Root Cause Analysis

Eluvatar

Eluvatar

TNPer
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Pronouns
he/him/his
TNP Nation
Zemnaya Svoboda
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Eluvatar#8517
Root Cause Analysis Results​

Apology

We want to start by stating that a disservice has been done to Imkihca. The fact that an investigation was underway was shared outside the TNP admin team, which resulted in rampant public speculation, gossip, and damage to her reputation which she should never have had to endure. We sincerely apologize for the unwarranted scrutiny to which Imkihca was subjected. She did not deserve that. We also apologize for the mistakes that we made in handling this situation, particularly for the length of time it has taken for this statement to be issued. We recognize that the delay on our end only exacerbated the issue, and we are very sorry for that.

Background Summary and Timeline

In November 2017, the TNP admin team received a complaint against Imkihca which included allegations of harassment and blackmail. We received some initial evidence from a source we considered credible, and based on the complaint and the evidence, we opened an investigation to determine if the allegations were true.

Separate from our investigation, the NationStates World Fair Committee (NSWFC) received multiple complaints about Imkihca, reportedly along similar lines as the one received in TNP. We do not know who filed these complaints, but they resulted in Eluvatar and McMasterdonia sharing some of the details of our ongoing investigation with the NSWFC. The information that was shared was the fact that Imkihca was being investigated, the nature of that investigation, and the general stance of TNP administrators on the evidence that had been collected. The NSWFC decided to ban Imki from the NSWF, then publicly referred questions on the matter to the TNP administration team.

Because the information had been released while our investigation was still ongoing, TNP admins were unable to answer the questions that resulted, or provide information as to whether or not Imkihca would ultimately be banned from the TNP forum.

During the course of our investigation, the concerns that were raised generally dealt with conduct over Discord, voice chats, or other, non-TNP forums. We went to great lengths to try to verify these reports, which required contacting individuals that might have been witness to the events in question or have direct knowledge of what occurred. Because of the research required to validate the evidence we had, our investigation took several months to complete. Once our investigation was finally complete, the admin team was unanimously opposed to a forum ban.

The purpose of the following analysis is to determine what went wrong on our end and prevent this sort of thing from happening again in the future.

Environmental Factors
There are several wider environmental factors that affected the underlying approach taken by admins to complaints that are filed. The #MeToo movement began in October 2017 and is part of a broad shift in public perception of harassment and inappropriate conduct. Related to that movement, a petition was brought to NationStates by Astarial (aka SillyString, one of the TNP admins) asking the moderators to better address repeat offenders who use the game to locate targets for offsite victimization. The petition gained wide support and resulted in changes to game policy to better protect players. Finally, and again related, there were sub-themes of harassment and online safety that surfaced in the 2017 World Fair.

Given this broader environment, accusations of harassment held a particular weight for us as administrators. In our desire to support victims and ensure a safe community, we acted rashly and did not do enough from the beginning to adequately investigate all aspects of the complaint we received.

Cultural Factors
This element of the analysis deals with the internal culture of TNP’s admin team. There are both strengths and weaknesses to be found here.

The strong point is that the admin team investigates all complaints it receives, even those which appear spurious. This is quite obviously the correct thing to do, and is a key component of ensuring that members of our community continue to feel comfortable filing reports. Moreover, the admin team investigates all complaints it receives, even those which appear to come from a reliable source. This is also correct practice, as it ensures that warnings and bans are handed out for good, demonstrable reasons, not on one person’s say-so.

A weak point, however, is that the admin team is not immune to familiarity bias. The case of Imkihca is not the first time this concern has been raised. Individuals who are well-known or who have been members of TNP’s community for a long time have sometimes been given more leeway than newer or unknown individuals.

In this particular instance, that bias manifested in an initial failure to critically examine testimony that we were provided by a respected member of the community when a unilateral discord ban of Imki was initiated in January 2017. At the time, the discord server was privately owned and not under administrative control. As this dynamic shifted and the discord server became integrated with forum administration, familiarity bias again allowed the ban to stand without proper review, when an investigation into the complaint should have commenced immediately.

Eventually, based on the growing scope of the complaint, the Admin team decided it needed to investigate fully to determine what action was warranted. Despite this decision, we were slow to properly vet the evidence we had received, and to take into account the broader context in which the complaints were filed. That Imkihca was not ultimately banned from our forum is due to robustness we found in other areas of our analysis, and not a lack of failure in this respect.

Procedural Factors
This element is the simplest of all: We had no procedures in place governing the sharing of information with other administration teams. Until this incident, sharing had generally been done on an ad-hoc basis, and we had zero guidelines for administrators facing an urgent situation.

