Direct Messages - wes

Direct Messages

wes

Not to add yet another thing to the pile for you but I need a serious talk whenever you get the chance

How can I help?

How much trust do you currently think there is in the members of our management teams?

It depends on who you ask.

18:15

If I had to shoot from the hip and put all my chips on the table, I'd say 70% of the community generally trusts us, whereas 30% doesn't for various and sundry reasons, many of which are probably beyond our control.

Sorry, I should clarify I mean trust in the members themselves. Not how they're seen by the community

Are you thinking of all teams specifically (admin, mods, QAM, DevC, RACheats) or a specific team

Mods and admins

I'd still use the 70% number, truthfully.

Thank you for being honest with me, truly

Of course. I don't think there's any data to support the number is lower than that. The data actually says it's probably a higher number than 70% - I'm being conservative.

18:17

I've run a few analytics in the DB while this whole debacle has been going on

18:17

I'm fairly certain with a strong community message and policy framework, we'll weather the storm and come out stronger.

I am prepared to share something with you with the understanding that we have collaborated over I think 3 years at this point and that I hope there has been enough good faith that it won't be shared elsewhere

Of course, you have my full confidence

Okay

18:19

I am being extra paranoid and have screenshotted this from my report

18:19

I need you to make this make sense (edited)

Where was that photo posted? In the main server or the workshop server?

18:21

It was posted in the workshop server.

18:21

Of course, my next immediate question is who do you think sprung this leak

18:21

Who is the deleted account?

I was not at the computer for most of the day when this posted. I have no idea who this is

This is fairly distressing

18:27

Those timestamped messages are across a period of over two weeks

18:27

What do you think we should do?

wes

Those timestamped messages are across a period of over two weeks

2 hours

But the 1st screenshot

18:28

That was 10-02

18:28

The 2nd was 09-14

You're thinkin g of US dating

18:29

It was 5 days ago

18:29

2nd october

What I'm saying is the leaked messages are not isolated. They're over a sustained time period

18:30

Here are all the people who had access to those messages:

Scott
wes
Hexadigital
LordAndrew
Nepiki
Searo
Suffa
AuburnRDM
Hotscrock
Jamiras
KickMeElmo
luchaos
MrOwnership
SnowPin
SporyTike
WilHiteWarrior
tele

I apologise, I'm not thinking things through right now 1st message: https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1423353545448493179/1423405270024982548 2nd message: https://discord.com/channels/476211979464343552/1002689485005406249/1416713283729231973 (edited)

18:31

Understandably I have deleted the image as well as the previous newborn I posted in that channel

yes

18:33

You asked for my complete confidence, and I will give it to you. However, this is a serious problem. Privately, if you give me permission, I'd like to escalate this only to AuburnRDM and Scott.

To check we are on the same page: Someone posted the initial message, and after asking the exact same thing over the next 2 hours and getting no response, posted a picture from 2 weeks ago

yes, we are absolutely on the same page

18:33

you were threatened using leaked messages that happened over a 2.5 week time period, and the messages were sent to you over the course of 2 hours while you were away

wes

You asked for my complete confidence, and I will give it to you. However, this is a serious problem. Privately, if you give me permission, I'd like to escalate this only to AuburnRDM and Scott.

I am not okay with this currently. Quite frankly, I was hesitant to reach out to you at all. None of this makes sense and I have no idea why this is happening. I have been largely silent since the 1st day

understood. if you are not okay with this, i will not do it

18:36

this is an extremely serious issue and i would not blame you in the slighest for leaving the RA staff over this. clearly, we have a major breach of trust in what should be a private and safe space.

I am currently in the process of privating or otherwise closing every social media presence I have. At the moment I have not reached out to the authorities because I am very much out of my depth, right now this is being discussed within the family as this much bigger than just me The reason I have reached out to you specifically is being of your previous mention that you had to handle legal issues of being harassed during your time at RA. It does not seem reasonable given what I've known about you to act in a similar way

ah, that completely makes sense.

At the moment I have not decided what to do about RA

I need you to understand, Scott is about to make a public statement saying no one on the staff was threatened. Again: "no, wes, don't do that" is an acceptable answer, but I would like to require Scott to remove that line with no explanation given.

