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Staff Feedback Thread

Link Thread Closed
Originally posted by Absolutely ridiculous stiffness in how rules are applied on the Discord server
Man it's been a while, hell I'm not even there but holy fuck if I've seen shit happening there, usually I go like "haha that mofo sure tends to exaggerate" but what I saw today was just absurd.

So there's certain user that might be kind of weird sometimes, not a bad guy, he's just very open. Anyways, so he mentioned how his mother had a miscarriage, a difficult topic for sure. But instead of offering any kind of condolences or literally any support, they decided to just delete everything and do their classic "ummm please go to #channel".

That's just ridiculous and shows an absolute lack of empathy from the Staff team.

That's all.


Originally posted by (Discord) About your most recent action in #general
I just... can't find the words to describe how disgusted I am by what you've done.

So basically, a user comes saying that their unborn sibling had died, and the first thing that comes to your mind is to delete the message because it might trigger (imaginary) people and redirect the user.

What the hell man? Is it that much to ask for you to be a little more sensitive with such topics? You know, exactly the way you are when it comes to slurs and questionable imagery. Can't you even give him your damn condolences or any kind of supportive words? Jesus Christ. And no, an insincere "he has my remorse" in a secret channel doesn't cut it (and it's not even the right word unless you killed the baby, but whatever; I'm not your English teacher).

This just makes you all as a team look insensitive as all hell. But I guess staining your image is your specialty, given the amount of complaints you've received in the past because of how obsessive you are with redirections and image/message deletions.

Fucking hell. And I'm sorry for the language, but I'm got really mad because of how poorly you handled the situation, almost as if you didn't give a flying fuck that somebody had just lost their unborn sibling.


Originally posted by Please stop with the "lol go to #channel"
I had enough of that stupid crap of redirecting natural conversations because you had to follow the rules to the 100%
not only because is stupid, it makes you look really bad, specialy when you redirect and erase a good boy (that has some language barriers, but still good) saying that his unborn brother died and you go and have 0 empaty. This makes me think how would you react when similar situations would happend... maybe even worse. think about you did...




To begin, I want to apologize on behalf of the mod team. We'd never quite encountered a situation like this before and weren't quite sure how to handle it. We did discuss it a team before deciding what action to take, but our decision ultimately ended up being the wrong one. Deleting the messages was a mistake, and our redirection message could've been worded better. I do want to provide a bit of insight into the thought process that happened behind the scenes in order to clarify things a bit. That being said, I don't want to shrug off the responsibility either; we made a mistake, and now that we've learned from it, we can strive to make sure similar situations are handled better in the future.


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So basically, a user comes saying that their unborn sibling had died, and the first thing that comes to your mind is to delete the message because it might trigger (imaginary) people and redirect the user.



I first want to address this part of the feedback. I don't believe this is a fair statement, as I had received a complaint from someone about the messages in #general, which is what prompted discussion on what to do with them in the first place.

Our intention with removing the message was to prevent other users from potentially feeling upset by unexpectedly seeing such an emotionally-charged in a channel such as #general, as prompted by the complaint I had received. In hindsight, and with no context, I do understand how it can come off as cold.

As for the redirection message, the intent in its wording was to get the message across in a clear fashion. Once again, looking at it in hindsight, it does seem colder than it was intending to be.

In short: we were not holding anything against the user; our intention was simply to redirect them to the appropriate place should they wish to talk about their troubles, without other users having to get involved if they do not wish to do so. This wasn't executed correctly, and the resulting message came off seeming harsh.

Ultimately, the mod team is all on the same page about the situation being handled poorly, and for that, once again, we would like to apologize. Looking forward, we'll take a bit more time and discuss sensitive situations like these more in-depth before immediately jumping to action.

This feedback was posted in response to this post by FPzero:

Originally posted by re: ExGFX Staff
I'd like to add that the long waiting queue isn't something recent. There has been 50+ waiting graphics for at least 4 months, so the recent resignation of two mods has nothing to do with it (it just happened some days ago).

