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:

Deebs has also decided to step down from Art Director as it was more intertwined with moderation than they wanted it to be, and what we intended it to be to begin with, something which they stated they were not comfortable with to begin with. Once more systems are put in place fully separating moderation and the art director role, they may return, if they feel comfortable doing so (and once they're no longer as busy in real life as they are now, which was also one of the reasons)

I'd like to thank all staff that have stepped down for their help and I wish anyone who is suffering from stress - be it to this situation or not, to take a break from it all and focus on things that make you happy, as that is what truly matters. Anyway, before I get sidetracked back to the main topic.

Communication has been a failure and hopefully, this post will begin a healing process to remedy that. I am working on means to improve our structure and how people provide feedback and critique -- we now have a anonymous feedback form on google for you to provide feedback and suggestions on how we can improve going forward, and voice your displeasure with how things were handled without fear of being reprimanded for it. (Though I please ask you to remain civil and avoid any further harassment of staff. We are using these forms as a tool to improve and harassment will become counter-productive to your fellow users attempting to communicate their feelings and ideas.)

For those who wish to discuss the issues with other users and give public feedback we also have a discord channel called feedback-and-discussion where as long as you're being civil and not breaking any rules, you don't have to worry about being warned. (Again, as long as you follow the rules and remain respectful).

This leaves us with two moderators and still a lot of users to manage, which has been one of the ingredients to cause the issues in our infrastructure -- we grew too fast, let too many users in too quickly and outgrew our methods of managing the site. It went from a small hobby site to a frankly massive community and we failed to keep up with our tools and ways of handling issues. To prevent this from further spiraling out of control all applications have been permanently closed until further notice. Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to joining but we need to get our ducks in a row before we let any more users in and give more workload to our staff.

I understand this whole situation was handled badly, and I (Hazer) take responsibility for that, I once again apologize to Wren and Velu for failing them as an admin and not following the procedures of moderation properly and failing to communicate in other ways.

One last note is that I would like to again request people be civil throughout this situation and remember that everyone is human, no one deserves to receive threats or insults. Though many of you may be upset at how this was handled and upset at me for my failings, please also keep in mind that there are people who call MN home, come back to it to de-stress from a hard day, and use it to take care of their mental health. I please ask for you to respect and not pressure people into leaving if they do not want to, thank you.

What now?

I will be working on more moderation tools, receiving and implementing feedback and insight from those who have managed large communities in the past to put into practice, as well as establishing a proper point system to abide by so that procedures cannot be skipped in the future.

I will be opening more channels of communcation and feedback both for the artists on the team and the moderators. I will also be maintaining feedback channels and forms for users as well. Alongside this, I plan to create pages for users to see/contact staff members, see their contributions if they are artists, and get the artist's efforts far more visible.

This situation has demonstrated how woefully unprepared I've been to handle such a large community and I feel taking these steps, as well as closing applications, will help me catch up and improve things significantly. All I can do in this situation is learn from my mistakes and make sure they don't happen again, it's the least I can do for everyone involved.

Given my situation with my wrists (severe carpal tunnel in both) I have an update on that. On the 15th I had a consultation with the surgeon and he has offered to perform surgery on both hands at once, which whilst it would severely restrict what I can do (for everything) for a week or two whilst I recover, it will help me get over this sooner. I have decided to take this route and I've been told his waiting times are roughly around 6 weeks or so, so hopefully that should be happening around January.

Of course given those two weeks of recovery I won't be active, but after healing I plan on diving head first back into developing for the site and finishing the aforementioned features if I haven't done so by then. So please expect a bit of an intermission or silence during January for a bit as I recover, and then expect me to come back full force afterwards (if nothing happens during the surgery or infections, etc.. I'll keep you all updated)

All in all to the users who were made to feel afraid and left in the dark, to the artists who felt like their efforts were exploited and to the moderators who had to go through harassment and mental health crisis due to the situation I am incredibly sorry for my failings, and all I can do now is work the hardest I can to improve as an administrator/owner to prevent this ever happening again.