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Why was the leod account disabled?

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There have been two or three people in this thread implying that a current member of staff's behavior is improper. We cannot seek to take action or even investigate or speak to this person if we do not know who it is. I understand not wanting to name names publicly. In that case I would truly encourage people to send us a feedback so your name won't be attached. If you don't trust feedback or don't want to share it with the whole admin team for whatever reason, you can PM or DM me directly (though this will obviously let me know who you are, keep in mind). We don't post every single user feedback we receive in the public response thread, especially when it concerns specific individuals, so there is no reason to worry about us letting others know you contacted us. Perhaps I haven't seen something you have, or don't know something about an individual you do. It just doesn't help me at all to have people saying someone is a bad staff member and should be spoken to if I have no leads on where to begin.


The only thing I can really say about the Dungeon is that we were younger and more stupid when it was created. I didn't think of it as a problem when I was staff at its creation because, again, young and dumb. It's only in hindsight of having grown up more and matured that I realized how stupid it was to have hosted such a thing on the site even if it was "hidden". I'm glad it was closed and then subsequently deleted. It's something in our site history that happened, that I no longer condone, and that I would ultimately consider a large mistake. It's not something I'll ever try to downplay.
Oh I wasn't clear, I meant for previous members.
HackPortsASM"Uploader"

I don't think anyone was talking about current staff members, to be fair. I was just speaking out of my own experiences, not just here, but everywhere I have been. This includes sites I have been staff on; Sites include FEPlanet.net (which is on life support due to being a product of its age), MarioKartWii.com (which is now literally dead. Thank you, Rex, for not giving a shit about the site and its users!), and various other forums that have since been thanos'd.

Out of my experiences here, I have heard of the whole leod incident, but I was never around while he was running rampant, so I never had the full grasp of just how truly awful of an experience that was. The next closest I could think of while i was actively a witness was Adeleine. Neither are staff anymore, obviously, but I feel that lessons can be learned here on choosing the next staff members wisely.

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STELLA!
there isnt much lessons to learn because smw central's staff team is not the same staff team as it was a year ago, or two years ago, or three, or so on.

that being said, i think the updates on site rules and the increased transparency on the behalf of staff actions over this past year has helped phase out the old guard and replace it with a hopefully more fair staff team. i understand the frustrations of what went on then, but just remember that there is nothing to "learn" from it that wasnt already learned over the past while. i'd like to think that the state of our staff team incl. the fact that we have not had any staff feedbacks or complaints about current staff members in months reflects that, and the one recent situation of a staff member misbehaving was met with an appropriate response on behalf of the administration team.

the dungeon and much of the lewdness on smw central was in part due to kieran and his view on what should and should not have been allowed. the dungeon was his forum, and he fought against the stricter rules on lewd content before he left. now smw central's stance is that porn is bad and naughty, and most traces of it existing on this site have been nuked from hell and back again.
Originally posted by idol
there isnt much lessons to learn because smw central's staff team is not the same staff team as it was a year ago, or two years ago, or three, or so on.


That's not exactly a good mindset to have if you're trying to better a community. While I'll gladly give credit where credit is due and say that the current staff team is leaps and bounds better than previous ones we've had, there's always room for growth. Adeleine is a good example of this; she didn't have much of a notable history to go off of so it wasn't until after she was promoted that people realized she was extremely problematic. I'm by no means holding this against the staff because it's not like she made any negative lasting impacts (she's more or less a nobody now), but that whole situation shows that the staff need to take post/community history (or lack thereof) into consideration when hiring people.

TLDR Don't get caught in the mindset of thinking there's no lessons to be learned even if our current state is far better than it used to be

Originally posted by idol
that being said, i think the updates on site rules and the increased transparency on the behalf of staff actions over this past year has helped phase out the old guard and replace it with a hopefully more fair staff team. i understand the frustrations of what went on then, but just remember that there is nothing to "learn" from it that wasnt already learned over the past while. i'd like to think that the state of our staff team incl. the fact that we have not had any staff feedbacks or complaints about current staff members in months reflects that


While the staff team has greatly improved, that's not entirely indicative that everything is fine and dandy. We still have some users here who have a considerable amount of status that isn't necessarily deserved. I've held off on naming names in this thread to avoid everything spiraling into chaos, but for the sake of making a point, I and and others weren't exactly fans of Ryaa, especially while he was on staff. He was banned from SMBX twice before coming to SMWCentral and applying to become a staff member, that alone should have been a deal breaker for anybody. And without detailing every little annoyance I have with the guy he wasn't exactly a positive presence in the server and especially the voice chat. He's made friends of mine leave the site and iirc he's made staff members quit Discord positions, this is not the type of person you should have representing your Discord Server/Community.

Those of us who picked up on his problematic behavior haven't really spoken up because he's so popular that it'd likely be an uphill battle none of us would win because he has so many people backing him (Not to mention up until recently there's been a lot of skepticism about whether or not staff feedback is actually anonymous). Why bother if it'll just make us look ridiculous right? It's not that different from people having to deal with leod back in the day, the only difference is that Ryaa is less abrasive (keep in mind, less abrasive =/= not problematic) and most likely not a predator.

