FA admin tries to secretly force people off forum, on being found out:"FUCK YOU"

[a pigeon]

A special user group was recently created on the FA forums called "miserable users" and it effectively made the forums unusable for the people in it. It was spotted because it was accidentaly appearing on the staff page after the wrong check box was ticked. Two people who voiced legitimate and considered criticisms of genuine issues with FA were put into this group and FA main-site/forums administrator, Carenath, was responsible for making the group and putting them in. His response has, quite literally, been: FUCK YOU and he has not so much as apologized at the time of posting.

As far as can be told, he went behind the back of the rest of the FA staff in doing this.

This has mostly unfolded in a FA forums thread and in the course of it, one of the people who been put in miserable users was banned for breaking a non-existent rule, and then unbanned. The thread was also locked twice (presumably by Carenath) and then unlocked by another admin. Dragoneer viewed the thread at least twice but did not respond to it.

OP:

If you want to shut people up for criticizing FA, ban them and come clean that you banned them. Don't dump them (Rossyfox and Accountability) into a usergroup that blocks access to the forum and prevents them from posting/viewing threads: http://forums.furaffinity.net/showgroups.php Your groups are literally admins, super moderators, moderators, and gagged dissenters. That's ridiculous.

You essentially banned them but you don't want their names to be in red and crossed out so it's far less obvious you just wanted to shut them up- their old posts that stop on the 23rd and 24th still remain but there is absolutely no indication of the fact that they've been "disappeared."

This is what drives the pervasive distrust on this site. Maybe if this nonsense wasn't pulled all the time you wouldn't have such an adversarial reaction to what you think is "every little thing." Kinda like how there hasn't been much talk about what's going on with the site. A few journals and LJ post from Dragoneer a week or so after the december attacks, a (now also disappeared) post about the 6-year old FA's future, and a whole hell of a lot of distraction/funny video journals from the main admin. The only discussion left is basically that of how to make the old/current site look new.

Hell, if you even admitted that you were trying to hush up two problematic (read: critical) users without anyone noticing, that would help, let alone apologizing. Moves like that might help improve the negative perception of FA staff when it comes to people who have an issue with how things run here. However, it will be swept under the rug and denied, that much can be counted on. And that's the problem.

By the way, you've been looking for an excuse to get rid of me from these forums. So here it is, a coward's excuse. Unless of course you want to be even more of a sorry milquetoast bunch and put me in the same limpwristed killfile as Rossy and Accountability. Be my guest.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users
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There was no legitimate reason for using this, except to make the forums unusable for the people in the group:

Oh wow. I've seen another forum with that vB plugin.

That's just... wow.

For those that don't know what it is: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93258

When classed as miserable, a member suffers ;

1. Slow response (time delay) on every page (20 to 60 seconds default).
2. A chance they will get the "server busy" message (50% by default).
3. A chance that no search facilities will be available (75% by default).
4. A chance they will get redirected to another preset page (25% & homepage by default).
5. A chance they will simply get a blank page (25% by default).
6. Post flood limit increased by a defined factor (10 times by default).
7. If they get past all this okay, then they will be served up their proper page.

Classy

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2342734&viewfull=1#post2342734
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Reactions from other FA staff indicates none of them seemed to be aware:

[...] Honestly I really don't know much about this, other than it's bullshit and that it was tested on here. I'm learning about this as you guys are.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2342936&viewfull=1#post2342936

I too am curious and was not aware this happened. =/

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2343022&viewfull=1#post2343022

demand an explanation as much as anyone else. Half an hour after the group was removed and I still have no idea while it happened. And neither do Ratte or Summercat, site admins.

As much as we've talked about 'communicating' as forum staff, someone just went over everyone's heads here, and considering that it was an admin-level feature/add on, it was probably senior staff.

Moderator IRC chat is dead. Nothing posted about it anywhere else. I'm waiting, and the longer I wait, the less I'm willing to stick around for an explanation.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2342987&viewfull=1#post2342987

I want an explanation.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2342932&viewfull=1#post2342932
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An attempt at explanation came from admin Summercat:

Right now, it's a "We dun goofed". The plug-in in question was being tested to see if it was compatible with the forum software setup we have. It was never decided to implement it fully as an available feature.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2342934&viewfull=1#post2342934

As for why those two, they were chosen as accounts from a problomatic thread as part of a test case. In my (personal) opinion, both accounts are close to being removed for other reasons and violations.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2342979&viewfull=1#post2342979

[in response to being asked who it was] Not saying. That's not really something I feel comfortable sharing, so I'm passing the buck to the staff member in question, and Dragoneer. Once they say something...

