[Staff Report] Stuvi and Ali

[Valdrec]

So.
I was hoping to be able to deal without this another way. I spoke to TJ, I message Gurrazor, I've asked in many different ways to speak to Stuvi that we might be able to get to the bottom of this in a voice communication, but to no avail.
I feel this is the last option I have regarding this debacle, and I'm somewhat nervous of what the outcome might be given the cases I will bring up in this report, so here goes.
(Please be aware there are two posts in this report)


Your Steam Name:
Valdrec

Your Steam ID:
STEAM_1:1:42437591


Admin being reported: @Stuvi and to a lesser extent, @Ali


Reason for Report:
Intimidation, aggressive behaviour, serial unprofessional attitude and language, misuse of staff powers.

Time of Occurrence:
The first threat I ever got was back when I was reporting homophobia/racism/imagery way, way back, perhaps late last year. I don't have anything concrete to back this particular claim up, so dismiss this part at your discretion, but fear of extrajudicial banning, by Stuvi, for reporting staff members was preventing me from doing so for some time. I only recently started again when I was confident I would not be banned.
I'm not entirely confident that I won't be banned for this, but it's reached a point where I can't allow it to continue.
There have been several incidents since that time, with the largest part of this treatment occuring around the recent debate about changing a rule, which itself ran into a larger question about impartiality and was pushed by the incidents, which I shall to my best to document below.

Evidence to support your claim:

I believe I would have some older forum records but for this highlighted issue the first I have is this:

Now, at the time I was being a little dramatic about the recent change to NLR, initially thinking it was a joke, but as I went into extended conversations with the mentors, it was clear this was a genuine rule, but Stuvi then says this.


At first, I wasn't sure what he meant, but it became clear this was a light threat intended for me, followed then with;


I was especially confused by this part, and throughout this extended debate, this is something Stuvi kept coming back to in order to derail the discussion, but more on that later.

Figuring it best to make a thread about the discussion as to more accurately and neatly talk about opinions surrounding it, I began to write a thread detailing it.

Just a few moments into this (just seconds from the conversation on the server) I find my unrelated staff report is locked, detailing:



Now, there's no clarification as to what is meant by "behaviour towards staff" is supposed to mean, and as the report was locked, I had no chance to respond.

It's possible that this was unconnected, but considering the short space between the strange conversation on the server and this being locked, paired with the other interactions, I suspect that this may have been quickly judged and locked for personal reasons - the belief that I am in some way out to attack staff, and that Stuvi is therefore acting defensively to protect the clique.
Judge that for it's merits.

During/after making the thread, I put a little note on my personal profile, detailing a short bit of info as to why people might not see me on the server for a while.
However, when I check again, someone has deleted it. No notice as to why, nothing about the rules, just censored out of existence.

Furthermore, I learn that my Mentor rank has been removed. No staff member tells me of this, I have to learn it from one of my steam friends. No reason is given as to why the rank was removed. I can understand if they interpreted my thread as saying I would be unavailable to be a mentor, but the lack of any formal indication it would be removed leads me to conclude it was done spitefully.

But there's more.

Perhaps I was just a little rocked from the OOC conversation and the locked thread, but I felt there was a pattern forming here. Stuvi does not like me and is not afraid to let it known.


Here the language gets notably more aggressive, and we now see an accusation of "spreading false information". In my own defence, as I am sure we will be able to see from this thread, I am clear to note what is my opinion or an observation, and what is grounded in data.
My assumption at this point, is that this "spreading false information" part is a deliberate attempt to dislodge the discussion.

As a side note. I notice during this exchange, or some time about, that the detailed "Senior member" has become "Monolith Pleb" I don't know if this is connected or not, as I think I saw it on somebody else, so my assumption is it's probably not, but I thought it was worth mentioning as it happened around the same time.

Back to the discussion, the language gets more directed, more personal:

I try to ask that we scale back the claws in the argument, and stay focused on the issue, but he persists:


We return again the accusation about my attitude towards staff. I can't really know how Stuvi frames this, but my guesses would be either he feels I am too direct in the discussion which he interprets as an attitude towards staff (something that sounds very similar to staff disrespect, a punishable action) or my other guess is he believe my reporting staff is with the intention of harm.
As I say, those are just guesses, but I don't really understand the conclusion drawn.

In the thread, in response to his heightening rhetoric, I have to outright tell him in the thread, that I can't respond to his reactions for fear of disrupting the thread entirely. That seems to be the end, but then, Ali, mimicking Stuvi's comments about my candour says:


There is seen here, I think, an attempt to derail the discussion with what I interpret to be more personal language, than debate structure. I also feel that given Stuvi's rank and his behaviour therein (and possibly conversations between the two, I can't know everything that goes on) Ali was encouraged to act the same way.

