We Have an Issue: Developer Conduct

[Azande]

 

Hello everyone. I am making a thread, I don't expect it to be super large, but I hope it does start a legitimate conversation about how Developers, Administrators, and Moderators treat players.

When Aurora first started, staff had incredibly friendly relationships with most players, and seemed outwardly rather helpful and kind. I genuinely enjoyed engaging in the community, sharing thoughts and having discussions. Over the years however, I have noticed a turn towards a staff team that is rude, belligerent, demeaning, arrogant, spiteful, and mean-spirited. This is reflected in both the Admin, Dev and Lore teams in various ways. However, I only have the energy currently to address the Developer side of things.

Developers
A lot of this comes down to what I believe to be 'developer arrogance'. You can read some articles here about the issue:
https://dev.to/lucagrandicelli/are-we-pretentious-and-arrogant-361l
https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2015/06/12/this-is-the-absolute-worst-trait-in-a-software-engineer/#109216f91964
https://www.quora.com/Why-are-a-lot-of-programmers-so-arrogant

My own partner is in the late stages of his computer science education, and I'm quite familiar with his social group's own developer arrogance as well, and I believe it has led to a severe behaviour pattern going all the way up to Skull132 and Arrow themselves. The following are issues I believe, and others I have spoke to believe, exist with developers;

1. If a developer is capable, and liked enough by Skull or Arrow, they are essentially immune from being banned for anything short of major grief. We have seen so many developers that are toxic and publicly rude to players, whom are never punished. It is only when they begin to get as racey as suggesting racial inferiority (Nanako) or consistent bullying of other players (LordFowl/Pacmandevil) that they are either removed, or flee the community themselves.
    
2. Developers get away with being so incredibly rude to non-developers and non-staff. They regularly insult and demean people that do not code, they call people retards, autists, stupid motherfuckers, dumbasses, etcetera, usually when the person is either making an argument about something they don't fully understand because they don't have all the information - it is okay to CORRECT people - it is not okay to bully, demean and insult them because they are wrong. Skull132 does this the most.
    
3. Skull132 as Head Developer exists in a place of nigh un-touchability. He is the server host, and aside from Arrow - there is nobody capable of challenging his control over the server, but Arrow is equally a part of the developer problem. The result is this, a HeadDev that is incredibly rude, mean and insulting to players, quite often, that cannot be removed by anyone except his close colleague and friend who is complacent, overseeing a team of regularly rude and mean people, whom he (Skull132) has not impetus or desire to actually moderate regularly until they begin to draw mass public ire (LordFowl, Nanako), and even then - he usually just claims he resolved the issue and continues on with life.
    
4. If ANY player talked in an ahelp to staff the way that Development staff regularly talk with players (referring to them as autists or retards or stupid or idiots), they would be either banned temporarily, or banned permanently. This same standard should be held for malicious insulting off-server, and on the development staff.

Here are a selection of staff complaints in which developers were overly rude or mean, and not appropriately punished in a way a player would be:
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11647-staff-complaint-lord-fowl/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11585-staff-complaint-lord-fowl/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11404-staff-complaint-skull132/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11487-staff-complaint-lordfowl/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11058-staff-complaint-lordfowl/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/12887-staff-complaint-skull132/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/14373-an-essay-regarding-transparency-which-is-also-kind-of-a-staff-complaint-i-guess/ (This one is still active, but I doubt anything will occur).

Reading through all of these complaints took time, and I personally suggest you take a look at all of the images and evidence shared, and then at the result of the complaints. They portray lots of rudeness, and then basically no punishment.

I also wish to share the following screenshots regarding how developers behave and talk in the discord, some of these go back to 2018 - but ultimately, if players can be banned for having to much notes from years past, staff as a whole should be accountable to continuous and historic behaviour trends. In here, you will see Developers insulting people, not being properly punished for it, and when reported to their superior, completely ignored. Note: Because of Forum Formatting issues, the screenshots are in a spoiler at the bottom.

Possible Solutions

1. A clear, publicly available, code of conduct on top of the rules that Development Staff (and other staff) must adhere to, as clearly the rules are not enough. Violation of these should result in removal from the DevTeam, period. If players get banned for this conduct regularly, staff should also see punishments.
    
