The D241 Debacle
When the site was new the admins asked for some mods to volunteer and D241 was one of those chosen, which is important for some context later, but we will move on from that now. As the site was in its early stages everyone was collectively deciding what they wanted from the site, each having different gripes from the UG, or expectations of what they as users wanted if they came from elsewhere like Twitter. At the same time as this
@I Wild Each It and
@Splinty were both finding their feet as admins with what they felt was appropriate for their site and how they should handle certain situations.
Which came to a head a couple times, namely on censorship and deleting posts which were deemed to be fighter bashing. I can't remember all the specifics, but in the end compromises were reached which seemed to satisfy everyone. This was before the idea of a TMMAC constitution, which I had floated a couple of times, gained steam, so there wasn't anywhere where the exact rules were written down and agreed upon, but it was verbal agreements which everyone thought were the same thing, but actually various people had different interpretations of.
Which brings us to just after D241 got demodded, since unbeknownst to most but a select few, the admins had decided they wanted to rotate mods and try out other options. D241 was the first one to get demodded, which I think he took badly and was perhaps a little hurt about it. It was around this time that some drama broke out again about censorship, which I can't remember the details of, but D241 took a very prominent stance in arguing against the censorship. You have take into account, this wasn't egregious or malicious censorship, but mostly centered around editing peoples posts when they were fighting bashing, or deemed to be insulting other members. However, as these things can do they created some resentment between both sides of the argument, however, if left alone they would have blown over in a week or two.
Fast forward 2-3 days - not a long time, I think you would all agree - D241 decided to make a thread about how he wanted to bang this married chick from his work. Where in the OP he linked a picture from the woman's facebook page. As you can imagine this was fairly divisive, with most unhappy that D241 seemed to be wanting support for his interfering with a marriage, and the derogatory way he referred to the husband in the OP. Of course, some egged him on like
@Priziesthorse, because some people just like to watch the world burn, and feel their penis burn too. As the thread progressed it was pointed out to D241 that he had essentially linked straight to this woman's facebook and someone, if so inclined, could get in touch with the husband. Which could ruin their marriage, as the woman is question was, at least according to D241 and we have no reason to not believe him, attracted to him and coming on to him.
Of course this distressed D241 greatly and immediately started asking for the thread to be deleted. In hindsight, it probably should have been deleted because it is borderline doxing, even if done by D241 himself, but as you've read there wasn't a clearly defined set of rules and everyone had their own ideas of what was more important. It is important to note, the doxing component wasn't really brought up until late in the argument and once it was the admins did delete the thread, since the OP had been quoted. However, since it was only a few days past D241 leading the charge against censorship and 'mod/admin abuse of power', there was some pause to delete the thread because they didn't want to censor the rest of the members who had posted in the thread. As well as this there was the sense that D241 wanted his cake and to eat it too, having things censored or not as and when it suited him. During incident the TMMAC constitution idea seemed to gain traction and it was felt that we would iron out these problems with that once it was created. Regardless the thread was deleted and D241 seemed to have got his way and everyone just wanted to move past it at this point.
D241 still wasn't happy with the way it had been handled, and he had a point that it probably should have been deleted earlier, regardless it was clear to pretty much all involved that D241 had pushed his luck as far as it was going to go. While he may have had a point, the admins had acquiesced to his demands, and now was the time to leave things alone and let tempers cool. However, this wasn't to be. Shortly, after the last argument, I think the next day, D241 came back with new complaints about
@ThatOneDude, who was a mod at the time, messing with his posts and editing them. From the links provided I couldn't see what he was talking about and told him to leave it alone since this wasn't the right time to be making this argument.
Nevertheless, D241 pushed ahead with calls to demod
@ThatOneDude and demanding that his posts not be messed with. The posts he linked to I couldn't see any evidence of editing or fuckery, but of course that doesn't mean there wasn't any. However, the admins had been planning to remove
@ThatOneDude as a mod anyway, due to the rotation of mods previously mention, yet now felt they couldn't because it might be viewed by
@ThatOneDude and others that it was because of D241's calls, which would have just caused more unnecessary drama and resentment - the last thing needed or wanted. Of course, messing up others plans doesn't exactly endear you to them, and if it wasn't the straw that broke the camels back, it certainly contributed. All of this, and D241's inability to let things go, culminated in the admins banning D241, for what was initially supposed to be a month, but has since been extended to permanent status. During this whole thing, parts of it were playing out in PMs which I can't speak to, all of this is related to the various, and many, threads which were created during the arguments. Anything which is erroneous is down to my own faulty memory.
Since then D241 has been rather salty on the underground and insulting about both
@I Wild Each It and
@Splinty, which from my perspective is why D241 is still banned. As, I believe, they are both level headed enough to admit that at the time there was blame to be had on both sides and things could have been handled more smoothly. Now with more experience as admins I don't think they would make the same few mistakes, and with the TMMAC constitution members know exactly where they stand with regards to what they can expect from their experience here.
All this said, I don't think now is the right time to try and bring D241 back, as I think he needs to spend some time not bad mouthing the admins and the site, allowing some past hurt feelings to heal. Sometime in the future I could see him being allowed to come back, assuming he is willing to eat some pride and apologize for some of his actions. He would be given a tough time from some members, but hopefully with generous use of the ignore feature he could get passed it.
