Our relationship is... complicated

I was given a year ban from the discord and social features of the site for supposed "constant developer harassment". The site motto is currently my only method of reaching the outside world, so I'm thankful that I have as much of a presence here as I do for you to be reading this.

I'm aware that I am very blunt and very stubborn. It's just how I am. These conversations are never personal, at least on my end. Simply disagreements on RA politics or set design - far from "harassment". A lot of the people I supposedly "harassed" are people I would consider friends, or at least are willing to be friendly towards. RA is a creative outlet to share pngs at the end of the day, taking anything personally is a mistake.

I wish I could truly love this website and sing its praises without putting a bunch of asterisks, but there's so much bullshit that it makes it hard to truly immerse myself and enjoy it. Not necessarily related to my current situation, but for a long time with each passing week it just felt like the site got worse and worse, staff making the worst possible decisions at every opportunity and going farther away from what I used to like about it. Occasionally there is hope the site will get better, making a good change or two, but it's quickly followed by 5 bad ones that just add more restrictions and more bureaucracy to the creative process. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to just sit back and take it while more and more of my rights get taken away from me. I've been contributing to this website for longer than most of the current staff have even been around, I deserve to have a voice. My voice is ignored but I can only hope that they can't ignore everyone.

A lot of the time it feels like no one really cares about the work I do for the site - that I'm replaceable and some new developer that's willing to comply will take my place. Given that the ability to do developer work for the site is the only right I'm given in most cases, clearly that's not the case. My contributions are valued enough that despite taking away everything else, you still want them from me. I'd be stupid to not quit in this situation, considering I'd be giving you exactly what you want - silenced, but still doing free labor. Unfortunately, I AM stupid, so I have asked for a site un-mute, which should give me back most of the tools I would need. Everything in my brain tells me to quit, but my heart does genuinely love the site deep down. It's probably just sunken cost fallacy, but it's really hard to leave when the place I've dedicated my life to is so close to perfection. I hope one day RA will get to a state where everyone can be happy - I have a feeling it'll be close even, but I also have my doubts it'll ever get there at all. Maybe I'll find an alternative creative outlet that doesn't actively want me gone. Only time will tell what the future holds.
hey just letting you know hotscrock is letting everyone know how youve failed on the portuguese channel cuz some people cant help themselves is what he said. people like him are whats wrong with the site. how can one person be on every single team responsible for ra? like if he has to act like one role but acts like another cuz he cant remember how one team is supposed to be and just mixes them all up theres a reason this isnt allowed in real jobs that arent shitty workplaces but i guess reddit mods dont really have a life he just says big long nothings to make it seem like hes better and smarter than he is dude literally doesnt even dev anymore just holds power and only devs to keep his status up. then you got sines and snow and fbern who treat people like ass on the forums and other devs see its okay and theyre all buds in the higher ups so they wont moderate each other.

like these people would be the politicians and ceos youd hate and probably even the ones they hate but i guess ra is okay cuz its just a hobby so its okay to be an asshole or whatever.

dont let those idiots bother you keep your head down just do what you gotta do or do what you wanna do. your sets are great having mastered a few myself and i hope you come back stronger than ever but if you dont come back at all nobody would blame you.
til pastebin has comments. I don't think everyone on the staff teams are inherently bad or anything, Wes and Jamiras are the two bright spots of this community that consistently make changes that actually improve the site and give people more freedom to do cool shit. It's mostly just a problem where everything's split into 10 different secret staff groups that control different things where only a handful of people are in the know. The recent subset change was a good step forward since now at least I can be in the room while they're discussing these things, hopefully we get more changes like this in the future.
Made a whole account just to say we do miss you Blaze, your presence is definitely missed and we await your hopefully triumphant return. Thank you for everything you've done for the site. And for the gamers. You truly are a legend.
I removed the link because I was pretty unfairly negative, but this is being passed around apparently, so hi.