2. Extend Moderator/Admin Authority to policing the Project, Suggestion and Github areas, for the sake of keeping Developers and Maintainers adherent to the rules. The Development Team has a unique little Kingdom in these three areas, where they are the law and are only really answerable to Skull132 or Arrow - this is no longer sufficient, and they should be accountable in all of these areas.
    
3. Reduce Skull132's role, authority and position in Aurora. I am incredibly thankful for him having essentially created the Aurora community, and I respect his knowledge and thought processes greatly. However, he is regularly disrespectful to regular players, and even fellow staff, pretty frequently. I believe that the control over the server hosting stuff should be separated between the Dev and Admin Team. One Head Admin should be a 'Host' and one Head Developer should be a 'Host'.
    
4. Prevent Administrators from also holding the rank of 'Maintainer'. This provides far too much job security, and as shown in MattAtlas' case in a complaint above and a screenshot below, only enables them to demean other people and not actually care about how they present themselves. Because they are a senior developer role, administration staff can't properly handle their conduct, and as mentioned before, HeadDevs have been reluctant to actually handle the conduct of Dev Staff. We should not be allowing the collection of high-ranking positions in staff teams.
    
5. Establish a clear Administration Team policy of punishing Development Staff with bans, both discord and game and community, when they break the rules as much and as often as they do. I am not saying that any current Dev has been breaking them 24/7 recently, but we have experienced this in the past with LordFowl, and instead of ever being punished severely, he was allowed to remove himself from the community.

Disclaimers and Disclosures

I am not making this post out of spite, anger, or a desire for 'revenge', I am hoping to start a real public discussion on this issue because over the years I have spoken to numerous players that have shared these thoughts on the Development Team.

I was recently (as of today), permabanned from Aurora for front-lining as Captain (complaint in dispute), so my ability to partake in the continued discussion of this issue may be hampered, but as long as I am able I will try to participate, and I hope others (including Development and Admin staff) will too.

I am hoping this thread will not be instantly locked and archived away without a proper discussion being allowed, and I'm hoping this thread will not result in vitriol and insults being thrown my way.

One of the screenshots provided lacks context, this is because the fast nature of discord makes some things hard to screenshot as a hole and I don't have the energy to edit, I am specifically referring the Skull - Boirealis screenshot, I encourage you to search for that section in the discord and read the previous conversation, where I was expressing (genuinely in a polite manner, while also thanking the Devs for their hard work), a dissatisfaction with how the Development Team does not really have a coordinated goal (this was Pre-NBT being a serious or actual thing). The reason I am sharing this screenshot is because it is a perfect example of Skull132's own personal arrogance and mismannered approach to interacting with people that may not know a lot about how development works. I stand by my belief that all community members, no matter how computer/code inept, do deserve to politely share their thoughts and not be belittled for it. Period.

Spoiler

(AlexSmith was Moondancer, a Developer. I don't believe they were appropriately handled here either)

 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2020 by Azande
Updoot

[Azande]

Spoiler

Additional screenshots in which Skull clearly himself declares he is using his position to fiat permit misconduct from one group of people, not necessarily Developers but one of them did have an issue with the word faggot for quite some time.

[Resilynn]

Obviously, I agree that there is a severe problem here.

I've been called a cunt by staff members, they didn't face any action until they got into fights with other staff members.  

Since my complaint went up, I've had a number of DMs sharing similar stories from players old and new, some former staff members.  It's not my place to share their stories for them, but I invite them to come forward.

Since my complaint went up, I've also had two staff members contact me- one to call me toxic for posting the complaint in the first place, another to accuse me of shit stirring, as if somehow handling my issues in the official capacity of a complaint is bad.  But then, that complaint is against an admin and a dev.

If players are being held to a standard where they can receive a ban for passive aggression over commenting on extended, staff need to be held to the same standards.  Calling players cunts and assholes isn't okay, but it happens, it happens regularly, and there are never consequences for it.

[Chada1]

I would like to point out that I've been called a lot of things (including the term 'faggot') and had the person who called me it permanentally banned in a timeframe of like, 3 minutes from the Discord (Without pinging a mod or admin, I'll note). I can say for sure that part (And I'm sure afew others) are invalid here.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Chada1

[Azande]

5 minutes ago, Chada1 said:

I would like to point out that I've been called a lot of things (including the term 'faggot') and had the person who called me it permanentally banned in a timeframe of like, 3 minutes (Without pinging a mod or admin, I'll note). I can say for sure that part (And I'm sure afew others) are invalid here.

