Staff Changes Megathread

[winserv03fan]

My drama instincts kicked in and I saved a backup of the journal. Good call too, it's gone now.

Backup of journal.

[Conan]

Chase has, without any warning, gotten rid of at least one mainsite admin/FA forums admin (QTmelon/Arshes Nei) and a mod from the forums (MLR).

Term also looks to have been removed. Further, all the previous forum admins are now listed as supermoderators, leaving only Dragoneer and Chase in the forum admin position.

I find it fascinating that they did an across-the-board demotion of everyone, including people like Yak. Something more is going on, me thinks.

[lamerfox]

Shitstorm incoming.

(edit: Already been removed, probably by Chase)

[Conan]

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/937022-Regarding-Recent-Changes-to-the-Forum

I invite you to look through that thread, because the second Dragoneer opens his mouth, he falls deeper into the rabbit hole than he's gone before. He clearly has gotten to the point where he is putting friendships first and foremost over the good of the site. No longer even TRYING to put a PR spin on things, he spouts off bizarre statements about Chase, about how he is willing to "forgive" Chase for past events and that things like the attached picture were "mistakes" that he can forget about.

He goes as far as saying that "if" Chase had diddled a dog, it would be a-OK because it wasn't against the law at the time and it wasn't against FA's rules to talk about it. I cannot make this up. It's right here: http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/937022-Regarding-Recent-Changes-to-the-Forum?p=4370953&viewfull=1#post4370953

Not once does he stop to think about how this LOOKS, about how damaging to FA's image it is to have Chase on staff, and instead he just plugs his ears and goes "LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU". It comes off as if his "friendship" with Chase completely revolves around Chase having administrative rights on FA. Some friendship!

And the best part, is this.

What issues that Chase and I have are our own, and we've gotten into spats and disagreements in the past, but if you're going to base the majority of your judgement on leaked logs from an untrustworthy source who selectively shared only snippets of a heated conversation... then be my guest, but the issues between Chase and myself have been long resolved.

He refers, of course, to the chat logs that were leaked here. Funny thing about that leak: Vivisector representatives had it more than four months earlier, and wisely stored a copy of the pastebin page away in the VivCorp Vault. Interestingly enough, it was posted the same day the chat log was made, an interestingly short window for "untrustworthy sources" to doctor a friendly conversation between friends into something much more sinister! This chat log comes from a time Dragoneer frequently used Pastebin, and I strongly believe it is he who originally posted it to begin with.

There is so much to say but I have no idea where to start. This is really just sad all around. FA is starting to come apart at the seams, and it's all happening at the hands of Dragoneer.

Couldn't think of a better ending.

[Conan]

Apparently, he has forgotten



It did totally happen. He was told it happened.

The PR hole he is digging is getting deeper.

[lamerfox]

Too bad you can't call that "aiding and abetting."

[ColonThree]

I'm not sure how I feel about this Chase situation. While I don't particularly like him, I'll play Devil's Advocate here. Most of the quotes I have seen about him seem to be largely lacking in context or just conjecture and rumor. Example 1, the (infamous?) quote from FA about jacking off dogs. It's not entirely inconceivable that - whilst condemning actually fucking animals - he does not have a problem with people doing that to dogs, but the quote was cropped to just show that. While still distasteful, it's at least a more reasonable position to hold, especially if the context is actually about dog breeding, in which case it's practically a necessity some times (or at least so I have been told by someone who was in the trade once). As for the PM to Dragoneer, I would assume that everything said in there is accurate, as it was intended to be a private and personal message to someone he trusted. While he admits he did "experiment with an animal", he also appears to regret having done it, that it was a dumb thing done by a dumb teenager, and does not wish to repeat the experience. All this doesn't exactly paint him in a favorable light, but it could be far worse. The rest is just interpersonal rubbish.

As for how he will actually run the forum, I'll wait to see how it progresses. So far it seems to be fairly standard FA nonsense really.

[camellia sinensis]

I'll play Devil's Advocate here.

don't

[ColonThree]

don't

If you'd told me that earlier it would've saved a lot of time

[lamerfox]

There has to be some dirt that will land him in a pound-you-in-the ass prison.

[graeme]

There has to be some dirt that will land him in a pound-you-in-the ass prison.

That seems a little vindictive.

Nothing has suggested chase has done anything at all wrong, just that he did when he was "younger" and thought it was regretful.

Now I highly suspect he's a scumbag due to the "standard" that seems to be in place to get hired at FA, but I think expecting him to be a criminal who needs to go to a pound him in the ass prison might be stretching laws past where I'd want them to be.

[rodox_video]

There has to be some dirt that will land him in a pound-you-in-the ass prison.

no

[an hoopoe]

Edit: Bazeel did not quit of his own free will, he was given the boot and gave his side of the story in some tweets, here pasted to form a whole:

As many of you know, I've recently been removed from the FurAffinity Admin Team. This was under the grounds of 'Failure to do tickets' and because I was creating a culture of having people go to me directly, to get things solved. I will respond to each in kind.