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2343017&viewfull=1#post2343017

On IRC, he again refused to say who it was:

<KesPillowgirl> Summercat: it's been three hours. whoever's done this isn't interested in responsibility
<Summercat>     I'm not naming names because I don't feel I should be naming names at this point.
[...]
<Bobsergal>     Yeah but you know who did it now
<Bobsergal>     but you're not saying
<Summercat>     Yup.

http://pastebin.com/YZfcGbwt
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Accountability, having been removed from the miserable users group then made this post:

You seem to forget that these are the same users that donated $16,000+ so FA could buy two new, very powerful servers two years ago. FA didn't want that much. They were planning on getting $2,000. But the users stepped up and donated 7x what was expected. You seem to forget these are the same users that (when donations are working) happily donate money every month so FA can stay online, in a server cabinet twice as large as they actually need or use.

As long as FA runs on donations, FA has every obligation to please the users. And it shouldn't be because they have to, they should want to.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2343187&viewfull=1#post2343187

This resulted in them being immediately banned.
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Eventually Carenath skulked out of hiding:

The short-and-sweet is that, I installed it to test on the live forum as another level of punishment to apply to particular users where a straight-out ban would be taken far worse in a particular situation. I choose those two users in particular as they were going to be banned anyway for other reasons and wanted to see if they could be subtly persuaded to leave as a ban in that situation might incite further drama and make things worse.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2343323&viewfull=1#post2343323

Naturally, people called on him, in the thread, to resign and this was his response, on twitter:



http://twitter.com/carenathziroth/status/32335924197064704
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Ratte said in the thread (relying what she'd been told) that the reason that Accountability had been banned was because they'd been using a proxy. It was pointed out that there is no such rule against this and she unbanned him. Summercat then explained himself:

RE the Accountability account:

Group held accounts are not welcome on FA's forums. However, in a moment of epic fail that I will be beating myself up for a while, I jumped the gun and acted on the circumstantial evidence showing Accountability to be a multi-user account. Due to the usage of a proxy system, we are unable to verify that the Accountability account is actually multi-user, again, aside from said circumstantial evidence (personality shifts between posts and topics, different writing styles).

A future rule about using proxies on FAF is being considered, but until that point, there is nothing in the rules about using proxies - and when such a rule gets implimented, I'm going to heavily suggest that there be a grace period to allow for those who refuse to access FAF without a proxy service to list off goodbyes.

In addition, I'm suggesting (and implementing for myself as of right now) a new policy on banning on the forums, that requires another admin to agree/verify that the ban is needed. I fucked up, the above is how I fucked up - and this is how I'm going to try to make certain I don't fuck up like that again.

(PS: To those that care, feel free to add this as an example of me being a bad mod.)

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2343414&viewfull=1#post2343414

In response to people suggesting that it was simply an excuse to try and shut accountability up:

Specifically, we are being hampered in our ability to see if Accountability is, indeed, a group account, because the account uses a proxy system. Further, if a banned user is attempting to evade a ban by using a proxy service, we would also have a hard time proving that it is indeed the same user.

It is less that we're doing this to target a specific user, so much as the case brought attention to a whole category of potential situations.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90871-Miserable-Users?p=2343490&viewfull=1#post2343490

Note that he tries to speak for the staff "we" in the latter post above, and says a rule is being considered but pre-empts it in the first one with "when". AFAICS he didn't respond to people pointing out it was paranoid rubbish.
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At this point the thread was locked and some posts in it were apparently deleted. An archive of the thread is here:

http://clanspum.net/~pi/fa_2011/

A thread started to try and continue discussion was locked:

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90903-Miserable-Users-redux
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On /furi/ someone had this response to Carenath:

http://i54.tinypic.com/o6w3v7.png

This is what Carenath says on his FA main-site profile:

I value Honour, Honesty and Loyalty.

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/carenathziroth

He owns the FA forums server.

[Dima]

Jesus christ, I read that thread and all I have to pull out of it is Summercat is a complete dumb.

I don't need to know jack shit about servers or proxies or whatever to know what the word dynamic means in conjunction with ip addresses.

Keep trying to fit that square block in the circle hole, summercat, you'll get it in there some day.

[loki]

I find it amusing that they:

1.) Are afraid of banning people outright because they might called on it being idiotic. Instead they create a passive-aggressive way to deal with 'problem people' - and avoid confrontation.
2.) Follow-up their response to being caught red-handed with lies, excuses, and straight up not-giving-a-shit responses.

