Clarification on Recent Bans

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There have been a few users concerned about the fact we recently banned a few users especially since some of them are devs in the community. We dont usually talk about bans like this but we feel its might be good in the case to give some more info and address some of the questions we have been getting.

First thing, we only banned 3 users. The 3 users in question have actually been on the edge of being banned for a long time, but I was reluctant to do so. I tend to be really hesitant on banning people in the first place, but I have been too soft in the past (to this community’s detriment I feel) and honestly I should have banned those users a long time ago.

I know a few people are concerned that we targeted users based on their views on AI, but that wasn’t factored into our decision at all. In fact one of the 3 banned accounts used gen-ai to code their games. This was purely due to past incidents and behavior that I honestly should have not turned a blind eye to like I did.

I know a few users are wondering why we have been removing their posts asking about this and it is really just because they are asking about specific users. I want to do my best to respect the privacy of those who we banned (no use dragging them through the mud) so we do not discuss any specifics with bans with people outside of those users. I will be happy to try to answer any questions that I can but please keep in mind I will not talk about any specific users or cases.

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I just hope if someday I get a ban I will get a message from moderator who banned me with explanation of ban reason. It piss me off when you get a ban in some discord server, telegram server, forums and have no idea for what reason you get banned. Feels like admin banned you for selfish reason instead of for breaking a rule.

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A good starting point would be to explain exactly what examples of misbehavior, broken rules, and misconduct were displayed to warrant banning the 3 users (or future users), because based on what I saw without getting into specifics, leaving the ban reason vague is a recipe for disaster.

I understand if you’re not comfortable about posting any specifics to respect the banned users’ privacy, but this post feels like you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. Might I suggest, if anything, to help provide more clarity to current users for what type of behavior and misconduct will result in being banned in a similar fashion to the 3 users who were banned? If not in this post, it has to be in the updated rules post which needs to be easily accessible as a pinned post or something obvious.

Either way, I’d recommend somehow reaching out to the 3 users through private DMs to explain and back-up their bans with proof. Not a big fan of “vibes-based” banning which this seems to be if no examples are being given.

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What if we asked the people who got banned if they were fine with their bans being discussed here and they gave the green light? Would it be fine to mention them then?

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What if we asked the people sho got banned

They sure have no problems talking about being banned off-site so why bother? Just air the dirty laundry and be done with it.

Once you engage in a period of fundraising from the community for the purposes of spreading around the burden of keeping the lights on, you have set an implicit expectation from said community of having some stake in it, which includes expecting a higher level of transparency. This was known going in.

If it was ‘past behaviour’, then the question is simple; what has changed between now and then? Did something happen? What were people ‘soft’ on? Did someone wake up off the wrong side of the bed? When nobody knows, everyone gets to invent their own interpretation of events.

And yes, there’s a difference between banning a rando and banning a developer.

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From my outside awareness of the situation, I think that all three bans were retroactive due to past (but fairly recent) messaging (toward other users) around the hot-button topic of AI use and allowance on these forums - messaging that was hostile, inflammatory, discriminatory, intolerant, and generally uncivil.

For my part, I was extremely pissed that one of them wasn’t banned months ago when they made unfounded accusations against another forum user that drove that user away from the site. So I’m glad to see that taken care of, even if it took far too long to happen.

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So why is this all happening now, as opposed to when these people were being problem individuals? Even if this wasn’t retaliatory, it’s still giving ”Amazon announces record breaking Q3, proceeds to lay off workforce.”

The individuals in question weren’t even made aware of their bans by the moderation personally, they had to learn of their status via third party. That doesn’t quite seem fair to do to long time members of the community.

So is the moderation just going down the line and suspending those who feel ”Too combative” with the site staff, regardless of their tenure in the community? Not only is the wording here vague, it is quite worrying to the rest of us who do want to offer genuine feedback to the site in fear of retaliation.

There’s respecting privacy and then there’s memory-holing their legacy, which is effectively what’s happening here. One of the individuals has their contributions in other projects across WG, and some are even actively profiting off of it. Are we just going to Voldermort their name for the sake of ”privacy”?

Again, all of this happening right when the site secures funding leaves a bad taste in a lot of our mouths, and it strains community relations a whole bunch. Who’s to say it’ll stop at 3 bans? What’s okay to say, and what’s not? How far back does a mod go to warrant a suspension? Do these even have a statue of limitations?

Scary times, NGL…

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I have recently been made aware that the notification emails explaining the ban apparently where not received by at least one of the users and possibly the other as well. I am going to be working on rectifying that today by manually emailing all 3 users.

I can not deny that I should have executed these bans a lot sooner. That was a big mistake on my part. @Krodmandoon had a long discussion about it and we decided that the best move end of the day was to ban these users due to their past actions instead of trying to waiting for the next incident to do so.

