Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2875
Location: Northern California
Recently, TASVideos put out a mission statement detailing the new direction we have been, and will continue to be, taking the site. The statement also serves as a public apology for everyone that we had pushed away from the site while still following our old standards and practices. The apology is specifically meant to be for those that were pushed away by our content standards, specifically our older, much harsher standards. The thread for the apology is supposed to serve a dual purpose as a topic of discussion and as a resource that we can point others to when they have questions about us. However, the intent of the apology has been frequently mistaken to be an apology for our moderation. As a result, we've had to split posts out of that thread on more than one occasion in order to keep it on track with the original intent. We felt the best course of action here was to actually create a space for our moderation to be discussed.
All we ask is that the discussion remains in good faith. The reason we have had to moderate the other thread so heavily is not because we were trying to silence criticism, that has never been nor will ever be our intention, it's because we felt that the criticism was presented as bad faith attacks on our characters as TASVideos staff. You are free to criticize our actions as much as you like, but attacking us as people is still very much not okay in any context. Should specific incidents be cited, a moderator or staff member may step in and provide further explanation and context for the actions we took and the behavior we showed at the time. Such explanations are not intended to be implicit defenses or justifications for our actions, and should not be treated as such in turn.
In short, as long as you present your criticisms, arguments, and suggestions calmly and civilly in accordance to our site conduct rules, we will listen to and address them appropriately.
TASvideos' Third Strongest Site Admin 🩵 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6598
Location: The land down under.
I asked Samsara when this Topic was made if it was more appropriate to move my, and CoolKirby's posts across.
Unfortunately that would bop her post since there's no way to pin/prioritize her post in the thread.
So to make it simple at least for now. I'm just quoting our two comments across.
Spikestuff wrote:
Memory wrote:
We at TASVideos want to be better. We can talk if there's any questions or concerns.
Something that I want to bring up, at least I believe it's in the meaning of the thread, so I apologize if this is a bit of a derailment, but it's something that's been biting me.
15 years ago, you can say this ban was justified around that time due to impersonation in the IRC chats.
But ~13 years after it well around that time I brought up seeing if this user could be reinstated, and I brought it up to Memory and Samsara.
This was something that was worth trying, like we got Samsara back, so this user, after so much time sounds like a good idea to return.
After all she is the co-founder of tcrf. xkeeper, or X.
Unfortunately, around that time her former roommates decided to drag her online about it.
Unfortunately, X didn't have a response at that time, so it was their word against her nothing.
Unfortunately, that book that I reopened ended up being shut right in front of my face.
She did end up eventually responding with evidence, and I just wished that I could just in good faith, before I left Publishing (let's be fair, you can't stop this old cat from having fun encoding) to actually try this request again.
I just froze. There's many things in the lead up to my end of Staff that I wished I brought up, but with this thread, this is something I want to bring forward.
I don't know why I never brought this back up afterwards, nor why I didn't try to fight for this, after all I did fight for a lot of things in the background and one was for the return of Samsara but that was with help.
How I talked about something, how I argued. Both good and bad, but this would've been a real good decision if I just didn't freeze up, cause I just didn't know how to present this forward-- ever.
I feel like, considering how much time has passed, how much this person has changed, I believe xkeeper should be reinstated.
Even if they don't use this site anymore, I believe that they could still be a big hand if they notice, or something.
She means something to a community that she made, and I honestly feel like this is something that should be mended.
Even if she has comments that criticize the site afterwards, I criticize the site on certain points, so please don't use that as something against her.
Again, I feel like this is something that can be mended.
I just don't know how to go about this anymore.
CoolKirby wrote:
I agree with Spikestuff about Xkeeper. I don't know as much about her, but I have been subscribed to her on YouTube for years, and she is constantly researching and sharing game info for people to read and benefit from. This aligns with her extensive TASVideos post history, which even in some of her final few posts, added useful info to topics.
As an older user of the site, I remember seeing her posts scattered in threads, usually a page below the current one. Her ban was the first high-profile one I can remember, and the question of whether it's still warranted has surfaced in my mind every couple years. Much has changed in 13 years; what she took issue with, like certain traits of admin behavior, are no longer present on the site, and we are more inclusive as a whole. It may be time to offer her another chance.
On topic, the site's entertainment changes have only made it easier to feel like starting a TAS, first with Vault and now with even more allowed games and categories. I no longer have to restrict myself to any%, or a full completion that may take hours, thanks to several always-acceptable Standard goals like NG+ and glitchless, let alone the freedom of Alternative publications. Perfect optimization is not expected now, so a racing game TAS for example isn't impossible to want to start without committing years to squeezing every last frame out of every turn. This is reflected in the several first publications of racing games this year alone. The definition of a game breaks down even more barriers to entry. It has never been easier to want to TAS on this site. I thank everyone involved in these changes, and hope to see those affected by the previous mindset return and enjoy themselves here. (Hi Flygon!)
