A drastic change in the community and its prospects

[Lazaro]

(05-29-2017, 05:49 PM)Sora Wrote: Throughout the past couple of months, a lot of toxicity has been built up. A bad environment has made people side against each other. Talking bad about each other, cussing severely, hinting disrespectfully about other members, and bullying. This is one of the worst things people can parttake in a community which should be supportive of one another, trustful, and loyal.

A lot of people have been involved in such siding, both unintentionally and intentionally. Its pirimary core has come from Discord, where forum members would encourage/invite other forum members to join groups. Sometimes, certain forum members who would not approve of such behaviour taking place in these groups. These members would then be singled out and attacked by the other members of the group, eventually banned from the discord and bad mouthed.

I am disappointed that only very few members have told me about this ongoing problem, which has taken place for more than just a couple of weeks, building up.
Naturally, the staff team and certain moderating individuals have been inclined to remove certain posts or threads in the forum, which were in obvious terms disrespectful towards another member, or the community as whole. The disrespect, originating from members in Discord bad mouthing, and challenging their position in the forums, knowingly that they would receive less warnings as they challenge the staff team with rulebreaking. As more posts have been removed by staff, some members have built up more anger after these posts have been removed. In a vicious circle, they would post even more provocative posts, which would then again be removed by staff.

One of the theories a very smart member has messaged me about, has been that certain member(s) have purposefully started speaking badly about members of the forums, the forums itself, agf/agma, and me, as the admin. With the intenion of causing disputes between members, spreading toxicity, only to enjoy the entirety of the moment and members conflicting each other.

The staff team, throughout this time, have been mainly silent. While observing and grasping the situation. After an important discussion between staff, we have decided on numerious strict principles to guide the forum through, and follow by. This has been set in order to protect members, continue flourishing a great place, spread positivity and joy between members instead of negativity.

Staff will make a strict decision if they believe the post/shout is provocative or breaks rules. The decision ranges from a warning, to a ban. This will be taken very seriously from now on, and includes everyone.

Finally, I would like to thank most of our members whom are great and loyal members. We have a lot of talented, passionate, and smart members in our community. We've had great friendships evolve. And of course, we've had great players evolve from our AGF duel arena, and more battles to come in the future the upcoming tournament system and clan system to be implemented.
I would like to thank the members who have cast light upon this situation, and contributed to put a final strict stop to it.
I would like to thank our moderating team, and staff for all their dedication to the community and support.

Thank you for reading. Let's unlimit our limits together!

I know this is an old post, but one of the mods from discord banned me for "arguing with a former staff member" . He didn't even gave me a chance to tell him what happened. I hope this staff won't continuously ban innocent members just because they "argued with a former staff".