The staff generally speaking should be more conscious of how other staff members are affecting the environment. If they're making people quit and are generally really hard to work with, something needs to change. And again, like with Adeleine I'm not holding this against the staff either, but there needs to be more checks and balances to keep staff from overstepping their bounds or just generally being difficult.
Originally posted by Samantha
Originally posted by idol
there isnt much lessons to learn because smw central's staff team is not the same staff team as it was a year ago, or two years ago, or three, or so on.


That's not exactly a good mindset to have if you're trying to better a community. While I'll gladly give credit where credit is due and say that the current staff team is leaps and bounds better than previous ones we've had, there's always room for growth.

I think what idol meant here was more what she said a couple sentences later:

Originally posted by idol
i understand the frustrations of what went on then, but just remember that there is nothing to "learn" from it that wasnt already learned over the past while.

It's not that we're unwilling to learn and change, it's that in this specific instance we have already learned much from it, so rehashing the situation and being told to learn from it multiple times has led to us throwing up our hands a little and thinking "what more do people want us to do?"

You and I already chatted a bit about this but I'll mention what I said to you earlier. I feel like every few months this topic or similar issues pop up and I end up going on an apology tour over things either the current team had little to do with or that we've already discussed in the past. I think we're all tired of being browbeaten about leod's situation and how we apparently didn't act fast enough, or that the previous team was bad to hire him, or something else along these lines.

I know saying "it's time to move on" is a dismissive of the people he actually hurt so I don't really want to say that, but it's also been over a year since we banned him, and we've discussed his ban multiple times across multiple threads. I, for one, want to move on from the topic. I've definitely learned from the situation, and others less severe than his, in my time as admin. I don't want to have to keep dwelling on the past every few months when I can avoid it.
I understand where you’re coming from. Admittedly there were times when I was more aggressive than I should have been about the whole situation and I can understand how frustrating it must be to have to apologize for something that’s not really your fault. Having said that though, I hope you understand WHY this topic is so pervasive. If you weren’t one of his targets it might seem like I and others are being a bit over the top, but he caused real pain to a lot of people, myself included. I’ve only really come to terms with how he affected me in the past couple days and it’s to the point where I seriously think I need to talk to my therapist about it. With that in mind, think about how his victims feel; they were probably much more damaged by the situation than I was. Beyond this thread I’m probably not gonna beat this drum much more unless I feel there’s something I need to say that hasn’t already been said, but don’t be surprised if other people continue to bring it up because I was far from his only target. I’m just the most vocal one it seems.

More importantly, like I said in the last post, the staff need to be paying close attention to other staff members and how they’re affecting the community. I don’t think anything bad will happen on the scale of leod, but just because it’s not as bad doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.
Even if things are fine on the surface right now, who knows when staff applications inevitably open in 6+ months? I wouldn't be complacent.

I will give credit where credit is due. The staff is far better now than it was before; even before taking into account rule revisions, anonymous staff feedback, and the like. But I'd keep a close watch on how the hiring process is handled. In my opinion, the Ryaa and Adeleine situation could have been avoided had precedence (or lack thereof) been taken into consideration during the initial hire.

Of course, this may be 20/20 hindsight talking. Anyhow, I've said my piece. What's done is done, and I just hope it doesn't happen again for a long time.

EDIT: I completely passed over this reply.

Quote
I don't know what you're hinting at here, but even though this is a hobby site, the incident with leod is a lesson learned as to how to act next time a situation like this happens (which I hope it doesn't).
The times have changed, and so have the staff. I remember when people vouched for him to get hired due to his ability to take decisions when I was on the team and I'm sure they regretted it badly, including myself.


I was referencing some of the responses behind Nameless's allegations from months ago. Other than that, it's mainly to dissuade the thought of the issue being a non-issue. I will admit to having worded my statement awkwardly, though. It wouldn't be the first time I've done that.

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STELLA!
That’s messed up! I know Leod had a great time that used here. I feel sorry for Leod.

But I know that Leod needs to follow rules.
My released ROM hack: Yoshi Saves Summer Vacation
I'm legitimately not trying to spring more drama, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to why this thread is still open for discussion. This whole debacle was settled a long time ago and I don't think there's anything else to add to it. Mistakes were made, and the only thing left to do is to move on from the whole thing

Originally posted by Fermín Acosta Jr.
That’s messed up! I know Leod had a great time that used here. I feel sorry for Leod.

Indeed he did have a great time here, but for the wrong reasons. I don't think you should feel sorry for him, though...
Nothing worth looking at here.

Extras



I should have something witty to put here (even if it's just to update dated info), shouldn't I?

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Originally posted by l30n4rd0
I'm legitimately not trying to spring more drama, but I'm at a bit of a loss as to why this thread is still open for discussion. This whole debacle was settled a long time ago and I don't think there's anything else to add to it. Mistakes were made, and the only thing left to do is to move on from the whole thing



Likely because a lot of the subject was never really touched upon until recently (the mod team were very hush hush about it for reasons already mentioned). Which of course spun into the discussion of some users wanting the mod team to be more transparent about these topics and more careful of the people they do promoted. Granted, it's not right to shame the current mod team for the practices of the previous one(s).

Basically trying to tie up loose ends, in a way.

speaking of loose ends, i believe these discussions should have tightened them all up.

& with that, closed.
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