Worse to thing that during those (at least) 4 months, the music section has got more or less the same numbers (50~60) but moderation is still going regular in that section. So it's not a valid excuse to say the graphics section "receives a lot of submissions all the time" because music receives the same amount (I'd say more even, consideting moderation is more constant there).


There's nothing much to mention here except that I agree. The waiting queue spiked heavily during January, presumably because of C3, and has been going down very slowly since.

These are the waiting submission numbers at the beginning of the past few months:

January: 23
February: 60 (66 submitted, 29 moderated from previous month)
March: 55 (33 submitted, 38 moderated)
April: 51 (30 submitted, 34 moderated)
Current: 55 (33 submitted, 29 moderated)

I'd like to reiterate that it *has* been going down slowly. But these are not sufficient numbers to clear out the queue before next C3 brings another spike. In that, you are correct.

However, all I can do here is point to FPzero's previous response. Clearing out the queue is not our main goal currently, but rather the hiring of a new graphics team leader and moderators. Before those happen, it's very unlikely that the queue will drop as quickly as it should.
Originally posted by Trophy Name Error
So, I was looking Lazy's profile until I see that:

The correct is: Secret Santa Event
The error: Satan


I asked around and it turns out this isn't actually an error. In talking with people who were here when the event was held, half of the users in 2015's Secret Santa event were actually "Secret Satans" who were supposed to intentionally misinterpret peoples' requests. I assume that's why the Event is called "Secret Satan" for some recipients.

Whatever the case, this is intentional, so there's no error to fix.
Originally posted by I've noticed slowdown since the webpage updated.
I'm a software tester, and since the site got updated to the new layout I've noticed a delay in the performance. I ran the site through a speed tester, and I just thought I would share the results.


https://www.screencast.com/t/hXTxB30Wjz

I appreciate your desire to help, but that report doesn't show anything out of the ordinary for SMW Central. Almost all of the other site schemes use assets much less efficiently than the one for the current C3. Cloudflare handles caching decently, too. I'm surprised that gzip isn't enabled, but that might be caused by layouts or other user-provided resources.

The cause of the current slowdown is the increased server load because of C3. The pages load perfectly fine after the server has managed to process your request, as evidenced by metrics such as time to first byte.
Originally posted by Contest suggestion
Good evening (from here) so, I have seen the evolution of the SMWC website and knowing resources that can be interesting to be explored, I suggest a "Contest" called "RNGLDC" (something similar) that uses the "Show Random" feature available on the site.
An example of this: the Contest user or creator clicks the link three times, generating three different sprites. Same thing for blocks. 5 times to generate 5 blocks. 2 UberASM. Creating a new one perspective of fun and creativity.
It would be an interesting contest that I would participate in and I would like to know if that would be a good suggestion The idea is very inspiring for Kaizos.


While this may seem like a good idea in theory, there is no practical way to do it. We have no way to guarantee that anybody sticks to their randomized resources, or even know what they are. All it takes is one person suspecting that a high-ranking entry didn't stick to their random resources and the whole contest falls apart.

There are also issues about people getting locked out of the contest--regardless of skill--because they rolled resources that don't work well together. This sort of RNG deciding whether you can even meaningfully participate is something we want to avoid in contests.
To whomever sent in feedback regarding an inappropriate avatar, the link you included gives a 401 error. Please make sure that we can access any images you link in your feedback and submit again.

bebn edit: Please make sure to tell us which user it is as well.


Our apologies for the long turnaround on this one, there was quite a bit to figure out here.

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Collab hacks will invariably be slow moving on a forum, and a discord channel + Google Sheet (or other form of organization) is absolutely the preferred method of collab hack creation.

Preferred for some, even most, certainly. But not all - there are those that do prefer to have a forum to work from, and extract enough use from it for us to grant it.

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This would solve the issue where the authorship isn't accurate and would at least remove the groups from individual's profiles. This isn't completely ideal, but I like it a lot better than how it currently is.

The current implementation of "group as author" is indeed flawed for the reasons described. We have a coding update in the works that will allow individual non-author contributors to a hack or resource to be properly identified.

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In addition, there are a number of these usergroups that are just full of inactive (and sometimes banned) users.

Fully agreed. A number of old and non-functional groups have been dissolved.

