As a follow up, the team has been investigating the incidents alluded to above in exacting detail over the past couple days. We take due diligence very seriously. As the claims regarding former staff have been outlined and thoroughly discussed by the relevant parties themselves, it suffices to say that the positions are far from as universally critical as originally indicated, and highlight the delicate balancing act which must be enacted here.
The additional, more private matters on which non-staff users are involved and, for good reason are protected by their general rights to privacy and those rights which as assigned as principles for Wolfery’s management, are also under investigation.
Though little direct identifying information is available in full public here, and rightfully so, 1) We have access to additional corroborating evidence from which the incidents in question can be identified, and 2) some parties have come forth with further information which securely confirms the prior deductions.
First:
Absence of context on the part of those who reporting in this thread does account for some of the confusion. And unfortunately, this absence of context does, in several cases, create an ambiguity in which without that context, based on public information, our actions can appear arbitrary. This is because it is woefully immoral to reveal the most important factors in our most important decisions. We will not be opening up personal, private, secure information for public review. In point of sober fact, doing so in some of these cases is vastly worse than the purported arbitrariness of moderation power use. To wit: explaining exactly why these specific decisions are made would be ethically inferior to actually making the decisions arbitrarily. This is one of the extremely rare cases where even the extreme hypothetical ‘what-aboutism’ still makes the decision cut and dry.
We will not be making our direct evaluation process open to public evaluation.
If this is an unacceptable level of opaqueness in the application of authority to a user, we acknowledge that that is an entirely valid perspective to have. We also, regretfully, must state that the implication is that that user’s principles are fundamentally incompatible with Wolfery. As I mentioned before, any community must make prioritization on principles. It can not, and will not, be for everyone. As Vernon mentions, it is healthy to diversify your community investment for this very reason.
Second:
In our review of these incidents, it has come to light that several of the purported facts and occurrences cited as evidence of misconduct on the part of the moderation team: silencing of dissent, arbitrariness of judgement, and abuse of power; are unavoidably fictitious. In at least three of the cases which have been brought for direct evaluation at this point, we can identify explicit, technical, non-witness based evidence which directly and summarily contradicts statements by the parties in question.
Though we all have a tendency, reasonably, to invest more trust in those with whom we are familiar, it is a sad and unavoidable fact that our friends can lie to us, too. As much as it is discomfiting to realize, the words of those we are friends with, especially across the medium of the internet, are ultimately hearsay. We would all like to think that those we are close to would not report falsehoods to us, but it happens. Whether overt and knowing deception, biased reports which favor them, or even incidental misinformation, it happens.
This is why, as frustrating as it can be for users, we know, we do not make decisions based on direct claims. We rely on reports, logs, and technical forensic tools, such as we have available. And in this case, it is clear that some of you have been lied to- in a few instances quite dramatically. To those of you that have, I am sincerely sorry, but pursuant to the first point we will not be meaningfully able to provide you with closure or satisfaction regarding these lies. I would caution everyone reading this to understand that doing the due diligence to understand all sides of a story, to trust, but verify, is a best practice for all relationships- especially those conducted over the internet.
