We would like you all to come into this blog with an open mind and to carefully consider the message of this blog.
While it will use some examples of events that have happened, and it will mention the people involved in said events, this blog is not about the events themselves. Rather, it is about the community’s (both users and moderators) often-inappropriate and inconsistent reaction to them.
This is a blog written by a few different people on Fantendo in regards to the current state of the community and the administration. This is not the work of one person, but rather several individuals who would like to remain anonymous. We ask that this blog be taken seriously, this is not meant to instigate drama although we acknowledge that due to the nature of this blog, it is likely to cause it. This blog is intended to instigate discussion of how this community can improve.
Some people in this community have been consistently problematic and blatantly broken rules without any sort of punishment or acknowledgement from the administrators. Oftentimes notable acts of this were carried out by sysops on this site. The most notable example of one of these users is the former administrator Exotoro. The primary example of this user behaving inappropriately is when she sexually harassed a minor online in a private chatroom.
This is unacceptable behavior from a person who was an adult at the time, especially considering the age difference between Exotoro and 1OFTHESEDAYS. Exo was 18 at the time and 1OFTHESEDAYS was around the age of 12 or 13. Now, regardless of that person's current views on the situation, the point of bringing this up again is to examine how the community reacted to that situation and how we feel this should've been handled.
People close to Exo defended her for no reason other than liking her, especially in the Discord. Below is a comment from the blog by somebody who looked up to her and stepped in to defend her, angry at a comment condemning her actions.
Child predatory behavior is not something that should be simply discarded and forgotten about. Exotoro’s apology is one that I can understand, and I don’t believe she’s a danger to anyone at the current moment, but the actions she’s committed are ones that cannot be kept silent or pushed under the rug. The truth of the matter is that even if Exo owned up to what she did internally, she has gotten away with doing these actions scot-free.
The above message (in italics) is an excerpt from the blog. We believe this still holds true. She did get away with her behavior almost scot-free - the only reason she is no longer an administrator on this website is because she stepped down herself. Many members of this community and a few administrators tried to defend her.
This could apply to any online situation. Being shamed is not adequate punishment in a case like this.
The discussion regarding this took place on 5/26/2020 in the #serious channel on the official Fantendo Discord, if anybody would like to read it.
In any other reasonable online community, this would not have been a point of contention. Exotoro engaged, as an adult, in sexual discussion with somebody who was around the age of 12 or 13 at the time. She knew this individual's age, and it was extremely irresponsible of her to do this and allow this to happen in a chatroom that she managed. Furthermore, she never admitted to this publicly and kept it secret, only admitting to it and publicly denouncing her previous actions after being called out on the aforementioned blog.
This has been said and dealt with, and nothing more can be done regarding that situation. Exotoro is no longer in a position of power and things are over between her and the individual that was harassed. However, this is a shining example of the community being hypocritical and not handling a serious issue responsibly. Keep in mind we do not bear any ill will towards the admins, but believe reform should take place.
This is a comment a Fantendo user close to Exotoro made more recently about a content creator being exposed as a pedophile. There are differences, of course, between the nature of this and the Fantendo situation, but this should've applied there too. 1OFTHESEDAYS was genuinely traumatized by their experiences.
Our point here is that a unique exception was made for Exo in a situation where she did not deserve it. Nobody would deserve it. We bear no ill will towards the people in these messages and we understand that Exo has cleared things up since then, so we remind you once again that this is not to respark this drama but to address the way the community and its administration dealt with it. The admin was going to get away scot-free. The worst punishment for her that was considered was temporarily taking away her powers as a personal punishment. This would have accomplished nothing.
I would also like to say that the "it's offsite drama" counter is not relevant. JayOkumura received a warning for similar behavior with a Fantendo user very recently, although that situation was entirely offsite. These events still occurred between Fantendo users who only knew each other through Fantendo. Therefore, it stands to reason that this should've applied to Exotoro, too.
Exo herself decided to step down from her position as an administrator on the website. She responded appropriately and responsibly to the situation. The other sysops, however, did not. This shouldn't have been the case. It is very clear to us that there are issues with how the administrators handle things considering it took the offender to do it herself in order for action to be taken.
Receiving a warning for her behavior would not have made sense because it happened 4 years ago. She should have been demoted by another administrator. She should not have had to demote herself in order for her to lose power. One can say that she wouldn't do it again but there is no way the community would have known that for sure, other than having her word. You never know who is really behind the screen.
The mentioned blog can be read here. It is worth mentioning that 1OFTHESEDAYS was not involved in the writing of this very blog.
State of the Administration[]
We believe that the administration is severely flawed, in that users are oftentimes allowed to get away with breaking rules and being rude, even in the presence of an administrator.
https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Thread:1667310
In the linked thread, a new user named TaigaFox who was beginning to settle in with the community through the Discord was harassed by Exotoro because the then-admin detected passive aggressiveness that was not there. We know from talking with this person directly that his experience on Fantendo was hampered by Exo's rudeness. The user left the site and its Discord less than a month later and has not returned. We believe that this situation should have been publicly addressed. SonicWiki responded on the thread and made no statement about it. Exo did not receive a warning.