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Strong for yourself and also others.
I'm hoping this is the right place for this. I wanted to respond to a comment regarding moderation that was made in the other thread. Normally I wouldn't make a post like this, but I think it's fair to give an opposing perspective to the topic since it was brought up.
DJ_Incendration wrote:
I agree that the tricks, glitches, strategies and how TASes are made should be public. I do wish more people were still able to submit runs here, like Logan. He submitted runs of games I had never heard of, many of which were published, allowing people to experience games they likely didn't know existed. I'm glad this community is changing for the better, and I hope to help out however I can.
I was on the receiving end of some of the behavior that Logan was ultimately banned for, and I would find the community to be less safe if they were still around. It wasn't just a one-time incident, it was a pattern of explosive, toxic behavior. Moderators were patient and gave Logan several chances only for them to continue that behavior. So no, I do not share the same wish for Logan to still be able to submit runs here. I think moderators made the right decision in banning them and I think the community is better off because of it.
Thank you for making this thread it is needed.
I’m going to gear this post towards helping you guys end people’s resentment to you.
Before you make any assumptions saying I’m otaku, I can prove that I’m not. You see one of my lifelong closest friends is trans. Am I right in assume he wouldn’t admit to that? I personally I don’t give a shit about what you are and only care about the kind of person you are. Anyways enough about that.
First off don’t assume that the apology will work right off the bat. You’ll have to prove yourselves over time. To do that you’ll need to show you truly value each and every user.
You need to understand something. No matter how much you try to deny it you did leave a lot of people battered and bruised. There’s likely going to be more people that’ll voice their frustration like that, and whether you like it or not you’ll have to try to work things out with them. If you don’t then you’ll just be back to square one with people resenting you.
You guys do seem more mature than I remember, but I can see some of your bad habits are still present. You guys jump into false conclusions too quickly and act on them. In the end nothing gets resolved and you end up with one more person who hates your guts when you didn’t need to. Instead you need to take your time to try and understand what’s really going on.
You’ll have to take accountability for anything you’ve done wrong. Denying things won’t help your image at all. It’ll only further sour people’s of you.
I need to remind you that the site is in such a delicate state that you’ll have to handle everything with care.
I’m sorry to do this to you but if you delete this post I’ll assume you aren’t acting in good faith. If you want to further discuss this just tell me, but otherwise I won’t make more posts. Have a nice day.
Why on earth should anyone trust a random throwaway account that is being extremely vague? Last time you brought up a bunch of drama from nearly 10 years ago in regards to spike and samsara and then tried to discredit me whilst admitting you had no real specific examples.
"One of my lifelong closest friends is trans" you do realize that this is basically the "I'm not racist because I have a black friend" defense right?
I gave you a chance to tell me whose alt you are in pms so we could maybe work something out. Instead you trashed a bunch of people in the community. Without honesty, there can be no trust.
At this point, even if you're not Otaku, you're still some troll and not worth listening to.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Why on earth should anyone trust a random throwaway account that is being extremely vague? Last time you brought up a bunch of drama from nearly 10 years ago in regards to spike and samsara and then tried to discredit me whilst admitting you had no real specific examples.
"One of my lifelong closest friends is trans" you do realize that this is basically the "I'm not racist because I have a black friend" defense right?
I gave you a chance to tell me whose alt you are in pms so we could maybe work something out. Instead you trashed a bunch of people in the community. Without honesty, there can be no trust.
At this point, even if you're not Otaku, you're still some troll and not worth listening to.
Well you kinda banned the account before I had a chance to send a pm. In fact I was typing it out when it happened.
I apologize for my anger earlier. I do agree we should do this in a more productive way. No more trashing on each other.
If you're being honest, respond to my pm with an actual answer this time.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
It was fun and all receiving a bunch of pms that passively aggressively criticized me instead of answering the question, but I'd really rather people bring up specific situations in good faith.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Thank you for making this thread it is needed.
I’m going to gear this post towards helping you guys end people’s resentment to you.
Before you make any assumptions saying I’m otaku, I can prove that I’m not. You see one of my lifelong closest friends is trans. Am I right in assume he wouldn’t admit to that? I personally I don’t give a shit about what you are and only care about the kind of person you are. Anyways enough about that.
First off don’t assume that the apology will work right off the bat. You’ll have to prove yourselves over time. To do that you’ll need to show you truly value each and every user.
We aren’t assuming the apology will miraculously fix all injuries from the past.