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And further, there's no real information at all on how to start a usergroup; from an outsider's perspective, it seems that you need to have staff and admin connections to make one, which feels like preferential treatment (correct me if I'm mistaken on this one).

You are mistaken on this one, which is completely understandable as the information isn't particularly advertised. See our F.A.Q. - the relevant question has been updated for additional clarity.

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I firmly believe that the groups create an aura of exclusivity and tribalism that creates distrust on both sides.

There are differing opinions on this point, but overall we agree enough that the remaining "functional" non-staff groups (i.e. currently assigned as a hack author or tied to a forum) have been hidden.

Thank you for taking the time to send in your feedback, and for waiting patiently for a response - it ended up spurring some long-overdue cleanup and streamlining.
To whomever sent in feedback a few hours ago about the zero tolerance policy: we do not and will not apply the policy retroactively. Thank you.
Originally posted by The copyright reform
Can you look at these:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/disastrous-copyright-proposal-goes-straight-our-naughty-list
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20201222/09404045933/senator-tillis-releases-massive-unconstitutional-plan-to-reshape-internet-hollywoods-image.shtml
https://torrentfreak.com/us-passes-spending-bill-with-case-act-and-felony-streaming-proposal-201222/

I think SMWC should blackout, like have everything disabled (until this issue is fixed) and show a message urging users to protest this awful provision.


While these current and proposed laws certainly do look like hot garbage, a blackout on this level is simply impractical. At least one of these laws has already passed, and we’ll be waiting for quite a while for that to get fixed.

We’ll leave the blackout protests to the big sites who will actually get the attention the issue needs.
Originally posted by Regarding the site's code
Will the code (PHP, MySQL, etc.) that makes up SMWC ever be released to the public someday, kind of like what most other internet forums do? As an aspiring web developer myself, I love to see how other sites are built, and also just due to personal curiosity.

Unfortunately, I doubt this will ever happen. The site has been built specifically for the needs of our community. It is an integral part of our identity that we can't afford to release freely.

SMW Central exists today thanks to the efforts of many different people. Out of respect for them, I also don't believe making their work publicly available is a decision that can be left solely to my discretion (or anyone else's, for that matter).

Even without these subjective reservations, the code is large, complex, and doesn't adhere to any style due to its age. We don't have the resources to provide sufficient documentation and support for such a project. Both are vital for a useful codebase that can benefit others. In other words, maintaining an open-source copy would require a lot of extra work and slow down development for very little benefit.
Originally posted by Regarding Touhou music in the respective section
Hey there. After returning from a long hiatus, I noticed that now all Touhou music in the section is almost impossible to find because you changed the names to something they games aren't even known for. Why was that? Before this change I was able to find any music by searching for Touhou [Number] or [Title], but now that's impossible to do. In my opinion, the section should strive to make things easier to find for the users and not the other way around :/


I'm fielding this on behalf of Nameless as I am the resident Touhou expert music mod.

This change was made for multiple reasons. The biggest one by far is that "Touhou #: English Subtitle" is not the official name of the games. For example, Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom's official title isn't "Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom", but rather "東方紺珠伝 ~ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom". For accessibility, the kanji is written out in romaji. The game's official Steam listings also follow this naming convention. (Here's LoLK's, for example.)

As for minor reasons, the number naming scheme is a bit awkward for games with no number, specifically songs from fangames. At the time the change was made, the only port under this umbrella was this port from The Last Comer, but there are others as well now.

We generally try to stick to the official title of games to prevent any inconsistencies in the music section and ease searchability. The English subtitles and "Touhou" are still present in song names, so you can still search based on those as well.

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I'm gonna be honest, I really don't like the voting this time around. So many good ports/compositions are being unfairly voted down just because they don't fit the levels.

Do you now see why every single SPC contest have had a rule to prevent people from voting like this? It's totally fine to use the levels as inspiration for the ports, but making it so people had to make music that would fit the levels perfectly is just not... how things should be done, and it's definitely showing in the voting.

Now, to be clear, I didn't enter the contest; I'm merely an observer this time around, but it still bothers me immensely that half of the basis for voting had to be whether the music fits or not. It's extremely unfair for the porters, especially because they weren't told beforehand that it was going to be judged that way. They were literally only told that they had to use the levels as inspiration.

