I’m gonna weigh in since someone made a post here just over a week ago, and the state of the hub has been bothering me every time I think ‘I might play SS14 today’. I’ve been thinking about how best to word this for a while; it’s going to be long, but I’ll condense it at the end.
To preface a little context, I voiced concerns after the EE dehub, specifically that I believed, as I still do, that Peptide and his Singularity servers recieved the full force of a punishment for a misconduct that took place in a discord server he was in, with his only crime being failing to speak out against it. I’ll re-state that I have a limited horse in that race, having put a little work into Peptide’s Fallout server more than a year ago, and worked alongside him enough to have what I think is a decent meassure of the guy, but we’ve not talked in over a year. Frankly, recent events have only made me feel more certain that this was mishandled, especially seeing earlier in this very thread that the strike system has been simply put aside out of convenience because someone was pushing boundaries, and apparently part of that consisted of having a server name that contained ‘speciesism’ - which is solely a server rule and has nothing to do with the hub (unless I am completely misunderstanding that exchange above, which is possible).
When I was discussing this on the Admin Help channel in the Discord, with hindsight, I really didn’t make my case as good as I would have liked, so I’m going to take a second stab at it here, with a broader focus on how I think the hub administration is being handled improperly, the tangible effects of it, and some suggestions.
- Why this matters:
I want to start by laying out why, imo, any of this matters. I think it’s easy to look at any failings in hubministration as low-stakes community drama, as something that will seem unimportant a few more years into the project, or as an inevitable result of managing a project of this size. Anyone who has contributed to the game knows implicitly how much personal time, effort and passion is required to do so - this scales from the hours or days to learn git and the language in order to make small tweaks, all the way up to the months and years a person will invest in making a hardfork or total conversion codebase. Everyone involved with the project understands intimately how much it hurts when that much effort gets lost to a git issue, or a failed storage device, or just an insurmountable bug or design issue. It’s easy to pretend that a dehubbing is just a slap on the wrist, or a cessation of providing one hub platform of many, but to pretend cutting ingress of all but the most determined 1% of players is anything other than a death sentence for a server is obviously disingenous. On a personal level, taking months or years of freely contributed work, from potentially dozens of contributors and pressing a single button to condemn it to unplayablility should not be a decision made lightly. To pull Peptide in as an unwilling example; I know he’s been working tirelessly on his fallout fork for at least 3 years, the guy has kids and he found time to put endless work in over something he was passionate about, he enjoyed and primarily, he knew other people would be passionate about and enjoy. Isn’t this the reason we’re all here? The idea that in a situation like this, pulling that plug is something that’s being done without every consideration, check, and moment for cooler heads to reassess and confirm is what is bothering me the most, personally.
- Transparency:
I’ll interject my own train of thought here for a sidebar because I’m sure the response to this is going to be ‘the decision was not made lightly, all considerations were given, it was decided that in this case, the punishment was apt’, to which I’d say; how am I supposed to know that, and how is anybody supposed to trust that if the process is as opaque as it is right now? In the case of the EE dehubbing, evidence was given that people a number of people in the ‘EE council’ discord made an attempt to pull the plug on Wizden hosting; as I said the last time this was discussed, I think this is a perfectly valid reason to take action with mod administration. In all the screenshots and information the community were supplied, Peptide’s crimes consisted of:
A) being present in a discord group of server hosts
B) saying he didn’t believe ‘this’ (presumably the DMCA, but impossible to tell as we have no direct context for the quote) doesn’t comprise harrassment
C) ‘operating a server we’ve had to strike for harrassment before’ - no further information provided, no prior strikes visible on the forum hub administration tag that I can see
D) ‘being fine’ with these events
I think it’s evident to anyone coming at this from an honest and neutral perspective that nothing Peptide has specifically done here breaks any of the hub rules, let alone to the extent that the entire strike system was seemingly leapfrogged directly to a dehubbing for all 3 servers.
Now when this was discussed in the discord, I was told that there was some other unspecified wrong that had been done which justified all the treatment, I was given no further information and every staff member present functionally told I’d have to take their word for it, and that Peptide was a malicious actor who deserved what happened to him, something which I still can’t square with the guy I worked with a few years ago on his Fallout server. Being blunt, the whole thing feels like something is being covered up, and it feels like any resultant ambiguity is being inflated to seem as big as possible to justify actions which otherwise wouldn’t fly - and how would anyone in the community confirm anything otherwise if we’re not being told anything? I’m just using Peptide’s case as an example of a lack of transparency, but I will touch back on this topic - my point isn’t so much that something was covered up, or that any lies were told, or truths were implied, but that, as a community member outside the circle, there is literally no way to know, and that makes for a really difficult environment to foster trust - trust that is essential to the process.
