I have been asked by a number of people, seeing as how I am the top mod, to say something about the shitstorm that is currently going on.

The fact that I worked on this instead of playing Destiny (on my 360) should tell you how much me giving my word that I would post it means to me.

First, let me just say something.

I need to accept partial responsibility for the state of things. As top mod, I should have stepped in earlier. However, my nature has been, is, and always will be that of an optimist. I give people the benefit of the doubt before I drop the hammer. I honestly felt the people in the mod team that were the root cause of the problems would be able to act like mature adults and work together, no matter that they had differences in opinion towards Gamergate. I should have stepped in sooner to head this off at the pass. As a result, there are a number of mods who have left who I feel added very useful viewpoints to the mod team.

As you can tell, I was very, very wrong.

There were times when there would be no problems, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there would be a flare up and chat would explode with accusations such as “witch-hunt”, “browbeating”, “vendetta”, “leaking information”, “restricting ability to mod” and the like. And then, just as quickly as it would flare up, it would die down for a while, and then show up again.

So let me go through what were the major problems that people had.

(Note that I contacted those involved below to ensure that I had accurately represented their position.)

Hokes:

Hokes felt (and feels) that there was (and is) a concerted effort being orchestrated between users and some mods to try to get them removed as a mod from the team. Their impression is that this effort is composed almost entirely of those who hold the opposite opinion to them with respect to Gamergate. To be blunt, they feel that it is almost entirely (to the point the exceptions prove the rule) made up of pro-GG people who are unhappy that Hokes is not in the slightest bit shy in sharing their opinions on Gamergate and gamergaters. This can be seen in the belief Hokes is possibly the worst shitposter on the sub. Of course, this feeling of there being a witch hunt was not helped by, every time they did something that some mods felt was against the rules, said mods would jump in going “PUNISH THEM!! PUNISH THEM!! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!” Never mind their transgressions were stuff other mods have acknowledged doing yet never got the same response. Hokes was not quiet in their belief that said repeated attempts to get them disciplined were less due to their crossing the lines and more due to the afore-mentioned conspiracy/vendetta/witch hunt.

Bashfluff:

She joined the team in response to what she felt was a heartfelt attempt of the team to try to change and improve their failing reputations in the eyes of the userbase. The genuineness of it won her over, and since she knew she was known to be a notable critic of the mod team, her saying yes to the invitation would make their new policies on accountability have more stability and be seen to be a good faith attempt. When she joined the team, it was never to moderate posts and comments, it was to do community stuff. She wanted to deal with improving user/mod and user/user relations. She was instrumental in getting the mod disciplinary track set up. However, she felt Hokes, in their belief she (Bash) was out to get them (Hokes), attempted from the start to try and eliminate her voice in any and all mod decisions and place her in a lesser mod position that was not equal to other mods, in addition to browbeating people into line, and throwing baseless accusation after baseless accusation. In addition, she felt the rest of the mod team was not just not giving a damn what Hokes did, not just ignoring, not just pointedly looking the other way, but actively hushing it up, squashing any attempt to hold Hokes to account and telling her to “shut up”. She felt the rest of the mods ignored this, and only decided to complain about anyone saying anything about Hokes, to try to keep them accountable. Furthermore, she felt (and feels) that none of the other mods one had any interest in reform or making things better. That the mod team used the appearance of propriety to do some awful shit and excuse it behind the scenes. In addition, despite her attempts to make peace with Hokes, the browbeating other mods, causing a hell of a lot of strife and suffering, or going beyond and/or subverting team actions continued. She felt the moratorium was to protect a certain person from allegations, and that's never how the mod team done things. Hokes got that through. And Hokes didn't want people to give feedback on it, be able to, or to limit banned topics to that, because they want to expand that list. She left when she saw everyone covering for Hokes more explicitly and becoming more and more okay with censorship and letting Hokes treat people poorly.

ScarletIT:

ScarletIT left the mod team because he rejoined in the first place to try and help making the mod team more fair and acting more professionally and responsibly towards its userbase. After introducing the new rules he felt there was still a problem with apathy in applying those rules and felt that with Bashfluff leaving the team, the problem would only get bigger and he would remain pretty much alone in actively trying to make the sub better and get the rules enforced.