I predict FA will crumble and its user base die away - it's only a matter of time.

[Heimdal]

I find it amusing that they:

1.) Are afraid of banning people outright because they might called on it being idiotic. Instead they create a passive-aggressive way to deal with 'problem people' - and avoid confrontation.
2.) Follow-up their response to being caught red-handed with lies, excuses, and straight up not-giving-a-shit responses.

I predict FA will crumble and its user base die away - it's only a matter of time.

FA admins are so use to ass-pats and popularity-based decision-making that they're treating their user base like a bunch of disposable groupies. A handful of users doesn't matter to them, and there's always more if they have a problem.

They will learn the hard way whether FA can exist without a user base.

[Freehaven]

Carenath deleted the "FUCK YOU" tweet and replaced it with this:

Apologies to everyone hurt by my recent actions. I lost my temper in dealing with frustrating issues, taking a break from all this.

Dragoneer, unsurprisingly, has yet to issue any sort of statement about this. He did say, via a Twitter PM to me, that he did think Carenath's actions were wrong.

[Pi]

He did say, via a Twitter PM to me, that he did think Carenath's actions were wrong.

And that he's working on it but he's only human, not perfect, and didn't know?

Why the fuck is he privately updating some random asshole instead of making a public statement? Is he some kind of cowardly manchild?

[Freehaven]

Why the fuck is he privately updating some random asshole instead of making a public statement?

He got pissed at me for tweeting the link to this thread and PM'd me about it.

Your question is still valid, though.

According to a couple of posters on my board, however, he may have done something about Carenath - he seems to no longer be an admin on either the FA Forums or on FA itself (if he was one on the main site).

[AshleyAshes]

According to a couple of posters on my board, however, he may have done something about Carenath - he seems to no longer be an admin on either the FA Forums or on FA itself (if he was one on the main site).

He answered a trouble ticket of mine a year ago.  So at least a year ago he was an admin who could deal with TTs.

But your posts seem to have made a mistake.  He's still an FA admin now.

[a pigeon]

Carenath is still an administrator on the FA mainsite, but he is no longer an administrator on the Fa forums. However:

[...] Caraneth hosts the forums themselves. Caraneth at any given point could just as well ban or remove a person with little effort and with absolutely no consultation. This effort would certainly be no more difficult than installing a gag-order plug-in on a message board. Caraneth has shown the capacity to do that. However, Caraneth's best effort to convince people that he wouldn't dream of doing any of these things was to put forth "FUCK YOU" in all caps on his twitter account to the people who weren't especially happy with his performance.

As far as I can tell, nothing has changed except for the fact I've been further patronized and a person who already has proven a certain lack of restraint is now angrier. Why was Caraneth demoted except to try and fool people into a bullshit sense of security? What has effectively changed? Does Caraneth even recognize that he fucked up?

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90930-Is-there-going-to-be-some-sort-of-follow-up-with-our-friends-from-yesterday/page4

The response to that from a member of staff:

So...many..assumptions...in ..this...post.

I'm sorry but I'm going to do the asshole-mod thing where I give you an inconclusive answer, mostly because it's not my place to to answer all these questions. It's Carenath's. If he feels like telling the forum then he will. In the mean time please don't jump to conclusions.

Yes, I know how douchey that sounded, but I honestly have a moral obligation to be this vague. :/

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90930-Is-there-going-to-be-some-sort-of-follow-up-with-our-friends-from-yesterday?p=2345449&viewfull=1#post2345449

I'm kind of baffled by the idea of a "moral obligation" to be vague and opaque about the workings of FA and its staff.

In response to the statement that its Carenath's place to answer questions about this matter:

And if he doesn't? Then what? Took him hours to admit to doing it in the first place, and even then it was a "I did nothing wrong I'm not sorry if you were offended" type deal. And then of course the "FUCK YOU" on twitter.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90930-Is-there-going-to-be-some-sort-of-follow-up-with-our-friends-from-yesterday?p=2345449&viewfull=1#post2345449

In this instance I would be violating someone's privacy . It would be kind of like telling the entire forum that someone received an infraction whenever one was given.

And for the record I was going to leave the assumption jumping post alone but I didn't want to give you no information. You guys deserve an explanation but I can't be the one to give it to you. :/

And that's the trouble here. Often times we do deserve an explanation or even just to find out what's going on without resorting to friend of a friend, leaks and closed LJ drama communities.