To rectify this for the future, we have written such guidelines. Administrators are now subject to rules regarding what information can be shared with other administrators and with the public, and when. In drafting these rules, we have preserved an individual administrator’s ability to react to criminal or TOS-breaking behavior (such as porn-spamming), but now require multiple administrators to consent to sharing confidential information with other admin teams, and for a majority to consent to sharing information with the public. These new guidelines will be released in a separate thread, specifically for comments and concerns regarding their content.

While the new guidelines do require non-TNP admins to agree to respect our confidentiality rules, we cannot control whether they actually do so. Despite this, it is often necessary and desirable to share information with other administrative teams. Therefore, TNP administrators involved in any decision to share confidential information must carefully consider the character and reputation of the outside administrators receiving the information in question.

Staffing Factors
The ability of the admin team to handle complaints of this nature, to investigate such complaints, and to respond adequately is a concern. Specifically, no member of the TNP admin team has formal training on identifying or dealing with sexual or non-sexual harassment.

There are no quick and easy solutions to this problem. Professional training of this nature is not widely available to begin with, and even if it is available, is likely to cost a not-insignificant amount of money. A lack of training is a widespread problem for administrators of regional forums, not one unique to TNP.

One possible option is to add a new administrator on either a permanent or consulting basis who has had such training in the past, possibly as part of their RL job. This administrator would be able to use their expertise to assist in any future investigations, to ensure they are carried out properly.

Another option is to broaden administrative contacts throughout NationStates. TNP is not the only region which has received complaints of harassment, and there is no reason for us to rely solely on the skills and knowledge found among our admins. Reaching out to other admin teams who have fielded major investigations in order to learn from one another would help foster improvements across the board.

We intend to explore both of these options to see what is most feasible for our team.

Systematic Factors
Our analysis turned up no concerns regarding systematicity. As awful as it was, this incident is the sole one of its kind that has occurred. Information from private TNP admin discussions does not regularly find its way into the public domain. Moreover, we discovered no indication of espionage or malice in this case that could indicate a likelihood of future leaks.

Investigative Process Factors
While this may not be apparent to the general public, most admin discussions regarding the complaint and our investigations took place on discord, and not on the TNP forum. Although there are reasons why this was the case, it was not the correct medium to use. Discord is quick moving and chatty, and not conducive to detailed discussions or analysis. If a future investigation requires such depth, it will take place on the TNP forum. And if, in the future, it is necessary to hold a more private conversation than that (such as if a TNP admin is under investigation), some sort of private forum will be set up for that purpose.

Given the seriousness of the allegations we received, the amount of material we had to examine, and the fact that this occurred over the holidays, it is understandable that the investigation took two months (November to January) to conclude. We do not find fault with this length of time in and of itself - had everything occurred properly, members of the public would not have learned that there were any complaints against Imkihca, and our investigation would have wrapped up quietly. However, we concede that it is problematic that we were unable to move more quickly once that information did become public. Much of that can be attributed to a lack of a written procedure to follow for investigations of this nature. We were figuring things out as we went along and could not jump ahead to a later step. The best way to address this for the future is to formalize a process, as we have done with guidelines for releasing confidential information.

As for the rigor of our investigation, we looked into every claim that was made to see if it could be substantiated, and when additional allegations surfaced in the NSWF, we investigated those too. TNP had never undertaken its own investigation of this nature before, instead relying on evidence submitted to us in well-packaged form for previous investigations from other regions. We relied on Europeia’s exemplary investigation of Brunhilde as a contemporary model of what ours should look like, and what degree of proof we wanted to strive for.

We did not contact Imkihca in the course of our investigation for a response to the allegations. It is not our policy to contact those accused at the time evidence is given to us. Instead, we investigate the merits of that evidence to determine if it is valid and if it would be sufficient to warrant a ban. Only then do we contact the subject of the investigation for a statement. Because we did not find such evidence in this case, we determined that we did not need her side of the story in order to not ban her.

At this point, we consider our investigation complete. We understand that there might be some who remain concerned about Imkihca because these allegations occurred at all, and want to see for themselves the evidence that was gathered. However, we have no intention of compounding the harm done to her by releasing to the public any further information on the allegations or the evidence we examined.

Individual Factors
The actions of individuals cannot be overlooked in this analysis. McMasterdonia and Eluvatar served as admins of both TNP and the NSWF, and they both admit to having made serious mistakes.

