Discord, Izzy - Abuse of Power

[Burger]

BYOND Name of complaint against: Izzy
Your BYOND name: BurgerBB
Reason for complaint: Abuse of power.

To get things out of the way, I am not appealing the discord ban given to me. I agree with the ban and I agree that the citadel discord community is not for me and vastly different from the main community. It's been a month and at this point I have no interest in really returning to the citadel discord but after being PM'd about it by 3 people in the last week, one of which telling me that I should make a complaint, I think I should write this. To put it bluntly, I genuinely believe that Izzy is unfit to be an administrator.

After an incident where I regrettably acted like a dick about someone posting grotesque porn in NSFW, Izzy mentioned in a conversation that they were seriously considering removing me from the discord (https://i.imgur.com/g07UUfi.png). This was a shock to me considering that compared to what is generally allowed in the channel and what I have experienced, it was really nothing worth removing me from the discord over. When pressed about it, it turns out that Izzy didn't like the way I was making balance PRs and they didn't like the post I made on reddit, hinting that I was doing both because I was malicious and not because I care about development or the community or like to joke around. That was an even bigger shock considering that my contributions were generally well received, had effort put into them, and nearly always merged and appropriately discussed (https://github.com/Citadel-Station-13/C ... =%E2%9C%93), and I have made plenty of posts on reddit making fun of situations on citadel that admins laughed at and had no problems with, so again, this was a suprise.

Regardless, I still continued to defend myself and ask for other instances where I was acting malicious so I could clear them up, but Izzy failed to provide any except for the reddit post, which I admitted was a bad joke and never made a single reddit thread about Citadel again (https://i.imgur.com/qFKJuq3.png), and the occurances in NSFW which I made amends for and dealt with. Izzy then finally went on to explain the the issues that had her and the team on edge and I spoke on all of them (https://i.imgur.com/bFbMEff.png) (https://i.imgur.com/YyvN7Cs.png). There was a lot more I wanted to discuss about this, but I didn't, such as the "alternative motives" part which I somehow missed because it was clear that they didn't believe me or was listening to me. What happened for next hour or so was really the most revealing, as it showed that Izzy didn't understand what it is like to dev and contribute for Citadel (https://i.imgur.com/VPNuUsp.png).

Using discord for discussion of PRs is batshit insane. Any developer, contributor, or maintainer worth their salt can tell you that discord is not a good platform for a community of over 300+ members where there is always a conversation going on and it is lightly moderated. I mention later to her that I do use discord to gauge opinions on general feedback, but most of the time it bears absolutely no fruit because it is either ignored fully or the responses you get are with minimal effort. I have asked developers and maintainers from other servers about this, and they said that not using github for discussion and using discord for discussion, even initial discussion, is generally a bad idea. My comment about "You don't moderate discord." is a reference to the fact that Paxton, another contributor, has been harassing anyone who doesn't agree with their ideas and likes to berate people for them, disguising them as "banter" despite people telling them that what they were doing wasn't appreciated. Multiple admins have dealt with Paxton, and one eventually got them to stop quite long after this conversation with Izzy by threatening them with a permanent ban if they continue to stir up shit. So at the time, what Izzy was telling is the equivalent of ordering me to use a typewriter to write a book instead of a computer, but the typewriter has a chance to bite your finger off every time you use the "E" key, which I explained. (https://i.imgur.com/MdcBE94.png)

What Izzy was proposing was that I was supposed to ask beforehand to make a PR and get approval from others before making it. Sure, you need approval from a maintainer to get a PR merged, but you literally do not need to get permission to make one. None of what Izzy suggested that I do is listed in the contributing guidelines, the rules, or any sort of rule or guideline page, and trust me, I know because I know where the contributing guidelines are, and they're here: https://github.com/Citadel-Station-13/C ... IBUTING.md

So this is my process: I gather general feedback about an issue to see if people agree or support it in ooc or the discord code channel, I make the PR, I then show contributors, maintainers, developers, and players the PR, and then they comment on the PR itself or make a comment directly if they don't want to. I'd wager in most coderbases is this an acceptable way of making and creating PRs because it shows exactly in code what the PR will do, and shows exactly in outline what the PR is supposed to do and why it is going to be implemented. It is an incredibly effective way of communicating intent towards people because it means that you do not need to repeat yourself when nearly everything you need to know is in the PR itself. It's organized, you can find the PR. Responses to PRs are usually well written, highly moderated, and highly up to standard. If you act out of line or off topic, your comment gets deleted.

Compare that to Izzy's process. Compare github to discord where there are nearly always 3 conversations at once, 80% of the people on there aren't interested in development, at most 2 people comment during the day because the rest aren't interested or are not around discord at that time of day and never scroll up to see what they've missed. Compare the good posting standards of github to the general hostile and shitposting attitude of discord where epic zingers, malicious intent, and drama suitable for a furry porn channel but not a place where volunteers are apparently expected to sift through the shit of to get constructive feedback about a PR that most people don't care about.

There was a lot more discussion about this that went nowhere. Izzy, an admin who had no experience developing in code, was trying to lecture someone who had 12 years of coding experience, 5 years of group project experience, 2 years of contributing to SS13 and dealing with github, and 1 year of actually being a promoted developer on Aurorastation. Izzy was ignoring all the evidence, testimonials, and opinions of other contributors and developers in favor of their own proposed method. They were proposing solutions like sugar coating PR titles to be misleading but still truthful in order to get what you want ( https://i.imgur.com/og3MsLS.png ), which really just pissed me off because that suggestion was their solution for developers to stop getting harassed by users.

I ended up bring this up in the coder discussion channel because this was a serious issue. I was not the one to start the conversation, but another developer who had grievances with how admins were handling things was lamenting about the same issue. I brought up the conversation I had with Izzy, the points I made, but another admin (Geemiesif) got extremely pissed off and tried provoking me 5 minutes after the conversation that had 0 drama or anything. I ignored them for the most part, but then I was informed by them that I would be permabanned from the discord by that same person who tried provoking me, because of an "unofficial vote" for starting shit.

I don't really think this is fair to anyone. At this point this really isn't about me anymore but how development functions on citadel and in ss13. If you have admins trying to dictate development to the point where developers are complaining, and your response is to either ignore them, not take them seriously, or outright ban them because they appear to be starting shit because of their history, then I don't think that's fair to anyone involved.

[Nik707]

Maintainer here.
Yeah I see literally no reason ever to discuss or get permission to make a pr. Unless it's something that takes ages to make in which case yeah get feedback before you waste your time but for relatively minor shit you are absolutely welcome to make the PR and let github house discussion.

[Fractious]

Hi Burger.

I'll be closing this Complaint since the person targeted by the complaint isn't in the staff team anymore.


Godspeed.