I think that is a fair point. I wont get into any specific incidents but I feel that asking for the general infractions of all 3 together is a fair question.

In no particular order the bans where given due to a combination of the following infractions:

  • Harassment against other community members
  • Chronic violation of general site rules resulting in a large number of flags against the account (was between 20-50 infractions in these cases)
  • Multiple attempts to circumvent site rules
  • Chronic toxic or overly aggressive behavior towards other community members (general violation of our always be civil rule)
  • Multiple instances of false flagging or reporting of users
  • Repeated failure to comply with moderator warnings or instruction
  • Multiple attempts to get community members banned by accusation of violations of our rules and ToS without evidence to back the claims and internal investigations failing to find evidence to back their claims

I would like to note once again it was not just one of these infractions but a combination that lead to the decision to ban.

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I don’t understand how this is better than making no post at all.

“Yes, we banned three undisclosed users at an undisclosed time for undisclosed reasons. Please stop mentioning the users whose names we won’t give out so that you know to stop speaking about them.”

Perhaps more damning is that you’re admitting you waited on handing out these bans. A user who I must not name out of some perverse form of “respect” released their own statement, clarifying that they hadn’t posted in months, in case there was any doubt around whether they’d made a recent transgression that had already been removed from public sight.

To me, it certainly looks like you knew that banning some or all of these users would cause blowback and deliberately waited until after the fundraising period ended to execute those bans.

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Hey, so I’m extremely disappointed to hear about this decision. I don’t agree with it or the way it was handled. I understand the “automated email” was mistakenly not sent out, but the very corporate way this is being spoken around is leaving a very sour taste in my mouth. I have always thought this site was amazing for being a hub for this community and am incredibly let down. I won’t be able to support things here any further, but wish you the best.

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July 2018 account here. Dunno what user number that makes me. Not interested in continuing to use this site, so I’ll take whatever comes from this. I don’t think you’re evil, but you need a wake up call.

This whole situation is a massive farce. Retroactively banning core users after months of inactivity for “hostility" is the kind of petty tyrant shit that goes on discords with 50 users. Completely fucking embarassing. And then you have the gall to speak like a weird malfunctioning linkedin bot in every single bit of correspondence involving it. Fundamentally appalling behavior, in any community I’m in this would be a “step down or I’m out” moment and after all this I certainly do not expect the latter.

Not to mention this is after ebegging for literally hundreds of dollars monthly from the community. Can you explain to me what the hell this is all being spent on? A continually dying forum and a totally new service always coming soon?

The decision to not just allow AI content but openly support it was a slap in the face to everyone who built this website. Things will only continue to rot unless you wake the fuck up to that the passionate people that drive this community hate this shit and have long since been driven off by it.

This website completely changed the whole face of game dev in this sphere. I was originally happy to see the community step up in trying to support you and keep things alive but now I see it should have died then and there. You are completely unequipped to be the continual owner of this community.

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I have an opinion on the Voldemort situation. I know it doesn’t matter what my opinion is on this because moderators may remove a comment or account at any reason at any time without any warning, but there was at least one user who was banned for (imo) some objectionable reasons. Although the user and I wouldn’t agree substantively on some major topics, I was hoping some other solutions could be attempted, first.

I’d also like to note that this user was also a proponent of the ban hammer for other users for lesser offenses, and I staunchly oppose that, too. I just personally think banning is for edge cases. Were they an edge case? Maybe, but I’ve seen far worse in forums - vicious and regressive trolls - so I still wish a better solution could have been found.

To your and others’ points: the way this user would express their opinion was often harmful and they shouldn’t be given preferential treatment just because they are a creator. You have mentioned some users (maybe them) ignored repeated warnings, but maybe a hypothetical probationary period or a road back to netizenship would be acceptable alternatives?

We’ve had our public spats in this forum, but - empathetically - I have much love for this place and its people - even and especially the ones I disagree with. I would advise against quick decision-making that might appear Robespierrian. Some changes did need to take place, but since the site temperature feels unsteady and uncomfortable, is it okay to request pumping the breaks on some of the heavy-handed enforcement? And: really outlining what decisions are in the pipeline and why?

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I actually largely agree with you as I hate having to resort to bans in the first place. I am actually really proud of the fact that most of our bans are due to removing underage users or spam accounts. But this case was different and did warrant it and it should have been done sooner.

I did provide plenty of warnings in most of these cases even if they may not remember them and even talked with them directly about their behavior in some cases, but I think since I have handled everything with such a light touch and in certain cases allowed them to get away with such behavior for so long it never really registered with them that there were consequences for ignoring our warnings.

I dont know if it matters or not, but these were the only bans we decided on doing and no others are planned unless some one does something really dumb. Its up to you to if you believe me or not but these were edge cases plain and simple.

