My Thoughts on the Sunsetting of TeenagersGaming

Written on December 30th, 2021

This post consists of my thoughts and my thoughts only on this matter. No other mods were involved in the writing of this post. In addition, please be decent human beings. Do not go out and harass any mod, TG or otherwise. Many of them are my friends and none of them had any knowledge of this or input on it. Thank you.

In addition, check out Cheese_Addict’s transparency document here, as it provides a more general overview of the whole ordeal, and this article assumes you’ve read that and references screenshots from it.

Google Doc | PDF Mirror (Mirrored on 12/30/2021)

Preface#

I’d actually like to start this whole thing out with an apology, as I feel to some extent responsible for how all of this went. At the end of the day, I have been very inactive as a mod for the past few months, and did not put in enough work and effort. While I am only one mod and am frankly not that important, I still feel responsible for not doing my part to keep TeenagersGaming running smoothly. That being said, I did not at all agree with the course of action taken, and especially did not agree with the way this decision was made. This document will focus on how that decision was made, and what I fear this says about the future of the Teenagers communities as a whole.

Context#

To gain some context into just how much of a change this whole situation has been to the entire inner working of the moderation team, you must first know how the teams have worked up until recently. I had been a TG mod since August of 2020, and throughout most of that time, the team has always worked the same way. All of our mod protocols were built to promote a democratic and fair mod team. These have always been core principles, principles that many of us truly believed in.

With very few exceptions, everything was voted on. Even minor changes, or stuff that only related to one or a few mods (e.g. making an announcement for a racing event), would be posted in #tg-proposals for other mods to react to and provide feedback on. This has been a really important part of how we operate as a team. We also emphasized being fair with bans and punishments, recognizing that occasionally the rules need to be bent to provide leniency or deal with an odd situation, but generally doing our best to only punish people that broke rules, and holding the entire team to the same standard when moderating. These two factors were something I’ve always been very proud of, and something that set us apart from other minecraft servers. Thus, seeing the steady collapse of those ideals has been frankly heartbreaking. If you’re reading this, it means that I have become so disillusioned with the leadership of this community that I’m frankly willing to risk the ban to post this. With this context in mind, I would like to now go over the events of the past two-ish months.

The Story#

In late October, we had been discussing the future of TG, and how to handle increasing player inactivity. This led to some of us floating around the idea of a hiatus for the minecraft server, along with other changes. None of this was concrete, and we planned to host a mod meeting to discuss it further. Unfortunately, so many of us are so busy nowadays that organizing a meeting is hard. We simply plowed on, hoping to be able to host a meeting soon, as the team has always had the mentality that big decisions need to be made as a team.

Thus, reasonably, it was quite a bombshell when Vilhu decided to very undemocratically decide that TG was to be shut down, with zero team input prior. See part 1 of the Transparency Document for the original message.

The team was very quick to respond, debating many of the claims in Vilhu’s message, with Cheese_Addict in particular providing a surprisingly well written response. Up until then, while Vilhu was making an ultimately undemocratic decision, and being a bit stagnant about responding, at least he was responding, and doing so respectfully, even admitting that it was unfair to not so much as ask for our opinions first. After this, however, relations went downhill.

(A bit of a sidenote, but throughout all of this we were still trying to schedule a mod meeting, trying to start a team discussion where we could hopefully convince Vilhu to not write off our opinions so easily. All I’m going to say is we made a WhenIMeet, he marked exactly one time as available for him, then proceeded to say that he wasn’t available when we decided to hold the meeting at that time.)

Things started to get sourer after this, with his next major response containing this very telling quote:

ps. If I wanted input from the team, I’d have asked for it. I might be an asshole, but at least I’m giving you guys the opportunity to discuss it now. Which I didn’t really do when i deleted debates, voice, or memes.

This was the first concrete admission of the fact that our opinions on the matter were not at all valued and he just wanted us gone, and this most certainly wasn’t the last instance of this. It became very clear that he only valued his own opinion, and was not truly working in the interest of TG, the TG Mod team, or even the overarching community as a whole. It also established that this wasn’t the first time he had used the “because I can” mentality to prioritize his own agenda over the team’s opinion.