But we also don’t need to show that we “truly value each and every user.” In fact, we actively shouldn’t value those individuals who are merely offensive disruptions to the the site community and have shown blatant derogatory action toward other individuals in the community.
I have no idea who you are, what your original account was, or why it was banned in the first place; so I’m not claiming you personally were such a derogatory individual. I’m simply refuting your claim that all users should be valued.
af9h5 wrote:
You need to understand something. No matter how much you try to deny it you did leave a lot of people battered and bruised. There’s likely going to be more people that’ll voice their frustration like that, and whether you like it or not you’ll have to try to work things out with them. If you don’t then you’ll just be back to square one with people resenting you.
We do understand this…hence the existence of this thread in the first place. And we are willing to work with those who contact us in good faith; but when someone comes with nonspecific complaints and is unwilling to even let us know who they are, the lack of good faith is firstly on them, not on us.
af9h5 wrote:
You guys do seem more mature than I remember, but I can see some of your bad habits are still present. You guys jump into false conclusions too quickly and act on them. In the end nothing gets resolved and you end up with one more person who hates your guts when you didn’t need to. Instead you need to take your time to try and understand what’s really going on.
So, instead of being vague, give us specifics on what we need to discuss in regards to site moderation so that we can put productive time toward the discussion
af9h5 wrote:
You’ll have to take accountability for anything you’ve done wrong. Denying things won’t help your image at all. It’ll only further sour people’s of you.
If people can’t even specify what they feel we’ve done wrong, how are we to take accountability for things others perceive as inappropriate slights toward them.
af9h5 wrote:
I need to remind you that the site is in such a delicate state that you’ll have to handle everything with care.
I beg to differ. I believe the site in in one of the most stable states that it’s been for most of its existence. I’m not saying that to suggest that we won’t care about righting wrongs, but we can’t right wrongs when one simply says “you’ve done things wrong” yet doesn’t explain in any specific way how.
af9h5 wrote:
I’m sorry to do this to you but if you delete this post I’ll assume you aren’t acting in good faith. If you want to further discuss this just tell me, but otherwise I won’t make more posts. Have a nice day.
Again, the existence of this thread should be enough proof that we are willing to discuss. But if you aren’t willing to give specific topics to discuss in this matter, we’ve got nothing to discuss.
NOTE: This user was banned as I was writing this reply.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2875
Location: Northern California
For anyone reading this thread and wondering why this random new account is acting so hostile and getting banned, this post explains who we're fully convinced they're an alt of and why they were banned in the first place.
At this point though, after this ninth attempt to re-register and continue arguing a point that has not even been provided, I can't say it matters whether or not this person actually is OtakuTAS or not. They are, of course, but even if they weren't, this behavior is unacceptable. Their original attempt at this on their first of nine alts was little more than a failed attempt at a call to arms, presenting little more than recollections of events so vague that even the ones that weren't made up still sounded fake. They lied in this thread about being in the process of writing their proof PM when the Reaper account was banned, they had at least a full hour to respond and had posted several more times in the apology thread during that period of time. One of the other nine alts had also managed to get through and send a PM, but it too provided no proof whatsoever. Over the last couple hours in PMs, they continually refused to provide the proof they said they were willing to give, constantly moving the goalposts by saying things needed to be "civil" first. Wasting our time, effectively. Reminder, this is coming from the guy who invented a fake stalker ex-girlfriend and impersonated a staff member because he was upset that he didn't get to snipe a TAS made by a disabled, suffering trans woman.
And again, even if it isn't OtakuTAS (it is though), the moderation we did here was in response to what we deemed to be bad faith behavior coming from anyone, even though it is nearly identical to OtakuTAS's behavior. Zero substance, nothing but vague personal attacks (primarily against trans staff members to boot), time-wasting and goalpost-moving when actually called on to provide something they promised... It feels like they're just sowing discord for the sake of making the rest of the community think that things are far worse than they actually are, and that's not something we can tolerate. Hopefully this scans the same way to everyone else as it does to me. If it doesn't, well, this is quite literally the thread to discuss that!
TASvideos' Third Strongest Site Admin 🩵 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
You do make good points about my initial posts. I would like yo discuss it with you further (well, I’ll still get to one), but before that I feel we should talk about something more pressing.
Memory just proved to me my criticisms weren’t exactly unwarrented. I admit I should’ve stated this outright, but all I wanted from memory before I gave her my main was peace of mind.
I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thing to ask for. In fact that should’ve been top priority for her. But instead she kept impatiently demanding my main and its email, and berating me for wasting her time. I’m sorry, but does that seem inviting to you?
I’m not trying to making you look bad Memory. You’re making yourself look bad. And now I know to tell people you guys still shouldn’t be trusted, because I care about the well being of others.