That being said, I am planning on giving the mods more teeth to enforce our rules and we are going to be less tolerant on certain behavior. Perma bans are still going to be reserved for extreme cases though, and none of that is going to come into effect until after I make the rules update post explaining what is changing and why.

And to your point about a probationary period, we dont allow for that but everyone has one appeal they can use to explain why their ban should be reversed but its up to each person to decide if they want to use it or not. We already received two request and even brought on one of the new mods early to act as a 3rd judge in the review to help try to provide a more impartial perspective in case we did judge something to harshly or made a mistake in our reasoning. We are just human after all, and while I think we made the right call here there is always the chance we fucked up and I never want to dismiss that.

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This whole thing was handled very poorly given the state of the site. There’s going to parts of this that are speculation, mostly from a lack of transparency that I’ll address later.

Firstly, the projects category is closed, topics that people still use are getting archived, and the response people have gotten when complaining about it is “sorry we’re favoring speed over care when doing this". But you still have time to debate whether users whose last posts range from one to several months ago should be retroactively banned. You say your hand was forced, but the idea that this was urgent is laughable and shows extremely bad prioritization at a time when there are many more important things that need to be addressed that are actually affecting users.

Secondly, doing this before actually announcing what the changes in how rules are going to be enforced actually are was dumb. I’m sure those discussions are what prompted these bans (and I very much hope it happened in that order and not “we want to ban these users and there needs to be a rule change to make that consistent"), but deciding on this and then enforcing it without giving any indication is part of a frustrating pattern of lack of transparency from site staff. This has happened plenty of times before, where you just do things without any warning or explanation and only tell the site as a whole what’s going on when people start complaining. You need to make people aware of these kinds of changes BEFORE you start rolling them out, and you need to do it EVERY time, otherwise nobody has any sort of reliability from this site because sweeping changes can just happen overnight without warning. We aren’t privy to any of your internal discussions, and that needs to be considered every time those lead to changes to the site, not just some of the time.

The bans should have come alongside the rule change announcement, where you could have included the explanation that these were unique cases that you felt were necessary. The time between the decision to ban them and that announcement should have been “insta ban the minute they cause another problem” territory so that it doesn’t look like you’re just banning people out of nowhere. Especially since, again, these were relatively inactive users that didn’t need immediate action taken against them.

Thirdly, the whole “oh you can’t say their names to respect their privacy" is both overkill in its intent and a failure in its implementation. This isn’t a jail sentence, it’s getting banned from a forum, no one’s life is getting ruined by that. It’s also pretty easy to find out who got banned anyway, especially since people are still talking about it, just dancing around actual names while still referring to their posts. Plus the fact that one of them literally made an announcement that they got banned (which is a circumstance that I asked about on this very thread but my question has either been ignored or forgotten). Just do what normal forums do and say “yes these users were banned, yes the reasons are legitimate, no you’re not allowed to argue about whether the bans were deserved or talk shit about them here.” Keeps the forums clean while actually letting people know what’s happening instead of everyone having to creep around an unofficial rule that doesn’t even achieve what it’s supposed to do.

Side note, the fact that none of them got an e-mail for pretty much the one important thing to get an e-mail from a forum about makes me worried what’s going on with the backend of the site.

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Genuinely thank for you for saying this. I’ve felt a little crazy over the past few days and the Customer Support responses from Grot were not helping. You’ve always been a voice of reason here and a great example of the kind of developer this community thrives on.

I do hope Grot and the new moderation teams can look at this and what others have been saying (myself included) and take it all to heart. The majority of active users here want the site to get better and for the communication especially to improve, prioritizing speed over your users is not how you foster community.

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I’m going to admit I typed out several paragraphs and only at the end did I stop and paused.

I don’t say this often. That’s not a brag, I really don’t. I’m just disappointed in the lack of transparency for some dramatic changes, archiving posts (instead of moving to Project Ideas & Discussion, I would argue) and the banning of a long-time member whom I cannot substantiate the claims of multiple instances for rules breaking, silence for 4 months, and then being banned without warning or thought to such a delayed judgment.

It makes me feel… a lot of things. Unsure, is one of them. And seeing the funding immediately starting to dip from patreon is concerning, too. The timing feels too coincidental.

Maybe I’m overthinking. @Chubberdy made some great points.

I think we need a pause, and something to show the faith you asked from us was still earned. Because these sudden sharp turns don’t feel like it.

Please start doing better. You’ve lost some people who won’t bother to talk about it. A couple who did, because they cared enough to say something. Some are hanging on here by a thread, whether they’ve spoken up or not.

Help us out. We want to believe in this site and community.

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Why not hand out shorter bans sooner instead of going for perma bans right away? This is all so sudden and the lack of clarity and censorship is so frustrating. Would you want to be treated like this yourself if you werent the one in power? Feels so tyrannical and unfair. Also Grim sends his regards.

