Closing this once and for all (Part 1)

[Cypherics]

Welcome. For those unaware, recently it has come to the limelight of how the moderation has been on DiamondFire. Whether you are a regular or someone who has been around for a long while, it's no secret that the moderation can be a bit quirky at times. This is by no means a hostile attack or any form of hatred towards any staff member in particular, this is just how I feel and seeing as we all have the right to freedom of speech, I do not think of this as anything other than criticism or rather insight as to how I feel about this whole situation. As someone who has been banned and treated to a fair share of punishments, some of which I still to this day am in denial of being not guilty for having caused said actions, I still did the time and tried to make amends. I want to assure you this is not a publicity stunt or anything. I am not here for sympathy, grieve, or whatever you want to call it. I am here to talk on the matter. I will be taking a deep dive and referring to a few threads. Additionally, there will be more threads to come as this is going to be massive, I plan to make this about 3-5 posts long so this is 1 of 3 or 5. Furthermore private conversations that were handled one-on-one, those will be kept confidential. Lastly, I will be labelling each section accordingly to make it more presentable. With that said, let's start.

SuperBaconBro makes his case known.​

On November 14th, 2022, SuperBaconBro made from what I can see an attempt to make amends with what he had done. Posting on the forums with the thread titled "Regarding my recent controversy..." While it is rather bland and not well described, there is some things we can dissect from this and utilize for this discussion. Bacon begins with saying that

It was wrong for me to explode out in outrage over the smallest inconvenience, with regard to identity politics, and with regard to potentially, if not flat-out, transphobic remarks.

For starters, we already got our first look at how things took a toll for the worse. Bacon goes on to say that

I also do want to talk about harassment targeted at me specifically, whether or not people intentionally try to stoke outrage from me or ask me my opinions on specific persons, along with privately DMing me results from the 2022 Midterm Elections and clowning on me just for my political beliefs

Here we get to see that people not only took matters into their own hands, they also went as far as to hatefully message him privately, about what he had beliefs in. Bacon then closes it off by saying

The real issue is that I took them to extreme measures when I shouldn't have. You may still be up in arms about this, and I still would respect your right to be as such (this is a forum after all), but I offer this simple admission of guilt to lower the temperature of discourse.

TechStreets Story.​

On November 20th, 2022, 6 days after Bacon made his post, TechStreet would take to the forums posting about his experience as a server/staff member, which can be found here. In the first few paragraphs, He talks about his time as A member, before diving into how his journey to being a staff member became. The important thing to note here is that it gives us people who are normal regular members of the server, Some insight as to how the experience of being staff went for this person in particular. TechStreet makes it known by stating for a starter

October 2021 I decided that I would start my next big adventure, I applied with my Creative Dev Plots project and in November I was accepted, I was over the moon to finally be part of DiamondFire staff team

While not that important, the next part is as he then says

In my time as Support I helped over 100 unique players with a total of 177 separate support sessions totalling over 1d 5h in time.

The toxicity For tech.​

Now you might be asking yourself how this links into what we are talking about here, or maybe you're puzzled as to why I referenced this post specifically. The way I see it, this last part about their time as Support tells us viewers, the dedication and commitment he made to play the part. He would than go on to say that

During August of 2022 I applied for the JrMod position and got accepted 2 months later.

However, things were about to get dark from here as he then proceeds to say

I was an extremely active JrMod making sure the rules were enforced, however some players decided they have other ideas in mind

The first encounters of our toxicity discovery would come into the light as TechStreet says

A day after my promotion all the harassment started, all the stress of this harassment undoubtably made me make the mistake I did, and that mistake is why I got demoted from the JrMod role.

While keeping it short and simple, it's a bit unclear as to what he exactly did, but given his next statement it helps give us some sort of fragment to work with. TechStreet then wraps up the post and says

I believe that there is some level of bias in the staff team, even from the staff managers. I want to make it clear, I loved this server but the toxic community is just way too much to handle, I will pop in once in a while to say hello but for the most part this is my goodbye!

From there the rest is a blank.

Sputt time corrupts the server.​

This is the first instance of the toxicity flying within the server and how things took a toll for me personally. The post in particular I'm inferring to comes from the one posted on January 30th of 2023. It was titled "Sputt Time has become something it shouldn't" I began the post by setting the record straight saying;

This post is by no means; an attack towards anyone, a hatred to the plot, and or any form of rule breaking in regards to that

I then proceed to describe a brief, but rather long explanation of what the plot has to offer, before actually diving into the main focal point. When I do dive to the main focal point saying;

It seems to be that whenever a player is killed on the plot, toxicity starts to spread very slightly like a virus. This could vary from a simple joking matter, to a threat or worse a death threat which has happened before.