I would love to say this is where it stops, but there's more. Continued on a second post as there is a limit to the number of images I can post Continued on the next post

 

[Valdrec]

In the discussion, I make the observation that the opinion seems to be struck down staff and non staff members, which is dismissed. There being now, two threads about this issue, I felt that if I were to tally all the opinions seeming to support or oppose it, it would only be right to make a separate thread, as to not confuse people into thinking the data was from just the one thread, and it seemed excessive to post the full image results on both threads.

I spend a couple of minutes counting the opinions and charting them, and finding, as I had observed, the same was made very clear. However, one of the first responses I got from this, was from a staff member.
Ali.



Ali proceeds to belittle my point entirely by making a mock-chart. In all honesty I find this very upsetting.

Not long after, the thread is locked. Nothing detailed why, or even what rule has been broken.
I actually had to have @DevulTj pull up the information to see who locked it, as I originally thought it was him:



I try to contact Stuvi to ask about having the thread unlocked, but he claims to be busy and says nothing else.

At some point during this, the rule in discussion is altered slightly.
Almost instantly, I find my discussion thread (but not the other by another author detailing the same complaints) is locked.
By Ali.



In the end I have to ask Ali on his personal profile to unlock my thread. I say I understand he may have a personal issue with me (I would certainly think so given the chart) but he denies it, but does unlock my thread.

In summary:

I've put my utmost effort behind discussing this rule change with a respectful environment. I've made every effort to ensure that debates were not about personal attacks, but on the issue itself.
Stuvi a red-rank Staff member, who I believe utilised staff powers in retaliation to disagreeing with my viewpoint and manner, could not do me the same decency, and in attempting to disrupt and derail any discussion I made about the issue, and onto defending myself personally, and as a result of these actions, and their publicity indirectly encouraged another green-rank staff member, Ali, to do the same.

I do not believe that staff members of this company, staff members who have repeatedly commented on the importance of respect of their rank from customers and players, are justified to behave in this manner, towards anyone, whatever they believe the justifications are for doing so.
Stuvi is one of the highest ranks in staff, and not only represents what is acceptable for staff, also represents to outsiders what conduct we think is acceptable within this company and game.
Ali is among the most senior contributors of this group, and while some of the blame can be placed on Stuvi for failing to represent professionalism, should know not to behave in this manner.

We all suffer when staff are allowed to behave however they want, if they are not held to standards of behaviour, when they take administrative action for their personal opinions rather than any stated abuse of the rules.
We risk the very real risk of the staff representing their own self-interests, protecting the staff group from outside criticism, opinion or responsibility, and becoming a clique, instead of serving everyone who is a part of Monolith's service.

It is my genuine hope that we are able to put a stop on this, and that life will resume as normal, but a nagging feeling tells me, that like previous reports, this might not even be considered, and might possibly lead to me being punished.

 

[Valdrec]

@Gurrazor I'm afraid I have to place this to you, given the seniority of the staff being reported here.

 

[Ali]

You’re literally accusing me of being influenced by a CM, which makes absolutely no sense. Stuvi has nothing to do with what I say. It’s my personality and if you don’t like that, so be it.

I locked your first thread because the issue was resolved in my opinion, and you accused me of having “great hostility” towards you, which isn’t true. Also, I unlocked it because you wished to continue the discussion, plain and simple.

Lastly, you make a forum thread with a chart and reiterated “Staff likes the rule, we don’t” without any sort of claim to make. Of course I am looking for a claim and an outright reason for this post to exist. Of which there was none. As for the chart, a little joke over the internet can’t hurt, can it?

I’m not making attempts at being disrespectful, nor am I trying to insult you. If you felt so offended, my apologies. At the end of the day however, I can’t think of any actual wrongdoing here.

Edit: Also, the second thread about the same rule had already been locked before the rule change, so it’s not like we targeted your thread when I locked it.

 

[Stuvi]

Here’s my proper response to this report.

First, I have no interest in talking to you in private. I also want to make clear that I am not forced to talk to every player in this community just because of my role – it happens that people dislike other people.

The first threat I ever got was back when I was reporting homophobia/racism/imagery way, way back, perhaps late last year. I don't have anything concrete to back this particular claim up, so dismiss this part at your discretion, but fear of extrajudicial banning, by Stuvi, for reporting staff members was preventing me from doing so for some time. I only recently started again when I was confident I would not be banned.

I'm not entirely confident that I won't be banned for this, but it's reached a point where I can't allow it to continue.
There have been several incidents since that time, with the largest part of this treatment occuring around the recent debate about changing a rule, which itself ran into a larger question about impartiality and was pushed by the incidents, which I shall to my best to document below.

That’s a bold statement without any evidence to back this one up. I am pretty sure I have never said anything to you about this one - but I am not sure either. You are right though; a couple of your staff reports were so unnecessary that we’d ban someone for continuing to post useless staff reports as they waste our time. We never had to perform such an action thought.