1) As per my agreement with Dragoneer, I was to take tickets others were unable to handle on their own, or large scam/theft items. These Were often brought to me by Dragoneer himself or other administrators. While working as a liaison between Fur Affinity and Artists Beware I was able to put an end to many accounts that had scammed users for years, out of thousands of dollars. Of course, they don't count.

2) This culture exists because I managed to complete tasks and correct problems in an efficient, timely manner. While I hated taking work from my notes, I would retrieve the original ticket, often idle for 3 months, and solve the issue, getting assistance if necessary. While I understand these do not make a difference ticket-count-wise, this is often a user's final resort before losing faith in the site as a whole, and it is our duty as Administrators to try and prevent that, amongst keeping the site running smoothly as individuals are able.

It was a fun, if frustrating ride. I do wish FA the best in the future, but there is a lot of good-ol-boy politics that I did well enough without. I fully expect to be booted for bringing this us, but people should get at least some explanation, versus nothing at all. Cheers.

Tl;dr - I got canned for something I don't quite understand, and stating that bit about tickets seems pretty convenient, considering what my position working with AB was understood to entail.

It also looks like Dragoneer may have refunded a commision Bazeel had from him, before giving him the boot:

Refunding me for a commission right before canning me as an Admin? While it may be unrelated, I -have- to state that publicly

-
Bazeel: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/bazeel , has quit, probably on February 14th since on that day his wife Sigil (who is active within the furry subculture as a furry artist) quit FA in favour of Weasyl:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5505460/

He is of course, at the time of posting, still listed on the staff page because god forbid Princess Piche ever update anything in a timely fashion. Sigil was also an admin on FA at one point, but quit.

Oddy and Keio also are no longer admins:

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/keio
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/oddy

FA is currently down to 14 admins, including Dragoneer, and 3 technical staff (listed on the staff page at least). In contrast Weasyl has 5 directors, 7 admins, 9 moderators and 8 technical staff.

FA has a publicly listed total of 17 staff and Weasyl 30, at the time of posting. Also, anecdotally I've heard that FA staff are still leaving trouble tickets unanswered for several months+, which suggests that the same issues which have always plagued it are continuing to plague it.

[Conan]

Bazeel: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/bazeel , has quit, probably on February 14th since on that day his wife Sigil (who is active within the furry subculture as a furry artist) quit FA in favour of Weasyl:

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5505460/

He is of course, at the time of posting, still listed on the staff page because god forbid Princess Piche ever update anything in a timely fashion. Sigil was also an admin on FA at one point, but quit.

Oddy and Keio also are no longer admins:

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/keio
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/oddy

FA is currently down to 14 admins, including Dragoneer, and 3 technical staff (listed on the staff page at least). In contrast Weasyl has 5 directors, 7 admins, 9 moderators and 8 technical staff.

FA has a publicly listed total of 17 staff and Weasyl 30, at the time of posting. Also, anecdotally I've heard that FA staff are still leaving trouble tickets unanswered for several months+, which suggests that the same issues which have always plagued it are continuing to plague it.

Dragoneer said a few weeks ago that they were super really close to adding more admins from the last recruitment drive ASAP, HONEST! Shocking that never happened.

I follow Oddy on Twitter and I'm surprised he lasted this long. He seems to have some amount of common sense that wouldn't mesh well with FA's modus operandi. Kind of wondering if they've kept him around hoping he'd supply FA:U with AV equipment like he does for some other cons...

[Miramar]

Also, anecdotally I've heard that FA staff are still leaving trouble tickets unanswered for several months+, which suggests that the same issues which have always plagued it are continuing to plague it.

I got a TT answered a couple days ago,that I had filed two months and a half ago. I was shocked to get a response at all!

[an hoopoe]

I noticed that both of the admin accounts Sciggles used on FA: Helperdog and Shivadramon, have been de-admin'ed recently and her personal account has not been given admin privileges:

http://www.furaffinity.net/user/shivadramon
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/helperdog

Her accounts are still listed on the staff page though, so either she's taking a temporary break or else it's Princess Piche's usual inability to get anything done on time or at all.

Sheepdust : http://www.furaffinity.net/user/sheep, http://www.furaffinity.net/user/sheepdust  has also lost their @ and gone from the staff page.

Currently this puts FA at 11 admins including Dragoneer.

[an hoopoe]

Another admin gone : Cerberusnl

Due to repeated issues with communication, I feel I no longer motivated to help FA out, administratively. As such, I'm resigning.

I'll still be around... I'm just not going to be doing any banhammering.

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5840700/

FA is now down to 10 admins inc. Dragoneer.

I also looked at the pages of all the remaining admins to see if/when they were active.