What's done is done, however. I'm aware it's way too late to change the judging rules, but I hope it serves as proof that making voting based on how it fits in a level is a bad idea. The contest organizer should've consulted the music mods about this, as they know it very well.


Firstly, apologies for the late response. We've heard your response, and I apologize for any hiccups that arose for 72hoSPC. Admittedly, voting stuff was the one thing I did not brief Bloo on when they approached me about hosting a contest (not blaming them or anything, just acknowledging my own screw-up). Though the voting based on the levels was based on a previous 72hoSPC (the third one, to be specific), to be honest that wasn't really a great rule then either. Regardless, we've definitely heard you and will not make that mistake again!
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Good morning. First of all, I would like to thank you for your work, this site is amazing. Secondly, I wanted to know what I need to become a hack moderator. Play Kaizo every day, at least about 4 hours. I've already finished games like GPW2 and Sheffy 2, so I believe I have the ability to face such a challenge. I'd really like to help with the work. Thank you for your attention.

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, since you made your feedback anonymous we don't know who you are so we can't offer any further insight into becoming a hack moderator to you. You're best to contact one of the SMW Hacks section managers directly via PM, in this case either Eevee or Atari2.0.



Originally posted by Staff/Former Staff Badges listing time on staff
Hello, I wanted to share this idea because I think it'd be nice to have as some way to recognize someone's time on staff, unless it was a dishonorable removal (like abuse of power or getting disabled).

I think it'd be nice to have a little (optional) badge to show that you were part of the team. As for the requirements, you could make it require a year or two on the team...or just give it to anyone who requests it who was or is on staff.

I am not sure on specifics, but I am sure you can figure it out. Again, this is optional. Why a badge? Former Admins get a name color, but like, nothing is left behind for a staff member who is no longer staff. Used to get custom titles...but that's for everyone now. It'd be nice if former staff members (who request it) can get a former staff badge with their time on staff.

Either that, or like just some other little thing to thank the staff members who were around for a period of time and helped out. The badges in question could relate to the department they were apart of (Discord Moderators, Forum Moderators, etc).

For now, it can be a simple badge but could have one made for each department.



Anyways, I hope the idea goes over well. I would like some kind of way to show off any contributions current and old staff has made as a way to thank them. Heck, a page to kind of list off who inspired what change around the site/discord could be neat.



-Some Former Staff Member

This is something we will raise and discuss internally with the rest of the staff team to get their thoughts, and we'll make any necessary announcements if anything comes to fruition in due course.
Originally posted by Document moderation
I have noticed the waiting list for the document section is abandoned lately.

Also, when clicking "Staff" list, there is no official staff affiliated to document moderation. Will a new hire occur soon?

Best,


The documents section does not have any formally dedicated staff because of the wide range of topics and languages the section covers. Rather, document moderation is left to any staff member who's willing to do it, and based on their expertise. Sometimes, it may even be multiple staff members who moderate a document. For example, ASM moderators will generally moderate ASM-related documents. However, if said document is in French, then it could be moderated collaboratively by an ASM moderator, and any other staff member who speaks French.

Given that the incoming amount of submissions for the Documents section is much less compared to other sections, moderators often focus towards their own section. Rest assured that everything there will get moderated eventually.

Originally posted by What are the rules on bumping threads?
here.,  Noivern clearly says that bumps are not necessarily bad if it still has discussion value.

But here, Nokia3310 did bump a thread and there was a fair amount of discussion afterwards. Yet PermaBan is rushing to close the thread just because it was a bump.

Why? I don't see the point. Just because a thread was bumped does not mean it had to closed. It still had discussion value.


Generally, we don't have an issue with threads being bumped anymore, as long as the topic is still relevant and the user bumping said thread provides further discussion value to the topic. In hindsight for the particular instance you provided, this thread could have remained open, but we're all human, and at the time it was deemed that the thread should've been closed.

