Whistleblowing

TL;DR: Ignas doxxed several community members, leaking the information to other members known to have disagreements with the victims. The moderation team is aware of this and has decided not to take any action because "his actions took place outside the MB community," despite the fact that everyone involved was a community member.

The following is all proven and verifiable information. DM me on Discord if you need the proof.

On June 3rd, 2022, Ignas sent multiple members of the community a series of chatlogs he had obtained by gaining the false trust of other community members. Ignas obtained these chatlogs partly by posing as a transgender girl named Ahri, who has since been proven to be an alt account of Ignas, which he created a few months ago. The logs were sent specifically to people known by Ignas to have disagreements with the victims. The logs included:

• information about the LGBTQ+ status of certain members of the community, which they have stated should not be known by the community at large;
• real names of several community members;
• personal photographs of community members.

Just so we're clear, the names and photographs are bad enough as is, but outing people's LGBTQ+ status can be legitimately harmful. It is imperative that those of marginalized identities and orientations be allowed to keep that information in precisely the places they want it to be. It only takes one person finding out who wasn't supposed to find out for the victim's entire social circle to know, potentially including anyone close to the victim who may be abusive to LGBTQ+ people. Ignas's actions could have, in the worst case, resulted in physical harm brought upon the victims.

And the administration decided to cover it up and not ban him.

Their reasoning was simple: because these actions took place entirely within other servers and direct messages, they are outside the jurisdiction of the MB community mods. This is not a valid excuse in the slightest. If I abused someone I was also in a social club with, even if it didn't happen during a club meeting, I would still fully expect to be banned from the club. Ignas being allowed to stay is unconscionable.

This decision will actively drive away community members who have done nothing wrong in order to "protect" an individual whose actions are indisputably wrong and very harmful. I don't feel safe interacting with this community as long as this decision is allowed to stand. I don't feel like the moderators are respecting or protecting me. I don't want to be a part of a community where members gain the trust of other members, betray them with almost criminal acts, and receive no punishment.

I do believe that at least one or two of the moderators agree with me in this respect. I demand that it be made transparent and public which moderators wanted to ban Ignas and which decided to keep him in the community. I demand that anyone in the latter group immediately change their decision, or else resign. If you are a moderator and think Ignas should have been banned, this is the place to clear your name. If you agree with me, a "Thank You" on this post will be taken as confirmation of this.

Those responsible for this abhorrent decision will probably reply to this post explaining why refusing to ban a known doxxer who attacked vulnerable people by revealing their personal information to their known enemies is totally okay, actually. Don't take their word for it for a second. Everything factual I've said is indisputable, and I feel like a vast majority of reasonable people will agree with my conclusions as well.

Everything you said Ignas did is true, and like you said everything he did took place outside the purview of the MB server and its rules. Our rules are not universal and only apply to actions within the MB community spaces (our discord, forums, webchat). If you would like to have the rules changed to affect the whole world and not just our community please make a case for that here. The mod team has reviewed all this and came to this conclusion. We have not obscured anything as theres nothing to obscure, no rules were broken. Ignas has been banned from the discord server where his actions took place, the appropriate punishment has been dealt.

Thank you for your comments and concerns, whirligig.

I do wish to clear up a few things since this is such a contentious topic. The point about Ignas doxxing people is correct and we are aware of this.

And the administration decided to cover it up and not ban him.

This is however not the case. The marbleblast.com staff team did not try to cover anything up, if we did then this post would be deleted immediately. We all agree that what Ignas did was wrong. And the appropriate administartion, i.e. the mods in the server where this actually happened, took action and banned him. We are not the moderators of the LGBT offshoot servers, and yes, it is not our jurisdiction.