1.5. Why this matters to the community:
To return to the point, aside from risking just throwing someone’s personal work in the trash, and how shitty that is, I also feel the need to point out that if dehubbing is handled without the gravity it should be, it’s inevitably going to feed into a bunch of community woes. I’d like to get ahead of the response I’ve heard before; to the tune of ‘its inevitable that some people will resent the punishments they fairly recieve’ by saying yes, obviously, and that I agree; as I said before with the DMCA takedown being a fair reason for a dehub, I am not of the opinion that no violation deserves punishment, or that it’s possible to completely avoid any negative feelings between wizden and the broader community. With that being said, if Wizden is seen to be, as I argue it has, using its position rashly or irresponsibly, that’s gasoline to any sentiment regarding a wizden in-group presiding over an out-group. As I attempted to convey in the previous discord conversation, if people feel like they could catch a dehub for minor offenses, like being present while other people discuss breaking rules, that’s going to put people on edge, and is going to lead to the community clustering into groups distrustful of wizden - which is very much what the EE group seemed to be. I’ll fly over the obvious reasons this is bad; a divided community will be unwelcoming and unlikely to co-operate on larger projects and moderation, inter-server drama bullshit will get more personal and heated, individuals will be less inclined to fork codebases for fear of dehub, or of the rules changing under their feet to where previously acceptable behaviour risks the work they’ve put in etc etc. If Wizden are attempting to act as community arbiters, such as here (do note the complete lack of any information at all), it’s even more important than it would otherwise be that the rules are enforced fairly, consistently, and, most importantly, are seen to be all of these things. Anything else is frankly irresponsible and is going to lead the community bit by bit to a very unpleasant place.
- It costs nothing to improve this:
In terms of what I’d suggest should be done, my suggestions are incredibly minimal, which I think is a point unto itself - doing this right would be basically free. I’ll go into more detail towards the end, but all that needs to happen that isn’t happening now is that the rules need to be enforced as written, we need some form of non-wizden oversight to ensure impartiality (and to make sure people can see it’s impartial), we need more transparency, with things that aren’t disclosed being justified, and the people most directly involved in the drama should absolutely not be the ones making decisions on how to resolve it.
- Things aren’t improving:
The two dehubbings I have some familiarity with are that of EE and the Nyanotrasen dehub from 2023. To their absolute and unsarcastic credit the staff involved openly admit that the NT dehub was handled poorly - I don’t disagree with the underlying sentiment, and based on what I heard around then and what happened since, Rane-headed Nyanotrasen was probably going to the block sooner or later. What concerns me, however, is that a lot of the issues then; the lack of communication with the actioned party, the lack of transparency with the community, and the seemingly rash decisionmaking involved are present in both dehubbings as far as I can tell. After the discussion on the discord I did a little digging on the other side, and as far as I can tell from Peptide’s perspective, he recieved a pretty hostile DM telling him that if he didn’t leave the EE discord his server would be dehubbed, to which a response of standing one’s ground and pleading one’s innocence, to me, is reasonable - as far as I am aware, that’s the full extent of communication. These two dehubbing events were over a year apart and, as far as I can tell from the limited information I actually have access to, the processes and approaches to hub administration haven’t significantly improved at all. Without transparency and oversight, I see no reason why they would at all.
- Can we be nicer generally:
The last unbroached point is something I’ve seen raised and acknowledged internally a few times which strikes me as both a hypocricy and catalyst to exacerbate pretty much all the other issues which is wizden maintainers and higher rank contributors, (I will say this largely doesn’t apply to admin staff) being standoffish, short-tempered, and just generally rude, to peers, community members, and when talking about people outside the community. This isn’t a new take, I’ve seen high level staff talk about it, I seem to recall there was an announcement a month or so ago saying it would be improved, I’ve seen a fair amount of staffers leave the group because of it. If people are prone to making quick rash decisions, especially if those people are, or percieve themselves to be the target of rulebreaking, that person should absolutely not be involved in the processs of deciding the response to it unless there are no other options. This might seem like I’m subtweeting PJB, but it’s a very common thing I’ve seen through the years in the community and absolutely isn’t limited to her, though in the case specifically of harrassment-based dehubs, to my understanding she is usually the target of, let it be said, unfair and genuinely disgusting smears. I am genuinely sympathetic to that, and I’d never say a person shouldn’t be upset or angry about it, but to reiterate, that person is not going to be able to make impartial decisions about how to respond to the situation and it seems incredibly obvious to me that in these cases whoever is the relevant party should be functionally recused. As a secondary point, I’ve seen plenty of venom spit about other community figures by wizden staffers in the discord - I don’t like the idea that one of the hub rules seems to amount to ‘dont talk shit about other server staff past a threshold’ when shit is talked about other servers from in wizden; I understand that no wizden staffers are whispering that anyone else is a pedophile, but I’ve definitely seen people be called wastes of space, disgusting human beings etc etc which I think puts fuel to people concerned about ‘one rule for wizden one rule for everyone else’, whether it’s true or not.