The largest mistake, which they both made, was in misunderstanding the evidence that had been collected. They, alongside other members of the TNP admin team, initially interpreted the evidence as being more compelling and damaging than the team ultimately concluded it was. In this light, Eluvatar and McMasterdonia’s ensuing actions are understandable. Given their mistaken interpretation of the evidence, they felt not only justified in sharing the allegations, but obligated to do so for safety of the fair’s other participants.

Unfortunately, additional mistakes were made. They did not adequately ensure that the information, once shared, was kept private. Additionally they both experienced significant time away from NationStates while this was going on, which compounded the situation by impeding easy communication between administration teams.

Over the course of the past 6 months, McMasterdonia and Eluvatar have both stepped down as active administrators for a period of time. Eluvatar returned to active status on January 31, 2018, and McMasterdonia resumed his status two months later, on March 27. Because they both acted without malice and with the intent to do what they thought was best, and given that the team as a whole bears some culpability for our failures as described above, we will not be meting out punishment to either one.

Conclusion
The above analysis is wide-ranging and long, covering a number of angles. Despite the best of intentions, our admin team made some serious mistakes in this investigation. In the future, investigations of conduct outside of our forum by our admin team will need rigorous examination at all stages, from interviews, to submissions, to deciding on measures to take, to deciding on announcement or sharing. The key takeaways are as follows:

  • The admin team has drafted and approved a new confidentiality policy
  • We determined a need for Internal protocols to be written on how to conduct an investigation
  • We identified a need to reach out to other administration teams to share best practices

We recognize that this document is not going to satisfy everyone, or maybe anyone. We invite members of TNP to share their concerns and comments. Constructive criticism from outside of TNP is also welcome, but TNP admins serve at the pleasure of TNP, not NS as a whole.
 
Thank you for sharing this Analysis with us all. It is good to see much thought has gone into this and that TNP Admin have been evaluating how to improve procedures. Continuous reviews of policies and practices is never a bad idea to see what has been working and what can be improved upon.

A few suggestions that I hope that TNP Admin might consider:

1. A more robust and detailed Moderation and Administration Policy Handbook.

2. Administrators designated for specific jobs with some overlap. (IE. Citizen-checks & Masking, Forum Maintenance, Security and Tech, Policy and Investigation). Each group having a Head Administrator with other Admins and intentionally moderators within each focus.

3. An appeal process for Bans/Admin action for certain offenses.

These are just some ideas that I think could potentially help any administrative team out, not just TNP.
 
We are indeed working on (1).

We kind of have (2) on a pretty ad-hoc basis, making it clearer might help improve efficiency going forward. I don't think it's a priority just now though.

We have (3) in practice, though it's not really written down how to do it. Perhaps that's something we should do.
 
A great statement. Bravo to the admin team on this one. I just hope this doesn't spark another shitstorm.

EDIT: Fuck. I jinxed it.
 
We are to understand now, then, that the person who came to you with initial claims of blackmail and harassment was lying? Imki is, in fact, completely innocent of all of the allegations set against her?

TNP admins and NSWF Committee Members alike reacted very harshly to the accusations against Imki, to the point that nearly all of them outright refused to speak to her or answer the questions she or any of her supporters had at all. Following the cited Brun incident above, NS as a whole was put on high alert and this accusation put many of Imki's closest relationships at pause. We had trusted Brun, too, and she turned out to have been a predator. I myself had to tell Imki that I would try to trust her until we could find answers, but that she must understand that after something as catastrophic as Brunhilde's nonsense had been, trust was not going to be easy for myself or anyone else right now. Admins of this forum put Imki's name on the line and left her in an emotional storm for weeks with absolutely no way to help herself, as again, admins would not talk to her. And I don't think that any of us have forgotten the temporary website that Raven put up on the matter, where he lambasted not only Imki, but TNP admins for putting him in this situation without his asking and Imki's supporters for supporting her so loudly as well.

This has been a lot. If after such an extreme reaction to Imki, we now find her completely innocent, I have to assume that the evidence presented to TNP's admin team must have been very misleading. It looks to me as if Imki has a solid case of slander on her hands. If TNP refuses to take any action against the admins who directly caused Imki to endure so much despite her utter innocence, will TNP take any legal action against the person who led these admins to believe untruths about Imki and her intentions? With something so serious as "harassment and blackmail," it's hard to believe that the person in question was mistaken about these allegations, especially considering the phrasing that you've used in this apology to describe this person: "a source we considered credible." I take it we can no longer consider them to be a credible source. Or if we can consider them credible, I'm very confused at how we could have taken their very credible information, come to a very harsh conclusion without even feeling the need to speak to Imki about it, and then months later decided that she did nothing wrong. It doesn't seem likely, in any case, that one might accidentally believe that they were being blackmailed when nothing of the sort was going on, and unlikelier that a qualified and reasonable team of admins would, when presented with the evidence, conclude that Imki seemed guilty enough that some preliminary action needed to be taken. Not unless some omission or deception was in play.