The admins should act professionally in situations like this. Even if Taiga was intentionally being rude, Exo was being very unreasonably rude and got away with it because of her popularity and/or her position in power. Bottom line is, an admin should be expected to follow the rules that they're trying to enforce.
https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:Astral-New-X/Unpopular_Opinions?page=3#comm-1640067
In a political debate, Exo turned to flaming instead of remaining calm and explaining her view in a mature manner. Regardless of personal opinion on the matter, this was unwarranted flaming, which is against the rules.
The two instances above are recent examples of this person flaming somebody back when she was an administrator, and both went publicly unnoticed and unpunished. Warnings, or at the very least reminders should be given out in these instances. This person has a history of flaming people and has been demoted for "general aggressive behavior" before.
We also found a few examples of another one of our administrators, WesternSkies, breaking the recently implemented "no explicit sexual talk" rule, despite being reminded of it several times by the community.
For reference, this is the rule being broken. Notice the date and compare with the messages seen above.
Things have been much calmer all-around since Exo was demoted, but the fact she rarely received warnings for her constant aggressive behavior and the admins were making excuses not to demote her shows that there is a problem with how the administration handles things.
Lastly for this section, we would like to bring attention to the potential for demoting the administrators RTA_fan and NovaPen. Once again, we bear no ill will towards these administrators, but they are mostly inactive, especially RTA.
https://fantendo.fandom.com/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=RTA+fan&page=&year=&month=-1
Public logs show us everything that an admin has deleted. You can go to the links above and specifically filter in just the deletion logs. Obviously being an administrator does not entail that alone, but it's arguably the most common thing for a sysop to do on this site. We believe that an admin's on-site administrative activity can be summarized relatively accurately based on how many articles they delete.
https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/RTA_fan?limit=250&target=RTA+fan
His last 250 edits date back to May of 2018. He is more active on the Discord but generally does not handle administrative duties, and is not often called upon in comparison to other administrators.
Now, NovaPen is a bit of a different situation as he's still semi-active on the wiki, but most of his edits boil down to working on his project, Rugby League Live 5.
https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Log/NovaPen?limit=500&user=NovaPen&month=&year=
To clarify, the (The parent article / parent comment has been deleted) tag does not mean that he deleted every individual comment, but rather he deleted the blog which resulted in the deletion of every comment. These are not individual actions. Keep that in mind while reading this.
This may not seem like little, but in comparison to the work that FuchsiaPanacea, ValkyriePyra, and IncarnateParanoia do, it is little.
https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Contributions/NovaPen?limit=500&target=NovaPen Again, most of his activity on the site is working on his fan-project.
The following are general examples of how much work these admins should be doing, ideally. https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Log?limit=500&type=delete&user=FuchsiaPanacea&month=&year= https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Log?limit=500&type=delete&user=ValkyriePyra&month=&year= https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Log?limit=500&type=delete&user=IncarnateParanoia&month=&year=
RTA and Nova do not often hand out warnings or block people. https://fantendo.fandom.com/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=RTA_fan&page=&year=&month=-1 https://fantendo.fandom.com/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=block&user=NovaPen&page=&year=&month=-1
We've recently lost Arend and Exotoro as administrators. If RTA and Nova are also demoted from their positions, then we would be down four admins. We suggest promoting AgentMuffin from his position as content moderator to administrator, then holding a new round of sysop elections for the three new admins to be picked.
The community[]
People in this community are very quick to jump on bandwagons against users when someone is receiving heat.
https://fantendo.fandom.com/wiki/Unten_Bluzen#comm-1669122
Oswald was obviously not in the right in this situation, but 11 other users got involved when it easily could've been left to just the admins. There was no reason for this to blow up the way it did. This has been a problem with Fantendo throughout history and while this may not be the best example, this is, nonetheless, a recent example. There was also much talk of this on the Fantendo Discord behind Oswald's back, although he was banned at the time.
This was unnecessary. Talking about the situation itself would've been alright, but these are moreso direct attacks.
Rule 3 on the official Discord server clearly states that talking behind other people's backs is not allowed, although the moderators do not actively make any attempts to enforce it.
We are not suggesting that the people involved in this or similar future situations should be warned. Warnings should be handed out as necessary (which they oftentimes are not, from what we have seen), although it is interesting to note that EnderLegends was only warned for vandalizing the image file, flaming was not part of his warning reason.
Closing statement[]
We once again ask you to come out of this blog with an open mind and remind you that we bear no ill will towards anybody in these screenshots. We may have gotten some information wrong, if any of you have any corrections then please post in the comments.
Once again, we're not posting this blog with the intent of starting drama, but rather the intent of sparking change. We think it's inevitable that this will spark fights, however, there is no way around that.
Please think for yourselves on this. Don't think that we're just right or wrong, think about why we're right or why we're wrong, and determine your own answer.