Over the weekend, NeoGAF, the internet’s biggest gaming forum, imploded.
The exodus of moderators and administrators from NeoGAF followed allegations of sexual misconduct directed at the site’s owner, Tyler Malka. On Tuesday, Oct. 17, a Facebook post from film director Ima Leupp accused Malka of sexually inappropriate behavior that occurred in April 2015. In the Facebook post, and as reported by Kotaku, Leupp said she was showering when Malka stepped in behind her without her consent.
Although the post began to spread Saturday, NeoGAF moderators were given a heads up on Thursday. In a private message to moderators, which is circulating online and a recipient verified for Polygon, Malka told his team that a rumor about him was floating around that “will be a never-ending clusterfuck on [NeoGAF] now until the end of time, which inevitably involves you guys and gals on the mod team in some way, so I’m an open book here.”
But Malka’s alleged sexual misconduct was the last straw for many of the site’s moderators. Malka had previously been caught admitting to other cases of sexual harassment on NeoGAF, including a trip to Spain in 2012 where he grabbed a woman from behind. After the new accusation, various moderators and administrators began to jump ship.
Multiple former NeoGAF members, including moderators, told Polygon that as the implosion and exodus happened over the weekend, they felt stranded. The site went “down for maintenance,” and its members, many of whom had joined NeoGAF when it first launched 11 years ago, very quickly had nowhere to go. The platform they used to connect with friends was either ripped away from them, or they felt that the world they had once belonged to no longer existed, as Polygon learned to be the more common case.
By Sunday, many displaced NeoGAF members flocked to a new Discord server. The Discord, which Polygon was asked to keep anonymous, attracted good- and ill-intentioned individuals who began sharing screenshots on Twitter of conversations. Late Sunday night, the server went into lockdown mode.
One member of the Discord server told Polygon that there were concerns that trolls from popular GamerGate and alt-right forums — including the subreddit KotakuInAction, VOAT, certain 4chan boards and 8chan — were masquerading as legitimate NeoGAF members. The concern was that, once these people got into the Discord, they would leak member information and organize attacks.
“‘NeoFAG’ [a collective dedicated to mocking and harassing NeoGAF users] over at the cesspool that is VOAT and 4chan were apparently trying to get ‘spies’ into the Discord,” the member told Polygon. “They were then posting screen shots of people in the chat to try and spread it and get their personal information.”
Their fears turned out to be accurate. A list that contained the personal information of former NeoGAF moderators and members’ personal information began to circulate online. The body of people trying to find a new home to hang out had been doxxed, and moderators brought communication with anyone on the outside to an abrupt halt.
Between battling trolls from some of the most nefarious online forums, including 4chan’s /pol/ section, and dealing with the fallout from NeoGAF’s drama, many of the former NeoGAF moderators announced they were working on a new website: ResetEra. Those who didn’t want to be associated with NeoGAF anymore could jump ship to continue chatting with many of the same names they recognized from the original site.
Many of the people we spoke to described ResetEra as an opportunity to redefine what moderation culture looks like from the ground up. Without worrying about Malka’s presence and reputation, they would be able to set their own rules and guidelines, operating under the internal rules they agreed upon in the earliest of planning stages. Big industry names and notorious ex-NeoGAF moderators, including Erren Van Duine, Emily Rogers, Nibellion and Shinobi602 all joined ResetEra with hopes of building a bigger and better forum for the community to thrive in — one that wouldn’t be associated with NeoGAF.
Shinobi602, a known member who stepped back from NeoGAF in March, told Polygon that, for the most part, ResetEra’s moderation and administrative sides will be full of new faces, alongside those notable to longtime followers.
“We see this as a fresh start and an opportunity to build our own moderation culture and aren’t really looking for comparisons,” Shinobi602 said. “We hope to be genuinely fair minded, reasonable and transparent. We really want to shape a positive community for everyone. A few moderators may be familiar but for the most part the staff has no connection with other forum staff.”
Shinobi602 said the full staff will be announced “soon,” but he wouldn’t divulge the list at the time of this writing. Part of that is because one of the biggest concerns that many early ResetEra members have is personal security. Members of 4chan’s /pol/ decided to turn the birth of ResetEra into a campaign, preparing to launch a retaliation attack once the site went live and editing ResetEra logos to fool people. The reasoning behind why they want to take down ResetEra isn’t clear, but recent threads suggest it’s a difference of political ideology that made ResetEra a target.
4chan
Knowing that NeoGAF was mocked online for years by groups like KotakuInAction and 4Chan, Shinobi602 told Polygon that ResetEra staff was prepared for the new wave of attacks on the site (once it goes live) and their community. Part of the way ResetEra’s team is looking to combat any serious harm is by sending out invites to the site in waves, vetting newcomers before opening it up to the public.
Although it’s not a permanent solution to the problem, which moderators are well aware will last for a longer period of time, Shinobi602 is hoping this strategy will at least let the site launch without too many problems.
“Obviously we knew there would be those who would want to harm our community in any way they can from the start, unfortunate as that is,” Shinobi602 said. “We’ve been working very hard to protect them and will have all hands on deck working to ensure that the launch proceeds as safely and smoothly as possible.”
Many of those who are in the locked Discord server should be receiving invites first, with people from other communities invited to join alongside after mods have vetted them. An administrator for one of the bigger NeoGAF-associated Discords, NEShaders, told Polygon that ResetEra administrators “reached out to communities to vet our people so they could get as many members on the forum as possible without just having a bunch of random users who want to hurt the community join.”
It’s unclear just how strict the vetting process will be when ResetEra launches, but one member told Polygon that conversation with people on the outside is kept to a minimum, to stop other stories from getting out.
The effort to keep the conversation clean and members out of harm’s way requires an extraordinary amount of work, with one member of the locked ResetEra Discord telling Polygon that “those behind the new forum are putting in a ton of effort, the ‘not sleeping a lot’ type of effort.” Shinobi602 told Polygon that although it’s been a strenuous affair, they wanted to do it as a collective; to help house their homeless community.
“Thousands of members of the community were suddenly stranded without any place to go,” Shinobi602 said. “It’s really a sight to see so many people gather to create something like this. That community has come together to make this happen.”
One constant for those involved in ResetEra’s construction process — or those cheering from the Discord server’s sidelines — is how remarkably positive the community has been, members told Polygon. People were sad for the original NeoGAF community they lost, one anonymous member said, adding that “this was a community that, despite its issues, was a positive thing for a ton of people for over a decade.” That sense of loss didn’t stop people from coming together in the late hours of Saturday night and wee hours of Sunday morning to start working on something new.
“People are super excited for something new and a change of pace,” Shinobi602 said. “We’ve had so many people volunteer to help and roll up their sleeves and that response has just been overwhelming. It’s clear that we’re determined to stick together and make this happen.”
No one would tell Polygon when ResetEra is launching, as the site staff is still figuring it out. But early members noted that as of the time of this writing, the forum is gearing up to go live between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET — around the time of Nintendo’s latest Direct. The near-simultaneous occurrence of these events isn’t lost on the community, which told Polygon that the coincidence was almost poetic in nature. After suffering through the loss of a home, lost NeoGAF members getting a new Animal Crossing game to animatedly discuss with friends on a website built in the original forum’s image seemed just right.
Source: Polygon – Full
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