Goonhub
Guess I'll post here since a big-ass chunk of this revolves around me.
4 long days of internal deliberation for what essentially amounts to 4 short paragraphs of non-answers, but I'll mostly stick to the parts that regard me and the Cool Zone.
Since it appears that a majority of admins stay clear from CZ, except for a few regulars and the occasional intrusion by one to make some unwanted "wow, this place sure sucks!" comment, I should probably shed some light into the type of internal subculture that has developed around the channel since misinformation and second-hand accounts of what happens seem to be a prevailing problem around the channel. You can say it however you'd like, but the channel was created as a quarantine channel for the discussion of "heavier" topics, notably political discussion and debate, inequality, poverty, homophobia and transphobia, and especially the Coronavirus pandemic, since such topics were becoming more frequent in General chat and causing arguments to pop up frequently.
Over time, especially as the pandemic got worse and political tensions within the United States escalated during 2020, certain members of the community found comfort in CZ as some topics became taboo to discuss in other channels, with people telling others to "take it to cool zone" whenever 'politics' arose during public discussion. We also had an increase of people coming in and publicly expressing bigoted ideals within the server. You now have a small group of people, lots of us queer, angry, poor, and disabled, feeling increasingly alienated and isolated within the community. This feeling gets worse when the people inside it are viewed as unstable freaks and are being made fun of in outside channels.
How does this relate to problems with administration? A lot of you really do not know how to read the room or empathize with nonadmins, especially in CZ. A lot of you are incredibly out of touch. It is absolutely disrespectful and insulting when someone like Huk butts in when someone is going through a traumatic recollection of being homeless in chat to flaunt his wealth and advertise self-help venture capitalist bullshit and other "bootstrap" crap. Or someone discussing incidents of transphobia against them to be interrupted by one of you coming in out of nowhere to post unrelated memes. Or getting in a heated political debate with nonadmins and then using vague threats of administrative punishment to shut down the argument. It causes a lot of bitterness on both ends, with nonadmins growing increasingly impatient with certain admins for repeated aggressions like this, and admins carrying pettiness over to adminchat, since a lot of you have admitted to not knowing what the hell happens in the channel, just that you've only heard of what happens there.
As for me, I am not going to pretend like I'm perfect and innocent in all of this. I'm loud, outspoken, and have a very colorful way of expressing myself. I have and will acknowledge that I've said things that have violated TOS and rightfully deserved reprimanding and punishment in some of the things I've said within the channel. What others and I are upset about however, is that there in fact is an obvious problem with personal bitterness and bias having a significant hand in punishment of nonadmins within the channel, even though you folks say that isn't true. How the hell you mistake a video of Biggie Smalls sitting on a couch with a sentence-mixed parody of Suicidal Thoughts as a video of an ejaculating penis is beyond me, but it's pretty damn telling when a bunch of you apparently just believed whatever was told of you and assumed that was something I would do. This isn't the only time that slander about me has been spread amongst you, since apparently some of you believed Vampirate (before he got permabanned from the discord) when he cooked up some bullshit story about me wanting to decapitate Huk for not paying for gender-affirming therapy.
![[Image: chop.PNG]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/833713782063890472/847952211518685194/chop.PNG)
![[Image: guillotine.PNG]](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/833713782063890472/847952214978592788/guillotine.PNG)
A lot of you obviously don't have a high opinion of me, especially given how I'll have admins like Sov call me fucking unhinged, only to backtrack and apologize once folks start jumping on your backs over how unprofessional and cruel that sort of conduct is.
I also have no clue where this thing about me being banned numerous times has come from, you make it sound as if I get banned every other week. As far as I can tell, my first ban from the discord came from that nonsense related to that video, in which the ban was revoked, then reinstated by Huk shortly after, who I should note did so after I went offline for the night, with no given reason, for no given duration, with no banning admin stated. I had to fight just to find out what the hell had happened, and was given the pathetic excuse that Huk, a long sitting admin, just didn't know how to use discord. I've only been sent to Lets-Talk a couple times, the first time over an incident where people pinged me and goaded me into spamming NSFW nonsense in the RP channel when I was in the middle of a manic episode after being cut off from my medication. I have no clue what goes on behind closed doors, but I'm not sure where this narrative of me being some sort of Ted Kaczynski-ass bashit insane serial offender is coming from.
