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To clear the air; Concerning a certain ex-staff member
#1
So unfortunately, it seems Trumpublican has resigned from his moderation duties. Instead of airing his grievances with us directly, he decided to write a gigantic manifesto of sorts detailing his entire reason for leaving, which unfortunately for him was either entirely misguided or intentionally libelous. Let's take a look, shall we? Here's his original post, sent to several community members (but shockingly no UDU team members) for no reason other than to be spiteful. I do not have the entire letter quoted in this post, so use the link provided.

Red blocks are quotes from Trumpublican's resignation letter.
Black blocks are my rebuttal to his ridiculous accusations.



     "Upon his admission into the moderator program, I wanted to specify what his gender was, yielding an innocuous transgender joke from myself. I was quickly rebuked by the admins, told that my behavior was not okay and would lead to further action taken against me. Thus, I learned that whatever I say must be compliant with the executive staff members’ beliefs and stringent ideology"

Let's stop here for a moment.

     Trumpublican knows nothing about our individual political beliefs.  He made an inappropriate joke at the expense of another staff member (that at the time we all, quite frankly, knew little about), and as such we gave him a simple warning, telling him to knock it off.  We were not enforcing a political agenda, we were enforcing a policy of "don't be a jerk to your coworkers."


     "When I returned, I was astonished to learn that Cole and Dallas had been fired. I asked for the reasoning behind this decision and the circumstances regarding it, yet I received no answer. My curiosity lead me to questioning Cole himself regarding the details of his firing. Evidently, Cole had posted a 9/11 meme in the staff chat, and Dallas joined in on the memery. Immediately thereafter, I was told, the two were discharged and banned for a month."

     He decided to omit quite a few key details here, I'll fill everyone else in on what he conveniently left out.  Cole took to posting inappropriate memes in one of our staff channels back when we were still using Skype.  He was gently warned to stop a couple times but proceeded to ignore our warnings.  When we began to sternly warn him that what he was posting was not appropriate, Dallas joined Cole in the fray and the two began to back talk us.  This was the final straw for the two of them as they had also been previously causing issues.  We did not immediately fire and ban them with no warning, as he's leading everyone to believe.  We expect our staff members to behave rationally and not to talk back when we ask them to stop posting potentially offensive content, Cole and Dallas did neither in this situation and were subsequently removed.


     "This type of autocratic behavior, I noted, was akin to that of Stalin’s regime: if you disagreed with the thought-processes of the administration, you would be removed, and all remaining members would not be informed of the reasoning behind the discharge, maximizing the amount of fear instilled in them."

     Most of the staff who were around at the time were present for this, and those who are still left here have reminisced about these events several times in front of the entire team.  To allege that we hid this information from him when it occurred in front of everyone and freely talked about it afterwards is preposterous.  To top that off, no one who watched what happened ever condoned their behavior, so how this translates into us being dictators is beyond me.


     “Soon came the Trston scandal, and although I passionately abhorred Trston and his behavior, it was a fun investigation with the staff, full of laughter and spirit.”

     Awfully funny he mention BubbaTrston’s behavior, as his first act as an ex-staff member was to unban this pyschopath of a child without telling anyone. What an upstanding team member!
[Image: BzCoJvdvTCCgggg5dIeZ3g.png]


     "Weeks later I learn that Zaqre had been fired, and again, I was not informed of the rationale behind the decision. Two months later, though, I learn that Zaqre had changed the Discord bot to “Nazi Germany,” which I in all ways condemn, but again, there were undoubtedly more details of which staff neglected to elaborate on."

     He again left out the part where we all freely discussed the events that transpired leading up to Zaqre's termination.  Here's what actually went down; After the Discord server was set up he began using the @everyone command very, very frequently.  After receiving a complaint from a friend about this behavior, I gently suggested that he tone it down.  It wasn't a warning, it wasn't a threat, it was a simple "hey, could you tone that down a little, people are saying that it's starting to get spammy."  He took personal offense to this and began to make everyone's lives difficult by arguing every single obviously justified ban we made for no rhyme or reason, then began changing the bot to display inappropriate content and arguing about that when we called him out on it.  He was terminated and, as you'd expect, the majority of the staff team began venting their frustrations with his behavior after the dust settled.



    "Kate became a moderator. I was startled to hear of this new appointment after her recent disregard for the rules in this forum thread: https://uduniverse.com/forums/showthread...ght=%23ban, her decision to not only defend BLM as an organization, . . ."

     We do not base our hirings on the candidate's political views, nor do we hold minor warnings against users who display great potential as a candidate.  How silly would that be?  Kate ended up being a fantastic addition to our team.


". . .but also to partake in and escalate political discussion."

His Roblox username is literally "Trumpublican."