From here I basically wrap it up by sharing a brief quick conversation I had when I encountered Sputt. I say;

I have spoke to Sputt regarding this and I remember that the exact day before Mr_Dumpling made the announcement that he was retiring, "I would much rather play a plot that isn't owned by a former staff member, let alone infested with toxicity left right and center." To which Sputt said and he specifically said "It's my fault" I followed that up by saying "yet you don't seem to give a damn"

The aftermath of the post.​

After the post was made, it took a while to gain some traction, but once it did I had built quite the heat for myself. It wasn't long until Sputt replied back and said

Toxicity is inevitable in a game with high stakes pvp, people getting angry and going out for revenge also just so happens to get people to stay ingame for a long time, too; it's part of the design.

Later on, Refrizor a retired administrator, would step-in sharing his thoughts on the matter, saying that

It's unfortunate that the plot became a toxicity pool, I can see where you are coming from. Your concerns and frustrations are valid - no one wants that in the community.

Making sure that everyone was aware what he was getting at before diving deeper saying

It seems your focus is on the plot and what Sputt did or didn't do, not the community. I understand it's the plot is causing the frustration. But the administration and moderation teams can't prevent toxicity either, we have started crusades to try to combat toxicity, and there's only so much DF's team can do, I'm sure in the future things will be figured out to deal with it more effectively... whether it be a change in moderation guidelines, community guidelines, programs, who knows, but even we couldn't prevent it. Sputt wasn't a moderator as far as I'm aware, there's not much he could have done at all. The only thing he could have done was alter the plot but that wouldn't solve toxicity cuz toxicity is already around the community, not the plot. And yes the plot may bring out some of the worst, which were the frustrations you were getting at, but it will be channeled into something else eventually.

 

[Francidium]

What point are you even trying to get at here? I would like to point some things out.
- superbaconbro has been unbanned for awhile now, and he also admitted his fault.
- iirc techstreet was known for being a very controversial staff member who didn't pass his trial for a reason, because he was an iffy moderator. they hired him as a junior mod, on trial, as they do with other mods, and he didn't get hired as a full moderator because he wasn't a good junior moderator. the entire point of jrmod is that it's a trial to see if you'll be accepted as mod or not.
- sputt is a former staff member, he has no obligation to continue his duties as one, especially when a plot such as sputt time is thriving, plus toxicity just can't be prevented in alot of cases, that's why the moderation team exists. and yes, the moderators do ban people who are toxic on games such as sputt time.

but yeah reading this feels like having a stroke because i can't tell what point you're even trying to make with this. you didn't point out anything that really makes the point of df moderation being quirky

also afaik df hiring can't be too biased because the admins who actually are responsible for hiring barely interact with the community lmao (unless i'm understanding this wrong) and if you mean level of bias as in like, not banning certain players or just nepotism in general yeah, that's around but tbf it's not entirely avoidable.

 

[Cypherics]

What point are you even trying to get at here? I would like to point some things out.
- superbaconbro has been unbanned for awhile now, and he also admitted his fault.
- iirc techstreet was known for being a very controversial staff member who didn't pass his trial for a reason, because he was an iffy moderator. they hired him as a junior mod, on trial, as they do with other mods, and he didn't get hired as a full moderator because he wasn't a good junior moderator. the entire point of jrmod is that it's a trial to see if you'll be accepted as mod or not.
- sputt is a former staff member, he has no obligation to continue his duties as one, especially when a plot such as sputt time is thriving, plus toxicity just can't be prevented in alot of cases, that's why the moderation team exists. and yes, the moderators do ban people who are toxic on games such as sputt time.

but yeah reading this feels like having a stroke because i can't tell what point you're even trying to make with this. you didn't point out anything that really makes the point of df moderation being quirky

also afaik df hiring can't be too biased because the admins who actually are responsible for hiring barely interact with the community lmao (unless i'm understanding this wrong) and if you mean level of bias as in like, not banning certain players or just nepotism in general yeah, that's around but tbf it's not entirely avoidable.

like isaid this is 1 of many posts... i split it into multiple

 

[ARMcPro]

I ain't readin' all that

 

[CoderElias]

I ain't readin' all that

You really should, it's actually interesting. Not that i'm on someones side though, it's just informative.

 

[Cypherics]

You really should, it's actually interesting. Not that i'm on someones side though, it's just informative.

Thank you! It took a lot of effort to put into this, and as cliche as that sounds, it's true.