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At the end of the day, one of two things is true - either you trust the site leadership, or you don’t. Everything else hinges on that determination.

Grot is unlikely to reverse the bans or cede ownership/control of the site. If you don’t trust him, this becomes a serious point of conflict for you as long as you’re here. And honestly, even if he did reverse the bans, you still probably wouldn’t trust him anymore, and I also doubt the banned users would come back for the same reason.

So.

If you’re willing to take the mod team at their word, that the bans were deserved and legit, and you accept that there’s a method to the “madness” of moving a lot of threads to Archive for some period of time, then you’re good. If not… :person_shrugging:

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For what it’s worth, when I encouraged you last year to be transparent and open with the forum about what was going on? This “seat of pants” description of whatever it is you are doing is kind of not what I meant.

The people who are, at this point, paying for the site’s operations (though that is, predictably, declining based on current mood) need to see that the people in charge are making decisions based around reasonable judgment. You should explain your judgment. More importantly, however, it should be reasonable.

You said you’re favoring speed over accuracy. You said you’re making decisions based on prior actions, not current behaviors. These are not necessarily reasonable in the moment without more explanation, which has not been provided.

When you were paying for everything out of pocket, you had the luxury of a “my way or the highway” approach. Now you need community buy-in before drastic action, which both of these events almost definitionally are. Please, address these things in advance in the future. Get community members on your side. Let people express concerns in advance, so you can shift your approach to address those concerns and at least seem like you are trying to hold yourself accountable to them.

You can’t undo what you’ve done - I sincerely doubt the people who’ve been banned want to come back, and unwinding the archiving at this point will be more chaos than benefit. But announcements should be made to the community about these things moving forwards BEFORE they happen. You will get more support when people feel included in some way, instead of feeling like they are being forced to react to whatever is going on behind the scenes. It also reduces the assigning of motivations, which as you can tell is often negative, and that invariably crops up when you don’t explain the thing in advance.

No one but you and Krod fully know what is going on right now. That’s bad when the site is crowd-funded, because people are going to vote with their dollars. You may not have a literal obligation to explain yourself, but it’s going to impact donations when you take action without the community’s input from now on. If you’d asked, I think a lot of people would have said “take the time you need to get this right” versus “do the quick and dirty thing” - and either way, people would have felt better about having the opportunity to be consulted about something they’re paying for.

I sincerely hope this sort of out-of-the-blue action never happens again.

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Hello, I am HeftyTotem and as far as I know as of typing this post, the newest moderator to join the WGF moderation team. Some of you might know me previously from some of the games I’ve helped work on as an artist, or other areas of the internet like PNG tubers.

There’s many reasons that lead to me offering to assist the site as a moderator. The main one was that I owe quite a lot to this site for what it’s given me in life. I’ve made friendships that I cherish very much to this day because of this place being the bridge allowing me to connect to them. I’ve also always looked forward to the Game Jams because of the creativity that people have in this niche interest of the net. For a multitude of reasons in my life I’ve never been able to properly give back over the years and it’s only been until recently that my situation has changed and opened up to me being able to take action in a constructive way. I reached out during the fundraising drive to offer my assistance as a moderator and as can be seen by this post, I’ve been accepted as one.

I say all that to be transparent and show where I’m coming from. I’m still learning ‘how stuff is done on the site’ as I have been invited into the moderation team and until I get more established I see myself as ‘a guest in another’s house’, so to speak. With that said, a main personal goal of mine is to try and act as a means of bridging the gaps in communication that the staff and userbase are suffering from. To convey feedback to the staff, to be able to allow the community’s desires be acted upon, to be able to translate the staff’s actions and reasons back to the community in as transparent a fashion as I can make it, and things like that.

I cannot promise to be able to do everything, as I’m just one guy, but I’m here to try and help in what ways that I am able to. I have acted as a mediator in so many things in my life and can see it is needed here. I’m trying to offer that. I’ve been more or less an ‘internet hermit’ my whole time here, so I don’t actually have any ties to most anyone in the community. I’m about as neutral a party as one can get in a situation like this. I’ve had the perspective of an artist, a game dev, a moderator, and a lot more, and believe my experiences as such has given me the best chance of being able to be trusted by both sides and allow my position to give weight and understanding to whatever message needs to be ferried regardless of who it’s for.

I’ll do what I can for you guys but I ask that you give me a bit of time so I can get ‘up to speed’ on everything as I have kinda been dumped into a bit of a war zone while it’s in the process of moving. That said, please do not be afraid to reach out to me with things. I want to help this be a place that the Community as a whole wants, so let me know what that is and I’ll see what I can do to make it happen. I fully expect to be held accountable for my actions and words and you can quote me on that.

(And just to cover my ass because there’s always that one guy like that, this is not a free pass to get me to do blatantly immoral stuff for you. I’m hopeful and trusting, not naive.)

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