So, to answer your question in the title, you can bump most threads as long as they're still relevant and you add some discussion value to the topic. Exceptions exist, and each bump is judged on a case-by-case basis.
Originally posted by a staff feedback that got relayed to me and i don't have the title
Teyla's recent announcement made me recall a few ideas that I might have posted in the staff forums years ago. If the remoderation is going to happen in the future, along with adding a new information column in the section, I feel like I'd like to share more opinions that isn't limited to the stuff mentioned from his thread.

(Note that some of these are going to be highly outdated: since I've been really out of touch with regards to SMWC matters)
Ratings: Possibly one of Tahixham's suggestions back when he was the section leader. A lot of our sections have ratings. Although I'm not sure how one would rate a ripped submission... I guess based on the accuracy of the rip?
Palette Used: This was a column back before we moved to the new sections. I've looked over Wayback Machine and apparently it was misused a lot (majority were "Custom", I'm guessing the ones aren't are using vanilla SMW's palette rows?). I'm not sure how useful is this actually, since .palmask is now a thing.
Map16 Pages Used: From the thread. My vote goes to the "Slots Used" option; it seems to be the most informative option.

Honestly looking back, majority of my suggestions here seem to be a little informative, but I figured it's worth a try to add more columns so that the Graphics section has much more information at first glance. I think that's pretty much the whole summary of my suggestion anyway lol.

Ratings: Personally, I don't really see what use ratings have in their current state in any of the sections, since outside of hacks where people do the whole "break down everything into out of 10 reviews" it mostly seems like things get a 1/5 or a 5/5 rating, and I think maybe a thumbs up/thumbs down would be better...

But it is weird how Graphics is the only section without them and honestly we probably should just enable them for uniformity lol. I'll bring it up with the other graphics members.

Palettes: I'm a bit iffy on this since palettes are -supposed- to be uniform to our palette guidelines now, and most submissions that use vanilla palettes denote that they use them these days. Graphics has a lot of space for more columns though, so maybe a simple list of the rows used could be helpful, especially for sprites.

Map16: This one I'm probably not going to add, ever since the map16 expansion there's just a metric ton of space for map16 now and unless someone is using a different BG and full exgfx tileset for -every- level they probably wouldn't run anywhere near to being out of space, and that would lead to a very inconsistent experience.

I think that covers all of it.
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https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=3316 this submission is missing a pic/gif, it would be nice to have one

Thank you for notifying us of this - some resources, especially older ones and dynamic sprites, have been in need of images/gifs for a while now. A gif has been added to the resource you mentioned, and we will be working towards ensuring all appropriate resources have an image/gif.
A Staff Feedback came in a few days ago from Vivian Darkbloom regarding another user. Normally, this kind of feedback would be addressed internally because it concerns another user and specific staff members directly, but as the situation has rapidly become both severe and complicated, we felt it was important to make a public statement about what has happened and why.

The user that was brought up as well as other staff members and admins have had their names redacted for their safety, and will be referred to as [User], [Staff Member #], and [Admin #], respectively. I am not redacting my own name.

[Content Warnings for this entire post: Discussion is of a generally sexual nature, including pedophilia and lolicon]





I was contacted on December 21, 2020 by Vivian Darkbloom (henceforth abbreviated to "Darkbloom") about [User] and their NSFW twitter account. This conversation can be read in full here with names redacted: (1) (2) (3)

[User] is Japanese and was believed to be about 15-16 years old at the time.

Darkbloom was concerned that [User]'s NSFW twitter account was accessible from their Safe For Work twitter and that their SFW twitter was allegedly linked on SMW Central at some point before our conversation. It is uncertain whether this was the case, because there was no twitter profile linked on [User]'s SMWC profile at the time of this conversation. The NSFW account in question had a few drawings that Darkbloom would go on to classify as lolicon art, as well as some audio uploads of presumably [User] making sexual noises.

I was not very comfortable with the drawings or audio found on [User]'s NSFW twitter, but at the time I felt it was not directly related to the site in a way that was actionable.

The majority of this conversation took place at 10PM local time for me and I was pretty tired, and the next day I had forgotten to bring up this situation with the other admins as intended. I fully admit that this was a mistake on my part. The topic then proceeded to go dormant for several months.



