So people, I'm back.
I guess the question at hand is, where are we at? As part of my return I requested a restructuring of the staff, which is something I have been working towards ever since the site came back online. That’s the primary reason I didn’t post as while I had a general concept, I hadn’t sorted the details.
So, what’s new?
Firstly, the teams, I took from what I learned in the second part of the future of Feral Heart thread. Ressy and Sura are running entirely separate teams, they both have their own mod selections, staff rooms, discord channels, etc, etc. Ressy and Sura communicate together, with their own team and with me. The teams also have an 'optional' social area where they can get together if they choose to.
How does this help me?
Going forward, my involvement will return to dealing with my fellow admins, authorising and allocating work. It’s been made clear that I’d like regular updates just to keep in touch with what's going on, even if it's just to drop me a message explaining that "this week, this happened" without the need for me trying to find regular meeting times. If there are any issues they need assistance with, I’ll still be available.
How does this help you?
They say variety is the spice of life. More people, more ideas, more methods. I do believe there's more than one way to do things. Teams may do things differently and with smaller groups of people every voice is heard, nothing is lost. Decisions can be made faster as fewer people need to be involved. I hope to see at some point one team looking at how the other approached something and learning from it. Each team can be much more focused with fewer tasks floating around. You have a choice of people to come to. Not only do you have the MOTS, but you have two entirely different groups of people you can come and talk to should you need.
The drawback and the answer.
There is a fatal flaw in this plan that some of you might have noticed already. If the staff teams are completely separate, how are we ever going to hope for moderation consistency? Well... Moderation is going to have to change. My proposal is to have very short bans placed by MODS. Once a ban is placed, a very small team of people will be notified to look over it. The ban will then be adjusted to an appropriate length. This should solve any inconsistencies. If there are any issues, I'm sure they can be tweaked.
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So that’s the plan. But other things have been going on that are completely separate. I’m going to do my best to fill you in. I don’t like to name names but I might have to in places to keep things making sense for those unaware.
While everything here was shutdown, a podcast was made. This entailed ex-staff members discussing what goes on in the staff. If I’m completely fair to the viewpoint, it's completely false, but there's little things that were missed from it. When you put in all those little things, it stops being a one sided attack and becomes a pretty reasonable situation. Just to give one example: Say you have just had a meeting and someone made a decision on something. For whatever reason you are unsure about what you need to do. You've asked others and they are also unsure. Do you not drop a quick message to the person who made the decision for some clarity? I’m not going to go through the entire thing and pick it apart. But yeah perspective is a wonderful thing.
As you can understand, people/staff this podcast was directed at were upset. Yes, some of them said at the time these people should be banned. It's the heat of the moment when people are angry and upset, this is why in a court of law your victim is never your judge.
I still took onboard all the comments made. But I had my own feelings about the situation. Being that there was such a difference in opinions on what should be done. I took the time to speak to people who had seen the podcast other than the old staff. I gave them all the available options of punishment. I filled in as much information as I could. Then I allowed them to come to their own conclusions as to what should be done. The responses were almost the same across the board. I’d like to make it abundantly clear that the research I did here was the basis for the punishments and not the input I had recieved originally.
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So the four core people involved were Calvary, Wolffox, Jango_Fett and AlphaEclipse.
The resulting punishments are as follows.
Calvary, for divulging information about the internal workings of staff and shedding a very closed one sided light on the old staff, as well as painting them in a much poorer light than they ever deserved. Your apologies were taken into account over said issues and as such your only punishment is not to be permitted return to staff.
Wolffox, for backing up Calvary on her entire statement even though you were not staff for the beginning of it and as such you were technically unable to ratify the entire thing. There was no effort made to limit the amount you agreed with Calvary. Put simply, as an ex global moderator I would have expected you to step in rather than just going with the flow. Your punishment is again, not to be able to return to staff. (However I would like to make a footnote to this particular punishment. It has been said that I wished for Fox to return to the staff. That’s true Fox did some very very good work for the staff. I appreciate it immensely, however before I reached the point of punishments, I had spoken to Fox. She made it clear to me that she would only return to staff if she could work with Ressy rather than under Ressy. This would mean Fox returning to staff as an admin. I simply cannot reward Fox's behaviour in such a way. Based on this they would not be returning to staff anyway so I saw little purpose in placing effort on reducing the punishment.)
Jango_Fett, for providing the space, aiding and even encouraging the distribution of staff information. You were aware of your position as a MOTS and what you were and were not allowed to do with it. When I attempted to negotiate the removal or even just an editing of the podcast, you were unwilling to cooperate. As such you have been removed from MOTS. A ban will be entered on the record your account for two weeks, however you will not have to serve this ban. The ban will simply disqualify you from MOTS for the next two years as per the MOTS Proposal.
AlphaEclipse, for also providing the space and aiding. However, when I re-watch your involvement. I note that you were the only person to say and I quote "Do not attack the staff". Your attempted to rein in the cast to some extent at least. When I approached you for assistance after the podcast, you did your best to aid me. In the knowledge of this, no punishment will be given.
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So I put a much shorter version of this in the staff room with no descriptions as staff had been nudging me as to what was going on. I wanted to speak to each of the individuals above personally and explain. I go to bed. The next morning I wake up to some annoyed messages. At this point I have no idea what's going on. I assumed I could deal with it at work. I get to work and I have a job booked out for the morning. I turn up at said job and it takes all day pretty much. I get back from the job only to discover someone on the staff has leaked what I posted. I’m pissed that after everything that’s gone on, someone is still trying to make my job harder. At this point I leave a snotty message in the staff room for someone to put their hand up and nobody does. Later on, I then kick all the new staff. I know its not the old staff as there's too much bad blood going around. So at this point I know I’ve stopped the leak.
I’m refusing to return any of the new staff to the team until someone puts their hand up and shows me they actually did it. I’m aware some of the staff were planning to leave anyway and are happy to take the fall for something they didn't actually do. Though I cannot believe at this point that whoever did it doesn’t have the balls to step forward. They are booted from staff, their friends are booted from staff. Apparently whoever this selfish person is didn’t give a damn about their team, and don’t assume its because none of them want to come back.
When I kicked the staff off the forum, I missed some permissions for some of them. Staff who are not even presently on the team have been using the permissions they had left to help out with the trolls on the forum and even just general tidying up. All I can say to these individuals is, hats off to you. It really is commendable that even in such a situation you continue on. Such amazing dedication.
As it stands, the offer remains for the new staff to rejoin whichever team they wish. However, I do require the instigator to come forward.
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Ressys new team.
Jumping to now, Ressy has selected a new team to run with; I’ll let them deal with their own introductions. As I said above, some of the new staff already made it clear they were going to leave anyway. In order for there to be a place for them to come back to, we needed at least the basics of a team. As a result, this small team has been formed. Should the staff rejoin, it may become substantially larger. Should they not, at least something is in place.
I hope this answers all the questions people may have. There are still components of this setup being put into place, but for the time being, the old staff will continue to handle moderation. MOTS will be reselected next season.
I think that covers everything.
Raz