Btw you already said yourself people resent you guys. Why should I have to put anyone on the spot? They can come and voice their grievances themselves if they feel ready.
Without getting into too much detail, I’m someone who has been hurt by the staff in the past. If you can’t convince me you can be trusted, then what hope do you have of convincing anyone else?
Btw I’ve screenshotted the entire pm exchange between me and memory. Assuming I can figure out how to post it here, why don’t you make your own judgements to see who’s right.
How many alt accounts are you going to make? From the looks of things, the staff have given you several chances to explain, in detail, your grievances. All I'm seeing instead is just vague posts from someone who is doing a poor job at sockpuppeting. You're not helping your case by choosing to engage in this conversation like this. You are, indeed, in fact, just wasting everyone's time.
I, as a user of this site and forum, am tired of seeing seemingly random and cryptic messages from people acting in bad faith here.
For the record, I'll happily share the PMs myself if anybody actually cares.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2875
Location: Northern California
Otaku, or whoever you are even though you're definitely Otaku, I have an offer for you:
Given who you are, or who we're convinced you are, you have to understand that it's not at all easy for us to trust you here. The burden of trust shouldn't be on us, the staff team who is literally being open about having made mistakes in the past with how we treat other users. The burden of trust is on you, the "anonymous reaper" who came here with an anti-TASVideos agenda and tried to start an uprising. You said it yourself in your PMs with Memory, trust goes both ways, and we are already trusting you to the best of our ability given the way you've attacked us in the past. The fact that I, of all people, have now decided to play along and push all of that to the side to hear you out should be more than enough proof of trust from us.
My offer is as follows: I've asked the staff not to ban your next alt on sight. You're allowed to re-register one more time. I'd like you to PM me on this account without any other action taken on the site. No posting here, no PMing Memory or anyone else involved in this thread. Just me. All I ask is that this initial PM contains the proof of who you are. Proof comes in the form of the name of your main and the e-mail address attached to it, which is needed to confirm your identity. No stalling, no excuses, no goalpost moving, please just provide me the proof you have publicly promised to give. In exchange, should you actually provide this proof, I promise I will engage with you calmly, civilly, and professionally for the entire duration of the ensuing conversation, regardless of who you are or whatever history we have. I can't promise that the conversation will go exactly as you want it to, but I will hear you out completely. If you feel like I'm acting out of line at any point in this conversation, you have my advance permission to post it here in its entirety as a public callout of my behavior.
Allow me to be blunt: As much as I, as a TASer, appreciate how slowly you're playing this game, I'm tired of it dragging on for so long. All of us, yourself included, have better things to do with our lives. We've already given you three chances to tell us who you are (on Reaper, on whatever alt you PMed Memory with after Reaper was banned, and earlier today). This, at least for me, is your last chance. If you try to stall again by not giving me your promised proof in that first PM, or if your next action on this site is anything other than that PM, then your ban will officially be considered permanent, with no chance of it ever being revoked.
The offer is open until it has been taken or until your own actions have caused it to be revoked. No time limit otherwise. I will do everything in my power to ensure that no other resolution (premature/accidental banning, honest mistakes over the terms, etc) is reached prior to this. Note that I may not be able to respond immediately due to my personal life, though I should always be able to respond within 24 hours.
UPDATE (December 9th, 2025, 5:01 PM PST): Contact was established early yesterday, though it hasn't progressed into today as of yet.
UPDATE (December 12th, 2025, 2:45 PM PST): I still have yet to receive a second response. I had expected this to be done by now, and it's barely even started. I'm going to be a lot more busy over the latter half of the month, so I will most likely have to pass this off to another Moderator or Admin if this continues to be delayed. NEXT DAY EDIT: I've done so. Still no response in any fashion.
UPDATE (December 17th, 2025, 2:43 PM PST): Response received yesterday.
UPDATE (December 20th, 2025, 10:XX AM PST): For transparency, I'm providing a more detailed version of the above updates below the divider.
UPDATE (December 9th, 2025, 5:01 PM PST): Contact was established early yesterday, with no proof of identity. I've decided to be kind and let this slide. It has been 24 hours since I responded, and I have not received a reply back. The user has logged in and read the message, so I should get a response soon.
UPDATE (December 12th, 2025, 2:45 PM PST): I still have yet to receive a second response. How frustrating. I'm beginning to think this isn't OtakuTAS after all. As much as it sounds like him, it's also starting to sound a lot like kaan55. Regardless of who it is, I had expected this to be done by now, and it's barely even started. I'm going to be a lot more busy over the latter half of the month, so I will most likely have to pass this off to another Moderator or Admin if this continues to be delayed. I'll send a follow-up PM, it really shouldn't take this long to give two pieces of proof. Might as well just ask outright if they're kaan55, too. NEXT DAY EDIT: Still no response, and something urgent came up in my life. The first follow-up PM wasn't read, and I'm not exactly happy with the accusation anyway, so I'm just going to delete it and resend it. I'll pass this over to Memory as well since I doubt I'll have the time or energy to spend on this situation.
