Sometime in 2016

No, as far as the Administration are aware of currently, in the sense that there is a secret PM group coordinating itself with the purpose of turning SB into a far-right site.However, there are some PM groups composed solely of conservative or right-leaning members that have staff members in them. There also were PM groups of similar makeup that were run by staff, but (as far as the staff were concerned) were intended for the purpose of improving behavior among those posters. So in the sense that there was a PM group made of conservatives run by staff at one point, yes.But the truth is far less salacious than the blog post supposes.The staff are aware that there are many PM groups that some staff members are a part of, but due to the before mentioned technical limitations, we would've had trouble figuring out which one this blog post was referring to from the posted pictures alone, as most of the screenshots do not appear to have been reported before. Thankfully, however, one of the incidents referred to by the blog was indeed reported, and from there (along with the description of its members and its rough history) we were able to ascertain for sure which particular PM group this blog post was referring to.This a rough timeline of what we know regarding these PM groups, from which we can put timing to the events described in the blog post:(EDIT: After having gained access to the PMs, we must issue a correction that the actual date in which the PM was started was late Jan/early Feb 2017 respectively, even if ideas may have been floated around earlier since 2016), Spartan303 created two large PM groups involving a large number of conservative or right-wing leaning members who frequently received infractions, along with Peregry LT_Ryguy , and bullethead (the staff are not aware of whether or not the Observer and Alamo were in this PM from the start as we can't easily determine join dates for PMs) with the purpose of coaching particularly problematic posters to be better debaters and to engage in less rules-breaking behavior.In April 2017, other staff members were initially alarmed at what seemed to be a mod-sponsored echo chamber. Spartan303 explained the purpose of this PM group, and after some discussion it was judged that such a "coaching project" to improve behavior could help reduce mod workload and improve forum culture. After discussion by multiple senior staff(the involved persons being Guderian2nd LT_Ryguy , and Kensai ), as well as many moderators, CommanderRazor gave the final approval, and put LT_Ryguy in charge of providing regular reports on the status of the PM. Unhappy Anchovy did enter the PM as the blog post notes, as he wished to see what it was like, before leaving it half a day later stating he did not like it. The existence of this PM was not to be secret - if members asked about it, the staff were to respond by saying that it was what the staff had intended its purpose to be. Of course nobody actually asked to the best of our knowledge.In Early 2018, several concerns were raised by various staff members that the PM mentorship/coaching project was not producing the regular reports as was originally decided, particularly after reports from the PM. Many mods became concerned that the project had failed and that confidential information(ie. reports, appeals, etc.) was being leaked in the PM, or that the mods within the PM were being biased towards ordinary users within the PM. As a consequence, Corp was put into the PM(invited in by Spartan303) to report directly back to the Administration on the PM's status; meanwhile, Cool Guy was told to gather statistics on the posting behavior of posters involved in the PM.In June 2018, based on the testimony by Corp and the statistics of posting behavior of it's members, combined with the lack of regular updates on it's status from LT_Ryguy , the Administration and the Senior Staff judged that the project was a failure and decided to cease the project, and lock both PM groups, as a means of visibly withdrawing staff sanction. The statistics showed no decrease in reports or infractions per post in the posters involved, and Corp's testimony was that the PM had degenerated largely into meme-chan posting rather than any coaching or mentoring of debating skills. The PMs were locked on June 17th.Sometime after this date, another pair of PM groups were created with largely the same people but without official sanction. Due to the before mentioned staff policy on largely leaving PMs untouched, this was allowed to happen as it did not seem to be causing problems in the public portion of SB and our longstanding policy regarding PMs and staff acts. It was also judged by the Administration that staff members could also be part of this new PM if they wanted to, as staff members always had the freedom to act as regular members and join PMs they wished to join, provided that they acted there as regular members and not as staff.In August 2018, a report on Odo making death threats against Gaius Marius was made from this new PM, which matches one of the screenshots presented by the wordpress link. The report was deemed sufficient to permaban Odo as he had a long history of failing to engage with the staff and the rules of the site in bad faith(he was already under discussion for Admonishment/Permaban), with this being the last straw that broke the camel's back.Throughout late 2018, multiple concerns were again raised by various staff members that the new PM was exhibiting the same problems as the old one, namely that the staff members in it were allowing membership of the PM group to influence their judgement and that confidential information was being shared in the PM. In regards to the former, the Administration and Cool Guy attempted to statistically analyze the moderating patterns of staff and provide feedback into what particular bias(mostly political) may be creeping into each mod's behavior, and staff were told to change moderation based on this data. With leaks, a concrete example was eventually found of the latter, although as it had occurred nearly a year prior, the relevant staff were first given a warning that any future leaks found would be severely punished.From then until now, nothing much has happened that we're aware of on this matter, and the difficulties of examining PMs combined with the impending XF2 move ate away at our attention so we could not devote resources to investigating, given that investigation would involve a deep database dive.