If I leave over this, I am accepting that I zero control over what is happening and I am otherwise abandoning 5 years of my only hobby. If I do not leave, I have to accept that some of my information is forever in the wild and is tied to who I am online

I would encourage you not to leave, but we have to find out how this happened

wes

I need you to understand, Scott is about to make a public statement saying no one on the staff was threatened. Again: "no, wes, don't do that" is an acceptable answer, but I would like to require Scott to remove that line with no explanation given.

My understanding was that Scott was being doxing and being sent death threats

We later investigated and found a community member was doxxed/threatened, but that's all we found.

It's clearly from an alt account or someone outside of our circle since they are pretending they don't know who I am

Yes but of course someone posted these things somewhere

18:43

The person who DMed you probably grabbed them, found you, and sent these insane things

I don't think Tele would do this but I have no reason to be adamant right now

I don't know what to think. He can't be ruled out.

18:45

fuck

18:45

i wonder who the 5 were that had reactions before the post was deleted of your child

18:45

all 5 of them could've been ruled out

I'm sorry, I didn't think of that

no worries

Fuck

it's alright, this is obviously very charged

I do not think of anyone that had access to those channels to be capable of this. I still don't, everyone at the start of the discussion was on the same page even though we couldn't have foreseen how some took it the wrong way

it's 100% guaranteed one of those people i listed

Some did change their minds as time went on but it doesn't make sense that because I didn't that I deserved this

it's probably safe to remove me, AuburnRDM, luchaos, Jamiras, MrOwnership, and Scott from the list.

wes

it's 100% guaranteed one of those people i listed

I need to ask, based on what?

18:50

Things have been very heated the last few days

those are the only people with access to the channel. those are direct screenshots, not a data breach

18:50

someone got those screenshots from one of the names on that list above

Sorry I'm not following

someone in the mod channel took screenshots, shared them in a side server, and that's where the person who DMed you got them from

Everyone on mod and admin can see that thread and channel

every mod and admin + tele is in my list above

wes

it's probably safe to remove me, AuburnRDM, luchaos, Jamiras, MrOwnership, and Scott from the list.

I am asking why anybody here is being ruled out

18:51

I'm still having trouble considering them as capable

18:52

But they had the same access as anyone else involved

me: I guess you just have to trust me, but I didn't do it.
AuburnRDM: I've been chatting with Auburn exhaustively over the last several days, I can't conclusively rule him out but I just find it impossible to believe it was him.
luchaos: is probably not even aware this is going on, and who would he share it with?
Jamiras: has been largely uninvolved and avoids side servers.
MrOwnership: is probably not even aware this is going on.
Scott: Again, a case where I just trust him completely.

18:53

that still leaves 11 people though

I know you are not that knowledgeable of discord but frankly I have next to zero tech knowledge in general. Are you absolutely sure it couldn't have been anyone outside of this have access?

18:54

That list I mean

yes, i am absolutely sure of that

18:55

from a technical POV, it is not possible to access a channel's messages without the correct perms

18:55

i even looked to see if i could get the reactions from the deleted message using the API. unfortunately discord hard deletes stuff from their database

18:56

that's why this is so distressing. i'm looking at the name of the leaker right now, but i'm also looking at 10 other names.

18:58

Before we go any further, I apologize for not asking this important question. Is there any support you need from me right now? You're the victim of harassment.

I am receiving support from my available family right now while I calm down. Since I have barely slept over the last 5 days I'm not doing anything until I've had a decent chunk of sleep to digest

19:03

Thank you for asking. Right now I am too charged to consider that. I am considering my options on where to go from here

I understand completely. This is very distressing, and what you're feeling right now is the natural response. I need to be completely frank with you and tell you what you already know: this is a serious safety incident. You have total control of what I'm going to share outside of this private conversation, if anything at all. I know the sender deleted their account, but if you haven't already, you need to report them to Discord. I would please ask that you also bubble this up to Discord's safety team. Please see: https://discord.com/safety/doxxing-policy-explainer The statement Scott is going to put out contains this text:

[b]Were there death threats or doxxing against RA staff?[/b] There have been no confirmed doxxing attempts or death threats directed at RetroAchievements staff. We have confirmed doxxing took place within our community however, and the perpetrators have been permanently banned. We take the safety of all community members seriously and will continue to act swiftly against such behavior.

I implore you, please let me remove that line I've bolded. The removal would not be explained and would not be traced back to you - period.

