At 1AM 7th of March I received this message from Voodoo, or as he says "The Moderation Team"
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Anyone active in #aeolus or the game, for this matter, might know me and my personality. Petricpwnz, Whiteheart, Pachuriko, Fremy_Speeddraw and many other aliases are all me. Now I haven't ever been showing the most self-restraint possible, but I do nonetheless try to not stir up trouble where it's not necessary, in this case - slack. And in this case not stirring up trouble was done by simply not participating in any discussions where I didn't have a strong stance and some input. Which in the past month or 2 was I think a 2-liner on topic of controversial UI mods. And so after receiving this PM, being pretty confused and upset I inquired about the examples of toxic attitude that slack has to be "protected from" and that warranted a ban with no notice. I sincerely have no clue what was it that led to this as I in fact do not remember writing anything that would warrant this. Not to mention, I did contribute on slack by reporting map editor bugs to ozonex as well as quietly through PMs in form of QAI code and ladder team map pool app code even if it was perhaps not seen in any public channels. So I assume "being afk" or anything along those lines should be out of the question, as there are many members there who are actually no longer active.
As of this moment, 5 days after the ban, I still haven't received a response. Perhaps I would just go and ask in aeolus, but shortly after receiving this PM I found that I was not the only one removed from slack. Farms and biass received the same exact template message about attitude and had their accounts deactivated. And they tried to get a response too, which, again, as of this moment does not exist.
After some time seeing no response we asked our not yet toxic friends on slack to give us some info by asking around there.
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Okay. Interesting. But I don't think I even talked to any devs on slack apart from ozonex bug reports, brutus in PM and icedreamer about some UI mod. Attitude each time they tried to contribute? Well maybe my memory is faulty but I don't think I make it a routine to badmouth new java client updates or server patches or really talk about anything that doesn't have a direct connection with the game itself. Again, as the moderation team always says, if you have issues contact them on forums, I asked for evidence and was ignored.
"That's not about a recent event in particular, more about a systematic bullying and/or toxic behavior around slack that has been going on for the past year."
Well, again, I maybe talk once every 2 months, either about UI mods or about, would you believe it, moderation. What integrity is there if anyone can be branded as systematically ill-behaved and kicked out without any solid basis? How many times have I seen "Anyone can join slack and contribute" phrase come around. I was there and was contributing and now I'm a scapegoat for some devs threatening to fork the project or something?
Well ok, no real examples provided, yet toxicity was stated as the ban reason. Here is where we come to find strange double standards and inconsistencies, as it just so happens I have some slack toxicity proofs of other users.
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Wow, people actually use sarcasm, what a crime!
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A few more examples in form of plain text due to lack of screens, but their authenticity is legitimate.
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Just a few random examples here. Now if the ban was as it says due to toxicity then I'm a little confused here. Because it seems there is plenty of toxicity far worse than what I remember myself having on slack, including the slightly ironic fact that a lot of it comes from the same person (a moderator) that explained how we were banned due to said toxicity. Moreover, I see plenty of bickering and dev infighting on development related topics, topics I normally just ignore.
This all doesn’t paint a pretty picture for me considering we received 0 evidence of our own “toxic attitude”.
Now you can reread this part after seeing all the screenshots above and tell me if perhaps, maybe, there are issues much deeper that lay within slack.
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The saga continues. FtX inquired about the bans and got a mod to respond. I will simply leave the screenshots here and give you a chance to feel the strong argumentation provided.
Part 1
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(Not true btw, I had a PM talk with Strogo about his mod, it was also me who suggested if he is even thinking about implementing it, he should only implement the minimalistic EQ version)
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What I see: -Why was it petric that got banned despite plenty of toxicity all over slack?
-Well he contributes to balance through discord anyway. (Yea and code through slack)
Part 2
Read carefully
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Ok so contribution is brought up, which again, shouldn't be a problem for me, but it got simply ignored.
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Wait a moment. Have nothing against thomas but his sarcasm frequency is possibly just as high as farms' and is used plenty on slack too.
Still not clear whether being on slack for "overall feedback" is ok or not. Let's continue.
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Yea I think I found a few screenshots worse. Am I saying being edgy is ok? No, I still don't know what "edgy" of mine is being referred to, but to warrant a ban while toxicity I show in the screens is just fine I assume it has to be something major.
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"You can expect me to do it professionally when you pay me by the hour", taking that one for the next time someone complains about balance.
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As of this moment my irc mod group PM and any attempts of ftx getting through on slack are being ignored.
Now I don't know how slack poses itself in relation to FAF but if we take discord as the example, it poses itself as an official discord server and obeys faf rules, let's review one possible case: slack poses itself as an official contributor hub and the same can be applied. If you ever chat in aeolus then I think it would be pretty unimaginable for you to get permabanned with no notice for using sarcasm or not putting enough friendly smiley faces with every message.
No matter how I look at it, I just don't see a solid basis for these bans.
And the second case: slack is a private space where faf rules don't apply. Now slack doesn't have it's own rules so would be logical the the only rule is "common sense". This goes around to an argument that happened on slack about moderator power reach, when a certain user had come into slack insulting people and had been gotten rid of. As far as I remember no agreement was reached but the consensus was that slack doesn't need extra moderation and slack doesn't need more moderators than we have (4 or so slack admins). In this case I don't see where this minimalistic moderation exists because this is anything but that. More over a very select group of people were banned while other display of worse behavior was ignored. I think I wouldn’t even care if this ban came from Sheeo personally for whatever reasons, but I've had enough with the moderation team. Saying I cannot trust them would be an understatement.
There is no transparency when it comes to moderation and you can't even get the mod team to reply, not even to the very people in question. Small crumbs of info getting through point in every direction possible including toxic behavior, lack of contribution and devs forking faf conspiracy, none of which got backed up in a way that warrants the current outcome.
I'm resigning from my position of balance team member, ladder team leader, stopping maintenance of QAI/NyAI and map pool app and ceasing anything faf work-related until I get a clear answer with solid reasoning. And whether it warrants the ban or falls within double standards of moderation we will see. If it’s the first then I will have no problem ceasing this inquiry.
Thanks.
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