The Footening

Warning: This post is not fun to read, but it is very important and I highly suggest reading through to the end if you use scrap.tf to any extent. This is not a post that can simply be boiled down to a TL;DR. There are a lot of events that occurred here and before you arrive at a decision it is absolutely critical that you know what was happening, and the backstory for both parties.

As we all (or some) know, there was a certain controversy brought up on this subreddit over the mass-banning of users belonging to a website on scrap.tf. The moderators of /r/tf2 deleted the initial post(s) regarding it for not being impartial (please do not flame them for this, they were doing their jobs), and being made on dummy accounts (this did not impact the vote score on the thread or any posts within it, Reddit's vote system does not work that way, but it still looks highly suspicious). The reasons for the mass-ban, and the decision on whether or not Geel's actions were justified, date back over a year.

Fasten your seat belts, this post is a short novel.

Background

Once upon a time, there was the "Team Fortress 2 General", or "/tf2g/" general discussion thread series on the /vg/ board, on 4chan. They don't actually discuss TF2 there, but sometimes it's nice knowing that the people who post the same intentionally misspelled iteration of the word "pootis" 20 times in a row at least played the game at some point in their lifetime. Anyway, Joshua "Geel" Coffey has been posting there for quite a while, dating back further than 2012 (he has been posting for longer, but the archive doesn't go that far back). The relation between /tf2g/ and Geel was never exactly good, considering that all he really did was go there to advertise his website (unlike Reddit's 10% rule, 4chan has an unenforced 0% rule). So basically nobody really liked Geel, but they didn't hate him either because he at least came there, sometimes answered questions, and raffled some cheap stuff to the general once in a while.

The Beginning

Animosity towards Geel and scrap.tf began to grow when co-founder and leading administrator Jesse "Jesse" Cardone linked to a livestream of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season (5?) premiere. /tf2g/ didn't appreciate this, because the group was largely opposed to My Little Pony and its surprising following. /tf2g/ felt this was an inappropriate usage of administrative privilages of the website, citing how this action was highly unprofessional, and could even lead to legal action against the website. /tf2g/ as a whole didn't like the message that was sent by the administration actively promoting something that they disliked (big surprise). Geel refused to address this and to announcement remained. This, in turn, led to heavy criticism of Jesse in the thread whenever Geel posted. /tf2g/ revealed that Jesse is actually the reason scrap.tf doesn't have a variety of features

The Great Haunted Heist

This is actually something that impacted everyone. When scrap.tf first began to buy and sell hats worth over 1.33 refined metal for a value closer to their actual price, Geel didn't do a lot of market research. Torah.tf (Backpack.tf) had Haunted Ebinizers listed for much more than what they were actually selling for, price change suggestions abound, but not yet enstated. Needless to say, once /tf2g/ user, Junk, noticed this. He promptly purchased all the Haunted Ebenizers he could find (there were A LOT, hence the price drop), and then cleaned out the metal inventories of all the scrap.tf hat banking bots. Junk used his newfound profit to purchase himself a Strange Festive Scattergun. Once he finished up, Junk posted about his triumph in /tf2g/, informing everyone about his exploits in "defeating the jew". This naturally upset Geel. He lost a significant amount of money to an unreported exploit in his bots. However, Geel's follow-up actions were slightly less than professional. Geel added Junk on Steam, and then, mafia-style, tried to scare Junk into returning the items (despite the fact Junk had already received a permanent site-wide ban). Junk did not care about his ban from the website, and dismissed Geel's threat. Seeing this, Geel began to remark on his "connections" with tf2outpost administration and SteamRep.com. Geel made a (later revealed to be empty) threat to get Junk marked on SteamRep and banned on TF2Outpost. Junk, whether through extreme bravery, stubbornness, intelligence, or just to send an outright "fuck you" message, called Geel's bluff and posted the chatlogs in /tf2g/ (which would later make their way to /r/tf2). This opened Geel up to a lot of criticism and strongly stained his credibility amongst the general. This is also the reason scrap.tf does not bank any hats for over the standard price, regardless of the actual hat value.

The Integral of e^(x^2)

Months later, a /tf2g/ user, Englo, decided he was tired of the game and wanted to cash out. Geel informed him publicly that he would buy keys (but not other items) from anyone that want to sell for a modest sum in PayPal. Englo began to cash out on his TF2 backpack, selling items at steep discounts for members of /tf2g/. Upon finally cashing out (sans some items worth below a key), Englo contacted Geel only to find that Geel no longer wanted to honor the offer he put forth, stating that the quantity was the issue (interestingly enough, it was because Englo had too few keys). Englo, upset by this, decided that to make one final farewell, he would make a series of impossible puzzle raffles on scrap.tf from whatever items he still had in his inventory, and give the answer to /tf2g/ users to make it appear solvable as the entries filled up. Englo made a series of raffles on the website that could not be solved with the given question (e.g. The title of this segment which is not only mathematically unsolvable, but the answer was also "I cheated on my math test"). This predictably upset a lot of users on scrap.tf, as his questions were not only technically impossible, but a lot of them were also very difficult to begin with. A few (about 3) /tf2g/ users decided to feed the flames and elicit more responses by dropping "hints" (e.g. Add me id/stary, a common joke amongst /tf2g/ users) towards the solution of the puzzles. This ruse cruise ended when scrap.tf user Victor began adding winners of the raffle in order to receive the password. Ultimately, he discovered what was occurring, and Englo along with everyone who alluded to the puzzles being solvable received a permanent site-wide ban, which was later changed to a community ban. Victor then proceeded to enter raffles directed at /tf2g/ users, which prompted a short migration to TF2R so that the raffle host did not have to deliver the prize in the event Victor (or Geel) won. Scrap.tf revoked the permissions for community-banned users to create raffles as a result of this.