What I think people are upset the most by, however, is the total and complete lack of responsibility and accountability on your own part. You expect us to show the utmost restraint, especially in regards to TOS violations, and have adopted a no-tolerance policy of punishment in paranoia of the server being shut down by Discord or being investigated by the government. It's absolutely nuts how someone can get in serious trouble in the server for making a goddamn JFK assassination joke, as if it's an actual threat, yet admins are allowed to come in the channel and discuss how to legally kill someone whenever chat starts talking about firearms. In my current ban, I used offensive, yet obviously figurative language during a discussion on police reform ("Better to just antagonist cops until they hate their lives and quit their jobs or kill themselves or w/e"), and that nets me a ban, but sourcielle can openly wish for the death of former president donald trump "so he doesn't maintain the gerocracy" immediately after, follow it up with some "by old age" excuse, and have other admins tell us in chat that it did not violate TOS since it's natural causes, and then we are told to drop it.
What makes you exempt from TOS violations, but not nonadmins? You clearly aren't doing enough to stop the administrative team from making comments like these, since they keep happening repeatedly. We have absolutely no clue what you people do in privated admin channels in regards to punishment,we are only told some vague crap about admins being scolded and then apologizing, and it is never in public. Every time this is brought up, we only get the same, lame-ass "we are currently working on that" answer. Your self-policing policy obviously isn't working, and you refuse to be transparent with the rest of the community in regards to handling admin-related incidents. Every attempt by the community to assist in this matter is rejected. How the hell do you expect the community to follow your rules when the people leading the community continuously break these rules in public?
Its also very obvious that all sorts of things are fucked up within the administration, with long-time admins and people of notice like Kate, HipBEE, and Bob leaving administrative duties or the community as a whole over general apathy and disinterest in productive change from within the administration, as well as how toxic and spiteful and shitty things reportedly are on the inside. I have no idea when, but with my own experience in administrating large communities, it's only a matter of time before this facade of stability breaks apart.
I guess that's it for me! I don't really have anything else to say, I've been with goon for a little over 6 years now but I'm just exhausted by this place now.
4 long days of internal deliberation for what essentially amounts to 4 short paragraphs of non-answers, but I'll mostly stick to the parts that regard me and the Cool Zone.
Since it appears that a majority of admins stay clear from CZ, except for a few regulars and the occasional intrusion by one to make some unwanted "wow, this place sure sucks!" comment, I should probably shed some light into the type of internal subculture that has developed around the channel since misinformation and second-hand accounts of what happens seem to be a prevailing problem around the channel. You can say it however you'd like, but the channel was created as a quarantine channel for the discussion of "heavier" topics, notably political discussion and debate, inequality, poverty, homophobia and transphobia, and especially the Coronavirus pandemic, since such topics were becoming more frequent in General chat and causing arguments to pop up frequently.
Over time, especially as the pandemic got worse and political tensions within the United States escalated during 2020, certain members of the community found comfort in CZ as some topics became taboo to discuss in other channels, with people telling others to "take it to cool zone" whenever 'politics' arose during public discussion. We also had an increase of people coming in and publicly expressing bigoted ideals within the server. You now have a small group of people, lots of us queer, angry, poor, and disabled, feeling increasingly alienated and isolated within the community. This feeling gets worse when the people inside it are viewed as unstable freaks and are being made fun of in outside channels.
How does this relate to problems with administration? A lot of you really do not know how to read the room or empathize with nonadmins, especially in CZ. A lot of you are incredibly out of touch. It is absolutely disrespectful and insulting when someone like Huk butts in when someone is going through a traumatic recollection of being homeless in chat to flaunt his wealth and advertise self-help venture capitalist bullshit and other "bootstrap" crap. Or someone discussing incidents of transphobia against them to be interrupted by one of you coming in out of nowhere to post unrelated memes. Or getting in a heated political debate with nonadmins and then using vague threats of administrative punishment to shut down the argument. It causes a lot of bitterness on both ends, with nonadmins growing increasingly impatient with certain admins for repeated aggressions like this, and admins carrying pettiness over to adminchat, since a lot of you have admitted to not knowing what the hell happens in the channel, just that you've only heard of what happens there.