- Why I’m worried:
I’m sure I’m not alone in that I have personally never liked the idea of the administration of one server having a button they can press to functionally remove any other server with zero oversight. Just picture SS13 if /tg/ had the ability to dehub, or Goon - the community would be significantly worse and everyone would hate it. When I voiced my lukewarm concerns in the Discord, I felt like what I was saying was taken on board, at least somewhat, and the reply assuring me that dehubbing would barely be used, and, where it was, it would only be used appropriately, after serious consideration, and only when the reasonable hub rules were broken sufficiently. The last few months have shown me that this isn’t the case; the hub rules are guidelines, the strike system is only used as long as it’s not too inconvenient, and decisions are being made hastily and opaquely. This is not good, it’s not fostering a community that’s enjoyable to be a part of, and it’s not sustainable. If things stay as they are, I can only see the course holding, resentment building, the community atomising, forks drying up and god only knows who will be holding the unsupervised controls to the hub in 5 years.
3.5. Suggestions:
My suggestions are as follows; some are vague, some are specific, I’m not a cop I barely play the game at the moment, so they’re worth whatever they’re worth:
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Enforce the hub rules as written. If colluding to break rules together is a violation, the rules should say so - the server rules are longer than the hub rules last I looked. Obviously every edge case and shitty rules-lawyer can’t be pre-empted, so in these cases it should be seriously discussed, made clear, to the people discussing and the community afterwards that an exception is being made and why it is being made, ideally be added to the rules going forward, ideally be given more leeway than a straight violation would be (IE not insta-dehubbing, maybe even having a non-confrontational conversation with the person to establish facts), and even more ideally, overseen by a third party of some kind, see 2:
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Involve at least a bare minimum non-wizden in the hub administration process. It’s really not a mystery where the secret cabal accusations come from. This does not have to be an embarrasing discord channel where people roleplay as the UN and cast votes; having one or two high-level staffers from servers that aren’t owned/run by wizden staff, who you can trust to be adults and not disruptive, in the room and able to voice their opinions on dehub discussions will go a long way to earning community trust. If you want to be cynical, frame it as adding fall guys to share the aggro. It would be great if there was an agreed rule to the effect of ‘no dehubbing unless lawbreaking, X strikes, or the third party okays it’, but that’s probably a big ask. Also crammed in here because it doesnt fit in 1 or 3; as I said before, if someone’s targeted, they need to recuse themselves from the process; angry decisions don’t lead to long-term good outcomes.
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More communication generally. Even if someone is snickering while obviously breaking rules and it seems stupid to reach out to tell them, I think it’s better that people are having 50 slightly awkward conversations than 1 person gets dehubbed for reasons they aren’t 100% clear on. Obviously the person reaching out needs to be at least a little impartial, so not the person who’s being targeted if it’s harrasment. You can’t run a community if your only interactions with groups there’s disagreements with are threats and mod actions. Also this applies to the community; obviously stuff needs to be redacted sometimes, it’s much better to say ‘yeah we left out X because it contained personal information about a staff member’ than to just not mention the hole. Further bonus points if the redacted stuff gets looked over by a trustworthy third party from 2 and they go on record agreeing that it’s fair to redact this to put to bed any concerns about impartiality.
I could give some spiel about how we’ve got a chance to a fresh start and we can learn from the fuckups of SS13 and, with some work, make a community that doesn’t hate eachother and collaborate, and work together to deal with bad elements in the community, but I feel I’ve touched on or implied it all already. SS14 is in a better place than I’ve ever seen 13, but that’s not something that stays the case without putting heads together; at the moment, I am plagued with visions from the dark timelines that flippant hub management will bring us. I’m not saying stop managing it, or stop banning people, or anything like that; just that we need to be sensible, community-minded and efficient with how we do.
I used chatgpt to generate a TLDR:
- Why This Matters:
Dehubbing can severely impact a server, potentially ending years of work with little consideration. In the case of Peptide, the dehub seems to be based on questionable grounds, which is concerning. The decision to dehub should not be taken lightly. - Transparency:
There’s a lack of transparency in how decisions like dehubbing are made. Without clear information, it’s hard for the community to trust the process. We need more visibility into the reasoning behind such actions. - Impact on the Community:
If dehubbing decisions feel arbitrary, it divides the community and creates distrust. This can lead to uncooperative behavior, increased drama, and discourage people from contributing to the project. - Minimal Changes Needed:
The solution is simple: enforce the rules consistently, improve transparency, and introduce external oversight to ensure impartiality in decision-making. - Ongoing Issues:
The lack of improvement in hub administration is troubling. Past dehubbings have shown similar issues with communication and decision-making, which still seem unresolved. - Behavior in the Community:
Staff behavior also contributes to the issues. Rude or rash actions, particularly when directly involved in a situation, harm the fairness and integrity of the process. - Why I’m Concerned:
I worry that unchecked power to dehub can harm the community, as seen in SS13. Without proper oversight, dehubbing can create resentment and erode the community, leading to its collapse in the long term.