Fast forward about 6 months, to July 3, 2021. We had been made aware that Darkbloom was talking with other users in his personal server "Punishment Zone," and claiming that SMWC's admins were "covering for a pedophile". This came to light as Darkbloom had messaged [Staff Member 1] with a variety of vitriolic statements about SMWC and its staff, fixating on [Admin 1] in particular. A redacted copy of the message in question is provided here: (4)

I had forgotten all about this situation in the months since Darkbloom's initial message, so the other admins and I began investigating. We discovered that [User]'s NSFW twitter account was inactive since February 1, 2021 and had only seen a couple more posts since December 2020. Additionally, [User]'s SFW twitter no longer linked to their NSFW twitter, making the latter very difficult to discover through normal means. The art on the twitter in question was indeed pornographic in nature if amateur in terms of ability, of the sort a younger person learning how to draw might make as they learn anatomy. The art was drawn in a chibi style as well, obfuscating the ages of the characters involved.

The consensus reached among the admins was that, while we didn't approve of the content on the account, no action would be taken against [User]. Between the inactivity of the NSFW twitter account, the complete detachment of said account from SMWC, and the lack of any evidence that [User] was engaging in any actual predatory behavior towards anyone, a ban from SMWC was unwarranted.



Fast forward again to January 26, 2022. [Admin 2] received a message from a user claiming that Darkbloom had again been trying to talk with [Admin 1] about the situation with [User]. The message alleged that [User] had been drawing child porn, but that Darkbloom's reaching out to [Admin 1] would get Darkbloom banned for "harassment". [User]'s NSFW twitter, which was not and still is not linked to SMWC, had not seen any new activity since February 2021 as was found above, and remains the case as of this message. [User] will thus not receive any punishment at this time.

It is entirely possible that, had I immediately relayed Darkbloom's original notice to the admin team back in 2020, that [User] would have faced a punishment of some sort. It was a mistake on my part that this slipped through, and I take responsibility for that. But with that said, presently, there is no evidence that [User] continues to engage with this kind of content, and there is no evidence that [User] poses a threat to anyone's well-being. To inflict punishment now for an offense more than a year past wouldn't be fair. Should new evidence come forth, we will reassess the situation as needed.

The inciting message will not be shared, nor will the initiating user be identified.



During our discussion of the January 26, 2022 message, [Admin 1] had informed us that they had received messages from Darkbloom directly, of a highly severe and uncomfortable nature. The messages specifically stated a preference to pursue the matter of [User] with [Admin 1] directly and exclusively, and included unambiguous threats to involve outside media to incriminate SMWC and its leadership. These messages will not be shared.

We were also informed by [Admin 1] that Darkbloom had messaged [Staff Member 2] and [Staff Member 3] with similar messages about the same topic. [Staff Member 2] characterized the messages as "an attempt to humiliate [Admin 1] and to undermine whatever trust I may have had in [them] and [their] leadership roles."

[Admin 1] invited Darkbloom to send a User Feedback about their concerns with [User] so that the matter could be discussed amongst all staff proper, rather than sending messages piecemeal to staff who are tangentially related or unrelated to the situation. Some time afterwards, [Admin 1] blocked Darkbloom on Discord.

Also on January 26, 2022, [Admin 3] received messages from Darkbloom reaffirming their efforts to pursue the issue of [User] with [Admin 1] specifically, alleging multiple times that our inaction against [User] was due to bad blood between Darkbloom and [Admin 1].

On January 30, 2022, [Admin 2] received another message from the same user who sent them a message on the 26th, inquiring as to why no action had been taken against [User]. [Admin 2] explained our decision as stated above, and the user was understanding.

On January 31, 2022, [Admin 1] received a message from a user in Darkbloom's "Punishment Zone" server stating that most of the users there do not endorse Darkbloom's actions, wished to remain uninvolved, and didn't wish to be regarded poorly by association.

Later, [Admin 3] received more messages from Darkbloom, stating that [Admin 1] does not like them, and because of this [User] would not be punished out of spite.

Later still on January 31, 2022, Darkbloom sent the following User Feedback:



This message was made visible to the full staff team to begin a thorough reevaluation of the matter of [User], and to decide whether and how to publicly acknowledge this complaint.