As for me, I am not going to pretend like I'm perfect and innocent in all of this. I'm loud, outspoken, and have a very colorful way of expressing myself. I have and will acknowledge that I've said things that have violated TOS and rightfully deserved reprimanding and punishment in some of the things I've said within the channel. What others and I are upset about however, is that there in fact is an obvious problem with personal bitterness and bias having a significant hand in punishment of nonadmins within the channel, even though you folks say that isn't true. How the hell you mistake a video of Biggie Smalls sitting on a couch with a sentence-mixed parody of Suicidal Thoughts as a video of an ejaculating penis is beyond me, but it's pretty damn telling when a bunch of you apparently just believed whatever was told of you and assumed that was something I would do. This isn't the only time that slander about me has been spread amongst you, since apparently some of you believed Vampirate (before he got permabanned from the discord) when he cooked up some bullshit story about me wanting to decapitate Huk for not paying for gender-affirming therapy.
A lot of you obviously don't have a high opinion of me, especially given how I'll have admins like Sov call me fucking unhinged, only to backtrack and apologize once folks start jumping on your backs over how unprofessional and cruel that sort of conduct is.
I also have no clue where this thing about me being banned numerous times has come from, you make it sound as if I get banned every other week. As far as I can tell, my first ban from the discord came from that nonsense related to that video, in which the ban was revoked, then reinstated by Huk shortly after, who I should note did so after I went offline for the night, with no given reason, for no given duration, with no banning admin stated. I had to fight just to find out what the hell had happened, and was given the pathetic excuse that Huk, a long sitting admin, just didn't know how to use discord. I've only been sent to Lets-Talk a couple times, the first time over an incident where people pinged me and goaded me into spamming NSFW nonsense in the RP channel when I was in the middle of a manic episode after being cut off from my medication. I have no clue what goes on behind closed doors, but I'm not sure where this narrative of me being some sort of Ted Kaczynski-ass bashit insane serial offender is coming from.
What I think people are upset the most by, however, is the total and complete lack of responsibility and accountability on your own part. You expect us to show the utmost restraint, especially in regards to TOS violations, and have adopted a no-tolerance policy of punishment in paranoia of the server being shut down by Discord or being investigated by the government. It's absolutely nuts how someone can get in serious trouble in the server for making a goddamn JFK assassination joke, as if it's an actual threat, yet admins are allowed to come in the channel and discuss how to legally kill someone whenever chat starts talking about firearms. In my current ban, I used offensive, yet obviously figurative language during a discussion on police reform ("Better to just antagonist cops until they hate their lives and quit their jobs or kill themselves or w/e"), and that nets me a ban, but sourcielle can openly wish for the death of former president donald trump "so he doesn't maintain the gerocracy" immediately after, follow it up with some "by old age" excuse, and have other admins tell us in chat that it did not violate TOS since it's natural causes, and then we are told to drop it.
What makes you exempt from TOS violations, but not nonadmins? You clearly aren't doing enough to stop the administrative team from making comments like these, since they keep happening repeatedly. We have absolutely no clue what you people do in privated admin channels in regards to punishment,we are only told some vague crap about admins being scolded and then apologizing, and it is never in public. Every time this is brought up, we only get the same, lame-ass "we are currently working on that" answer. Your self-policing policy obviously isn't working, and you refuse to be transparent with the rest of the community in regards to handling admin-related incidents. Every attempt by the community to assist in this matter is rejected. How the hell do you expect the community to follow your rules when the people leading the community continuously break these rules in public?
Its also very obvious that all sorts of things are fucked up within the administration, with long-time admins and people of notice like Kate, HipBEE, and Bob leaving administrative duties or the community as a whole over general apathy and disinterest in productive change from within the administration, as well as how toxic and spiteful and shitty things reportedly are on the inside. I have no idea when, but with my own experience in administrating large communities, it's only a matter of time before this facade of stability breaks apart.
I guess that's it for me! I don't really have anything else to say, I've been with goon for a little over 6 years now but I'm just exhausted by this place now.