Reclining Foot Support

Just over a month later, things got more heated between the administration of scrap.tf and /tf2g/. A lot more. As it turned out, lead administrator Jesse was sharing lewd images with (now-ex) administrator Luna. Someone (not necessarily Geel) tried to cover up three images originating from a private administrative chatroom on scrap.tf, but this only served to exacerbate the Streisand Effect. Luna denied the authenticity of the images, but forbade all discussion about them on scrap.tf, threatening to issue permanent site-wide bans for an offense. Naturally, /tf2g/ rushed into the issue headfirst with suicidal overconfidence, and about 20 people ended up banned with an unappealable permanent site-wide ban as a result of saying "footrest" in an administrative raffle made by Jesse. Among these people was Shuckle (noted in Extra Credit). Interestingly, the staff member stated for issuing the ban was Jesse for a brief amount of time. When people began to question their bans which had no reason listed on the ban, scrap.tf added the ability for the administration to anonymously ban users, and hide the ban reason from everyone but the banned user. This is important because it brought up the issue of not only the professionalism of the staff, but the integrity of the hires. Geel has not commented on this issue in any form despite inquiries being directed at him dozens of times, but Luna has since been removed from the administrative team, and some of (not all) the bans were changed to community bans.

Pay my Pal, would you?

Almost immediately after the footrest incident, Englo made a return. Upset about the footrest case, Englo contacted Geel regarding this usage of the administration on behalf of /tf2g/, stating that he believed permanent bans were unjustified for just referencing the material. Geel then proceeded to complain about how "Everyone deserved what they got", and how "none of them are beneficial to scrap.tf in any way." This time he supposedly hacked Geel's Paypal and stole all the contents of it (about 200,000 USD). Englo also obtained no less than 1000 copies of Bad Rats during the Summer Sale when they were on sale for $0.24, before they all mysteriously vanished from his inventory. Presumably he used them to promote alternate accounts to Steam Premium (not TF2 Premium) in order to evade his ban on scrap.tf and continue entering/creating raffles. No word on what happened to the remaining $199,750 though. Geel denies any of this ever occurring, although Englo's ban was changed back to site-wide with an unlisted reason.

Execution

The Gun Mettle Update dropped at the worst possible time. Right as the tension between Geel and /tf2g/ reached its highest, the update brought tons of new or returning players into the general. The general normally took 3-4 days to go through 700 posts, suddenly it was taking half a day to do the same. This is when Geel decided he had enough of /tf2g/. /tf2g/ frequently gave away the answers to puzzle raffles with decent prizes (along with links to decent public raffles), hell, there's a Steam Group devoted to solving them (nobody in this group has received a ban despite it being brought up, Geel has not commented on this). This problem, however, became much more exacerbated as Geel launched the specific section for Puzzle Raffles. Raffle owners started becoming baffled as their incredibly difficult (to Google) puzzles were receiving about 50 entries in minutes. One particular raffle owner complained to the staff, to which Geel issued a 3-day community ban to everyone who entered (Geel's definition of "using a stolen password", in this case, meant "joining after the password was leaked", this ban was later extended to permanent and the reason changed to "Users of /vg/ are not welcome here"), and closed the raffle so nobody won. Geel changed it so that community banned users can no longer enter raffles. Geel states that the reason for the bans were "constant trolling, flaming, and harassing coming from the majority of the group", but the closest they ever came to that was with footrest (where all the "harassment" was one word being spammed over and over, something administrative groups should be able to deal with), and Englo, who received a permanent ban.

So what? (IF YOU ONLY READ ONE PART READ THIS)

Geel made the executive decision to ban over 200 people from his website on the basis that about a dozen from that group were misbehaving over the span of several years. Imagine if Geel had a falling out with Fiskie (see Extra Credit below), on bazaar.tf, and he banned everyone who ever posted a trade there as a result. This means that Geel is utilizing his power in a manner that many people find unacceptable. Whether or not Geel was justified, that decision is up to you.

Extra Credit

(Stuff that doesn't really fit into the timeline of this, but is still relevant)

There was once a glitch in the scrap.tf bots (way back when you had to add them on Steam), where you could add an item to sell, remove it, and the bot wouldn't recognize that. Geel got a lot of his bots cleaned out by a collaborative effort on the end of a few /tf2g/ users. He followed everyone who stole from his bots into servers where they were playing in, and Junk-style, called them out publicly and tried to cow them into returning the items. Everyone involved received permanent site-wide bans. Geel also unsuccessfully attempted to get everyone who utilized this exploit a SteamRep mark.

In /tf2g/, Geel entered a private raffle made for other /tf2g/ users. He posted in chat "It's rigging time." Almost too conveniently, Geel won the raffle. Geel denies actually rigging it.

A prominent /tf2g/ poster, Shuckle, was fairly recently revealed to be female. Geel's alleged first course of action upon seeing this revelation was to add her and send lewd messages. The true intention behind this, be it a poorly-executed joke, or legitimate sexual harassment, is unknown, as Geel denies this occurring.

Fiskie, lead designer of bazaar.tf, posted in /tf2g/ for a while. He even got a wedding ring from Stary! Fiskie's stance on this whole issue, or if he even cares/knows, is unknown.

Geel very recently made an ill-fated joke raffle, where he raffled 5 items with a 5 entrant limit in a private /tf2g/ raffle named "This is a trap". Everyone who entered received a temporary ban (at least until the unrelated permanent community bans were issued) from scrap.tf for the reason "You fell into a trap". Not the best PR move Geel.