A few hours after submitting this feedback, Darkbloom continued to message [Admin 3]: (5)

For context, Earthling was a user with a history of bad behavior on SMWC's Discord. He was permabanned primarily for the contents of his reddit profile, where he explicitly expressed support for lolicon and pedophilia alongside transphobic sentiments as well. This reddit profile was directly linked in his Discord profile. Earthling had claimed to be 13 years old at the time of their ban, but this couldn't be verified with certainty. Earthling was banned for actively promoting harmful content, directly accessible from SMWC; contrast with [User] as detailed above.




Over the last several days since January 26th, at least five staff members in total have received messages from Darkbloom about this subject. These messages have been consistently reported as being heavy and startling, as well as irrelevant, as none of the staff messaged have any hand in day-to-day userbase management or discipline. At least two of the staff messaged experienced significant distress upon being dragged into these topics out of the blue.

Darkbloom, despite having been blocked by [Admin 1] on Discord, had sent [Admin 1] a message on Twitter on February 5, 2022, billed as an apology. In actuality, this message was a protracted indictment of [Admin 1], and Darkbloom concluded that his mistake was being mad at one admin as opposed to all of them.

At this point, Darkbloom's interactions with the SMWC admins and staff constitute harassment. He is unable to accept our conclusion regarding [User], and his vehement disagreement with our decision continues to be unfairly thrust upon [Admin 1], and upon a wide swath of staff deemed "close" to [Admin 1] by association. For the safety and mental health of both [User] and our staff, Vivian Darkbloom has been banned from this community indefinitely.

This matter has been circulating among SMWC-adjacent groups with varying accuracy of context, so this feedback is being relayed fully and publicly to make our position perfectly clear. Darkbloom is not being banned for reporting what he believed was pedophilic behavior to site admins, and he is not being banned for disagreeing with a staff decision. He is being banned for extensive harassment of site staff.

And as always, we will continue to monitor the site and Discord server and remove links, images, etc., that clearly violate Rule B1 when we discover them.
Originally posted by "Concern with sity policy regarding pedophilia"
I'm concerned about Darkbloom's document being called a misinformation, I would separate Darkbloom's behavior from the actual incident that prompted it. That site has a long history of content not appropiate for minors and while there is some evidence that the staff decided to clean it up, some things still fall through the cracks. The belief that lolicon is not related to pedophilia is all too common and waiting until actionable things are found is like playing with fire, especially when leod's messages took a long time to be discovered and he was still defended by many.

It is true that this site has had a seedier side in the past, and that's something we're always trying to distance ourselves from when possible. The site used to have a hidden subforum dedicated to sharing pornographic material under the previous site owner's tenure. This forum was closed in 2016 and made inaccessible to everyone except admins, and eventually fully deleted in 2019 when ownership of the site was transferred to Noivern. Evidence of this subforum's existence can, unfortunately, still be found throughout the site's history in old posts and dead links. Rest assured though, this subforum's contents are gone forever, and no record of the posts within remain.

I do believe that lolicon is related to pedophilia. A key point of our decision not to ban [User] was that the age of the characters represented in the drawings were ambiguous due to the artstyle. There is a difference between a sketchy drawing like these were and a fully-rendered and colored piece of art.

We are going to re-evaluate our rules in regards to recent events and likely make some changes to them to clarify our positions. Rule B1 in particular may see some expansion of scope.
Originally posted by Submissions by Banned Users
I noticed that some new submissions in the waiting section by users who are currently brown-banned are being approved. This was not the case before, such as in hacks or waiting music where if a user was banned, all the submissions they had in waiting would be rejected. Was this policy changed?


There has been a recent change to this policy, yes. We'll be announcing it more formally soon along with those aforementioned other rule updates, but in short we felt that even if a user gets banned it's not fair to them that their submissions get automatically rejected, because if the section moderation queues had gotten to their submission in a different order it might have been accepted before their ban. This doesn't mean their submission will be automatically accepted, of course, but it does mean it will be properly moderated and then accepted or rejected accordingly.
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