I'm not entirely sure how your court systems work and whether Imki would be able to make a case herself or if TNP would have to make a case on her behalf, but for everyone's reference, from TNP's Legal Code:
Section 1.3: Fraud
11. "Election fraud" is defined as the willful deception of residents with regards to the candidates running, the time and venue of the elections, or the requirements and methods by which one may be eligible to vote or run for office.
12. "Fraud" is defined as an intentional deception, by falsehood or omission, made for some benefit or to damage another individual.
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I think we can safely say that the slanderous image pushed onto Imki definitely was meant to damage her reputation. We all agree now that Imki did not deserve the treatment that she was given, and it seems reasonable to conclude that whoever made these accusations against her did not do so in good faith. It think it entirely appropriate for TNP to make up for the damage that they've caused Imki by helping her now find justice against those who may be working against her.

I of course am not asking for the admin team to make a ruling on this, or even asking their opinion on the matter, as it seems more a Governmental issue at this point than a matter to be handled by admins anymore. I do believe, however, that given the damage done to Imki and the neglect of the admin team to give her a chance to defend herself, it seems now appropriate given her innocence for the TNP government to give her the chance to find recompense for the wrongs done to her - either by directly allowing her to make a case against her accuser(s) or by having a TNP Govt vs. situation where the government - or, hey, even the admin team! - stands in her defense to make things right.

Things have to be made right here. This has been all wrong. I hope to see TNP's government step up and protect victims of the sort of slander and harassment that Imki was forced to endure at the fault of their admin team and set a future precedent that these things will not be swept under the rug.
 
Just to clarify, you are asking an IC entity (TNP Government) to take action against an OOC Entity (TNP Admin)?
 
I am asking an IC entity (TNP Government) to take action against an IC entity (whoever supplied the admin team with false or misleading information in the first place).
 
Going to generally agree with Altino here, and +1 all that.

To add some of my own:

Most folks have probably read my own release of thoughts on the matter, and know that I'd basically held some serious suspicion, to this day, based on detailed accusations shared, the fervor with which they were supposed by two members of your admin team, and the fact that even after deciding not to ban, neither those two nor anyone else decided to explain why no ban occurred despite that fervor.

The NSWF was given a through summary of claims, mostly from TNP admins, that generally revolved around the following accusations - obsession-based harassment, threats to doxx, attempts to isolate players, deleting posts to change the context of convos before sharing them, targeting friends of those she's allegedly obsessed with, using third parties to contact people who've explicitly asked her not to contact them anymore, emotional manipulation, and (ironically) slander.

Those are very serious claims. Claims that it was insisted, from there until there was nothing but silence, that there was firm, clear evidence of, and plenty of it, from a swath of sources. You've said no ban, you've said that there were procedural flaws, but at no point have the actual allegations been debunked, described as wrong and why, etc, by your staff with even a shred of the ferocity with which they were made in the first place.

Elu, you once even clearly stated regarding some of the allegation, that "the evidence I've personally reviewed leaves me quite comfortable in saying that I am sure well beyond the preponderance of the evidence, possibly beyond a reasonable doubt."

Today, five months later, you've just told me that you changed your mind regarding whether a forum ban was appropriate.

Why?

What I'm getting at is, *still*, your team is being unclear as to actual allegations themselves.

Are they nonsense, bogus, made up shit?
If so, will people with poor intentions be held accountable?

Are they rooted in truth, but very exaggerated by one side, in a "both parties at fault" type thing, that made them worthy of a deep look, but not be ultimately ban-worthy?

This is a great coverage of flaws in your administrative process. There were certainly a lot of those around, on a few sides. But still, you've not fully covered why this situation even got as far as hitting those flaws.

I think it would be good to use your new administrative policies, and share one step further back.

You've cited, against that, "we have no intention of compounding the harm done to her by releasing to the public any further information on the allegations or the evidence we examined." I'm sure she'll not hesitate to speak up for herself here either way, and perhaps to correct me, but as I see it, it's been a constantly present trend throughout this process that Imki actively has sought detail into the allegations made, into the supposed evidence, with the aim of understanding and refuting it. Did you approach her before making that call "in her best interest," or just plow forwards with it on your own?

