I'm not throwing the ex-mods under the bus. Most of them were great folks, actually. Most I considered friends, though I'd like to think I wouldn't abandon ship quite so readily if I were in their shoes, even though I told them to watch out for themselves and not get caught in the witch hunt by association. One of them I shed a few tears when they said their reluctant goodbye that day. You will not see me speak ill of most of the old team, just like as far as I know most of them have not spoken ill of me.



Most of the old team just didn't actually moderate the forum, you have to understand. It was a heavily flawed system in retrospect that empowered the few members of the team who reveled in the attention and the power and the notoriety of publicly engaging and banning under their public/irl identity. Most of the mods were just standout good posters who were brought on for that reason, and didn't do much banning. I don't have the exact stats on hand, but Besada and Bishoptl banned more people than pretty much the entire rest of the mod team combined, (then just besada when I kicked out bish), out of the ~50 mods we had. I took all that into account when I redesigned the structure here after the whole crash. The wrong personality types were empowered by that system.



As for sitting back and letting everyone else do all the work: fuck yourself. I did not exploit anyone involved with NeoGAF, I had and have paid positions where appropriate, and I ran the website. It was -- and still is -- a very large website with a great deal of things to be managing at any given time.



And I did attempt to change the direction of the site. Look at the OP. There was also the Jon Stewart thread which I can't locate at the moment, and several others. Hell, I tried to bring some moderating influence into people calling for witch hunts against everyone getting accused in the #metoo threads of the day, got turned on by a large subset of off-topic's Social Justice contingent for suggesting that unilateral presumption of guilt was not a virtuous position to hold, banned a bunch of them for lashing out at me, and then lo and behold I was falsely accused myself like a week later and given the same presumption of guilt and angry mob dancing around my would-be pyre (and some of the folks who were banned got together on Twitter to bomb NeoGAF with the allegation, because pettiness and self-righteousness I suppose; I've been guilty of self-righteous grandstanding too, so shit happens I guess).



NeoGAF is likely the most successful traditional message board ever, at least in the English language. I don't need to be here. I'm here because I care about this place, and I'm stubborn as hell, and after I recovered from how hurt I was by my community turning on me I started the process of rethinking everything from the ground up and finding a better way forward. I'm here typing this right now because I'm legitimately enjoying what we're doing with the site again and we have so much cool stuff in development, too, that I think the community will be really into. I'm energized and mobilized, contrasted with the misery olympics of circa 2017 that I had little desire to continue having a part in.



Whatever conception you have in your head about me desperately clinging onto a sinking ship or some crap, in between playing desperate nosferatu in the shower or whatever the fuck...whatever helps you climax easier in your vivid fantasy, I guess, but it's not reality-based on any level. This horrific experience I went through the moment I was falsely #metooed, while it did put me on the edge of walking from what has been a passion project of mine for almost two decades, has evolved into an opportunity that I'm grasping, yes; an opportunity to fix the problems that couldn't be fixed under the previous status quo, to rethink everything from scratch with the benefit of experience and hindsight and revelations about the true nature of several folks who had been involved and trusted...then put it all together, and get to see what comes of it.



I'm here because I want to be. Site's rapidly recovering, too. Deal. <3