UPDATE (December 17th, 2025, 2:43 PM PST): Finally a response came in last night. It's kaan55, confirmed. Fantastic. I'm just going to stay uninvolved and report it to Memory, who wasn't contacted at all despite me explicitly asking him to contact her instead of me.
TASvideos' Third Strongest Site Admin 🩵 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
So a few days before we received the answer, we in staff-chat realized another possibility of who this mystery ban evader could be: kaan55.
Back in 2018, kaan55 harassed two women from TASVideos through discord pms: GoddessMaria and myself:
I specifically told him off at the time to not compliment me more than he knows me whereas with Maria, that was her only response to him. In 2020 he sent me more creepy messages.
A little while later, while talking with Maria, we found out that we were both harassed by the same user. Furious, I brought it up to staff-chat and went to confront kaan in discord dms. I also posted this on my personal twitter as #metoo was a big thing at the time and I wanted other speedrun communities he was in to be safe from him. kaan made a bunch of excuses and explained that we were the only two women on tasvideos he harassed as after all...
I requested him to publicly apologize in the tasvideos discord, which he did, but we did not ban him at that time. He then deleted his messages to me and Maria. Meanwhile Spikestuff reached out to the Crash Bandicoot community since they happened to be involved there already, and found out that kaan harassed people there too. The Crash community on the other hand, elected to ban him outright.
Instead of seeking to improve himself as I hoped, over the next year kaan tried to target spikestuff for their interactions with the Crash community and went to Noxxa to try to get them removed from staff, which spike was at that time.
We decided enough was enough and elected to ban kaan55 from TASVideos.
There were later sporadic appearances of him on the tasbot discord server where he complained about his ban on tasvideos in various ways, including trying to manipulate dwangoAC by criticizing his ability to moderate in 2023. Additionally he badmouthed tasvideos in this Classic Sonic Series RTA discord where a moderator reached out to me for info. The Classic Sonic Series RTA discord banned him. He simply left the TASBot discord.
2 years later, an account named AnonymousReaper surfaced in the apology and mission statement thread, making vague complaints about tasvideos and some prominent members such as, Spikestuff, Samsara, and myself. We initially thought this user was OtakuTAS, but we later realized that it could be kaan55. He then revealed this to us on December 16:
As Samsara was now preoccupied with personal matters, I took over and responded myself:
In full defense of the response I gave, I completely forgot just how manipulative kaan55 had gotten. I didn't realize just how completely and utterly delusional he had gotten and might in fact be beyond saving. I truly would have forgiven him if he had given tasvideos an earnest apology INSTEAD of doing the weird reaper stuff.
This reply of his is so extremely manipulative. It legit kinda hurts my faith in humanity a tad. He never exactly said what his screwups were. He continued to tell me how we should handle him, even though that's not remotely how bans work.
I was suffering from some bad sleep so I didn't respond that day, resulting in the following message from him:
I was flabbergasted. He assumed that the reason I hadn't responded was because I was conflicted. When I received his original response, I had actually already made up my mind, but this solidified things further. kaan is sounding like an evil vizier trying to usurp power from the monarch, except he had none of the actual power to do any of it.
This man is completely and utterly delusional, and therefore will remain permanently banned. We are hosting this evidence on the server because he is a safety concern and not to be trusted under any circumstance.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2875
Location: Northern California
Regarding the Kaan situation, I have one final, overwritten set of comments to make:
Kaan did not originally meet the conditions of my offer, instead choosing to continue his manipulation narrative by claiming he was afraid that his friends would get hurt and that he couldn't reveal his identity until he was promised that they would be safe. I decided to play along, knowing that sticking to the terms of the offer and banning him would only cause him to come back and start claiming that I was actually going to hunt down those friends.
Since this is literally the thread about concerns over our moderation, I want to put it on record that we only have a problem with Kaan, here. Kaan's friends didn't sexually harass two staff members, Kaan's friends didn't spend literal years trying to get Spikestuff fired from multiple community positions, Kaan's friends didn't create 10 alt accounts all in the name of trying to dismantle this site. Kaan did all of that himself. In all honesty, I feel bad for these friends. He's absolutely lying to them about us, absolutely twisting the narrative to be completely in his favor by hiding all of his unhinged behavior and projecting his spite onto us. There's no way he actually cares about these friends, he's straight up using them as ammunition against us in order to make himself look better. It genuinely sickens me a bit that he chose the moment that he did to return and push his false narrative again, with us putting out a public apology for our past behavior. He saw us in what he perceived to be a moment of weakness and decided to try going for the kill.