I don't like feeling like I'm throwing other admins under a bus here, but seriously folks. I, and I am surely not the only one, have held shy of a player for almost half a year based on the detail and supposed veracity of these allegations, and the strength with which Elu and McM defended such. You kinda owe at least breaking down where they were wrong to a similar degree.
 
To be clear, this entire section is new:
4.3 Confidentiality

What is considered confidential information?
  • The identity of an individual filing a report, either of inappropriate conduct on the TNP forum or of unacceptable behavior in general, as well as the content of any such reports;
  • The identity of any individual who has been investigated, or is being investigated, by the Moderation Team, until and unless a punishment is handed out;
  • Private communications with members of the Moderation Team regarding moderation issues;
  • Applications for a role as administrator or moderator, including the identity of an applicant, the contents of their application, and any denial of an application by the administrators.
  • Posts in private areas visible only to members of the Moderation Team in their role as members of that team;
  • Information shared with the Moderation Team by administrators of other sites or fora that is considered by those administrators to not be public;
  • IP addresses, email addresses, or other information available to members of the Moderation Team that could be used to identify members of the forum.
What is not considered confidential information?
  • [*[The content of any reported post, except when that content has been hidden from view by the Moderation Team;
  • Approved applicants for a role as administrator or moderator;
  • The individuals banned from the forum, the duration of their bans, and the general nature of the offense(s) that led to their ban.
How is confidential information treated?
  • Confidential information may be shared with all TNP administrators.
  • Confidential information may be shared with TNP moderators as appropriate to reach a moderation decision.
  • Confidential information may be shared with the administrators of other offsite communities following these guidelines:
    • Non-TNP Administrators with whom this information is shared must agree to respect these confidentiality guidelines, and not release confidential information to the public.
    • Confidential information that helps communities protect themselves from illegal content, or content that contravenes forum terms of service (e.g., IP addresses used by pornspammers) may be unilaterally shared with non-TNP administrators by any TNP administrator.
    • Confidential information that identifies individuals banned from the TNP forum for non-game-related reasons (i.e., those subject to an administrative ban, not a judicial ban for violating TNP law) may be shared with non-TNP administrators by the agreement of at least two TNP administrators. This type of information includes nation or forum account names, IP addresses, email addresses, and similar. It does not include RL identifying information, or specific evidence for the rationale behind the ban.
    • Other confidential information may only be shared by the agreement of at least three TNP administrators.
  • Sharing information with non-TNP Administrators may only be agreed to by TNP Administrators who are not also administrators of that offsite.
  • Confidential information may only be shared publicly by majority agreement of all TNP administrators.
  • Non-confidential information may be freely shared by any TNP administrator.
Click to expand...
 
SillyString:
To be clear, this entire section is new:
4.3 Confidentiality

What is considered confidential information?
  • The identity of an individual filing a report, either of inappropriate conduct on the TNP forum or of unacceptable behavior in general, as well as the content of any such reports;
  • The identity of any individual who has been investigated, or is being investigated, by the Moderation Team, until and unless a punishment is handed out;
  • Private communications with members of the Moderation Team regarding moderation issues;
  • Applications for a role as administrator or moderator, including the identity of an applicant, the contents of their application, and any denial of an application by the administrators.
  • Posts in private areas visible only to members of the Moderation Team in their role as members of that team;
  • Information shared with the Moderation Team by administrators of other sites or fora that is considered by those administrators to not be public;
  • IP addresses, email addresses, or other information available to members of the Moderation Team that could be used to identify members of the forum.
What is not considered confidential information?
  • [*[The content of any reported post, except when that content has been hidden from view by the Moderation Team;
  • Approved applicants for a role as administrator or moderator;
  • The individuals banned from the forum, the duration of their bans, and the general nature of the offense(s) that led to their ban.
How is confidential information treated?
  • Confidential information may be shared with all TNP administrators.
  • Confidential information may be shared with TNP moderators as appropriate to reach a moderation decision.
  • Confidential information may be shared with the administrators of other offsite communities following these guidelines:
    • Non-TNP Administrators with whom this information is shared must agree to respect these confidentiality guidelines, and not release confidential information to the public.
    • Confidential information that helps communities protect themselves from illegal content, or content that contravenes forum terms of service (e.g., IP addresses used by pornspammers) may be unilaterally shared with non-TNP administrators by any TNP administrator.
    • Confidential information that identifies individuals banned from the TNP forum for non-game-related reasons (i.e., those subject to an administrative ban, not a judicial ban for violating TNP law) may be shared with non-TNP administrators by the agreement of at least two TNP administrators. This type of information includes nation or forum account names, IP addresses, email addresses, and similar. It does not include RL identifying information, or specific evidence for the rationale behind the ban.
    • Other confidential information may only be shared by the agreement of at least three TNP administrators.
  • Sharing information with non-TNP Administrators may only be agreed to by TNP Administrators who are not also administrators of that offsite.
  • Confidential information may only be shared publicly by majority agreement of all TNP administrators.
  • Non-confidential information may be freely shared by any TNP administrator.
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Thank you.
 
