Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-24573226-20171007211457/@comment-4403232-20171012041333

So, while I didn't originally plan on commenting here due to not wanting to cause disruption (which unfortunately seems to have been happening frequently already in this thread), there is a few things on Hazel's vote that I'd like to comment on, due to the conversations involved taking place on Skype IMs and groups that people don't have the ability to see, unlike actions taken on the wiki itself.

"He had informed them of his intention to nominate them as soon as they proved to him that they were ready. This situation between the two of them was not known to the rest of the admins. Even as Grif continued telling me this tale, it was clear that he had kept dangling the position of bureaucrat as a carrot to this other admin while continually judging their performance as a staff member, though Grif lacked the self-perception to realize this."

With the user in question, I did NOT "keep dangling the position", the user was aware that I did plan on eventually writing a nomination for the position, however it did not ultimately pan out. As for this situation not being known to other administrators, it never came up because I never completed or posted the nomination. I offered feedback as to my thoughts on how they performed their role, yes, however I also provide that feedback to any other staff member that requests it. This user was not given any unfair or special treatment.

"Nedz sought me out a day or two later. He wanted to confirm that I had told Grif I was ready to become the next admin"

In regards to this, Nedz had independently and coincidentally contacted me later that day stating "I'm also thinking about nominating Hazel as an Admin when V4 ends, she has done a very great job and has some great potential." To this, I simply replied that I "had a lengthy talk with her" and that Hazel did indeed have potential. I'm not entirely sure why Nedz came to his conclusion that I had asked her if she was ready, but I did not state that Hazel was "ready", nor did I disclose a single thing about my conversation with her to him. In fact, today is the first time I've found out that Nedz and Hazel had said conversation, this is news to me. During my conversation with Hazel, I did express that she had great potential and thanked her for going above and beyond her duty as rollback when it came to improving the wiki, however I did not make any promises to Hazel, Nedz, or any other user that she would be "next".

"In other cases, when consensus was actually reached, Grif would backtrack the conversation into not actually having agreement so therefore we would do nothing."

On many occasions, due to time zones and work hours, I would enter a conversation after several staff members had already discussed it, but prior to anything occurring from it. If I had thoughts on the matter that differed from those mentioned at the time, then I would raise them. The hours I'm online and active tend to not coincide with a lot of the other staff members (for a while, I was watching the chat's "night shift" by myself as the sole staff member present, as we attempted to find moderators to cover that position). Personally, I do not believe a "consensus" can be reached when only a portion of the staff was witness to a conversation, and if said conversation has yet to be acted upon, then further input by those who have yet to see it should be encouraged. However, just because I by myself was in opposition to something, it never meant that the plan could not continue, the decisions were reached by a majority, not by whoever had the highest staff rank. Differences in opinion are why we have a diverse staff group, if we all agreed 100 percent of the time, we'd never take other viewpoints into consideration.

"He agreed to its removal when he saw “I was bothered by it”, but when he realized that as a rollback I couldn’t remove comments myself, and therefore hadn’t been given the rights to make the call to be bothered by a comment, he said it was going to stay. Even though we didn’t know each other at that time, he went so far as to insinuate that I was trying to ask for a personal favor of him to remove the comment and he wouldn’t “do it for me any more than he’d ban a person from chat for a random user”. I was completely flummoxed by this response to pointing out an inappropriate comment. I recall now that this situation had left me so upset at the notion that even keeping the wiki clean would require battles in which validity depended on your ranking in staff that I strongly considered quitting."

This situation unfortunately, I believe Hazel interpreted my statements different from how I meant them. I had said that at the time, I personally didn't think the comment NEEDED to be removed, but that I had no objections to if a forum mod or another administrator removed it (some staff members are more strict than others as to what's acceptable when it comes to borderline things). After talking with other Forum Mods during that day, I briefly thought that Hazel was a Forum Mod instead of a Rollback and mistakingly gave them the go-ahead to proceed as they saw fit. I then apologized to Hazel about the situation, but stated that because I found that the comment didn't NEED to be removed, acting on her request instead of going by my own judgement would be a violation and abuse of rights. However, I also stated that if there were past situations of similar comments being removed, then I would indeed remove it, since maintaining consistency in how we run the wiki is important and would change my judgement. Hazel then found examples of similar situations, at which point I acknowledged that my stance was more lenient compared to others' and then removed the comment. During this scenario, I also encouraged her to seek a second opinion if any other administrator of forum moderator was present.

"An example would be toward the end of Volume 4, months into our established rhythm of consult-and-do, the absent Grif decided he didn’t like one of our decisions on a profile pic and came into the group chat to make us change it, disregarding that it had been one of many group votes."

This situation, unfortunately, I do not remember very well, nor can I find it in the large group message history. To the best of my knowledge, I came onto the wiki after work and saw that an image that was decided upon and uploaded was of poor quality and did not meet the high standards of our wiki, at which point I logged on to Skype (I believe this was before we started using Discord) and raised my concerns that the image was of quality below our expectations and usual standards. However, I may be wrong on this particular point.

As a comment regarding my overall activity on episode releases (to which the quotes about me feeling like a piece of shit and useless came from), sponsor releases used to take place on Saturdays, days where I would not come home from work until late at night due to Saturdays being a weekly mess at my work, causing me to finally arrive home completely exhausted after a 12+ hour shift with most of the work already completed. I am hoping with the Thursday sponsor release and 3-day sponsor window, I'll be able to contribue much more. In addition, there have been manager switch-ups at my workplace which has made my workplace less toxic than it used to be, leaving me in less of a downtrodden mood than I was in my January conversation with Hazel. Does my work situation excuse my lack of activity? Of course not. However it does provide context into my comments and why I expressed them.

I do not intend to portray Hazel as being "wrong". Prior to posting her vote, I gave her my blessing to make an honest vote mentioning things from a conversation we had previously agreed to as confidential between the two of us regarding how I was feeling with my life at the time and a brief opinionated history of the wiki (where the whole bureaucrat carrot thing took place). I do entirely believe that Hazel has posted her take on the situation honestly, however in a situation like this, I feel that both sides should be heard from. The point of my post is NOT to discredit Hazel's in any form, simply to provide my perspective and feeling towards the scenarios mentioned so that users may feel more confident in a decision for or against this nomination, as two staff members have posted that they were not fully aware of the scenarios involved. Having heard from both sides should hopefully make more users comfortable in posting their opinions.