I've never had the pleasure of someone insulting me, let alone the staff members that have, get banned. This includes Abo calling me a cunt, Skull and Garn calling me fucking idiot many times, etc. I'm not particularly sour about those specific incidents, but the fact of the matter is that staff get away with being quite rude to players, while players do not get the same courtesy against staff.

[Alberyk]

I will agree that lord fowl should have been removed from his position due to his awful behavior, and I would have done so if such happened while I was headmin. On slurs: I have banned a couple of people already for using them, I think you are just taking stuff out of context, and a lot of those screenshoots are also old and out of place. And even in matt's case, he did suffer a strike over being rude in his complaint. I can't say anything about those supossed staff problems if people do not make complaints over them.

[Chada1]

2 minutes ago, Azande said:

I've never had the pleasure of someone insulting me, let alone the staff members that have, get banned. This includes Abo calling me a cunt, Skull and Garn calling me fucking idiot many times, etc. I'm not particularly sour about those specific incidents, but the fact of the matter is that staff get away with being quite rude to players, while players do not get the same courtesy against staff.

I mean specifically the anti-queer part, and many of the racial parts. Those don't happen for sure. I can't speak for your experiences but I can speak for those.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Chada1

[Azande]

 

1 minute ago, Alberyk said:

I will agree that lord fowl should have been removed from his position due to his awful behavior, and I would have done so if such happened while I was headmin. On slurs: I have banned a couple of people already for using them, I think you are just taking stuff out of context, and a lot of those screenshoots are also old and out of place. And even in matt's case, he did suffer a strike over being rude in his complaint. I can't say anything about those supossed staff problems if people do not make complaints over them.

Some of the screenshots do lack full context, which is why I encourage people to search the words and times to find the exact sections and come to their own conclusions. It is really difficult to make a nicely formatted forum post outlining discord incidents without having it be 1000 pages long due to how fast discord can move.

I am glad you agree on LordFowl, and I think that issue is part of the reason why some concrete actions should be taken to regulate the Dev Team.

[Azande]

5 minutes ago, Chada1 said:

I mean specifically the anti-queer part, and many of the racial parts. Those don't happen for sure. I can't speak for your experiences but I can speak for those.

In these incidents, I don't think anyone using these terms has maliciously used them as a way to insult someone's sexuality, or race. And I would say this issue is the least important out of all of the issue mentioned. This was originally going to include criticisms of the Admin and Lore Teams as well, but I've become quite tired and couldn't bring myself to do those as well, so the inclusion of any references to those are a bit of a holdover that I thought, for the most part, showed less of a 'Aurora has a racism/homophobia problem' and more of a 'these things are used to police players but not staff' - see the Paradox 'retard' screenshots for context.

[Roostercat]

While I haven't really been hit with the big insults such as anything racially charged, I have noticed that developers tend to be oddly hostile. I made a thread suggesting the removal of the draft system, stating reasons for why, and it took literally two minutes before I was pinged multiple times in the code dungeon, and basically called an idiot for thinking the thread would go anywhere and that my opinion was factually wrong. The hostility in the staff team, and not just developers, is very noticeable. And it should absolutely be addressed. 

[Azande]

3 minutes ago, Roostercat said:

The hostility in the staff team, and not just developers, is very noticeable. And it should absolutely be addressed. 

I'm really sorry you experienced that. And yes, I agree - the issue also extends to the Admin/Mod and Lore Teams, I originally was going to have three sections for this to outline each, but I just couldn't muster up the energy.

[Alberyk]

1 hour ago, Roostercat said:

I have noticed that developers tend to be oddly hostile. I made a thread suggesting the removal of the draft system, stating reasons for why, and it took literally two minutes before I was pinged multiple times in the code dungeon, and basically called an idiot for thinking the thread would go anywhere and that my opinion was factually wrong.

Kinda wrong here, chief. no one called you an idiot, no one pinged you multiple times, and the person that pinged you was not a dev, and they just "attacked" your suggestion.

If anyone see staff being rude, feel free to make a complaint. Trying to post stuff here won't do much.

[Roostercat]

It may not have been direct name calling, but it was definitely implied. There was also a case of people putting words in my mouth, and stating that my opinions and view on the matter were something other than what I said, which is rude as hell, to put it simply.

[Mofo1995]

Since lore team was brought up, albeit in passing mention, I would like to mention that there is a lore team rules and regulations with code of conduct that every new lore member is made to read when they join. I can post it publicly if anyone is interested. 