Nobody ever speaks up. The entire staff is uncoordinated and at any given moment some are stonewalling while the others are worried about stepping on toes. What if one staff member does something wrong, let's give a generic example of using administrative access to the site to stalk an ex, but doesn't want to say they did it? Is the right thing for the rest of the staff to say, "Oh, well, they don't want to come forward, so if we did, it would be an invasion of their privacy?" Seems like there's little recourse when a staff member acts in bad faith and doesn't want to own up to it. Also making him a senior member is moot: he still has direct, local access to the server. That's a big reason why this is just a matter of PR and keeping it quiet than actually fixing a problem, his "not resigning, FUCK YOU" attitude only underlining that fact.

I agree completely but I'm not going to budge on this. I'll just say is that you're making another huge assumption.

At this point a member of staff did say something:

Carenath made the decision to step down. He carried out his own demotion. Even though the forum servers are in his possession, the general state of the forums will remain unchanged and he will continue to look after the servers. Regardless of what anyone may think, he does regret what he did and I believe he learned a lesson. Stress was probably a factor - although I know that's no excuse. I don't know if he himself will make an announcement tomorrow, the next day, or never.

So that's the state of things. Personal opinion time: in a year or so, he might want to come back and moderate and I will personally be okay with it. He's been in IRC channels with me over n years and he always struck me as a good guy throughout our conversations. Pulling the 'isolated incident' card always seemed scummy to me but I'm going to do it in this instance.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90930-Is-there-going-to-be-some-sort-of-follow-up-with-our-friends-from-yesterday?p=2345574&viewfull=1#post2345574

if he stays at the Senior Member level and keeps his head down, that's that. Deal w/it. He's stepped down OF HIS OWN ACCORD
(([10:03] <@Carenath> Yes, I stepped down for a while. I need a break.), not that you'll care) and he came forward of his own accord, so... chill out.
[...]
The forums will continue to be ran as per usual, and I and the rest of the staff have complete faith in that. He slipped up, but as Aden said, this has been an isolated incident, etc. (just go read his post, damn it.)
[...]
I would be rather displeased with a lynching mob as well. But hey, it said he wouldn't quit- he still *stepped down* to appease y'all, in a way.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/90930-Is-there-going-to-be-some-sort-of-follow-up-with-our-friends-from-yesterday?p=2345584&viewfull=1#post2345584

Given that Carenath owns the forums server, will continue to host the forums and look after the server and remains an admin on the main site, I'm uncertain of how noble and self-sacrificing his voluntary stepping down really was, since it doesn't seem to involve actually giving up much. The main thing seems to be that he will keep his head down for a while, but that's only to be expected after a major fuck up.

Also, I asked in that thread if the staff code of conduct, promised by Dragoneer in December, had yet materialized, since presumably it would help with things like this and "It is definitely well under development, at the moment there are strict staff guidelines for security".

From the same thread:

[...] the culture of this place is so afraid of stepping on each others' toes that IMing/messaging individual admins will get "not my problem" or "i can't do anything about a ban made by someone else"

[...] your options for private contact are an admin who is: busy, doesn't want to step on anyone's toes, or the issuing admin who more often will not will think it's legitimate and that you should stop whining before it becomes permanent. Ever seen someone come into the IRC? I mean, I've been permanently banned from it by Pinkuh based on a convenient lie, so I don't know what it's been like these past years, but coming in and saying "I'd like to ask about a ban" always caused a negative/intimidating reaction from users and staff when I saw it. Plus Rossyfox was in for a week asking if something was wrong with the forums and if anyone else was having the same problem, and he was ignored, so...

[...] there have been so many public complaints and admonishments from nearly all the staff because users come up with huge paragraphs of possible explanations, because things happen and are never addressed by staff. Whether it's because some don't want to, or some are afraid, or because they want to craft the perfect press release that paints FA in the best possible light and end up taking so long to do so that they just give up and say nothing because 90% of users forget, in the end the result is the same. We don't even have any updates or information on what's going on with the site: just "something will happen in a few months," "we're paying for a new UI," and the popular "we're working on it, trust us." Stuff like Carenath's little stunt do not do much to repair this trust, and it's pretty clear that users are seen as untrustworthy.

If FA stops considering any and all criticism as an attack, that would be a good start. Shitting on bad practices and policies != shitting on FA, unless those bad practices and policies are to be considered part of FA's essence. If that's the case, then we're in trouble.

[AshleyAshes]

Why is Caranath still hosting the servers now anyway?  As I recall, he hosted them from a backup with FA had it's big kaboom in 2008 or so.  It was to give the users somewhere to chat rather than go to another website.  They have FA running and have servers just sitting around and unused.  Why not move the thing back to the data center now?

