Goodbye

[Three of Swords]

Like several others, I don't know what happened. And I've never had any direct interaction w/ you, Dulux. But your loss to the community will hurt, and I'm sorry to see you leave.

[Moon Wizard]

In general, we at SmiteWorks try to take a light approach to moderating the forums. We like to give everyone a chance to express their views, and become a member of the community. In those situations where we need to step in, we issue warnings and close threads in order to de-escalate and provide feedback on acceptable forum etiquette. In a few very rare cases, we have banned users. However, in general, we try to use these tools sparingly, and give everyone feedback and chances to become part of our community. As part of this company approach to forum management, we hold our moderators to the same standards.

In this specific case, we feel like we need to make a statement of facts as we know them, since there seems to be some misperception of what occurred recently that caused Dulux-Oz to announce his departure.

Here is what happened from our perspective:

• A new user had in a few short weeks shown his combative nature on the forums.
• Per our approach to handling the forums, we closed threads that became combative, and warned the new user to tone down their rhetoric. As mentioned above, we try to give everyone a fair chance to partake in the community.
• In one of this user's last threads, they continued their combative rhetoric, but was engaged by Dulux-Oz in a defensive manner and one of Dulux's responses made what could be perceived as a veiled threat.
• Shortly after the thread was closed by us, the new user announced their departure citing this threat.
• In the new user's departure announcement, a third account engaged this user in a very vitriolic exchange with name-calling, profanity and more.
• It was noted by the combative new user that this third account appeared to be a "puppet" account for Dulux-Oz, and in fact shared the same IP address as Dulux-Oz. The third account had been inactive for several years prior to this exchange.
• The threads were closed, a final warning was sent to the new user, the third account was banned, and moderator status for Dulux-Oz removed. These actions were taken as immediate steps that night they occurred to de-escalate the situation.
• While Dulux-Oz later explained that the third account was owned by a relative trying to defend him and piped through a VPN on his network; the issue is that public relations damage from the incident is a real issue (that could become bigger if not dealt with quickly). This is why we took the steps we did.
• We provided this information to Dulux-Oz, and explained why we took the actions.

Just to be clear, we did not ask Dulux-Oz to leave nor take any action other than to remove moderator status the night that the issue occurred. Dulux-Oz is welcome to stay or return whenever he wishes; and we would be more than happy to welcome him back to the community.

In regards to his removal of his content, I will be starting a separate thread for discussion.

Regards,
JPG

[k410]

Thank you, Moon Wizard.

I'm sure we can appreciate FG's side of things and also appreciate and respect that one stalwart relative or friend who stands up for us and tries to help, but inadvertently makes things worse with the best of intentions.

Meanwhile, as we wait for the asteroid to hit or a global pandemic (or whatever) to kill us all, at least things are not as bad as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEh1fT1IH14

[JohnD]

As is frequently the case, there is always "stuff" happening in the background that the regular user, commenting after the fact, knows nothing about. These types of situations are always going to be tricky to resolve to everyone's (anyone's) satisfaction.

I go back to my earlier "lose-lose-lose" outcome statement.

Thanks for providing a little clarity.

[k410]

I still think a positive outcome is possible -- not bludgeoned, not coerced into being, but allowed to sprout in its own time.

What are we but complicated stories riding meat and bones, and perhaps a little more?

An important skill is not to let our stories ride us.

The circle is unsalted, the candles are unlit, and the owls are silent.

In such a moment we should allow better things to happen.

[Ampersandrew]

Well, since you've joined the conversation John.

I've edited this several times, trying not to be a ****.

From your timeline, you revoked moderator status before you talked to him. That—in my opinion—was heavy handed and shows a complete lack of trust on your part. It's an implied slur on his character. Based on the say-so of an acknowledged troll that you banned no less.

If you'd revoked my moderator status without any discussion with me, I'd have had a similar reaction.

It seems to me its the complete opposite of a light touch.

[Dr0W]

Well, since you've joined the conversation John.

I've edited this several times, trying not to be a ****.

From your timeline, you revoked moderator status before you talked to him. That—in my opinion—was heavy handed and shows a complete lack of trust on your part. It's an implied slur on his character. Based on the say-so of an acknowledged troll that you banned no less.

If you'd revoked my moderator status without any discussion with me, I'd have had a similar reaction.

It seems to me its the complete opposite of a light touch.

Honestly, I've been on the admin part for a long part of my life and stuff like that always happen. Whenever bad actions come from one of the moderators the usual first and foremost action is to remove that one privileges, unless you are both online and can talk about that right away. Since that person is not acting accordingly and it HAS power, it must be removed ASAP. The talk can come later, and I believe he as notified the moment he got his privileges removed. As an Admin you simply can't let a moderator who is acting against the rules to keep power and possibly create a bigger problem.

Moon Wizard acted professionally.

[Ampersandrew]

Whenever bad actions come from one of the moderators

Since that person is not acting accordingly and it HAS power, it must be removed ASAP.

As an Admin you simply can't let a moderator who is acting against the rules to keep power and possibly create a bigger problem.

I'm going to have to politely disagree.

You're also assuming that the moderator is acting against the rules.

An account that's been quiet and suddenly posts doesn't need moderator privileges. Unless something else happened that we haven't been told about, I can't see how revoking moderator privileges helps at all. Even if it happened that's not an abuse of moderator power.

public relations damage from the incident is a real issue.

Yes, yes it is. Although possibly not in the way you think. It's certainly affected my opinion of the company. I was impressed with the company's relations with the public. Now less so.

I can't see any way forward to a good outcome from this "incident" as JohnD said "lose-lose-lose".

Look at the end of the day it's up to the company to interact with the community in a way that they see fit. Moderator is as far as I know an unpaid volunteer position, but they will be seen as representing the company. Still, I don't find the guilty 'til proved innocent assumption palatable, but obviously others disagree.

I've probably said more than enough about this. I'm not directly involved.

[dulux-oz]

Just for the record: I didn't step back because I lost moderator status, I stepped back because of things that happened surrounding the lose of moderator status. I said in my original post that SW were perfectly within their rights in what they decided to do, based on what they understood at the time (although I don't think they were particularly just).

And also for the record: I wasn't abusing my moderator status - I wasn't even aware of what was going on (after "the warning") - I wasn't even on-line during the worst of the trouble. I lost my moderator status because I was part of the initial build up to "the warning" and to which I apologised for in my first post - and I'm OK with that. Not necessarily happy with it, but I've accepted the fact and the reasons for it.

And, finally, also for the record: Thank you, everyone, for all the nice things people said in this thread. I've read them all over the last couple of hours, after having been informed by a friend that they were there. I haven't been on-site since I wrote the initial GoodBye post, and only came on now because my friend said I should.

[Dr0W]

I'm going to have to politely disagree.

You're also assuming that the moderator is acting against the rules.

An account that's been quiet and suddenly posts doesn't need moderator privileges. Unless something else happened that we haven't been told about, I can't see how revoking moderator privileges helps at all. Even if it happened that's not an abuse of moderator power.

I'm not saying he did. I'm saying that MW had pretty strong reasons to believe he didn't act accordingly. First thing to be done is to remove the status, then have a good talk, and then maybe get the status back. If an admin has strong evidence that a moderator didn't act correctly, they should remove the privilege to prevent possible future damage. This is just standard procedure.