Hey Boss! Thanks for bringing up your concerns here. First off, I won't downplay Wednesday’s events as anything other than a disaster, as much as I'd hate to admit. It’s been hard on me too, and it’s made me realize that I also need to take criticism better - I nearly cried. I'll go from the top down to make it simpler to follow my points.
I absolutely agree that we didn't handle this censor situation well from start to finish. That is completely our fault, and we hope to never let it happen again. We realized beforehand that this update could be jarring or unpopular to members who have become used to the more lax atmosphere, and we did not prepare to address the concerns properly - both in our initial post and in the response. In our responses, we should have thought more of the community's perspective - how exactly they would feel and what to say to them. What's done is done, however, and we have already begun discussion internally to improve our communication and consistency.
In this discussion, we have so far talked about the way we interact in response to member feedback - making sure that we’re treating everyone like humans and knowing exactly what we need to tell them before we release the updates. Not being condescending or giving incomplete explanations. You are also right in that a lot of us didn’t handle addressing the concerns well enough - too many of us were talking at you and not with you, making claims we couldn't always prove (e.g. the majority comment).
The inconsistency in our explanations was also terrible and something we don't want to repeat. You're right once more. When I woke up on Wednesday, I had seen the responses to the thread and brought it up in the staff boards to discuss how we were going to respond. This was supposed to be our procedure whenever we needed to address concerns that were beyond simple answers. But then I checked Discord, saw 500+ messages already in the #support channel, and made the bad decision to jump in as well. The damage had been done already. Staff also shouldn't have name-dropped even when under pressure. I will get back to the main name-drop in question later.
As for shhmew, she has received no punishment or major backlash from staff. People who felt concerned or personally attacked by her comments went to her directly and resolved these feelings peacefully.
The echo chamber/reception to criticism part is something that I personally have worked on improving (and still need to improve). We all individually struggle with different aspects, and as a team we will need to acknowledge exactly what each of us needs to work on. In exchange for efficiency and coming to decisions sooner, I tend to push my own opinion even harder when I notice a pause in discussion rather than further opening the floor to thoughts. I know that I can certainly make this less of an issue by wording my poking posts differently. As a whole, we as staff are also discussing how to reduce the echo chamber - the first step of which is to more carefully moderate the staff Discord, both for our communication and for eliminating gossip.
As for Bubba's situation, I would like to update you on that and explain more of my reasoning for how I handled it. I understand your frustration and how I could have come across as hypocritical for not saying much in the moment. On Wednesday night, Rin and I gave Bubba a staff warning for his out-of-line comments in the #support channel. I'm sorry I couldn't act on it instantly, as I needed Rin to be up to speed first before handing it out. I was already of the mind to give it to him. Staff warnings operate differently from member warnings - accumulating three of them within six months results in demotion. These warnings are given for breaking policies related to activity, behavior, and contributions. Usually we hand these out as a collective admin team - but when an admin is in question, as in this case, I absolutely had to consult the other admin who wasn’t in question - Rin.
Other staff handled the verbal warnings that you mentioned, and this highlights another problem - we’re not good at relaying information about verbal/official warnings in the Discord, which would absolutely cause issues in consistency in our enforcement. I had almost zero idea about these cases until pretty much now. I will bring up with staff that we should discuss and report any Discord warnings - verbal or official - in the staff boards so that no one will have such a gap in knowledge or moderate inconsistently.
I understand that after what went down, you and many others in the community feel confused, disrespected, and overall really disappointed about a good portion the staff, myself included. Your concerns are indeed valid, and we have already begun the aforementioned discussion about improving our communication and consistency. We are also preparing modifications to the censor policy as a result of Wednesday's discussions, which we will bring to all of you when we finish. Please stay tuned for our proposal on that in the next few days.
I also realize that my statements or promises may be tough to believe at first sight, but the differences will hopefully be more apparent over time when we show what we’re telling you. I hope you give us that chance.