Before I exapnd on this I will be transparent about the voting like you requested. The final vote ended in 3-1 in favour of not acting, following the logic that it isn't our place to moderate. Go'way was the person who brought this up to the mod team and consistently held the position that Ignas should be banned or temp. banned throughout the whole discussion. I personally held the position that an offshoot server is not our job to moderate and would set a bad precedent since it would open the floodgates for holding people accountable for things that are done outside of the community. DK and Doomblah were more inbetween the two opinions, leaning towards ban at the start of the discussion, but by the end of it voted for doing nothing. I hope this has been transparent enough regarding the voting.

But to exapnd on the arguments a bit more. Any offshoot server is its own thing, and there have been several community servers that violated the main server's rules, which has always been allowed. I understand that these things can be extra sensitive as you have explained, but thinking that we should moderate other servers is a strange path to take. I for one am not even allowed in to that server and all the proof I have seen has been second-hand accounts at best. DK is also not in the relevant server, and after this event, Doomblah is banned from it. I hope I am making sense here. you would probably think it was a bit weird if you had a community server and the people in it were judged by a group of people who have no insight into your server.

I am also inclined to bring up the fact that the very server that is relevant to this doxxing situation also had no problems with leaking private information when it was leaked to the server and not from it. At least two people have been banned from another offshoot server for doing this. This is not me excusing Ignas' actions, but rather a way to talk about the earlier precedent. In these past situations the offender was banned in the relevant server and left alone in all other servers. This is a standard that was agred upon by the previous mod team. Two of the people who are curtrently thanking your post, HiGuy and Derpking, were very clear in the past that they agreed with this way of moderating. If it happened outside of the community then it was not our place to moderate it. Some people have asked about the "feet pics" incident before, and this incident was ultimately not dealt with by staff members because it was not happening in the community. I again hope to make it clear that I am not excusing or agreeing with what Igans did, i am only explaining that the way we dealt with Ignas is not new.

I wish to reiterate that I have personally not changed my opinion on the matter as I believe it would not be a good precedent to set to moderate actions in other communities. Many of our members are in dozens or even hundreds of servers and they regularly break the rules set in our community. When you decide to create a separate server then you are responsible for it, and this is ultimately a failure of the mod team of the LGBT server, whoever they are. I have no insight in it and I don't know who has as I am not allowed in.

I hope that you are at least satisfied with the transparency of this post even though you will be unhappy to hear that no one as of yet is planning on resigning over this disagreement. With that said we truly do appreciate concerns being voiced, it is not something we just say for the sake of saying it. And I ultimately believe the role of the moderators is to serve as an equivalent to the executive branch of a government. The point being to serve the people, or in this case the community members, in such a way that agrees with the common interests of the members and the rules we have in place. No decision or rule is set in stone and we are always ready to discuss what we have done and what we are doing. I appreciate you taking this concern to the forums where it can be discussed in the open and where we can see the opinions of more community members, especially considering the fact that a situation like this runs the risk of having people sit in their respective echo chamber and not talking about openly and honestly.

To summarise: I think it is the correct decision to follow the previous precedent and not involve the moderators of this community in a server where we have no insight. I fully disagree with what Ignas did and I hope it is clear that I am in no way defending it. The decision is not set in stone and we as a staff team are willing to listen to any and every argument from either side.

I think much of what I said earlier still stands, but I want to respond to a couple of specific points here.

I am also inclined to bring up the fact that the very server that is relevant to this doxxing situation also had no problems with leaking private information when it was leaked to the server and not from it.

I would need to see evidence in order to agree with this. If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, then I think the simple answer is that there's a very big difference between leaking people's opinions and leaking people's names, identities, and photographs. I'm not aware of anyone in the server you speak of doing the latter.

Two of the people who are curtrently thanking your post, HiGuy and Derpking, were very clear in the past that they agreed with this way of moderating.

Both of these two former moderators have told me that they agree that this is an idiotic and harmful decision. In particular, when I mentioned this to HiGuy, he specifically pointed to the former case with Powerjohn and how that case was handled differently from this one. So I think this point is, probably, factually incorrect.

I hope that you are at least satisfied with the transparency of this post even though you will be unhappy to hear that no one as of yet is planning on resigning over this disagreement.