[Scheveningen]

Just now, Mofo1995 said:

Since lore team was brought up, albeit in passing mention, I would like to mention that there is a lore team rules and regulations with code of conduct that every new lore member is made to read when they join. I can post it publicly if anyone is interested. 

Hello, I am interested.

Also, what is the anime name of the girl in your profile picture?

[sonicgotnuked]

Alright, this boils down to misconceptions, and a lot of it. My first course of action is to address the staff complaints you listed above:

Spoiler

Here are a selection of staff complaints in which developers were overly rude or mean, and not appropriately punished in a way a player would be:
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11647-staff-complaint-lord-fowl/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11585-staff-complaint-lord-fowl/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11404-staff-complaint-skull132/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11487-staff-complaint-lordfowl/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/11058-staff-complaint-lordfowl/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/12887-staff-complaint-skull132/
https://forums.aurorastation.org/topic/14373-an-essay-regarding-transparency-which-is-also-kind-of-a-staff-complaint-i-guess/ (This one is still active, but I doubt anything will occur).

1. There was a mutual understanding at the end of it.

2. Arrow explained some backend dev stuff and the complaint eventually dropped.

3. There was some changes that occured. 

4. Misconception. It was clarified and dropped.

5. The drama was investigated. Investigations tend to happen behind the scenes out of the server's eye.

6. Skull apologized after discussion in the post.

7. Matt was apprehended by Garn about this.

 

Now onto individual topics I will refrain from posting on a perspective of how the development team handles administrator maintainers outside of what I was told.

4 hours ago, Azande said:

If a developer is capable, and liked enough by Skull or Arrow, they are essentially immune from being banned for anything short of major grief. We have seen so many developers that are toxic and publicly rude to players, whom are never punished. It is only when they begin to get as racey as suggesting racial inferiority (Nanako) or consistent bullying of other players (LordFowl/Pacmandevil) that they are either removed, or flee the community themselves.

These were mostly instances that were never reported. But there was some back end investigations that occurred. Inter staff discussion are not typically seen until said person is literally removed. Nanako was stripped of dev perms after abusing them. To be all honest, I do not know what personally exactly happened to Fowl and Pacman, but they either got removed or pressed out by the dev team.

 

Quote

Extend Moderator/Admin Authority to policing the Project, Suggestion and Github areas, for the sake of keeping Developers and Maintainers adherent to the rules. The Development Team has a unique little Kingdom in these three areas, where they are the law and are only really answerable to Skull132 or Arrow - this is no longer sufficient, and they should be accountable in all of these areas.

From what I've personally seen with access to the inter-staff discord, this is incorrect, because they do keep tabs into the moderation chat and we do have discussions.

Spoiler

Reduce Skull132's role, authority and position in Aurora. I am incredibly thankful for him having essentially created the Aurora community, and I respect his knowledge and thought processes greatly. However, he is regularly disrespectful to regular players, and even fellow staff, pretty frequently. I believe that the control over the server hosting stuff should be separated between the Dev and Admin Team. One Head Admin should be a 'Host' and one Head Developer should be a 'Host'.

Alb is a maintainer. They have access to the server. Garn also has access but generally uses it when the server dies and he's around to hit the big restart button. I've seen Skull make mistakes, but he hasn't ever tried to cease the server. I've never faced disrespect from him and when I've seen it, it generally ended in an apology (I.E, that staff complaint 6)

Quote

Prevent Administrators from also holding the rank of 'Maintainer'. This provides far too much job security, and as shown in MattAtlas' case in a complaint above and a screenshot below, only enables them to demean other people and not actually care about how they present themselves. Because they are a senior developer role, administration staff can't properly handle their conduct, and as mentioned before, HeadDevs have been reluctant to actually handle the conduct of Dev Staff. We should not be allowing the collection of high-ranking positions in staff teams.

This is a contradiction of your point above. To be a maintainer, you have some server access. You want administration to have control. You don't want administration to have any control. That's what the maintainer position is from what I see: To have some control in the server operations and code base. 

4 hours ago, Azande said:

Establish a clear Administration Team policy of punishing Development Staff with bans, both discord and game and community, when they break the rules as much and as often as they do. I am not saying that any current Dev has been breaking them 24/7 recently, but we have experienced this in the past with LordFowl, and instead of ever being punished severely, he was allowed to remove himself from the community.

