washing your dirty laundry in the wider public will only anger more people and drive away those who might be on your side.

There comes a point when to say "You may be right but your actions went too far" - and for me this was the case here.

[BROS_ETT_311]

Can we be clear about what transpired?

The moderation team harbored and nearly enacted a concerted effort to defend a potential (and shortly later confirmed) sexual predator. This isn't just a fuck up. It's entirely reasonable that something like this deserves attention, negative or otherwise, and that is not to be minimized.

This is serious because it calls into question the judgement of the staff and whether they prioritize the safety of the community. While targeted harassment is undoubtedly threatening, it is far more concerning that the staff was willing to allow someone the likes of which was capable of actual physical endangerment. It's regrettable that this will almost certainly provide ammo for genuinely bad faith actors, transphobes and homophobes alike, but the alternative is one of gross negligence and irresponsibility, which is honestly the most charitable interpretation I can give of the actions on display. It's sincerely baffling how members of the staff are having such a hard time understanding this.

As I mentioned before, there is only moving forward. But make no mistake, what happens next will be under heavy scrutiny of the community at large. There is no rewriting history here, nor shall it be repeated.

Side note -
Marty, I mean no disrespect, but I absolutely disagree with disabling comments on the video. I understand the objective might be to roadblock potential bigots, but I strongly believe lessening engagement on the matter is a step in the wrong direction. Still, I commend you for shining a light on the situation. Your video isn't stupid, it's necessary.

[buxomdev]

Graf Zahl wrote:
> In that case, posting stupid videos on Youtube will create the exact
> opposite effect than you want to have.
> Washing your dirty laundry in the wider public will only anger more people
> and drive away those who might be on your side.
>
> There comes a point when to say "You may be right but your actions
> went too far" - and for me this was the case here.

Graf, if your only contribution to the conversation is 'THIS IS DRAMA AND DRAMA IS BAD AND THIS VIDEO IS STUPID', then why are you even saying anything at all? You're just conveniently skipping over the need to have this conversation in the first place, that a group of super mods (regardless of their stated intentions) were trying to throw their weight around multiple Doom communities, wanted to memory hole an incident surrounding an accused pedophile and force these communities to accept a potential predator back into their midst? And Marty was the one taking it too far when he exposed this? Should he have just said nothing and let the Fun Police quietly erase any evidence of this incident?

And that's what I keep noticing about these posts from the mods. It's always 'it wasn't my intention' or 'we didn't mean it that way', when the results of their actions are what I described above. You can't argue intent over results. They may not intend to act like a team of super moderators abusing their power, but what difference does it make when the result is the same as a team of super moderators abusing their power?

I didn't have much to do with the ZDoom community before this, but I intend to have even less to do with it now. On the contrary, these events coming to light haven't made me angry at Marty, but the mods here for handling this entire situation in the most ungracious way possible. Rachael especially, since she started handling out bans and tried to suppress discussion right away.