I'm glad to see this report. I think it clearly articulates the process and problems and gives extensive reasoning behind some of the issues.

I'd like to agree with Altino that if a player or player(s) attempted to use admin as a weapon against Imki, that needs to be investigated. I'm not sure by whom or who. I can understand that admin wants to make sure people feel protected in giving accounts and particularly victims but in this case players need to understand the seriousness of their claims. Victims shouldn't feel afraid to come out and their confidentiality needs to be respected BUT it's also imperative that people can't weaponize admin.

I'm also wondering about some other things but need to maybe clarify with individuals before posting more here.

Anyways, here is a constant issue. None of us are experts on harassment and to expect a whole crop of people to show up pro bono to help administrate things is probably unrealistic. We can however, help each other learn and try to get experts to look over what we are working on.

I do hope that admins from Euro who have the strongest insight into this would be able to enrich the rest of the admin teams on how to address these many complicated human relationships.
 
I can understand not releasing any details about the allegations or the evidence. After all, when someone has a complaint, or is a witness to something under investigation, the team needs to have their trust that whatever they tell them won't be shared without their permission. Releasing those things to the public could damage the ability of the team to gather information in future investigations.
 
Crushing Our Enemies:
I can understand not releasing any details about the allegations or the evidence. After all, when someone has a complaint, or is a witness to something under investigation, the team needs to have their trust that whatever they tell them won't be shared without their permission. Releasing those things to the public could damage the ability of the team to gather information in future investigations.
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In this specific event, not doing so could as well.
 
A few small things...

First, it might be somewhat ironic coming from me, since I was the one that originally brought this topic up again on the GP forums (in quite salt-laden terms no less), but a personal note to anybody who was arguing here, in the "Statement on Imkihca" thread, or on GP: We were all arguing with nearly or wholly the same general goal in mind. No matter if you thought/think McM should be burned alive at the stake, or rather thought/think that TNP Administration should win "Best Off-Site Team of the Year", or (more likely) you were situated anywhere between those two extremes, we all wanted to see an obvious wrong righted in some reasonable fashion. Accusing each other of being political hacks, or of making things worse, or any number of other things isn't necessary and isn't helping. My opinion, fwiw (and I realize some will disagree with me).

Second, thank you to TNP administration for that report. It's quite detailed on what actually happened while still taking great care to keep any details confidential. The new confidentiality policy is very solid and demonstrates what I understand to be current best practices.

Third, I disagree with Souls' assessment. Even if it didn't violate their brand new (and imho reasonable) confidentiality policy, it's well outside norm and reason to make this public in any way, and Imki herself has mentioned that despite still not knowing what the original claim was, she's fairly satisfied with how things have turned out now. What could be done instead, which would be in line with the confidentality policy as I understand it, is release it to select non-TNP administrators that are in good standing and let them be the judge. That would establish "trusted review" without going public. I'm not sure if that's feasible but it's something to consider!

Fourth, I do agree that it's worth investigating whether or not the original report on Imki was done with malintent (which would in and of itself make it an OOC impropriety). Given the new policy, TNP administration of course can't say whether such an investigation is under way or not, though I think (especially given this report and the new policy) that it's reasonable to assume that it's being investigated.

(this post should be interpreted as just representing myself, not acting in name of any position or whatnot)
 
Another question I would like to ask:

Is there any discussion to bring on more members to Admin and Moderation? What specifically would Admin be looking for in new staff in regards to the new policies?
 
Artemis:
Another question I would like to ask:

Is there any discussion to bring on more members to Admin and Moderation? What specifically would Admin be looking for in new staff in regards to the new policies?
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We currently have seven administrators and six global moderators. Most admin tasks, requests and checks are picked up and done within 24 hours, rather than the 14 days slack the constitution gives us.

No. we are not at present discussing bringing more members on to the admin team.
 
Due to real life professional reasons I’ve been somewhat absent from NS for the last four months, but considering the origins of this issue I think I can point to the genuine “root cause” of this - which has been mentioned implicitly, but not explicitly.

The TNP admin team was willing to take Raven at his word, on the basis of trust and past services, and took far too long to demand evidence and react when it was not forthcoming.