I do appreciate the transparency, and I am still calling for you, Doomblah, and DK to either reconsider or leave. I'm pretty much not going to budge on this, as I think this is simply the worst and most blatant instance of a problem that has rampantly existed in this community for years.

The decision is not set in stone and we as a staff team are willing to listen to any and every argument from either side.

Well, I suppose now is your chance to do so.

FWIW the previous mod team banned multiple people for offenses committed against community members done outside the server (powerjohn, walgrey, noby, etc). Powerjohn was banned for the exact same thing (doxing) done in a google sheet shared on YouTube (ie not in the community server), and nobody contested it then. Not saying all of the bans/lack therefore of we did were justified, but please don't try to claim my/our previous actions as justification for this.

Thanks.

I would need to see evidence in order to agree with this. If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, then I think the simple answer is that there's a very big difference between leaking people's opinions and leaking people's names, identities, and photographs. I'm not aware of anyone in the server you speak of doing the latter.

Leaking a person's opinions can and is dangerous in some parts of the world. I live in Europe and peoplre are regularly imprisoned for holding certain opinions or using certain words. You may disagree with my personal opinions, and you may agree with the laws that ban certain kinds of speech, but it is certainly true that leaking chatlogs alone is dangerous to some people. This is not me comparing or saying that I was treated worse, or even equally as bad as the victims in this specific case. I am just pointing out that leaking even something as small as chatlogs can be dangerous to a person. And in the cases that I am thinking of both people were explicitly told to not leak any messages. This is a rule violation and I think being banned from the server affected is the appropriate response.

In particular, when I mentioned this to HiGuy, he specifically pointed to the former case with Powerjohn and how that case was handled differently from this one.

You will have to clarify what situation this is about then because Powerjohn was banned long before his whole doxxing situation happened.

So I think this point is, probably, factually incorrect.

It is not factually incorrect and I will expand on this when I respond to Higuy, but in short this was logic that was used in order to deal with certain community members. In other cases like with noby, it was never made clear even to me why the person was banned. I don't think that this inconsistent way of moderating is something we should follow nowadays. In fact I can confidently say that the moderation practices of the old team is what drove people to create offshoot servers and abandon the official server for an extended period of time.

Never in my life have I seen anyone stoop this low in the marble blast community. Ingas should be ashamed of themself

FWIW the previous mod team banned multiple people for offenses committed against community members done outside the server (powerjohn, walgrey, noby, etc). Powerjohn was banned for the exact same thing (doxing) done in a google sheet shared on YouTube (ie not in the community server), and nobody contested it then. Not saying all of the bans/lack therefore of we did were justified, but please don't try to claim my/our previous actions as justification for this.

Thanks.

I don't remember the details of the walgrey situation so I will not speak about it. But I can say that you are wrong about Powerjohn being banned for doxxing, he was banned as early as 2014 (well before the doxxing) and it was related to his behaviour. He was community banned but still allowed to participate in the WRRs until he took a post by Marson and posted it outside of the community. This is one of several "myths" in this community that is treated as fact despite not being so. Another one that I have noticed you personally spread is the lie that I bought my way into the moderation team; the team that you and Matan lead at the time. noby was banned for undisclosed reasons, I was in the mod team at the time and I never got a good answer for why he was banned. Still to this day I am not sure why, and that is a big reason for why we reverted the ban.

With this said, what I said about both you and Derpking is still true, you both thought it was a good idea to leave other servers be (when you thought it was appropriate) and at that time I agreed with you. And that is the same logic I am using now. You might not agree with it today but it did happen.

i can't say i know much about PowerJohn, however I can for the others. Noby was banned for harassing Lamp outside the main server in 2017. Walgrey was banned for harassing a user in the now OpenMBU server in 2020. NintendoGamer was banned for harassing some members in DMs in 2021. this precedent has merit and this kind of behavior, when the majority of affected users are a part of, or affiliated with this community, should not be allowed.