Dear Ayy Papi,

As some of you know by now, I'm no longer to be a moderator as of June 29th.  This is not my decision, Grace has made the call that I am not fit to be a moderator.  She grew weary of arguing with me, said I overstepped my position as a moderator, did not respect the admins or her as server owner, and decided to demod me, although I cannot say whether she included Macs or Lemming in this decision, as I am not privy to admin chat.  I'm under no illusions about how people see me, I know there are people that dislike me for various reasons, and some people are probably pleased to hear that I will no longer be a mod, but I hope that everyone will take the time to read this and realize that this is not about me.  I am OK with not being a moderator any more, I have served my purpose in calling out the bullshit that occurred on the server.

If you want a tl;dr of this, it's as follows: Grace publicly said was stepping back from participating in administrative decisions for personal reasons, after which she then used a server member (Tort) to meddle in the election of a new moderator, used privileged information in a public setting to further her goals, and purposefully tried to discredit the remaining admins (Macs and Lemming).  There was never collusion amongst the staff to rig the election, there was miscommunication on some things.  The staff was supposed to run the server and make decisions without her, and that was invalidated when she didn't like how it was going.  The moderators were being included on decisions after she left, their input being taken into account, but according to Grace, all the mods are supposed to do is warn and mute for any offending chat, not to have a say in decisions about the server.
When I was first appointed as a moderator, it was to help deal with spam and inappropriate messages during the time when the admins (who were all European) were generally sleeping.  I did so, and all seemed fine for a while, despite disagreements cropping up between the staff, where I called out some inappropriate decisions, but I've been told those are not relevant to this, so I'll not go into more detail on them here.  The first time I had an inkling that things were turning sour was on the night of June 21st, going into the morning of the 22nd.  I issued a warning about some inappropriate discussion and received some pushback and flak from the users involved, and I asked in mod chat for a discussion on what happened, whether further action was necessary or not.
Grace then soon after that said she was going to be away from Discord for several days on vacation, without a response to what I said.  I felt ignored and like I was free to be insulted by the members of the server as I was trying to moderate them, and Grace later responded with sarcasm to me about the situation, and then went on to state she didn't read all of the chat, not for the last time.  For the record, nothing was ever formally done about that.
Moving forward to June 24th, Grace decided that she was going to step back from being an admin, for personal reasons.  Macs and Lemming were the only remaining admins at this point, and it was decided we should have another mod on staff to help out and to break ties.  When I refer to staff from here on out, it refers to Macs, Lemming, Stabby and myself.  The four of us each drew up a list of candidates we felt would be a good mod, we compared and compromised, and it seemed like we were ready to appoint a new moderator, as Stabby and I were appointed.  It was then decided by the admins that there would be a public vote instead, and Macs posted the announcement for the election on Monday, June 25th.  What was not discussed thoroughly at the time was who all got a vote, with the ambiguous wording that it would be left up to the members of the server.  Jaime at one point did ask me, and while we never reached a consensus because it was never fully discussed, the candidates did not receive a vote.  What took a long time for me to get brought up and decided upon was that the staff should have a vote in this, as we're also members of the server.  I started the conversation on this topic early in the election and brought it up multiple times, but because of delayed responses, it was not added to the announcement until 6 hours into the election process.
The discussion and arguments that occurred in the election channel on June 24th were ones that I took very little part in, and I believe what Tort said on that day was done solely on his own volition.  What happened on the morning of June 25th, were done under the influence and direction Grace, who was supposedly no longer involved in admin decisions.  Tort later admitted as much to several people.  He called into question the addition of staff votes, saying that because it was not in the original rules, that they should not be allowed.  He further went on to question the integrity of the election, stating that the staff added their votes to sway the outcome of the election.  Grace was talking at the same time, and used her position of influence to add weight to his accusations, saying that the staff were meddling in the election and wanted to add our votes once the votes started to come in.  Grace claimed that we didn't like how the votes were going, and that we wanted to use our votes to change the outcome of the election.  She was able to see the number of votes each candidate was receiving, who was voting for whom, and she then used that information in public to make her accusations.  She gave that same information to Tort, in order to make him feel justified in his actions.  Grace fed Tort information, directed him and incensed him to attack the election and staff in public.  In short, she did exactly what she accused the staff of doing: she influenced the election and eventually changed the outcome of the election.  After the election closed and it was a tie, she continued to influence decisions, talking with the administrators about it.  For the record, the election rules said that the staff would handle matters if there was a tie, which included moderators.
During all of this, she publicly attacked the admins' decisions, questioned them and rallied the members to do the same.  Her invitation of Skyler to the server is clear evidence of this.  He was known to be on the banlist of the server, and she gave him an invite anyway, feigning ignorance.  She claimed to want an invite for Moonman, so Macs gave her an invite for Moonman.  Mrofni vouched for Skyler, possibly not knowing he was banned, and Grace used her troll invite for Moonman to invite Skyler, which was a violation of the invite process – the invite link goes to the one who did the vouching, so if the link was meant for Skyler, it would have gone to mrofni.  Grace knew exactly what she was doing inviting Skyler to the server and tried to play dumb, claiming she didn't know he was on the ban list because she didn't read mod chat after Sonder was elected.  That's bull on 2 points, the first that Skyler was put on the banlist on Sunday, June 23rd, 2 full days before Sonder was elected; and secondly, ignorance is not a valid defense.  She did a run-around and invited Skyler to make Macs look foolish and then petty because Macs had to then kick Skyler from the server for (apparently) no reason.
What this all boils down to is that Grace only stepped down from being an admin in name, so that she could continue to enjoy influencing the server while no longer having to face the user base for the decisions rendered, because technically only Macs and Lemming were technically admins now.  She continued to have a say in decisions, she shaped public discussion against the staff, and she wanted to be able to hide from the consequences of her actions.
I became a moderator to make sure everyone was on the level, whether they were a regular member, an admin, or the server owner herself.  She didn't like that I wouldn't fall in line, that I wouldn't stay quiet on it, and when I started to take it public, she made the decision to demod me.  I told Macs that I would wait until Friday to discuss all of this with the staff, but she forced my hand with demodding me, so here it is.  My hope is that you'll read this, look at the screenshots, and realize that the person running this server is duplicitous, a liar, and has very little respect for the other people that help run the server.  As she is owner, we cannot effect any meaningful change, but the public deserved to know what happened over the past few days with all of this, and to see what really happened with everything.

Rand