Language…
9 users online:  bebn legg, bradcomp, DaveStateGaming, Dennsen86,  idol, Metal-Yoshi94, oliver1,  Sayuri, signature_steve - Guests: 334 - Bots: 457
Users: 64,795 (2,372 active)
Latest user: mathew

A confession and apology

Link Thread Closed
Originally posted by Shiny Ninetales
First of all, I feel like some people are biased enough to trying to minimize this situation the most possible, but I'm trying to give my opinion for the most objective position.

This is a very serious situation. When I see people saying "lol don't worry, it's not that important" or "just forget it" I feel like people is forgetting that this could potentially have affected themselves. Yeah, sure, it actually didn't, but what if the information leaked would have been something actually important? What if it could have been something about a specific user? Or even worse, about internal site information? They're hypothetical cases, I know, but considering most of us NEVER expected something as big as this, it could have been anything, honestly. And if you were affected due to the leak, wouldn't you want at least some kind of action taken?

(...)

So yes, I'm sorry, but I don't feel this should be left as if nothing happened. Sure, we can forgive and forget, but this isn't something that should be exempt of a penalty, in my really humble opinion. I think there's enough objective reasons to take actions for this, so if the admins doesn't do anything, it's demonstrated that, or they are biased, or they just can't/don't want to handle this siatuation properly.


While there's no doubt in my mind there's a hint of bias on all our parts (myself included), my point of view isn't shrouded by the fact that I consider Nameless a friend. While it is very disappointing that Nameless did this and I don't believe she's exempt from punishment by any stretch, you have to take into account that, as minimizing as it might sound, this IS a Mario website. Let's say in a worse case scenario Nameless leaked passwords or security loopholes or something and the entire site was nuked... then what? Yeah it'd be sad but we'd probably just go about our lives in the real world. As long as you aren't 2017 era me your life won't be ruined by the site being taken down. You can still talk to all your SMWC buddies on Discord and you can post you work to places like SNESLab or ROMHacking.net. Is it the same? No, of course not. But at the end of the day this is a silly hobby we all like to take part in and it shouldn't be taken that seriously.

But of course, that hypothetical didn't happen. The site's still up, we're all still here, Nameless has made it very clear she hasn't done this since nor does she intend to, and frankly I believe her. Call it pretentious but I can usually tell when people are bullshitting and I didn't get that vibe from Nameless's post at all.

TLDR I think everyone getting extremely angry at this whole situation fails to realize we all have bigger fish to fry than this. And again that's not to say Nameless shouldn't be exempt from punishment. I think she should be revoked of her staff status at the very least considering this happened fairly recently, but y'all are acting like the stakes are much higher than they actually are.

And that is the tea.
cant believe this sensitive information that was leaked 2 years ago ruined the site.
ask me if i give a f*ck...
Like others have said, I can't even pretend to be impartial in this matter, but I'll give my thoughts anyway.

Regardless of the severity, this incident happened a year ago, before Nameless even had the position she has now. The damage was done and over with long ago.

I feel like people need to look beyond just this incident when considering what, if anything, should be done about this. Instead of blindly calling out for blood, consider what she has done for this site since she became administrator.

I'll admit that I only sporadically check the site these days, but from what I gather, she's generally well liked among the users here, enough to be voted 3rd for best staff member. And I don't feel like she would have even been promoted to administrator and kept the position as long as she has, if she brought nothing.
list of mods/admin behavior that have been "less than exemplary":

- friend of person that had a gripe with the forum, basically gave them admin permissions for a "prank" that resulted in potentially years of lost posts, documentation and resources that were only available here. then somehow maintained their position on staff and tried to get people banned for little more than a grudge.
- sexual deviant (multiple)
- friend of sexual deviant that regularly tried to use their combined weight to get people they disliked banned
- legitimate pedophile that preyed on underage users of this community

add "sale of 'private information'" to this list

in a professional environment, unauthorized sale of data would result in legal repercussions that could bankrupt the owner(s) of the site. in an actual company these types of people would be banished, never to be employed by the company again and, in some cases, be remotely involved with it. i'm shocked this community is still seen as positively as it is despite all of the controversy surrounding it over the years.

i feel it's worth looking into the people that allowed this information to be sold in the first place; why was there nothing put into place to control the flow of potentially sensitive information? that falls on the people above nameless; the other admins and owner(s).

damage control through apology and action against the user after the fact isn't enough because nameless still financially benefited from the sale of that information. either nameless or the admin team/owners should be liable and willing to provide financial compensation to the user whose data was sold and not solely a hollow apology. and then when that has been taken care of, a reformation of mod/admin policy and a restructuring of the staff team should be done to ensure this will never happen again, including stripping rights from those that have no purpose to see this information.

that sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? because it is, any actual company would have to do that. the difference is that this is a mario hacking website and not an actual company, so your data doesn't matter and you effectively have no rights by posting on this forum and nothing is promised or guaranteed to you.

besides maybe a demotion/ban/whatever the staff team decides to do, literally nothing will happen and nobody will remember this or care in 3 days, short of the one person that has no reason to still be outraged.


but i'm just a shitbaby so here's the sole 2020 post i will make



this whole situation probably could have been avoided if the staff on this website were more transparent in general such that a user wouldn't feel it necessary to bribe a mod into leaking information regardless of their own supposed sociopathy
Originally posted by Sonikku
either nameless or the admin team/owners should be liable and willing to provide financial compensation to the user whose data was sold

the user whos data was sold was the same user who paid for it. you know how on discord when a mod warns you? it gets logged in a warning channel. same thing on the site. in this case, a user paid for information on all the stuff they had been warned for, basically.

Originally posted by alexandrite
this whole situation probably could have been avoided if the staff on this website were more transparent in general such that a user wouldn't feel it necessary to bribe a mod into leaking information regardless of their own supposed sociopathy

i can't think of any community that has completely public staff areas. everything that is currently public and transparent is everything that can be public and/or transparent. we could make warning logs public like somethingawful does, but im not sure how much you guys would actually like that in practice.

furthermore - for those who may feel uncomfortable publicly posting this to the forums, you can use our anonymous staff feedback.
Originally posted by idol
everything that is currently public and transparent is everything that can be public and/or transparent.

Originally posted by Sonikku
list of mods/admin behavior that have been "less than exemplary":

- friend of person that had a gripe with the forum, basically gave them admin permissions for a "prank" that resulted in potentially years of lost posts, documentation and resources that were only available here. then somehow maintained their position on staff and tried to get people banned for little more than a grudge.
- sexual deviant (multiple)
- friend of sexual deviant that regularly tried to use their combined weight to get people they disliked banned
- legitimate pedophile that preyed on underage users of this community

ahahahahahahahaha

to be fair maybe i just missed it but this is my first time hearing most of this stuff
Originally posted by alexandrite
Originally posted by idol
everything that is currently public and transparent is everything that can be public and/or transparent.

Originally posted by Sonikku
list of mods/admin behavior that have been "less than exemplary":

- friend of person that had a gripe with the forum, basically gave them admin permissions for a "prank" that resulted in potentially years of lost posts, documentation and resources that were only available here. then somehow maintained their position on staff and tried to get people banned for little more than a grudge.
- sexual deviant (multiple)
- friend of sexual deviant that regularly tried to use their combined weight to get people they disliked banned
- legitimate pedophile that preyed on underage users of this community

ahahahahahahahaha

to be fair maybe i just missed it but this is my first time hearing most of this stuff


#1 occurred in 2009 when Counterfeit and Kaeru, who were both staff at the time, assisted in hacking the site through poor password strength, resulting in most staff and admins being locked out of their accounts. This was 11 years ago and was a very publicly known event at the time.
#2 is very vague so I don't know what event is being referred to. #3 is unfamiliar to me which means whatever it was happened before mid-2017, when I rejoined staff. This was at least 2 1/2 years ago. It could very well be that much of this was kept quiet by whoever was staff at the time, but it's important to note that nearly every single person on staff right now was hired after I was, putting very few of them potentially around for any of these alleged incidents.
#4 was leod being banned in early 2019 after we learned that he had engaged in predatory behavior towards underage users of this site. This had apparently been going on for some time, but was unknown to staff until after he had already resigned from the team about six months prior. Very shortly after we learned of his behavior, we permanently banned him from the site. It's coming up on one year since this happened, and while it wasn't talked about in great detail on the site or discord, it was mentioned multiple times by us.

I'm not sure what other kind of "transparency" you want from us. Nameless's situation was brought to our attention two days ago. Us admins talked about it among ourselves for a day, and then nameless posted this thread. As idol mentioned, a completely transparent staff area or staff discord is not really possible or reasonable.