     "xiBlu was hired: Unprofessional, immature, incompetent, and unqualified for the job, after seeing her discussions and behavior, again I was confused why she was hired. A month later she leaves the server, citing bullying from another staff member as the reasoning. And again, the pattern of unleashing a barrage of insults and hatred followed."

     Since Trumpublican apparently forgot, this is exactly what the Trainee Program is for.  Once her behavior started to decline, we demoted her to Trainee to work out the problems we were having.  She then left entirely, throwing around accusations of bullying that were later determined to be entirely blown out of proportion.  This "barrage of insults and hatred" never occurred.


     "A short time later, I learn that ThunderAurora has been fired.  Again, I’m not informed of the reasoning behind this decision, as I’m told to continue to do my job and pretend nothing has happened."

     This is probably the only incident in which minute details pertaining to someone's firing was withheld, and that was solely due to the complexities of the underlying issues we were dealing with behind the scenes.  He was not told to "continue to do his job and pretend nothing happened."  We gave the appropriate parties as many details as we could, but ultimately did not feel comfortable with sharing the entire story with everyone.


     "Later, Chicken_Boom was hired, who openly admitted to allegedly being a 52-year-old lawyer. This is a man over the age of 50 hired to play and moderate a children’s game. Again, I still can’t wrap around my mind how and why this guy got hired. I did not like him, but again, when he was fired, the barrage of insults and vitriol among the lower-ranking staff was not surprising at all."

     Yes, this was a massive mistake on my part that I will freely admit to. No one believed his “alibi” but his application was good, he seemed levelheaded, he knew a couple staff members already, and we really needed more moderators. He was removed from the Trainee Program when we discovered a pattern of abuse of power and when he started making questionable comments to other staff members. After his removal, the disgust at his behavior, especially towards the female staff members, came to light from the rest of the team. For Trumpublican to be surprised at the reaction his removal garnered from the rest of the team is pretty shocking. The whole ordeal was a massive blunder on my part that I've taken full responsibility for, and it's something that will not happen again.


     "Jomsviking is hired onto the team. A few weeks prior to his hiring, I had banned him for illegally towing my car; he sent me an immature message expressing his animosity towards me."

     The punishment that Trumpublican dished out for Jomsviking was illogically severe, and the "immature message" that he received was a silly joke. The entire situation unfolded because Jomsviking, myself, and several other people were goofing around in a largely empty Noyan server with the admin speed functions. Jomsviking's punishment was rescinded almost immediately.


     "Per the moderator hiring guidelines, one cannot become a moderator if he/she has been previously banned; under the moderator supervisors, this rule was blatantly ignored,"

     As with Kate, denying a superb candidate on the grounds of something silly is ridiculous, especially given that I rescinded the punishment.


"and I soon learned that his allegiance to Vortex Security was undoubtedly to blame."

Jomsviking wasn't even active in Vortex Security, so no, it was not to blame.


     "A majority of subsequent moderator hires - Lilly, Chris, and Falcon - despite seldom playing the game and moderating, were, I’ve deduced, hired based on predominantly nepotistic factors."

     These people were hired based on their applications and outside recommendations, quite similar to the way that literally everybody else has been hired.

     Lilly wrote an excellent novel of an application and had a reputation that preceded her for being helpful, intelligent, and friendly. She's been integral in helping our team get innumerable inappropriate accounts permanently removed from Roblox and is a blast to hang out with.  I've never regretted hiring her.
     Chris also had a great application, had several recommendations going for him, and knew most of the staff members and policies already.  He's been an extremely active member of the team and I've not regretted hiring him either.
     Falcon wrote a great application, but was interviewed TWICE just to be certain that he'd be a good fit (pay attention, those of you who've been complaining about "VS favoritism"). He's also been incredibly helpful and active, and I've not regretted hiring him either.

     These three have been infinitely more active than Trumpublican since their tenure began, which is pretty ironic since he complains about their activity levels. Come to think of it, I haven't seen Trumpublican doing much of anything for the past couple months while the rest of the hirees picked up the slack. Hmmm....


     "Hence these ill-advised decisions, I believe the moderator program is at its worst condition, and will only continue to worsen after my resignation."

     My only ill-advised decision was not hiring them sooner. The moderator program is at its prime, we have a working process and plenty of first hand experience that helps in rooting out bad candidates. Considering Trumpublican's activity levels have been almost moot and that his opinions on the recent hirees are based on his own biases, his conclusion about the moderator program as a whole is incredibly silly.


     "As I analyze the moderator program as a whole, I feel that a major flaw was the failure to include the current moderators’ opinions on potential hires, which only generated aloofness among the moderators. Hopefully the UDU staff will take this into consideration into their future decisions, but I would not be surprised if this suggestion was ignored."

     Most of our hirees were recommended by other staff members and/or known to most of the team, and a decent portion of the terminations we've done have occurred after private conversations with various staff members, so this point is moot. We can't give every single moderator full access to hiring process, but we do take their opinions both before and after someone is hired.