[Eevee]

The official reason, as I last heard it, is so the forums are still up when the site goes down.

Yes, this would require that their entire rack goes down at once, but it's happened before.

[Conan]

The official reason, as I last heard it, is so the forums are still up when the site goes down.

Yes, this would require that their entire rack goes down at once, but it's happened before.

It should probably be on a remote server that's under FA's direct control, like it used to be at one point. I just want to know why Dragoneer thought handing the keys of the forum to someone else was a "good" idea. Because it isn't.

[Glaice]

Carenath is an idiot for even doing that in the first place.

[Pi]

Carenath is an idiot for even doing that in the first place.

Has he actually explained why he did that in the first place? Did your bullshit detectors go off?

[Freehaven]

Has he actually explained why he did that in the first place?

That would require a moderator to actually take responsibility for their mistakes instead of just hiding and saying "FUCK YOU GO AWAY" until people forget what happened.

[Glaice]

Has he actually explained why he did that in the first place? Did your bullshit detectors go off?

From what I have seen lately, no....tho he was removed as admin on FAF.

[Arche Kruz]

The person who exposed Carenath's "FUCK YOU!" tweet to a more public light ended up being blocked from him on twitter and remains so to this day. I am not buying his apology or his pretenses of regret. The only thing he regrets is being found out, and he did his demotion to save face. He's still demonstrating himself to be the type of person who would shoot the messenger, and then sulk around in the shadows, hiding away from any notions of real accountability. He still shows that, while having no problems abusing any positions of power he has at his disposal for self vindication, he has no ability whatsoever to handle flak then it is predictably thrown at him for his actions.

[ProvincialTwit]

The person who exposed Carenath's "FUCK YOU!" tweet to a more public light ended up being blocked from him on twitter and remains so to this day. I am not buying his apology or his pretenses of regret. The only thing he regrets is being found out, and he did his demotion to save face. He's still demonstrating himself to be the type of person who would shoot the messenger, and then sulk around in the shadows, hiding away from any notions of real accountability. He still shows that, while having no problems abusing any positions of power he has at his disposal for self vindication, he has no ability whatsoever to handle flak then it is predictably thrown at him for his actions.

Sooooo....he's a furry, then?

(zing!)

[Conan]

So Arshes Nei has started a forum thread asking Dragoneer why he hasn't put the trouble ticket policy into effect yet. Of course, he has not responded. This is also the first time I've seen a thread calling out FA not get locked. I guess it's not a good thing to piss off the head admin for the forums!

[Freehaven]

I was passed along this chatlog by Rossyfox, one of the forum users who was placed into the "Miserable Users" group; emphasis is mine:

(3:24:37 AM) rossyphox: I am just unsure as to why I would be on an about to be banned list
(3:25:01 AM) Murasadramon: If you don't know why then, uh... yeah. I don't think my explaining it to you would even begin to drive the point home.
(3:25:46 AM) rossyphox: Well, I can guess why, I'd just like a stated reason
(3:26:19 AM) Murasadramon: Because you're spreading outright misinformation. Sometimes you're right, but sometimes your facts are so fucking wrong it's like you're just repeating shit you hear second hand. Don't bother to fact check.
(3:26:37 AM) rossyphox: You could always correct me if you think I'm wrong.
(3:27:00 AM) Murasadramon: And if it happens again it's going to be an account closure, no questions asked. It's been going on too much. Whenever drama strikes, you seem to jump on a bandwagon of attack FA, join the crowd, rabble rabble rabble... then proceed to message us next day like we're all best of buddies.
(3:27:12 AM) Murasadramon: Excuse me? No. It's not my job to correct you when you get the facts dead fucking wrong.
(3:27:40 AM) rossyphox: Well, if you don't deal with misconceptions, they will continue to exist.
(3:28:28 AM) Murasadramon: If you don't spread false information without asking first I wouldn't have to deal with misconceptions.
(3:29:16 AM) rossyphox: I don't really have any consistent way of asking first.
(3:29:34 AM) Murasadramon: You have my e-mail.
(3:30:35 AM) rossyphox: I'd like to know what I've been saying that is misinformation, so that I can avoid saying it in future.
(3:31:22 AM) Murasadramon: I'd have to go back and read every fucking post you made since the hack. There were shitloads of them, especially on the LJ and lately on the fourms.
(3:32:28 AM) rossyphox: Surely there must be something that sticks out? It'd have to be pretty bad misinformation for you to take this course of action.
(3:32:40 AM) Murasadramon has signed off.