And for what? Because we made him apologize for, and I repeat, sexually harassing two staff members? He's been on this puppetmaster grind for five years now. Five! Years! Five years of being so obsessed with himself and his reputation that he couldn't even muster up the courage to take a single hint of accountability over, and I repeat, sexually harassing two staff members. Five years of spreading lies and, most likely, manipulating other people into thinking that we actually are some kind of collective of rabid wolves that ban people on sight for merely disagreeing with us, coming from a guy we didn't ban for two full years after it was revealed that he, and I repeat, sexually harassed two staff members. Five years of, presumably, telling his friends that they should be terrified of us because of how we treat him and how we'd treat them in turn, coming from a guy who literally just got another co-authored publication within the last week.
If you do happen to be one of his friends reading this, and you were affected by all of his lies and are actually scared of us, you really don't have any reason to be. We're not the kinds of people who, say, go around stalking people in other communities running years long hate campaigns against them out of spite. We wouldn't, for example, DM staff in other communities trying to get them to take action against anyone we don't like, or join related Discord servers for little reason other than to complain about hate we receive that we feel is unjust. That'd be ridiculous. I don't think we've ever done that sort of thing in site history, even at our worst, and if we ever did then we can add it onto the apology thread and double down even further on changing for the better going forward, because we're not cowards about accountability.
TASvideos' Third Strongest Site Admin 🩵 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6598
Location: The land down under.
Samsara wrote:
Finally a response came in last night. It's kaan55, confirmed.
...Seriously? It was kaan?
Actually hindsight I shouldn't be surprised by that.
The thing about kaan, and it'll show up in a bit.
kaan likes to lie differently, will always act innocent instead of actually taking the blame and would instead blame everyone else.
kaan, just to reiterate some key bits from our PM's when you went to me thinking I would backstab Staff.
Quit with the guilt trips, 'cause I shouldn't be surprised you're still doing that 3 years later.
Stop blaming others for your own issues.
And I was right to call you out for the lie of "I just don't have it in me to hate people" back then, you clearly do.
Saying that you're [taking full responsibility] in private doesn't actually mean you've committed to it if you haven't stated it in public. - 2021
As for "unrelated" information to another post.
I was using they/them before kaan was banned.
Edit: This is just in regards to the comments you made that's found in Memory's post after being able to digest it better.
Two things that I should point out in regards to all that, and I'm going to order it in reverse.
> I'm tired of this drama.
I'm going to be blunt here just for you kaan.
Once you were gone, no one gave a damn about you.
There was two statements when you were gone; "so now what" and "thank shit this drama is over".
Technically there was a third, and I think that's a more important matter for the Staff to discuss now after your performance that you did, but that's for them to figure out.
Honestly that's extremely disappointing for someone that says they're the owner of a Sonic TASing Discord to continue to act as they did 5 years ago.
People actually know how to fall on a sword, own up to shit, and know how to apologize, but not you.
Bringing up the Sonic TASing Discord was something you wanted to barter with, and nothing else.
The only person who gave a damn about this "drama" was you. Everyone else moved on.
And we're still going to move on again as once again this is over, and you clearly learnt nothing.
> Let me publicly take the fall for [my own posts].
You're still stalling after all this time.
You were gone for three years where you could've made an apology, but instead much like here all you did was stall.
You never did make that "apology" you wanted to give to the Crash community with that alt you made on that Discord mind you.
To make it worse, besides what I wrote on the paragraph above.
You decided to instead make more slanderous comments about members in this community instead what you were saying in private to Memory.
In what sense do you think with how you came back that a branch like that would be given to you?
Why can all you do is blame everyone else?
You demonstrated that you don't know how to fall on your own sword. You can't actually take the blame for anything.
All you know what to do when you get confronted is figure out how to stall and sheep out.
You never intended to make an apology in the first place.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Strong for yourself and also others.
I was going to make a more specific reply, but since that context was split and locked, I'll try to keep this closer to the topic of this thread. With a couple of these concerns (mainly the most recent one), it seemed to start out as a straightforward question (i.e. "what did I do wrong") that was answered directly and honestly by staff. However, it immediately became clear that the original concerns weren't being raised in good faith or to get a real explanation for a certain situation, but rather as a means of initiating personal attacks.
I ultimately agree with the moderation actions taken, and I definitely don't feel like there's been any undue hostility from staff. I think it's good to match the degree of moderator action to the level of hostile/otherwise rule-breaking behavior with as little personal bias as possible, and I think staff has done that fairly well.
