We need to do some improvements on our end for managing the site to the best of our capability, and we will be focusing on that, to that end we are not currently taking new users for the foreseeable future.
New Colours
New Colours
New Feature
New Feature
Updated Feature
Events
New Colours
Events
New Feature
This update contains some of the most requested features recently, as well as some bonus amazing pets and petpets for you all to enjoy! Lets dive on in shall we?
Staff List
You can now see a list of the staff/contributor team here which includes moderators, artists, consultants and more!
We will try to keep this as up-to-date as possible, so it'll be easier for you to know who to contact when needed.
For those who have contributed assets to Moderneopets, there will also be a link to their...
Contributions Page
These pages will list the colours, alternative colours and items that a user has contributed to the site. It will also mark any collaborations and pets/alts that will be undergoing changes in the future. Please note this page is still a work in progress and will have more features added to it soon (such as marking items that are being replaced, listing other assets contributed such as shopkeepers/maps/etc and performance improvements!)
Do you want to share some love towards those who help MN make it what it is?
For any artist who has supplied their donation links to us, you will see direct links to their kofi/paypal/gofundme!
More donation mediums may be added later on artist request, and if you're a contributor (past or present) that hasn't provided that information yet and want too, simply go here and submit your information and we'll get to it ASAP!
Don't have the funds to show some love? Well love can be shown in many ways -- you can also easily NeoMail the contributors through their contributions page to brighten their day, I'm sure they'd appreciate it!
Want to see a list of everyone who has put their piece of the pie into Moderneopets? here is a full list of past and present contributors (from pets/alts and item credits being detected, we will expand that scope soon as mentioned previously.)
Additional Credits!
As we're working on improving our crediting system and giving credit where it's properly due, we have also added in colour-specific credits that you can find listed in the appropriate page in the Rainbow Pool. For example: a much needed and delayed credit to user shadybug for their hand in defining how we handle Maractite, as well as some of the artists who helped conceptualize some of our other colours! (Sorry about how long it took to get the ball rolling on this, and thank you for those who reminded us!)
Robots!
General News
Hello Neopians!
This announcement is to address the recent situation that you may or may not be aware of.
So first and foremost, in terms of transparency since this has become a public matter and caused a lot of concerns, I will be giving a rough breakdown of the situation for those who are aware.
On the 10th of November around 00:50 (UTC +0) two artists were removed from the artist panel. This was due to another report from some artists on being harassed and ostracized by said users, and to give a broader history we have had such reports multiple times in the past, however we failed to act in a timely manner and therefore never gave infractions to the users involved, which is one of the big issues that caused this situation.
Looking back through the conversations had in the staff threads about these incidents it is clear we had the intention of sending warnings however never took it into action - letting the issues just build up without being addressed. I learned recently from the moderation team they feel like they needed my go ahead to do anything and that is partly due to the lack of tools on-site and partly due to them either lacking appropriate permissions on the discord or myself not being clear on the procedures and steps taken and who can.
That is another failing on my part which led up to those artists not getting the proper moderation treatment that they should have had.
Given the situation that was reported most recently to us we went back and saw the previous incidents and decided that since this behaviour had been going on long enough, and that we failed to act in a timely manner previously that we should act immediately this time, preventing inaction from happening again. Instead of starting at the beginning of the infractions with a warning, due to the previous threads we decided to remove them from the artist panel permanently.
In hind-sight this was a knee-jerk reaction from us purely to prevent inaction and failings like we had before.
However for the artists that were blind-sided and hit with a kick it was definitely unfair for them, and we regret skipping the warnings.
I would like to formally apologise to Wren and Velu for skipping the standards of normal moderation.
It was a major failure in our part and one that we will be working on not repeating.
I will be doing the following to make sure this doesn't happen again in the future:
Creating a full moderation panel on the website with incident handling, records of previous infractions and the actions taken at that point.
Implementing a "point" based infraction system that is used by some major sites to dictate punishments in a more appropriate and fair manner, based on the infraction and previous history (history that was actually warned for). Making sure that mod action is swift by letting my moderators know that they don't need my go ahead as they believed before, and providing my Moderators the permissions and tools needed to enforce said rules.