The discord account that sent this has been deleted. From what you've said it's doubtful I could recover anything meaningful from it, and even if I could it's probably a throwaway that's not linkable to the person who leaked from the server Right now what I need to know before going further is what possible options I have for staying at RA. There is a leak in our private moderation channels. There is currently deciding on the policy that started all this in full knowledge that they did this to me. It is entirely possible this was done to prevent me from participating in site policy

19:15

There is* = They are

19:17

As you are aware there is currently a movement to oust anybody in mod/admin that willingly allowed clover to have a set

19:18

It is very difficult for me to believe I am not being scapegoated

What do you mean?

19:19

If I believed there was a conspiracy in RAdmin to oust you over the Clover situation I would immediately resign

During the initial fallout there were calls for mod/admin member that were in support of the initial message to resign. Tele left before this of his own volition, therefore it's reasonable for me to assume parts of the community believe there are still problematic members in the teams. I am suggesting that whoever leaked this is painted me as the sole person responsible in an effort to save RA's reputation

I see what you mean, I didn't think of it that way.

Admittedly I have no proof of that. But there isn't really much to go on right now so it's as good a theory as any

19:28

I still have no idea why anybody would do this

19:28

I am otherwise a very private person on purpose, I shared those images because I felt safe to

I don't either, which also makes it pretty distressing.

19:28

If you choose to remain, at some point, we're going to have to tackle this issue.

What would tele have to gain from this? Their stance was against censorship and doesn't have anything to gain from giving RA any favours right now

I view it the other way: here's an innocuous leak of someone who supported me, then someone takes that and twists it to what you're seeing now.

I understand. You view it as way to add fuel to the fire

Yea

I didn't consider that

The child photo leak could've been just as "innocent" (even though it's a COMPLETE violation of trust/privacy): "look he had a kid, that's great!" Then this insane person connected the two dots and you got those DMs.

Right now I am unsure if I should let that announcement go out or not at all, even with the removed line. Frankly that would strengthen my position to leave

19:35

If it's alright with you, please ask them to hold of for a little while until I get my thoughts together enough to write something in mod-chat. I understand not making the situation worse but from my perspective it's entirely possible there is someone in there right now who believes they are getting away with this

Alright. I want to note we want to get the announcement out within 24 hours

I'll pause my social media attempts right now to get something written up

I don't want to breach confidence

I am not okay with mentioning that there has been a doxx. I have not been swayed that any of the members of mod/admin are not involved and want to avoid letting them prepare anything beforehand to counter I am not sure on how you should word this. I understand you all want it out within the next 24 hours so I guess all I can ask is that you ask that it be halted while you are looking into something concerning and you are not at liberty to share

19:42

I am putting my trust in you because honestly if you were involved right now I don't see you being this motivated to help me

I'm only going to send a message to my group chat with those people. An explanation is not needed to the broader mod+admin group

Thank you

I want to be sure I have my wording right

I will get started on that message immediately. I may take breaks to take my mind off it by doing other busywork because I want to make sure I also get this wording right

19:44

All I wanted to do when I finally got back to the computer was to work on my single ticket and potentially do some dev work since it relaxes me, I don't even know how long I've been at this

‍

that certainly resonates

19:45

all the time i spent dealing with Robbie's crap all i was thinking was "man, i wish i could be working on [insert RetroAchievements feature here] right now"

You don't really consider how much of you is out there until you decide to pull back

19:46

You in general I mean, I know you are a semi-public figure and therefore have some knowledge of this

yea ive said many times i wish i did all that stuff under an alias

19:48

alright, we're holding off on publication.

19:48

the ball is now in your court!

1

Okay, it's 10pm here and I need to sleep. I'm sorry but I will respond to you tomorrow. Before I send this out I am planning on the worst case scenario. I will look through all my current projects and make sure they are in a stable position before posting in mod chat because I feel I am responsible for them. You are free to doubt this and take steps to back them up if you think it's credible that I would vandalise them or another sets on site.

nah i'm not worried about that

just want to be sure we can get our community announcement out tomorrow. i don't think we can delay another day. lots of sensitive situations happening at once!

‍

Want to give a heads up that Scott is going to have virtually no choice but to post his announcement roughly 6 hours from now

Understood. I'm just trying to word this correctly and should be able to post soon

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