My one concern regarding moderation is that things sometimes tend to drag on for much longer than necessary after it's made clear that moderation action will be needed. That might just be because taking action is perceived as a fairly extreme step, and it's understandable for cases that require additional behind-the-scenes discussion. But I'm wondering if there's a better way to de-escalate things if (for example) a conversation gets a little too heated in a submission thread. Maybe temp-locking a thread for a few hours or temp-muting a user could help in those cases. Of course, that wouldn't have really helped in this particular thread, but I was considering sharing this before all the derailing happened.
But I'm wondering if there's a better way to de-escalate things if (for example) a conversation gets a little too heated in a submission thread. Maybe temp-locking a thread for a few hours or temp-muting a user could help in those cases.
Unlike Discord, a forum inherently provides a "pause" of sorts between posts. As such, heated discussions here tend to be more deeply-rooted in nature than simply being caught up in the moment. Temporarily locking a whole thread isn't ideal either because it silences other people too. Also, practically speaking, muting a user isn't much different than banning them.
OceanBagel wrote:
My one concern regarding moderation is that things sometimes tend to drag on for much longer than necessary after it's made clear that moderation action will be needed. That might just be because taking action is perceived as a fairly extreme step, and it's understandable for cases that require additional behind-the-scenes discussion.
If you mean in the sense of actual time span, this may be due to several factors. Most often, concerning behavior will be brought up amongst the moderation team. However, everyone has different schedules and live in different timezones. So there can be cases where it takes time for multiple people to chime in on a situation. There may also be additional research that needs to be conducted in order to properly assess the situation. Writing a carefully thought out response takes time too.
If however you mean that there is significant back-and-forth until we take a more severe action, this is a more complex issue. To be clear, if someone's actions are an immediate threat/attack towards others (e.g. scam posts, doxxing, extreme threats, hate speech, etc.), then an immediately harsh response is often warranted and given.
Otherwise, when someone is being unruly, we'd rather see them acknowledge what we say and seriously reflect on what they themselves are doing, in the hopes that they correct their behavior. Sometimes it really turns out that they misunderstood, or that what they intended to say wasn't conveyed properly. Giving them that chance is important. How they respond to us also helps us to determine whether they have any real interest in resolving the conflict in a civil manner, or if they're just here to cause problems.
I will say, I would be interested in more active qualified moderators to gain better coverage so situations don't escalate as much.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
If you mean in the sense of actual time span, this may be due to several factors. Most often, concerning behavior will be brought up amongst the moderation team. However, everyone has different schedules and live in different timezones. So there can be cases where it takes time for multiple people to chime in on a situation. There may also be additional research that needs to be conducted in order to properly assess the situation. Writing a carefully thought out response takes time too.
That is what I meant, yeah. I can see why locking a forum can prove to be counterproductive, and splitting off threads seems to be a decent solution anyway. But I do think having a lower-stakes temp mute (or temp ban, if that's how it works) could prove useful by preventing escalation temporarily while staff takes time to discuss other options.
You're right about how there are often cases where there was a misunderstanding and I certainly understand engaging with people when that happens. My post was more about cases where it's clear that someone's arguing in bad faith or continuing to push after given a warning to stop.
I'll give an example of a case that I think was handled similarly to what I'm proposing (with some differences that I'll point out). I hope I'm not opening up some old wounds here, but I think it'll help demonstrate my point.
In the thread Thread #24004: #7994: HappyLee's NES Super Mario Bros. Special: 35th Anniversary Edition in 02:50.20, there were some disagreements with a judgment that devolved into increasingly personal attacks and ultimately a temp ban of 3 months. When it became clear that this was happening, the thread was temporarily locked to give staff time to respond. I think this is a good practice when there are tensions from multiple people like in this example. When the conversation continued, so did the personal attacks, ultimately leading to the 3 month ban.
I think this strategy is fairly effective, but I do have two comments related to my suggestion. The first is related to my earlier comment about engaging with someone for too long past the point where they're no longer acting civil. It seems that this user got no less than three warnings from staff about the same thing within a few hours. Based on what Bigbass had said, I'm guessing this is related to staff deliberating on what action to take. Which is fair, but my second comment has to do with the idea of shorter duration bans for individual staff members to enact at their own discretion. I think if this user were to have received a 48-hour temp ban alongside the first warning, there would have been a greater chance at the situation de-escalating before a longer ban was necessary. Of course, this won't always work, but I think it would be useful for these kinds of situations.