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So, who holds responsibility for this shitstorm that went down today?

In part, we all do. Allow me to rip the bandaid off, so to speak.

What is below is my interpretation and feelings of where some of the responsibility lies. Everywhere that you can throw an “In my opinion” in there , do so.

As I mentioned above, once I saw this happening in the mod Slack chat, I should have stepped in more publicly. I tried my best to calm things down behind the scenes, but it was obviously not effective. (understatement of the century). To the entire mod team, I apologize. To the users, I apologize as well. I should have stopped Hokes from accusing those who disagreed with them as being part of a witch hunt. Sometimes, disagreement was simply a disagreement. I should have stopped people trying to get Hokes disciplined for every minor thing that they do a lot sooner. I should have tried to defuse the hardening of the feelings towards the other mod team members sooner, and I should have done all of that in the open. I should not have assumed that everyone was willing to try to fix things or work together despite them.

Hokes has some responsibility as well. Yes, there was (and is) a witch-hunt that was (and still is) out to get them for stuff that, were it not Hokes, would possibly not even get reported. However, because it is Hokes, it is reported on, magnified, and exaggerated to hyperbolic levels. At the same time, Hokes has been quick to throw out accusations of witch-hunting where there was none. As a result, Hokes made statements that implied that those they being accused of participating in said witch-hunts were biased and should remove themselves from various decisions or were less equal to the other mods who were not being accused of participating in said witch-hunt

Scarlet’s actions played a role in this as well. They were quick to find fault in any little transgression that Hokes did, and often asked for punishments that were excessive as compared to the transgression. At least once, a transgression for which it was asked Hokes be demodded, Scarlet was found to be doing at the same time.

Bashfluff took the position of moderating this sub very seriously. I honestly think that adding her to the mod team was one of the smartest decisions that was made. However, Hokes not liking her really impacted her, and the rest of the mod team not agreeing that Hokes is horrible tainted her view of the rest of the mod team. In my opinion, she is similar to Hokes in that they are both very quick to assign to others motivations for doing things that are simply not there. Decisions of the mod team that were voted on that did not go her way happened not due to a difference in opinion, but rather, in her view, due to active maliciousness and a desire to censor things.

All of the other mods also hold some responsibility, for seeing this happen and not speaking up and letting it carry on as is. We are all supposed to be adults, and adults should be mature enough to be able to work through these things and, if needed, help others work through these things.

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I (and the rest of the mods) once saw this place as somewhere that could hopefully be used to defuse the animosity and shed some of the labels that get applied by each side. A demilitarized zone, so to speak.

Looking at the level of “discussion” that goes on here, it becomes rapidly apparent that the overwhelming majority of posters have little or no desire to actually communicate and see those with a differing viewpoint as humans.

This post sums up things pretty accurately:

https://np.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/3lz5cn/im_scarletit_2_times_former_mod_of/cvaybea

So where does the sub go from here?

Pro-GG see this sub as Ghazi 2.0. Anti-GG see this place as KiA 2.0.

Pros are leaving because they feel the environment is biased and the moderation skewed. Anti-GG is leaving because they see us allowing too much posting of PRATTs. Both sides are leaving because of the significant amount of low-quality posts that mostly insult the intelligence of the reader.

But that seems almost damn inevitable, when the issues are this polaized.

We can cater to one side, and lose the other, or cater to none and lose both.

But there's no option for keeping both sides.

Do I hit the reset button, nuke all the content, implement new rules and start over with a blank slate?

Do I continue as is, and hope that this post is enough of a spotlight on responsibility that people change?

Do I take a hard line and pre-emptively ban those I see as the worst of the shitposters...those that toe the line and are clearly not here for any sort of conversation? (This is a group that includes both pros and antis, FWIW)

Or do I simply set the sub to private, and demod everyone but myself?

If we (and by we, I mean the mod team and the users) don't do anything and just try to business as usual our way through this, the sub is toast.

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So, I repeat,

where does the sub go from here?