User blog:Bantha117/Staff Update: Staff Changes and Season 6 Preparation

Howdy. We’re not typically in the business of doing big blog posts, but there’s been events recently that have demanded some staff involvement. We’ve got a few things to discuss so I’m gonna lay ‘em out.

The Past Week on the Wiki
You may have thought we were not paying attention to the events unfolding. On the contrary, I can assure you the staff has been keeping an eye on the situation, and deliberating on how best to handle it and other relevant matters. While I personally admit to seeming unresponsive during the events of the past few days, given the reaction from certain members of the community I did not want to incite further issue until we as a staff had something concrete to present to you.

With that said, as of yesterday NightFalcon9004 has been demoted from his position of rollback and blocked. This was a unanimous decision that will not be discussed any further. Instead what I would like to talk about more is how this was handled by the community. In short, the behavior on display this past week from many users has been unacceptable, regardless of intent. The brigading and shitposting turned a serious issue into what felt at times more like a witch hunt or even a joke, and actions such as these spread to other users who in turn parroted misinformation or were given a different picture of the events than what they actually were. The attention drawn to all of this even attracted users who took the opportunity to make light of the situation, or push personal vendettas, and so blogs such as these will be deleted. Not because we're trying to censor the issue, but because they're representative of the unacceptable manner in which this event unfolded.

This brings us to a related subject, one that was going to be addressed regardless of this past week, but was given greater relevance because of it.

On Shitposting
While in off-season, shitposting was given pretty much free reign. This was intentional, as activity was down and it wasn’t harmful to the wiki’s core content or violating Terms of Use (mostly). However, as Season 6 is about 6 weeks away, we’re no longer going to permit the numerous joke-y/troll-y blogs and subsequent spamming of Wiki Activity. It was fine when nothing else was going on, but as activity and excitement for more rap battles rises, it’s time to get just a bit more serious and focus on what brings this community together. We appreciate the cooperation of our userbase in this matter, but if the behavior continues hereafter, we as a staff will take action against it.

Conclusion
For a short period we’ll allow for any questions to be discussed in the comments, but if they become anything like some of what occurred this past week, we’ll end this period early.

If you have any further questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to message any of the staff rather than keeping it to yourself. We can only address complaints that we are made aware of.

Thanks for reading.