I think some people are blowing this out of proportion lol. She leaked a user's list of warnings to that same user 2 years ago. Yes, leaking private staff threads for money is a bad thing to do in general, but this particular instance isn't exactly that serious. Obviously it was a bad thing to do, but this is a single minor offence that Nameless did not need to bring to the public's attention, but she did. Should she got off scot free, probably not, but at the end of the day, was it really that big of a deal?

edit: corrected wrong information

yall need to think about this logically. not this "nameless betrayed us #smrpg{sad}" thing. i mean use your noodle. what is the absolute worst thing that could have been leaked? nameless at the time was a section mod. not an admin or a site coder, aka zero database access. literally all you can touch is hosted material and the staff forum, of which theres absolutely nothing worthwhile there in terms of private/sensitive information (having been a mod myself). "oops, someone leaked the theme for next c3" "get the pitchforks". the WORST thing nameless could have leaked is her own password. thats it. also, you guys (userbase and staff) are putting this website on a very high pedestal for some dum reason. its a smw hacking site. like, not even a normal smw site; a hacking one. far from nitendo-sanctioned. founded by a rando bored dane and his swedish friend. take a chill pill and realize where youre posting lol.

whoever said the briber is in the wrong is right. it was me btw. i took advantage of the situation nameless was in to get a lil peek at my own User Discussion thread. why? i dont remember. i was probably bored. but it was wrong of me nevertheless and i dont know if i can apologize to nameless because this affects her way more than it affects me (even though logically that should not be the case, as i stated earlier). im not trying to like worm my way out of it or anything; im just saying literally nothing was leaked aside from boring posts. no one is dead or injured. all resources are still intact. this happened over a year ago, and life has moved on since. again, chillax w

either way: nameless, i'm sorry

now hurry up with the c3 voting #smw{:TUP:}
Originally posted by FPzero
As idol mentioned, a completely transparent staff area or staff discord is not really possible or reasonable.

it's a mario website. like it's cool if you want to keep contest details or whatever a secret, that's fine, but the general sentiment seems to be that nothing discussed could possibly be that serious. if anything though it perpetuates an air of clique-ish-ness to the staff team which has always been smwcentral's main problem. sure it's gotten better here and there but something like this leod situation which was kept mostly in hushed tones, no sort of big apology to the victims and update people on the situation, just sort of feels like a reinforcement of this clique-ish-ness and the protection it entails. i'm glad anyways nameless was forthright about this because it probably would've never really been known if it was just left to the staff.
Okay, I'll be frank.

Again, not a completely unbiased hot take, but I don't think a staff member leaking a thread about a specific user to the user themselves when asked is that bad of a thing.
Originally posted by 1616
Okay, I'll be frank.

Again, not a completely unbiased hot take, but I don't think a staff member leaking a thread about a specific user to the user themselves when asked is that bad of a thing.

I'd normally think the same, but again, what's top secret should remain top secret. Not to mention Ladida was staff before so they were allowed access to UD threads by default, including a potential one about them.
Windowless ride, feeling alive
Are you alive or just breathing?
Originally posted by FP
#1 occurred in 2009 when Counterfeit and Kaeru, who were both staff at the time, assisted in hacking the site through poor password strength, resulting in most staff and admins being locked out of their accounts. This was 11 years ago and was a very publicly known event at the time.

Sonikku is referring to the "great wipe", I think? I don't even know how that happened but I think it was this person called "ArbeWhat" who was involved in this rather than Kaeru (Darklink) and Counterfeit. I think what you're referring to was a separate incident, involving stealing cookies.
@ leod stuff: wow, that's messed up. Glad that's been dealt with.

Some users mentioned earlier that it could be a User Discussion thread (which Ladida confirmed just now). What's the worst thing Ladida would've seen in the thread? I feel that the situation affected no regular user outside of the staff team, except for Ladida. I'm just guessing here, but Ladida probably didn't even gain anything from this, besides probably learning about how he caused the pantsu incident and the staff trying to find ways to deal with it? (I'm just guessing.) I think the severity of this incident would've been different if Ladida wanted to look into someone else's UD thread with malicious intentions.

What Nameless now can do is making sure she doesn't let herself get manipulated into doing this again (even though it was over a year ago and she's maybe less/not prone to this at this point). I imagine she lost a great deal of trust from the staff team after this incident, especially because of this one-year delay. Some users may be upset about this, but personally I'm indifferent about it. I'm just lurking here while occasionally starting some ROM hacking project I never finish. The incident doesn't hinder this process.