There are clear guidelines staff follow. This is why I'm posting this, because it peeves me when people have a misconception that staff are immune. Staff, generally to get their position, show that they uphold the general server rules. That's why you don't see them getting banned because Aurora gets as a whole gets staff from people who show they understand the rules, can learn from their mistakes, and be all around decent people to work with. In fact, I've personally talked to skull about one of his frustrations being vented into OOC and moderated it like I would do any other player by asking one of the admins to disable OOC. Then I spoke with him a little.

 

This is why staff complaints exist for staff members, not involved, to take an unbiased approach on the situation and come to final decision if said staff member was in the right or wrong.

 

While I can't post some examples onto other people, I can post my own mistakes and issues that were investigated and resolved like any other person. I will be blurring the names of the people who issued my notes since it's pretty standard when sharing them.

https://gyazo.com/7fff7c23abe926a72a40a497e6e98a14 | During my first mod trail

 

During my time as a moderator.

https://gyazo.com/2924970c5e195b0cfd1ef5f46896d791

 

https://gyazo.com/6fca285817418f69bb09bd61de0d3f82

 

In Conclusion

The staff team does moderate itself. I've spoken with people. I've started conversations. I've been personally spoken to before when I screw up. I understand the misconception that staff are immune from an outsiders perspective, but most of the issues, are handled in the back end. 90 percent of them get resolved internally and it never comes to the light of day since there is honestly no place for it. It functions. It exists. The mere exsistance of the entire staff team being 53 people and functional is evidence enough of this fact. Because if there was not moderation, there would not be a team that exists since it keeps the team functioning and working together despite the MANY differences among everyone.

 

Look at the two recent lore arcs for example involving Tajaran and Skrell. You have lore developing a concept. Developers actually adding the concept into the game. CCIA pushing the IC company side of things. Administration enforcing the rules so it doesn't fall into a mess.

 

All of this is not possible when a team is dysfunctional. Inner staff moderation is a key corner stone in a functional team. 

 

[geeves]

When you call out the entire dev team, could you provide any current-day prove towards every single member of the team, instead of blanket calling out everyone? The Aurora staff team is fairly massive.

4 hours ago, Roostercat said:

While I haven't really been hit with the big insults such as anything racially charged, I have noticed that developers tend to be oddly hostile. I made a thread suggesting the removal of the draft system, stating reasons for why, and it took literally two minutes before I was pinged multiple times in the code dungeon, and basically called an idiot for thinking the thread would go anywhere and that my opinion was factually wrong. The hostility in the staff team, and not just developers, is very noticeable. And it should absolutely be addressed. 

Got an example of that staff team hostility? And also of developers being oddly hostile? I'm genuinely curious.

[Resilynn]

24 minutes ago, geeves said:

When you call out the entire dev team, could you provide any current-day prove towards every single member of the team, instead of blanket calling out everyone? The Aurora staff team is fairly massive.

Got an example of that staff team hostility? And also of developers being oddly hostile? I'm genuinely curious.

Sure, I have an example for the whole devs feeling like they can get away with anything thing.

 

(I was also maximum cringe in this conversation, but I did admit that my attitude would probably get me banned, and low and behold, as not-a-dev-or-admin, it did)

 

Edited May 20, 2020 by Resilynn

[Skull132]

What you posted right now, @Resilynn, is both missing context and smells like shit posting (specially considering that it was in a chat where Geeves doesn't have his rank colours). And there's a metric ass of this in this thread. Either posting content without context, lying through omission, or flat out lying. If y'all ever want to figure out why staff are hostile towards you, it's because they're apparently not permitted to relax and chat shit without someone somewhere using it to claim they're a despot.

[geeves]

If you're going to be carefully choosing screenshots from our personal DMs, you could at least do the morally correct thing and copy paste the full thing with included context.

Garn and I have our disagreements, but we respect eachother on a personal level. In this instance, I was attempting to fight against his judgement, using my personal clout to gain an upper hand. I was quite popular back in 2019, being part of various cliques and being on-server a hell of a lot. Thing is, I didn't use my position as a developer to do it, I used my position as Geeves. I had a fighting chance, but the hierarchy simply doesn't work that way anymore. In essence, I fought to stand up for what was right, to help my (then) friends. Evidently that was a mistake, as some people would rather throw you under the bus in an attempt to drag everyone down with them. Though that's a decision for the other thread, isn't it?