     "I should also mention that I do not consider myself to be the perfect moderator, for my inactivity was a large factor to my decision in resigning."

     So... he complains about the "inactivity" of staff members he doesn't like while he himself isn't around? Huh..?


     "This is an adult who publicly farts, an adult that makes small-talk in a highly unprofessional way, who has created specific discord channels titled #assblasts and worse among staff."

     This is the really funny part, Trumpublican complains about being reprimanded for making potentially offensive jokes to other staff members that they didn't know, almost as if to complain that we needed to lighten up. Then he complains about us lightening up within the confines of our equivalent to an employee lounge.  Hm...


     "I think Alex also scorns his behavior, but cannot fire him because he’s the only guy who understands the stats and networking behind the UDU."

     Uh, no, actually I'm proficient enough at the backend side of things that I've programmed a large part of the optimizations to the database system on my own. Not to mention, he's my friend.  Friends don't always agree, sometimes friends argue, but we're all friends here. We're a team.  Well, most of us were at least, it's pretty obvious now that he had it out for us this entire time because of a bunch of a series of fabricated grievances.


     "This resignation I believe is long overdue, and I hope that with it more people will come to the same realization that I did."

     I agree, his resignation was long overdue. He rarely contributed and his ties to hardcore police roleplaying groups caused us more headaches than I can count. I sincerely hope no one comes to this manipulated realization.


     The screenshots he posted (without context, mind you) as "evidence" to backup his claims mostly point to the light hearted atmosphere of the staff chat. The screenshot involving Neko and Maddy occurred after Maddy left the team, turned on us, blamed us for her problems (that had nothing to do with us in the slightest), accused us of not helping (several team members that were better equipped tried very hard to help her), then proceeded to begin spreading ridiculous lies about us. Eventually we realized that a lot of what she was doing to the team as a whole was a stunt for attention, and the tensions boiled over into what ended up getting screenshotted.


     I find it very hard to believe that anyone would pay any mind to the nonsense being spewed forth from such a laughably inactive ex-moderator as Trumpublican. His personal attacks against team members he rarely, if ever, interacted with speaks volumes about his credibility, not to mention the fact that he blatantly abused his moderation privileges to unban miscreants after he left. This resignation letter is a pitiful, half-baked attempt to throw punches at the shadowy manifestations of his own insecurities he has projected onto the other moderators and the management team, all of whom he either hadn’t even met, interacted with, or gotten to know as a result of his unwillingness to socialize in a team environment with his peers. It’s a pity that his tenure was unable to end amicably like most others before him, but he made his decision.
Founder of the UDU.
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( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)つ━☆゚.*・。゚
#2
Early this morning, we were notified that Trumpublican had stolen two logins for the online moderator center. He did not gain the two logins by brute force, instead, as he so bluntly put it, he simply saved the information to his computer from a post I made back in the staff chat quite some time ago containing login information for four users. Looking back at that decision to post the login information, it was a completely idiotic move on my part, and it's not one I'll make again. However, I also did not expect anyone to abuse these logins. The logins that were compromised quickly had the information changed to prevent usage.

First of all, the unauthorized usage of our systems is against the law. The login was not made for him; how he got it is irrelevant. No one told it to him, it was just an oversight on my part. However, being that the website is our property, he basically violated it by utilizing this information. Secondly, the fact he had these saved as most likely part of some grand scheme he was hoping to orchestrate is a testament to his trustworthiness.

In case you were wondering, the only adverse effect he managed to accomplish before we found out was the unbanning of someone very unwelcome here - someone, who, given that the circumstances were known at the time, should not even be allowed to use the internet given what they did. Regardless, we immediately rebanned said person and disabled access to the entire site for two specific IPs that can be associated to Trumpublican.

Below is the proof that he performed this act.

[Image: GoiQKoyETdO2JOjdUhYnKQ.png]

(The parts not posted by him were removed, as was sensitive information)

What I find most interesting was the revelation that he immediately saved this information to his PC after it was posted. This tells me that this act of his was not due to recent events. This had been planned out for months, and he was basically using us. If that's not evidence enough of his traitorous and backstabbing ways, I'm not sure what else could be. One thing is for sure, is that he clearly had some sort of vendetta against us for a long time.

Hypocricy is a fickle thing, but Trumpublican fits the bill perfectly. He complains about us being immature and unprofessional, yet, as demonstrated above, he quickly used login information not meant for him as part of some petty revenge scheme against us. Not only that, but he goes and unbans someone who was sending sexually explicit images to minors, and then he has the claim to boast we are not professional? Has he looked in a mirror lately? In addition, he's also counting how many people looked at his letter? Looks like someone who was pretty desperate to me. Given his misguided facts and aspirations of some uprising, I'd say that desperation is describing it lightly.
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