Originally posted by NamelessHey.
After a lot of reflection, I feel it's time to publicly admit that I've been a less than exemplary staff member for the site and community. Because of a lapse of judgment, I performed an act that is nothing but detrimental to the site's security as a whole and brought down my trust within the community.
On September 4th, 2018, I was paid to leak a specific thread from the staff forums. The incident occurred while I was only a section manager/music moderator, and has never happened before or since. I won't disclose who asked for this, though they are free to reveal themselves. Though I can't say the leak was anything dangerous or top-secret, I do understand that the issue is the implication that a staff member, much less an admin, can be potentially bought off. All I can do to (try to) explain my actions is to discuss the context on why I was desperate enough financially to make the decision to comply, but I feel that all that would boil down to is me making excuses.
Currently, the admins are deliberating what exactly to do and how it should be handled, but in the meantime I feel it's best I should come forward to the community. I'm honestly deserving of whatever comes my way, both in whatever the admins deem suitable as punishment and whatever the community has to say about me. All I can say is that an incident like this involving me has never happened before then, and has never happened since - as an admin, there is a lot more dangerous stuff I could potentially leak, but the thought of doing it has never crossed my mind, nor will it ever again.
It hurts to admit that I did something bad, and it's certainly not relieving when I still have to face said consequences. But, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I compromised security on the site, and likely lost a lot of face to my fellow staff and to the community. Whatever happens will happen, and I will accept the consequences that come with it. My actions most certainly do not reflect on the other admin team members - I don't know what they would do if put in the situation, but judging by the fact they've told me how wrong I was for saying yes in a myriad of different ways, I'm certain they would have held a bit stronger than I did. I'm sure our regular staff members would likely feel the same way.
If you're down here now, though, thanks for reading this wall of text. I admit I've caused my share of problems within the community as a user, especially in my younger days, and the fact I'm continuing to make some form of headache for the staff to deal with is all I need to feel the guilt and weight of my actions. I like to think that I've made up for my past actions by striving to be a better person, and if Mosts results have anything to say about it people would seem to agree. However, the fact I'm causing trouble in a much different way, even if it was an isolated incident, shows I've still got a ways to go, and I'd like to see it as another chance to admit my wrongs and try to make up for them. And please, if you're ever staff anywhere, don't leak stuff, seriously.
Thanks again for reading. Carry on with your day, now.
This puzzles me so much and I am genuinely indifferent because of it. I have a few concerns here that have been bugging me since this situation was announced. It's almost 6 AM and I'm tired so I barely spell-checked or read many of the other posts. Here goes:
First off, why exactly was this brought into relevance? Or well, what was the goal. This entire post invites a hell of a lot of speculation since it's so vague and doesn't provide much info that can actually lead users to trust you as an admin. I would imagine that staff would know by now after Impetus that posts like this only drives users/other staff to form their own random, one-sided and problematic versions of what happened. If you aren't going to give information that can make users feel like they are at ease and don't have to worry about potentially having their own personal information leaked all over this site, then it is pointless to admit this publicly.
Next, if this was in 2018, then this is before you became an admin. Meaning anyone in the staff team to this day could be leaking personal information (for free) just the same and are being let loose due to not coming forward like you did. I have argued on this once before with the idea that groups of staff shouldn't have access to other parts of sub-staff groups that they aren't involved in. For example, Forum Mods not having access to Music Mod places/Graphics Mods not being involved with Discord Mod stuff. For the Discord mod portion, it was refuted before due to us (staff) "never knowing if any emergencies will happen where outsider staff members are needed" which is already foolish to me. By that logic, it's implying that there is a chance that an entire sub-group of Discord mods and admins are inactive to the point where it's actually necessary to have every single staff member be on top of specific users. At that point it falls on the fault of the leadership if a serious situation like that ever happens (which it never has with the current setup). My point in bringing this up is to make it very known that no one's information is actually 100% safe on this website. I don't want to cause some sort of loose paranoia with saying this but just keep in mind that Nameless isn't the only person on staff who has leaked things. Being paid for it is a completely different low but that's a entirely different issue.
What bugs me more is that this is turning into users vs Nameless for something that happened over a year ago. I can 100% understand why people feel on edge since this is all so sudden, but just keep in mind that your information realistically isn't safe with any staff member like I said. You all have to remember that this is a fan-base community led by people who don't have much professional experience with this sort of thing, if any at all.
Now back to you, Hazel, I guess my biggest questions here are why this was brought to life days ago but you haven't visibly said anything since. I don't want to make it look like I'm belittling you as a current administrator, but your first priority should be comforting people that are now worried because of what you've said and done. Regardless if it was a year, a day, a week or a century ago, your absolute #1 stance in this should be giving clarity and proving that you are ready to face your mistakes head on and show that you can be trusted as an administrator instead of just giving the "people say I'm better so I'm better" type of response for something they didn't know about. With the way this is going now, it seems more like you're hiding from these responses, whether constructive or unnecessary responses. With my knowledge as ex-staff, I can understand not wanting to release classified information, but honestly how classified is it to give depth to an already tense situation? Like I mentioned before, the vagueness of your post will only invite more speculation and discourse among most users that read it.
To conclude (for anyone reading this), I personally believe that nothing will actually be done about this situation past this announcement post. People getting unnecessarily temp banned for going off topic with it should have been an obvious outcome for the people banning them as there isn't much to go off of with what Nameless is saying. While it is reasonable for Nameless to face something like demotion from admin because of this situation, it doesn't seem like it will make much of a difference in the way this place is set up. There's still going to be a lot wrong in this community. One less person on the admin/staff team isn't going to change that. The rest of this falls mainly on the entire admin team who, in my opinion, should take what this situation has given and work to fix their policies and information visibility so this has very little chances of ever happening again.