[Resilynn]

Maybe there should be a means of handling things on server that don’t require clout and popularity to get the upper hand??  Maybe that’s a huge problem?

[Faris]

1 minute ago, Resilynn said:

Maybe there should be a means of handling things on server that don’t require clout and popularity to get the upper hand??  Maybe that’s a huge problem?

You don’t need clout or popularity to handle things. 

[geeves]

Judging by the fact that the clout and popularity method didn't work, as will no doubt be proven again in a minute, I wouldn't say that it's more than a minor inconvenience. Staff Complaints work. I've never received one on myself, nor has any developer in recent time, so I dunno if there's a perceived invulnerability or something.

[MattAtlas]

7 hours ago, Azande said:

Prevent Administrators from also holding the rank of 'Maintainer'. This provides far too much job security, and as shown in MattAtlas' case in a complaint above and a screenshot below, only enables them to demean other people and not actually care about how they present themselves. Because they are a senior developer role, administration staff can't properly handle their conduct, and as mentioned before, HeadDevs have been reluctant to actually handle the conduct of Dev Staff. We should not be allowing the collection of high-ranking positions in staff teams.

this is completely wrong because i just got a server warning for going nuclear on resi in the complaint which in hindsight i regret, so, might wanna remove that conjecture

Edited May 20, 2020 by MattAtlas

[Skull132]

9 hours ago, Azande said:

If a developer is capable, and liked enough by Skull or Arrow, they are essentially immune from being banned for anything short of major grief. We have seen so many developers that are toxic and publicly rude to players, whom are never punished. It is only when they begin to get as racey as suggesting racial inferiority (Nanako) or consistent bullying of other players (LordFowl/Pacmandevil) that they are either removed, or flee the community themselves.

Only two of the three names listed were actually developers. Both of those were removed following citations and otherwise punitive action against their conduct. Mistakes made were admitted to in respective threads and discussions. You could spend the next however many years trying to reopen old wounds, but that doesn't change the fact that they were (eventually) dealt with, and cases of this nature haven't popped up since.

Further, to claim that I liked all 3 of the people listed, or that I even enjoyed having all 3 of them around, is an unimaginable stretch, if you've ever actually been in staff discord to discuss them.

9 hours ago, Azande said:

Developers get away with being so incredibly rude to non-developers and non-staff. They regularly insult and demean people that do not code, they call people retards, autists, stupid motherfuckers, dumbasses, etcetera, usually when the person is either making an argument about something they don't fully understand because they don't have all the information - it is okay to CORRECT people - it is not okay to bully, demean and insult them because they are wrong. Skull132 does this the most.

You are free to report any member of staff's conduct to members of the administrative staff via the relevant means (report button on the forums, ahelp ingame, ping on Discord). This has always been the case. Developers (and other staff for that matter) have received forum warnings for various posts.

9 hours ago, Azande said:

Reduce Skull132's role, authority and position in Aurora. I am incredibly thankful for him having essentially created the Aurora community, and I respect his knowledge and thought processes greatly. However, he is regularly disrespectful to regular players, and even fellow staff, pretty frequently. I believe that the control over the server hosting stuff should be separated between the Dev and Admin Team. One Head Admin should be a 'Host' and one Head Developer should be a 'Host'.

What you outline cannot work. Ever. When you host a server, someone's account has to be billed for it. This means that someone's billing information is going to be available and it is unreasonable to expect a member of staff make it public to other members of staff. (Specially if we're talking credit card information, which doesn't required 2FA to abuse.) The only way to achieve what you describe would be to set a full non-profit or other legal entity. But for obvious reasons, this is a way excessive ask.

The current way gives every member of the server's leadership as much control as is possible, without compromising my personal information to a degree with which I feel uncomfortable with. As I have told you many times before: all 4 members of the leadership (head admins and head devs) have near-full access to our infrastructure. The only thing I can practically do, that others cannot, is pull the plug on it all. But this is due to what I outlined in the earlier paragraph: someone has to pay, and whoever pays has full control over the service.

9 hours ago, Azande said:

Prevent Administrators from also holding the rank of 'Maintainer'. This provides far too much job security, and as shown in MattAtlas' case in a complaint above and a screenshot below, only enables them to demean other people and not actually care about how they present themselves. Because they are a senior developer role, administration staff can't properly handle their conduct, and as mentioned before, HeadDevs have been reluctant to actually handle the conduct of Dev Staff. We should not be allowing the collection of high-ranking positions in staff teams.