Think about the incident this way instead: Any staff member could've been manipulated into doing this, given the right conditions, not just Nameless, because it's a human error. The outcome could've been different if the conditions were different, e.g. Ladida asking for someone else's UD thread, not his own. It's hard to guarantee that something like this won't happen again, so maybe the problem should be dealt with on the staff forum-level instead? Maybe archive UD threads after a certain period of time so they're unreadable until N amount of staff vote for it to be un-archived? I dunno. But I hope the staff will pull through this somehow.
My blog. I could post stuff now and then

My Assembly for the SNES tutorial (it's actually finished now!)
Some quick notes:

- The current staff is not and never will be responsible for the actions of previous staff teams. It's been many, many years since the site was created and staff rotates in and out all the time. Neither I nor any other current staff member is going to get saddled with bullshit that happened years ago just for being staff. Anyone who argues this is being disingenuous at best.

- Transparency is fine and all but there is a limit. The staff areas are *not* going to be made public, ever; there are always going to be conversations and details that you're not going to be privy to and that's never going to change. That's just how staffed forums work. The userbase does not get to decide what staff discussions should be private and what should be public.

This is a warning to keep this thread civil. Neither of these two topics have anything at all to do with this thread. Anyone posting about them will have their post deleted and their account banned for 2-3 days.

EDIT: I meant it.
It happened, that's the past now. If Nameless learned her lesson, give her another chance. It happens, humans do fail. I have failed as well several, several times.

The thing to be thought is what should be the staff team policy when dealing with issues like these. The process should be the same for all users, regardless if it's admin or staff. Though the history we have seen staff members getting fired for less severe things made while others made worse stuff and were never demoted or warned at all. That's the only thing to be thought.

Other than that, you are all just losing time discussing if A or B's point is correct or not. We have more important issues to deal on life and on this site compared to a leak that occurred one year ago and is not severe given the context (after Ladida confessing what happened). alexandrite and Samantha, your time is precious. Consider learning ASM instead of wasting time shitposting. (ninja edit: glad the mods removed the latest posts)
GitHub - Twitter - YouTube - SnesLab Discord
My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined.
Originally posted by StrikeForcer
this is low even for you
Selling out the site is tantamount to betrayal

Originally posted by Ragey
I just can't imagine how entitled someone must be to do such a thing and then further bother the community they care so little about with this drawn-out, hollow, and egocentric post 1.5 years later. How embarrassing.

>civil threads, and other jokes you can tell yourself
imagine being on the receiving end of this for leaking someone's own warning log to them. lol. love how friendly everyone is until they're eager to demonize someone before they even know the full story. this is twitter levels of ravenous

by the way, a demotion (especially a non-permanent one) is reasonable, all things considered, but that's just going through the motions. putting that aside though, think of nameless' position on the website and how long ago this occurred. if she really didn't give a shit about smwc and was as corrupt as everyone implies she would have ditched the site without any public apology months ago, maybe longer. and if she didn't, she would just keep doing things like this, and i trust that she's telling the truth that she didn't since she's done a ton for the website even after taking the bribe

Originally posted by Deputy BS
oh whats that? "financial situation"? probably not important. have you considered maybe someone paid for my user staff log that shows i said the n-word in 2011, cant let that happen

only good post in this thread
i think what nameless did [this thread, not the action described in op] was really admirable. coming out to confess and apologize for something like this isn't easy, especially on a public forum. i think that a lot of other users in this thread are kind of overreacting. many people have already said it, but here it is again; were a site dedicated to smw hacking. you are a forum user for said website, taking time out of your day to view the Drama Thread Of The Year that'll be forgotten in like, a week, if its not memed to death - which it won't. personally, i cant see why people are getting so UPPITY about this, saying that they've BETRAYED smwc and whatnot. its not a huge deal, to me atleast, and i believe that this thread really reflects the type of person who nameless is.

anyway. besides all that. i'm slightly biased after reading everything but id be willing to forgive.

i like what vitor said, though;
Originally posted by Vitor Vilela
It happened, that's the past now. If Nameless learned her lesson, give her another chance. It happens, humans do fail. I have failed as well several, several times.
I don't interact with the community very much anymore for the wrongdoing I've done in the past myself, so I don't really have the right to have an opinion, but here are my two cents. What Nameless did was wrong, and she acknowledges what she did. But it was between her and Ladida and I know how terrible she must feel for revealing something like this (it sort of seems things have been sorted out between them?), as mentioned before, this takes a lot of courage to confess.

But also, let's be real: not every staff member is going to like you no matter how good you are or how you're friends with x person. I also wondered if staff had a bone to pick with me as well for my behavior and I don't personally believe it's wrong to know (to a certain extent) if people talk shit about you, it's human curiosity wanting to know what others think of you/what version of you exists in somebody else's mind.

Do I condone this? No, of course not, but it's human to admit and forgive. Live and let die.
Link Thread Closed