There has been quite a lot of drama internally in the last few days between myself, codeshadow, M3E6 and the rest of the admin team. In the interest of transparency I would like to fully detail what has been happening and why.
Chapter 1 - In the beginning, there was MegatronWhen I launched MCNR I had no staff. I got a few people interested in the server before it launched and made some of them moderators and admins. We launched with just a couple of staff. One of these first members of staff was Megatron and he was an enormous help to me. I decided I would need someone to take charge of non-development responsibilties on the server such as staff recruitment and such, hence why I made Megatron the first
Community Manager.
Megatron was fantastic. He did so much for MCNR without me even asking, he was extremely proactive in his efforts to improve the server and plan for future developments. He was always trying to motivate me to do things, bringing me ideas, helping me without me needing to ask. Unfortunately Megatron's country (Israel) has mandatory military service and he was forced to leave. I had to find a replacement..
Chapter 2 - codeshadow takes overcodeshadow joined around the same time as Megatron, and was the only suitable candidate at the time to take over Megatron's role as community manager. I had faith in codeshadow's ability to live up to the efforts that Megatron put into the server, and made it official - codeshadow would be taking over Megatron as community manager.
Chapter 3 - codeshadow's effortsIn the weeks and months after codeshadow was made community manager, I never felt the same energy or enthusiasm from his compared to what Megatron showed. I will not lie and say that codeshadow didn't do anything. codeshadow did quite a lot for MCNR over the months he was in the role, but I felt like I had to keep asking for things.
One of the things that irritated me was his lack of staff recruitment. Over the many months codeshadow was community manager, he only recruited two members of staff (trina and lancer). This is not sufficient for our needs as a growing server. One evening I went onto the server as there were 65 players. How many staff might you expect to be present on a server with 65 players? 3 or so? Try zero. I had to spend 4 hours of my time moderating the server because there were no staff online. It was 7pm GMT which is not even that late. I understand that staff have a life and being an MCNR admin is not their 'job', but the problem here isn't the existing admins, it's our lack of admins in different timezones as a whole.
I told codeshadow time after time that we need more staff, asked if he had checked the recently submitted applications etc. and he never seemed to put any effort into it and had to urgency to recruit new staff which we were in deperate need of.
I hired 3 members of staff including Eldy. and Rick_Grimes as we were desparate for staff. Codeshadow informed me that Rick_Grimes was a rule-breaker and insulted Eldy. by saying he was incapable of being a moderator due to only having 4k score. How is that relevant? All new admins are on probation for 1 month, in which time their actions are closely monitored and scrutinised by myself and others. If they don't fit the role, they will be demoted immediately. If they become good moderators, hurray for us and for them. We have to give people a chance.
Chapter 4 - codeshadow's replacementI had talks with Megatron various times over the past few months about finding a replacement for codeshadow as I was not happy that codeshadow was meeting the expectation of the role of community manager. M3E6 had been around for a few months. In that time he has quickly been promoted through moderator and admin ranks, and soon after becoming an admin we talked about him joining the development team. I made him a manager in anticipation of this.
Once I had decided that codeshadow needed replacing for the sake of the future of MCNR, I decided M3E6 would be a suitable fit. He showed enthusiasm and effort. I asked M3E6 if he was interested in the position and he agreed. I demoted codeshadow and replaced him with M3E6 in that exact same moment. I fully removed codeshadow's status as a member of staff
temporarily until I had the chance to discuss his position with him. I did not intend to demote codeshadow from a management position, simply from his
community management role. Unfortunately codeshadow was offline when this happened. In retrospect I should have waited until codeshadow was online and talked to him - I'll admit that was a mistake which I regret and I apologise to codeshadow for doing this behind his back.
Chapter 5 - codeshadow's returnAfter many hours of talks, I reinstated codeshadow as manager and then joint community manager alongside M3E6. The problem is codeshadow and M3E6 hate each other. Codeshadow had many questions and was insisting that M3E6 was useless and wouldn't do anything as well as he would.
Chapter 6 - M3E6 and Samone, corruption and liescodeshadow accused M3E6 and Samone of corruption and lies. codeshadow thinks M3E6 'leaked' to Samone that codeshadow was to be replaced, causing Samone to complain to me about codeshadow. codeshadow thinks this is the reason he was demoted, because of M3E6 and Samone, when in truth I have been planning to replace him for months, as Megatron can attest.
Chapter 7 - codeshadow's resignationThe current and hopefully final chapter in this drama is codeshadow's resignation. codeshadow has decided to resign from his role as joint community manager and leave M3E6 to take all the responsibilities they were going to share.
Chapter 8 - SummaryI did not feel that codeshadow was living up to expectations. I wanted to find a replacement. I found M3E6 and replaced codeshadow. codeshadow was not happy. I offered to reinstate codeshadow as a manager (and then later as joint community manager alongside M3E6) but codeshadow was not happy.
Everyone has been very supportive of codeshadow which is nice to see. I did not want to lose codeshadow as a member of the MCNR family, but he has made his decision.
TransparencyBeing accused of corruption and a lack of transparency by codeshadow has insulted me. I do not have corrupt tendancies, hence this post to try and clarify what has happened and why. If anyone has any questions regarding this situation post them below and I will answer them.
This situation has been ongoing for days and things have been changing, so if I missed any details or got something wrong please point it out and I'll correct it. Any inaccurate facts are merely a mistake due to how complicated this situation got.
codeshadow posted a resignation topic which was filled with internal information (such as future server features) and leaked private conversations, which I will not allow. I have edited the post to remove these things and re-posted it here:
http://mikescnr.com/forum/index.php/topic,2311.msg8987.html#msg8987Thank you for reading.