What transpired after this were Tumblr posts written by both artists expressing their very valid anger and frustration about the situation. Many have read them and were, again, understandably upset. Even if it had not been intended, this resulted in my staff receiving harassment from via DM's and behaviour which has required legal action to be taken. I'm not at liberty to discuss any of the legal issues, but this demonstrates how severely things had progressed. As an owner, I want to protect my staff and users, and this is no exception. Due to this, I banned the accounts of those who I believed to be involved with the threats, which included the two artists as they (intentionally or not) facilitated that behaviour, yet again bypassing any kind of procedure we had set into place, purely for the safety and comfort of those being harassed.
Velu requested their art be taken off the site, and I agreed due to the previous failings. Wren also requested their art to be removed as they felt exploited given the situation, and I agreed. Given some of the comments I had seen, it reminded me of the clause that art would be kept in the cases that the artists are just removing them out of spite over punishment. I considered thinking of using the clause, however, given how the situation was handled and this being an exceptional circumstance, I brought it up to the artist panel themselves for them to vote on how we should proceed with the removals. I wanted this to be fully up to them as they are artists as well, they know the struggle artists go through, the work that goes into it, and they all agreed to the same clause when they joined - not to mention those remaining will have to be the ones to remake the art assets (unless you want me to draw something in MS paint with my jacked hands)
After much discussion and deliberation, we decided to fully remove all requested assets as originally intended. This is what we're working on now, and that's when I made the re-imagining feature to organize all of the assets that need to be re-done.
Another artist came to me and requested that some of their assets be removed due to not agreeing with the clause/artist rules once re-inspected and some of the negative comments that were made in the panel towards some of the parting artists. I do not condone these comments and plan to review this in more detail and talk to those involved. (I thank this artist for bringing this up to me before they left, as things have been incredibly hectic these past few days.)
When creating the announcement for the re-imagining I should have addressed the situation publicly too, but I was of the mindset that moderation action is usually not disclosed publicly on sites and it would be inappropriate. However, given the situation (our/my failing at moderation), and the removal of beloved assets, an explanation should have been given alongside that announcement. I apologize that you were left in the dark given the situation and that it cultivated an environment of fear and worry.
For transparency's sake, many artists have also stepped down due to disagreeing with how this situation was handled and fear that something like this may happen again, and that's completely understandable and we don't fault them for that at all! This situation has been stressful for everyone involved and I apologise to our artists for making them feel fear of their position or lack of trust in our actions and staff, and for those who left I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors and thank you for your service on Moderneopets.
Another concern that was brought to us is the lack of a staff page where people can see the current members of staff for contacting for moderation issues or other reasons. I will be working on a staff page which lists all current staff members. For the artists I will also work on them having their own page showing all their contributions to the site and if applicable, a link to their ko-fi/patreon/other donation service so users can directly give their thanks to the artists that work on making MN a vibrant and lovely place.
On the subject of staff, we have had two moderators step down from the position for their own mental health, one being the_seventh_circle who states their stepping down here, why and some of what they have gone through during this. This is the reason I stress for people to remain civil as I get feelings are hurt but it doesn't justify putting anyone through something like that, and that applies to all involved. The other moderator to step is Kat/Katnoir who wanted to leave you guys with this:
hey guys, i'm leaving the site for a long while again. I have been a part of modern since its inception, i've been vocally against it growing too fast because of drama like we're dealing with now but i'd like to stress: i'm not leaving because of this. if anything i wish i could stay and help put this thing back together again! but the fact remains from the last time i stepped away: my mental health is now in a rough state and my physical health is suffering too. ultimately i've decided and have actually been thinking about this for 3-4 weeks that it's best i go do something with less of an impact on my health. i'm probably not going to leave the discord and my stuff is remaining for when i want to play the site again but i can't hazard a guess at how long that'll be. it's been fun guys but ultimately my health must (and has needed to for awhile) come first.
We need to do some improvements on our end for managing the site to the best of our capability, and we will be focusing on that, to that end we are not currently taking new users for the foreseeable future.
Join us on Discord!