How do I know this? Because in January 2017 - when this began with Imki being unilaterally banned by Raven from multiple Discord servers - the same issues came up in TSP, where Imki and Raven were both admins for our own Discord server. At the same time Raven was banning Imki in TNP he removed Imki as an admin in TSP, on the basis of vague accusations of “harassment” against her and without any supporting evidence. In TSP we set up a parallel admin chat to discuss and investigate the matter, and concluded that Raven had to provide specific accusations and supporting evidence; this was something he was unwilling or unable to do, and when pressed on the issue he ceased to communicate and then when we would not let the issues rest began threatening to either shut down the Discord server or hand control of it to a third party from outside the admin team. This was deemed unacceptable, and Raven was instructed to hand control of the Discord server to one of two TSP members deemed reliable (Tsunamy or Drugged Monkeys). Raven did so, but then proceeded to leave TSP and cease all communication with us - we had taken Imki’s “side” over his.

At no point did he detail what, specifically, he was accusing her of. At no point did he provide any evidence or supporting material. When asked for these he first refused, then began ignoring us, and finally moved on to threats.

In this same time period - and due to the lack of information provided by Raven - I attempted to get details from other regions where Imki had been banned on Discord, trying to talk to several TNP admins about this subject. In all cases I was either ignored, brushed off, or told that the Discord server was a “private” matter outside of TNP control. Based on what I now know, it seems apparent that the TNP admins I asked simply didn’t know - Raven had refused to tell them either. I had a similar experience with other regions where Raven had banned Imki.

Based upon what I know of this entire debacle, I believe (but cannot prove) that the first time TNP admins asked Raven for details and evidence of his accusations was when the NSWF incident occurred; the slow collapse of this case from that moment stemmed from the lack of anything substantive to support Raven’s claims, eventually leading to him quitting NS and creating a revenge/hate site attacking Imki.

The lesson I’ve taken away from this - and I hope the TNP admin team has as well - is that no matter how respected or previously trusted an individual is, claims cannot be taken on face value without specific details and supporting evidence. The second that TSP asked Raven to provide such problems began occurring - and as he became increasingly evasive, accusatory and threatening, it became clear to us that his allegations did not stand up. I do not know when this was replicated in TNP, but as an outsider it appears that his record of service and higher status in TNP meant that it took longer for Raven to be subject to difficult questions, and when he failed to answer them adequately he was given more leeway.

I think TNP was right to take his initial accusations of harassment seriously - potential victims should always be listened to and accusations investigated - but when he failed to support the accusations it took far too long for TNP to hold him to account, and as such for over a year he got away with issuing fake accusations. TNP should have realised months ago that Raven wasn’t the victim here - Imki was.
 
Very well said Belschaft! I truly appreciate you taking the time to say what needed to be said!
 
Belschaft:
This was deemed unacceptable, and Raven was instructed to hand control of the Discord server to one of two TSP members deemed reliable (Tsunamy or Drugged Monkeys). Raven did so, but then proceeded to leave TSP and cease all communication with us - we had taken Imki’s “side” over his.
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To add to this: Raven did pass on the server (to Drugged Monkeys), but not before completely nuking the #admin channel.
 
I'm sorry, are we going to get any comment or action at all here, or are we just going to stick with the "if we ignore them maybe they'll go away" routine? Even an acknowledgement that we have been seen, but you don't really care what we say or think and don't really care about Imki would suffice, if that is how you feel. But we cannot continue to be ignored.
 
Altino:
I'm sorry, are we going to get any comment or action at all here, or are we just going to stick with the "if we ignore them maybe they'll go away" routine? Even an acknowledgement that we have been seen, but you don't really care what we say or think and don't really care about Imki would suffice, if that is how you feel. But we cannot continue to be ignored.
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The last admin posted here less than 24 hours ago. They have lives and jobs like most other people and cannot be here every hour of every day to post solely in this topic. You are not being ignored.
 
Altino:
I'm sorry, are we going to get any comment or action at all here, or are we just going to stick with the "if we ignore them maybe they'll go away" routine? Even an acknowledgement that we have been seen, but you don't really care what we say or think and don't really care about Imki would suffice, if that is how you feel. But we cannot continue to be ignored.
Click to expand...
Going to respond as someone who was not around when all this went down. And in no official capacity until the end.

1) What do you want a comment/action on? There have 3 statements from TNP in total that I can see. 1 from Flemingovia in January, 1 from Eluvatar/McMasterdonia and 1 absurdly long post that is the start of this thread.

2) What does Imki want? Sometimes it *really* feels like there's a lot of talking for her or assumptions made about what she wants or feels without her actually saying it.