I noticed that of these admins AsiaNeko has shown no external sign of activity for over a month (since May) and she mentioned in a journal (from December last year) that she is recovering from surgery, and that she will be "not allowed to work for who knows how long". So it seems probable that she isn't doing any admin'ing on FA.

Nerosilent has shown no external signs of activity on FA for 5 months (since the beginning of Feb.) and his journals mention physical therapy and surgery on his back. So again I wouldn't be expecting him to do anything.

Of the other 8 admins, chase (aka Carmen) has nothing on his page so you cannot really get any clue as to whether he's been active or not, but the other 6 : Dragoneer, Foxamoore, Jasu Fox, Kryphosdrgn, quoting_mungo, SSJ3Mewtwo and Surgat, all have favourites, shouts, submissions and journal entries which show they have been active on FA in the past few days.

However, the only admins I've seen in the past few months daring to show themselves in an admin role in comments, journals &c. and that I've heard of as answering trouble tickets are Dragoneer and quoting_mungo.

It seems possible then that Dragoneer and quoting mungo could be the only active admins left on FA, and that no other admin is now prepared to stick their head up above the parapet on FA and communicate with users (likely because Dragoneer is so shit at communicating with everyone from the rest of the staff downwards).

It just goes to show that no matter what Dragoneer promises to do, things always end up back here : trouble tickets piling up, issues not getting resolved, admins quitting and the userbase getting ever more soured on FA and its staff.

Dragoneer has already posted a string of FA United related site announcement journals so I suppose he's going to try and bury his woes in his vanity convention.

[Kitashi]

There's a new admin sock puppet, SystemAccount (http://www.furaffinity.net/user/SystemAccount) being used for admin work (https://twitter.com/DanzaDragon/status/479302732965502976).  I'm willing to bet Chase and Sciggles are still doing admin work, but using SystemAccount instead of Carmen and HelperDog/Shivadramon.  Because FA's all about transparency, right?  Speaking of, I finally got banned from FA for sharing the common knowledge that HelperDog, Shivadramon, and Carmen are all sock puppets for Sciggles and Chase (https://twitter.com/Kitashi_/status/479443880530944000)!  

Also of note, remember that FA admin drive 8 months ago (http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5122085/) ?  Yeah, still waiting to see new admins from that!

[Conan]

Wow, they managed to get Cerberus to leave. I remember that he was perhaps one of the biggest defenders of the site back in the day. $5 says the "communication" problem had to do with either Chase or Sciggles.

There's a new admin sock puppet, SystemAccount (http://www.furaffinity.net/user/SystemAccount) being used for admin work (https://twitter.com/DanzaDragon/status/479302732965502976).  I'm willing to bet Chase and Sciggles are still doing admin work, but using SystemAccount instead of Carmen and HelperDog/Shivadramon.  Because FA's all about transparency, right?  Speaking of, I finally got banned from FA for sharing the common knowledge that HelperDog, Shivadramon, and Carmen are all sock puppets for Sciggles and Chase (https://twitter.com/Kitashi_/status/479443880530944000)!  

Also of note, remember that FA admin drive 8 months ago (http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/5122085/) ?  Yeah, still waiting to see new admins from that!

I really, really love Oddy's reply to your tweet.

A long time ago, back when it was quite clear that a lot of the FA Admins had only clawed/sucked their way to the top just to show off their shiny admin badge, one of the ideas people had discussed as being possibly "good" for the site was anonymizing the administrators. The idea was that, without being able to yell "I'M AN ADMIN" and throw their weight around (without actually doing anything, mind you), that maybe only people who wanted to actually help the site would be compelled to be an administrator.

At this point however, it's fairly obvious that they're doing it just to cover up Sciggles' (and probably Chase's) reign of terror. I don't think it's a coincidence that "SystemAccount" started getting used right after Sciggles emptied out her other two admin sockpuppet accounts. Banning you for "posting private information" about the abandoned socks reeks of desperation. Sorry, Sciggles. You can't hide. We're not as dumb as you think we are.

[an hoopoe]

This person: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/xaerun

is an admin again, though I don't know how long they've been restored. He describes himself as a "toxic and negative" person:



He also mentions this information about how the FA staff are supposedly currently structured:

Administrators are grouped into different category tickets, with training relevant to that category given to each administrator. Harassment administrators deal with tickets relating to harassment, and so on. I'm actually moving into that category myself. It's possible the cub porn administrators are still getting to those tickets. Dragoneer covers a range of tickets himself, and trust me, there's a lot. When you have tickets submitted for things such as "Uh yeah so this user has an otherkin-phobic slur in their shout history", they get in fast. Non-valid tickets are closed pretty much the moment they are noticed.

^
https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/1254207-Tickets-about-child-porn-not-getting-read-in-6-months?p=4815439&viewfull=1#post4815439

Normally I'd ask why you want someone who is "toxic and negative" to be an admin, but then I remembered that it's Sciggles who is in charge of "training" the staff.