Geezer (aka Dead) randomly blamed for Shalooonsh's harassmen

Hey, don't drag me into this.

I know I got rage issues. That goes well beyond this game. HOWEVER, I keep my shit together and don't rage at friends, neighbors, fast food cashiers, etc. I certainly don't bully people over any small amount of power I have in my life.

You can delete your conversation and IF THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIEND you cannot reopen it unless you share a server and can click on the name to do it. She left the server. He deleted whatever conversation he had.

He can't delete the shit WE spoke of because I was kicked off the server.

And since it's likely that Kaitrena and Shalooonsh are not friends, but in fact the former blocked the latter for being a creep, it's really no wonder that staff couldn't find evidence of Shalooonsh's discussion with Kaitrena among his private messages. We also have to consider that staff are not necessarily technically adept and may not have checked every nook and cranny while searching Shalooonsh's account.

Though I can't help but wonder how many hours Shalooonsh had to spend deleting shit before he turned over his password to the administrators, lol

As a side note, I can't help but think what precedent that sets for the other staff. Does every staff member use a "dedicated" Discord account for Armageddon or do some of them use their Discord account for both Armageddon and personal purposes? Staff members have a right to personal privacy, just like anyone else. If you're asked to turn over your password to an account that belongs to you and you refuse, will the Producers just dismiss you from staff? Probably something to think about, staff members reading this, if you use your accounts for anything besides Arm.

Now... I'm not saying you're Shalooonsh. Hell, I am not even going to go so far as to say that the particular incident in question is real and happened. But I /am/ going to say that if you /are/ Blaze, the above is funny as fuck, especially if the situation is actually true. Because goddamn the context that would put this post in. I am lawling.

I would argue that, on an individual level, most of the staff members are not inherently bad people. What is actually bad, that we've actually seen in this thread?

- We've seen that staff themselves see individual players as expendable. This has been an attitude that has persisted for years at the top levels of staff and in this particular thread in the form of turning Nile into a scapegoat to, at best, give a false sense of security to a newbie who ostensibly was afraid of returning to the game. When Nile had the gall to protest being scapegoated, he got banned. Not only is Nile affected, but everyone playing around his character was also affected by his character's sudden disappearance.

- We've seen that people who defend staff actions on the virtue that staff have the right to do anything they want for their game (or to their game) create incomprehensible discourse at best, and toxic discourse at worst. No one here is arguing that staff don't have the "right" to ban anyone they want from the game, or that players have the "right" to play Armageddon. The staff are welcome to choose and curate their playerbase how they see fit. Just because someone can do something doesn't always mean someone should do something, and just because someone shouldn't do something doesn't always mean they can't do something. Yet we have one person here saying that Nessalin will do anything he wants, even if it's bad for the game's overall health. How are we supposed to interpret this? Nessalin certainly can do this, but is it in the best interests of the game to drive off its players? Who is actually responsible for the game's content: the programmers, the storytellers, or the players? Is there, perhaps, a shared responsibility?

- We've seen that when a member of staff makes a mistake, the staff body as a whole circles around to cover up the mistake instead of fix it. Shabago clearly made a number of mistakes: he provided the character and account name of one player to another player without the first player's permission and accused that player of doing something wrong. He explained the matter in an intentionally vague and possibly menacing manner to that other player to leave open the possibility that staff would target her with a ban as well, or at least view her with deep suspicion, if need be. The correct response to Nile was not Nessalin's flippant response that Nile shouldn't believe everything he reads on the internet, but a conciliatory apology signed by both Shabago and one of the Producers stating that Shabago understands he made a mistake and that he will never do it again.

What actually needs to change? Staff should consider alternatives to the current staff structure that actually allow players to reconcile with staff by putting a neutral party of mediators between them. People who are neither fully staff nor fully players who can arbitrate when necessary. If staff are interested in inclusiveness then they should explore a means of resolving player-staff conflicts in a neutral manner. If staff can't clear this basic hurdle then it's impossible to expect anything other than continued mismanagement and CYA-style actions.

This is a good idea in theory, as a neutral body of moderators who act as tactful, patient, and reasonable as possible.

Getting decent administrators in the first place would make this not an issue. All the mechanism of "neutral advocates" does is creates a wall of obscurity that somewhat dulls the smell of shit in the other room. It's still going to be shit in the other room: installing a wall doesn't fix that.