3) Who is "we"?

Due to real life professional reasons I’ve been somewhat absent from NS for the last four months, but considering the origins of this issue I think I can point to the genuine “root cause” of this - which has been mentioned implicitly, but not explicitly.

The TNP admin team was willing to take Raven at his word, on the basis of trust and past services, and took far too long to demand evidence and react when it was not forthcoming.

How do I know this? Because in January 2017 - when this began with Imki being unilaterally banned by Raven from multiple Discord servers - the same issues came up in TSP, where Imki and Raven were both admins for our own Discord server. At the same time Raven was banning Imki in TNP he removed Imki as an admin in TSP, on the basis of vague accusations of “harassment” against her and without any supporting evidence. In TSP we set up a parallel admin chat to discuss and investigate the matter, and concluded that Raven had to provide specific accusations and supporting evidence; this was something he was unwilling or unable to do, and when pressed on the issue he ceased to communicate and then when we would not let the issues rest began threatening to either shut down the Discord server or hand control of it to a third party from outside the admin team. This was deemed unacceptable, and Raven was instructed to hand control of the Discord server to one of two TSP members deemed reliable (Tsunamy or Drugged Monkeys). Raven did so, but then proceeded to leave TSP and cease all communication with us - we had taken Imki’s “side” over his.

At no point did he detail what, specifically, he was accusing her of. At no point did he provide any evidence or supporting material. When asked for these he first refused, then began ignoring us, and finally moved on to threats.

In this same time period - and due to the lack of information provided by Raven - I attempted to get details from other regions where Imki had been banned on Discord, trying to talk to several TNP admins about this subject. In all cases I was either ignored, brushed off, or told that the Discord server was a “private” matter outside of TNP control. Based on what I now know, it seems apparent that the TNP admins I asked simply didn’t know - Raven had refused to tell them either. I had a similar experience with other regions where Raven had banned Imki.

Based upon what I know of this entire debacle, I believe (but cannot prove) that the first time TNP admins asked Raven for details and evidence of his accusations was when the NSWF incident occurred; the slow collapse of this case from that moment stemmed from the lack of anything substantive to support Raven’s claims, eventually leading to him quitting NS and creating a revenge/hate site attacking Imki.

The lesson I’ve taken away from this - and I hope the TNP admin team has as well - is that no matter how respected or previously trusted an individual is, claims cannot be taken on face value without specific details and supporting evidence. The second that TSP asked Raven to provide such problems began occurring - and as he became increasingly evasive, accusatory and threatening, it became clear to us that his allegations did not stand up. I do not know when this was replicated in TNP, but as an outsider it appears that his record of service and higher status in TNP meant that it took longer for Raven to be subject to difficult questions, and when he failed to answer them adequately he was given more leeway.

I think TNP was right to take his initial accusations of harassment seriously - potential victims should always be listened to and accusations investigated - but when he failed to support the accusations it took far too long for TNP to hold him to account, and as such for over a year he got away with issuing fake accusations. TNP should have realized months ago that Raven wasn’t the victim here - Imki was.
Click to expand...
As someone who has been gone since we were on IRC and has come back to Discord, let's be clear about "control". It was never the policy that the forum/region had any official control over the chat channel. Indeed, there were often operators that were not TNP people but could be relied upon to be reasonable. So the statement that TNP forum admin did not have control over Discord was not surprising. Technically the region could choose to unilaterally abandon that server and create a new one. I would venture that the familiarity bias mentioned in the report played a large role there. Imki is not (and I don't believe ever has been) an active member of the TNP community. Should her banning in 2017 have been questioned? Probably. But could the TNP forum admin technically do anything about it at that time? Only remove chat links from the forum, which, historically, is not the easiest route for TNP to take.

My understanding is that control of the TNP Discord passed to McMasterdonia in late 2017/early 2018. And at some point, it has become a more official venue, connected to the forum. I am *still* clueless about what that actually means. I am sure TNP will figure that out over time.

Stepping into a semi-official role. Looking at the timeline below (from the NS forum thread) and based on what I've read, I'm assuming this went down sometime in December, after a host had been settled on.
  • Now until Nov. 20th: host bids accepted
  • Nov. 20th - Nov. 27th: vote for a host
  • Dec. 3rd - Dec. 10th: host and committee set everything up
  • Dec. 15th - Dec. 21st: the fair is held
I can definitely say that discussions concerning Imki and an investigation gathering evidence had begun before the end of November. So no, the NSWF was not the first time that it was brought up. So no, the statement is not a lie.
 
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