----

Now, at the time I was being a little dramatic about the recent change to NLR, initially thinking it was a joke, but as I went into extended conversations with the mentors, it was clear this was a genuine rule, but Stuvi then says this.

You’ll see why I reacted the way I did if you’d provide all the chatlogs. Here, I digged through the logs and picked out the relevant OOC messages.

At first, I wasn't sure what he meant, but it became clear this was a light threat intended for me, followed then with;

I was especially confused by this part, and throughout this extended debate, this is something Stuvi kept coming back to in order to derail the discussion, but more on that later.

Taken out of proportion as it wasn’t even directed towards you. Stop thinking everything I say is heading towards you. My message was obviously directed to the hacking accusation. See chatlogs above.

----

Figuring it best to make a thread about the discussion as to more accurately and neatly talk about opinions surrounding it, I began to write a thread detailing it.

Just a few moments into this (just seconds from the conversation on the server) I find my unrelated staff report is locked, detailing:

Now, there's no clarification as to what is meant by "behaviour towards staff" is supposed to mean, and as the report was locked, I had no chance to respond.

Report was irrelevant as officernoodles stated what we said during the meeting: He handled the report properly and there was no need to make a staff report for that. Your "behaviour" is the closing of your future reports as officernoodles was the one accepting them, but you didn't want that. You deal with the staff member that accepts your report - this is not a "make a wish" gameshow.

----

During/after making the thread, I put a little note on my personal profile, detailing a short bit of info as to why people might not see me on the server for a while.
However, when I check again, someone has deleted it. No notice as to why, nothing about the rules, just censored out of existence.

Furthermore, I learn that my Mentor rank has been removed. No staff member tells me of this, I have to learn it from one of my steam friends. No reason is given as to why the rank was removed. I can understand if they interpreted my thread as saying I would be unavailable to be a mentor, but the lack of any formal indication it would be removed leads me to conclude it was done spitefully.

Thanks for blaming me again for doing absolutely nothing. And yes, you're blaming me as you put this into your staff report towards me.

----

But there's more.

Perhaps I was just a little rocked from the OOC conversation and the locked thread, but I felt there was a pattern forming here. Stuvi does not like me and is not afraid to let it known.

That post was totally unnecessary and could've been deleted for shitposting but I haven't. Also, you're leaving the relevant bits out again. I explained our thought process.
Here:

----

Here the language gets notably more aggressive, and we now see an accusation of "spreading false information". In my own defence, as I am sure we will be able to see from this thread, I am clear to note what is my opinion or an observation, and what is grounded in data.
My assumption at this point, is that this "spreading false information" part is a deliberate attempt to dislodge the discussion.

You keep claiming things that you can not prove, that's why I said that. Everything negative you say that you have nothing to back you up for is simply wrong, especially when stating that our staff are unable to handle certain situations, expressing our inability for decision making, etc. is unacceptable without proving it. People only remember the negatives, not the positives.

----

As a side note. I notice during this exchange, or some time about, that the detailed "Senior member" has become "Monolith Pleb" I don't know if this is connected or not, as I think I saw it on somebody else, so my assumption is it's probably not, but I thought it was worth mentioning as it happened around the same time.

Yes, because you surpassed 300 posts. It's been like that for ages. Congratulations, while we are at it!

----

Back to the discussion, the language gets more directed, more personal:

I try to ask that we scale back the claws in the argument, and stay focused on the issue, but he persists:

We return again the accusation about my attitude towards staff. I can't really know how Stuvi frames this, but my guesses would be either he feels I am too direct in the discussion which he interprets as an attitude towards staff (something that sounds very similar to staff disrespect, a punishable action) or my other guess is he believe my reporting staff is with the intention of harm.
As I say, those are just guesses, but I don't really understand the conclusion drawn.

My response to this can be found the screenshots above. What I would write would be the exact same.

----

I also feel that given Stuvi's rank and his behaviour therein (and possibly conversations between the two, I can't know everything that goes on) Ali was encouraged to act the same way.

No comment LOL.

----

Not long after, the thread is locked. Nothing detailed why, or even what rule has been broken.
I actually had to have @DevulTj pull up the information to see who locked it, as I originally thought it was him:

I try to contact Stuvi to ask about having the thread unlocked, but he claims to be busy and says nothing else.

Yes, I locked it because:

Enough said.

----

I have nothing further to add to this other than that you need to stop acting like the guy that knows everything better. You are not the hero we deserve, nor are you the hero we need.

 

[Gurra]

@Valdrec , what's actually the substance behind the accusations in this report, is not sufficient for it to warrant further action. Frankly, I've asked my staff to focus on other things than you, and I hope you can try to relax a bit and focus more on simply having a good time in the community.

Denied.