I do not get where this is coming from. Either you're implying that admins cannot police other admins (which is false, seeing as how we have admins and even mods deal with player complaints about admins), or that admins cannot properly handle complaints about developer conduct. There is no magical third place here for people like Matt or Alberyk. For complaints about developers, yes the Head Devs (and now also maintainers) tend to handle team, with the principle being that the leader of the respective staff team is responsible for handling conduct complaints about them (which is why you see the lore master handling complaints about the conduct of lore devs, and not the administrators directly, unless it's relevant to their domain).

What everyone should know about this process is that every such complaint, if non-trivial, is typically discussed within what we call the Deputy Shadow Council. Which is really just a pretentious name for a Discord channel where all team leaders (deputy and primary) are present. This includes the Head Admins. This means that, contrary to your understanding, the administration is involved in resolving these complaints.

9 hours ago, Azande said:

Establish a clear Administration Team policy of punishing Development Staff with bans, both discord and game and community, when they break the rules as much and as often as they do. I am not saying that any current Dev has been breaking them 24/7 recently, but we have experienced this in the past with LordFowl, and instead of ever being punished severely, he was allowed to remove himself from the community.

This policy doesn't exist for players; why should it exist for staff (specially staff who aren't dealing with direct administration)? This has been discussed in similar threads before: Aurora's enforcement of "Don't be a dick" rule is incredibly long-winded. In this very thread, there are people who've skirted by under this rule for way longer than some members of this community think is reasonable. The rope eventually snaps and the person gets removed/banned. The same rope is extended to staff as well, and thus far, in all cases, it has eventually snapped. This is one of those, "What's truly correct here?" questions, where being too heavy handed with the rule does (and has, if you'll remember the era of FFrances as head admin) cause backlash in the opposing direction.

Also. No such policy can be enforced without players reporting instances of these abuses. Neither can the current policies work without the same reporting.

9 hours ago, Azande said:

Extend Moderator/Admin Authority to policing the Project, Suggestion and Github areas, for the sake of keeping Developers and Maintainers adherent to the rules. The Development Team has a unique little Kingdom in these three areas, where they are the law and are only really answerable to Skull132 or Arrow - this is no longer sufficient, and they should be accountable in all of these areas.

The idea of these "Unique little kingdoms" is the foundation behind Aurora's policy on how to handle staffing. (And there's a falsehood or two here as well.)

Every team is trusted with an area of responsibility and no team shall undermine this. This is done to minimize conflict between teams. The exception is the Administrators, who actually have all-access to staff discord, minus leadership channels. And even this has already created minor issues and needless friction between staff members, as Administrators poke their noses into matters that they are not fully informed in or involve themselves in discussions in a manner that does not jive well with the MO of the staff team whose room they're interrupting in. (This is not to say that I'm calling admins out, the mistakes in question are human, this is just to highlight why such extensive freedom is given in the first place: it minimizes needless friction.)

Further, the falsehood I mentioned in the beginning is that admins do not police the areas you suggested. ALL aspects of the forums are subject to oversight from the server mods and admins. Meaning that you can hit the "Report" button anywhere, and an admin or a mod will deal with it. Not a developer, not a lore writer: an admin. If a developer is the subject of the report, then for small infractions, a warning is given per MO. If it's something larger, then the admins typically ping the head admins and the respective team leaders for further disciplinary actions. Psure Fowl got forum banned by the autoban system as a result of this (per the same standards a player would have been).

Github does not fall under this oversight because Github is considered a tool for the development team. It is not a place for community-wide discussion: it is a discussion place about code and gameplay considerations first and foremost. If you start treating it like the suggestion forums, then that discussion is just going to move somewhere else, less accessible to the community.

9 hours ago, Azande said:

A clear, publicly available, code of conduct on top of the rules that Development Staff (and other staff) must adhere to, as clearly the rules are not enough. Violation of these should result in removal from the DevTeam, period. If players get banned for this conduct regularly, staff should also see punishments.

Again. I maintain that we have treated members of the dev team with more-or-less the same rope that we've given to some players. And again, you're scratching up old wounds that have been dealt with: you have no new cases coming even close to the magnitude of Nanako or Fowl to reference. Clamoring for public executions and hard lines is not something we wish to deal with.