After a period of radio silence, tensions became worse with a discussion where I personally tried to reason with Vilhu about how his “no response is also a response” (that’s a direct quote by the way) policy was not reasonable as a leader of a community, and that when making major changes, a leader needs to be available to facilitate and discuss said change. That led to a reply that I felt was a major tipping point in how I perceived the whole situation:

if i decide something, let you guys know about it and take feedback on it, acknowledge the feedback*, there’s zero need for me to comment on passive aggressive replies. i do not want your guidance on how to lead this community. if i want it, i’ll ask for it. thank you very much and never fucking ever do that again.

*sidenote: I disagree with the statement that he took any of our feedback, as I do not believe skimming over feedback and then dismissing it without any reasoning given is not taking feedback

Muzak even wrote a whole paragraph (very politely worded if I may add) refuting the above message, and was graced with all of a three word response. It was incredibly clear at this point that we were simply not wanted in a mod team we had dedicated so much of our time to.

After this, the TG modchats were in a bit of a stalemate, with many mods not making any comments either out of fear of implicitly agreeing to the shutdown, or possibly even being demodded for acting up too much. In our mind, Vilhu felt like an unstable cannon that could make any decision at any time. Not exactly a situation conducive to reasonable discourse. We were left in silence, not knowing when an announcement would be made.

Then, the day came. We were aware of when it was going to be announced around 12 hours prior to it happening. We had some fun with our last few hours on the server before the plug was very abruptly pulled before Muzak even had the chance to finish putting together the world download (This in and of itself says a bit about just how little communication there was between us and Vilhu at this point, with Vilhu writing off our entire team essentially). The channels were deleted, the roles removed, and those of us who were only TG mods or opted to retire with the shutdown found ourselves in the old folks’ home.

The aftermath of the shutdown was worrying to say the least. Lumin and Vil made it very clear that they did not care about or understand the gravity of shutting down an entire community, describing TG users as “babies”, and acting extremely unprofessional in chat. Definitely not acceptable conduct in the slightest. Furthermore, they reinforced the fact that they believe that the core principles of our moderation team do not apply to them, with a number of users being permabanned or silentbanned from teenserv for merely discussing the shutdown or arguing with them. It cannot be understated how much of an issue this is for the health of the Teenagers community, and I pray that they come to their senses and realize that this is no way to act as owner or administrator of a community.

My Thoughts#

I wrote this whole big thing with the intent of conveying my thoughts on the whole matter, and that’s what this section is for.

Quite simply, I worry for the future of the Teenagers communities. Albeit my more recent inactivity, I have poured quite a bit of time into the community as a whole, both throught TG and through interteam efforts for the broader community. I have a real attachment to this community. Even now as I’m typing this, I have yet to determine if I even want to post this, because despite TG being deleted, despite the increasing abuse of power, despite the chaos, I still have a fond attachment to Teenserv and don’t know that I want to be banned for publishing this.

That being said, I think the CD and DTL have and continue to further violate the very principles and ideas that represent the foundation of the Teenagers communities. I’m seeing a continual lack of respect for users and moderators, a lack of professionalism, and a belief that their own rules and principles do not apply to them. I’m seeing a CD that is out of touch with the communities he runs, yet has the belief that he is more in touch with it than his mods. The continual attitude I’m seeing is heartbreaking and saddening. It was bad enough a month ago that I decided to retire from the team entirely with the shutdown, and I can say with confidence that the state of things is 10x worse now than it was then.

But despite all that I have said, at the end of the day I harbor no hate for Vilhu, Lumin, or any other mod regardless of whether they agree or disagree with Vilhu. One thing I have not enjoyed seeing on the community’s side has been some of the hate and harassment thrown at the Teenagers mod team. The anger is justified, but we’re better than that. Nobody deserves to be harassed, plain and simple. I am debating the decision, not the person. If I publish this, I do so with the hope that it just might be read by them, or by other members of the mod team.

To Vilhu and Lumin:

I genuinely implore you to step back and take a look at your moderation decisions. Look in the mirror and consider what a decision or action looks like to a fellow moderator, or to a user. If possible, maybe step back from moderation for a bit, take a break to clear your head and come back to it with a fresh mind. I fear for the future of the community if this continues to be the way major changes are handled. That being said, I do wish you the best of success. I hope that Teenagers can continue to thrive, continue to be a safe and pleasant community, and continue to be there for it’s users. After all, at the end of the day we do all of this for the users, right?

With respect and love,

ABlazingEBoy