I think part of the issue is that bans that automatically expire after a certain period are actually a relatively new technical development to TASVideos and I don't think we're in the mindset yet. I am absolutely in favor of more short term bans just to cool people off, but it would likely require a more active moderation approach and therefore more active moderators to be particularly effective.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
In the thread Thread #24004: #7994: HappyLee's NES Super Mario Bros. Special: 35th Anniversary Edition in 02:50.20, there were some disagreements with a judgment that devolved into increasingly personal attacks and ultimately a temp ban of 3 months.
[...]
The first is related to my earlier comment about engaging with someone for too long past the point where they're no longer acting civil. It seems that this user got no less than three warnings from staff about the same thing within a few hours. Based on what Bigbass had said, I'm guessing this is related to staff deliberating on what action to take.
This was before I became a mod, so I can't comment on much around what staff was doing at the time.
Some of what that individual was saying was "fine" albeit aggressive. The site rules can definitely be confusing sometimes, and it's understandable that one might be upset to learn that their movie can't be accepted because of a rule being misworded. However, their baseless assertions that Samsara intentionally changed the rules to spite him specifically, was the biggest issue. Looking at it in retrospect, I don't think anything happened too slowly. Perhaps a moderator could have been more strict upfront, e.g. give a reminder to everyone to remain calm? But like I said, I don't know what the situation was like at that moment (e.g. who was active on staff, what discussions, if any, were happening behind the scenes, etc.)
OceanBagel wrote:
Which is fair, but my second comment has to do with the idea of shorter duration bans for individual staff members to enact at their own discretion. I think if this user were to have received a 48-hour temp ban alongside the first warning, there would have been a greater chance at the situation de-escalating before a longer ban was necessary. Of course, this won't always work, but I think it would be useful for these kinds of situations.
It's possible. It's certainly something we should consider. I feel a little uneasy with combining the temp-mute/ban with the first warning. I think it'd depend a lot on the severity of the behavior and the context surrounding it. If it was shorter, like a few hours instead of multiple days, then I'd be more okay with combining them.
I specifically told him off at the time to not compliment me more than he knows me whereas with Maria, that was her only response to him. In 2020 he sent me more creepy messages.
A little while later, while talking with Maria, we found out that we were both harassed by the same user. Furious, I brought it up to staff-chat and went to confront kaan in discord dms. I also posted this on my personal twitter as #metoo was a big thing at the time and I wanted other speedrun communities he was in to be safe from him. kaan made a bunch of excuses and explained that we were the only two women on tasvideos he harassed as after all...
I requested him to publicly apologize in the tasvideos discord, which he did, but we did not ban him at that time. He then deleted his messages to me and Maria. Meanwhile Spikestuff reached out to the Crash Bandicoot community since they happened to be involved there already, and found out that kaan harassed people there too. The Crash community on the other hand, elected to ban him outright.
Instead of seeking to improve himself as I hoped, over the next year kaan tried to target spikestuff for their interactions with the Crash community and went to Noxxa to try to get them removed from staff, which spike was at that time.
We decided enough was enough and elected to ban kaan55 from TASVideos.
There were later sporadic appearances of him on the tasbot discord server where he complained about his ban on tasvideos in various ways, including trying to manipulate dwangoAC by criticizing his ability to moderate in 2023. Additionally he badmouthed tasvideos in this Classic Sonic Series RTA discord where a moderator reached out to me for info. The Classic Sonic Series RTA discord banned him. He simply left the TASBot discord.
2 years later, an account named AnonymousReaper surfaced in the apology and mission statement thread, making vague complaints about tasvideos and some prominent members such as, Spikestuff, Samsara, and myself. We initially thought this user was OtakuTAS, but we later realized that it could be kaan55. He then revealed this to us on December 16:
As Samsara was now preoccupied with personal matters, I took over and responded myself:
In full defense of the response I gave, I completely forgot just how manipulative kaan55 had gotten. I didn't realize just how completely and utterly delusional he had gotten and might in fact be beyond saving. I truly would have forgiven him if he had given tasvideos an earnest apology INSTEAD of doing the weird reaper stuff.
This reply of his is so extremely manipulative. It legit kinda hurts my faith in humanity a tad. He never exactly said what his screwups were. He continued to tell me how we should handle him, even though that's not remotely how bans work.
I was suffering from some bad sleep so I didn't respond that day, resulting in the following message from him:
I was flabbergasted. He assumed that the reason I hadn't responded was because I was conflicted. When I received his original response, I had actually already made up my mind, but this solidified things further. kaan is sounding like an evil vizier trying to usurp power from the monarch, except he had none of the actual power to do any of it.
This man is completely and utterly delusional, and therefore will remain permanently banned. We are hosting this evidence on the server because he is a safety concern and not to be trusted under any circumstance.