Worth mentioning I never got any warnings before my ban, at least nothing obvious like an admin dm. I assumed whatever I was doing was fair game and no one really minded, since it was just usual ra politics.
I was treated the same way recently. I was on the play test team for about a year and contributed a lot to the process and to RA as a whole. I redesigned the play tester spreadsheets and that template is still in use by the team.

I also influenced how testing is done and did a lot of testing, spending well over 1,000 hours, during my time on the team. Some of the current features for site integration were also my ideas after talking with Wes. For many months, it was only myself and one other tester that were active and we were testing 3-4 sets at a time.

All that said, I was thrown off the team. Why? Because I asked the CR's and QA's why the rule that we can't show the dev the logic, or talk about it, when we break something. We can send save states, and the dev can see the exact same thing we see in the logic, but we can't cut the middle man out and just show it to them. Not tell them what's wrong in the logic, or how to fix the issue, just show and discuss.

The only answer I was given by anyone was "it's not your place". So, the actual reason is they don't have one and showing the logic makes them largely irrelevant. I guess they didn't like my question because it exposed that they have rules based on ego and nothing more. There's no logical and practical reason for it, only "because I said so".

A few weeks later, I was kicked from the team without warning or the courtesy of an explanation. I did eventually manage to make them give me a reason. What was that reason? "Insubordination and violation of the rules." The "tipping point" was because I stopped being as social as I normally am during the end of the set I was currently testing.

Why was I not as social? Because my health is very poor, I had some serious life issues I was tending to, and it made my mood poor. I wanted to finish testing the set since we were already three weeks into it. I wasn't rude at the end of testing, either. Just not as talkative.

I didn't violate any rules, I didn't argue or say I wouldn't follow the rules, or anything else of the sort. Actually, I specifically stated in the original discussion that I had no problems following the rules. I simply wanted to know why that specific rule exists.

The actual problem is I asked an honest question based in pure curiosity and they took it as an attack on their egos. How much I contributed to everything meant nothing. I wasn't given the courtesy of asking me for clarification or reason for my shift in mood. Just kicked without warning.

I'm sure it was Hotscrockofshit that did it. The bullshit message I was sent through the website, I replied with a long message about how they treated me with no real basis for doing so. Hotpocket replied to my response with his own lengthy message. I did reply to it, stating that I'm sure he thinks his opinion is important but I didn't ask for it and couldn't give two shits less about it. I still haven't read it, so I've no clue what it says.

His rebuttal was "that just further solidifies the decision to remove you from the team". That's why I'm pretty sure it was Hotcracker who did it.

Sorry they treated you the way they did but I can't say it surprises me. If you don't lick their assholes clean on command, they want you gone. The quality of everything has tanked since I joined last year and continues to do so.

They just want people to crap out generic, broken sets that have barely been tested by anyone, including the dev who made the set.

Being kicked from the team didn't bother me because the hobby started feeling less like a hobby and more like a chore. What irked my tits was how they did it. They didn't have the stones to talk to me before kicking me and gave a bullshit reason only after a QA, that I get along well, with made a big scene about it.

He told them that after all I've contributed over the last year, I was owed an explanation. He wasn't a part of the decision, so he didn't have an explanation for me, but he made sure I got one.

I was originally told that it wasn't permanent and I could reapply to the team in a couple months. I told them they can keep the role and I hope they choke on it.

I always wondered that too. When the playtester group was introduced the first thing I asked about was "why isn't the jr here? I would want to be able to talk to the playtester about my set after". I cannot tell you how happy I am that I never had to bother with jrs or any of that stuff. Ever since the beginning that entire program has just been a mess and it's only gotten worse over time - literally like 70% of the reason why I never just quit the site despite all signs saying I should (because I'd have to do it). Needing to communicate between like 5 different teams is what's really gonna kill the site. I can't even get admins or devcompliance to look at my messages unless I message one of them directly to get the vote going, imagine needing to actually work with them to get something done.
Not helped is the fact that these 5 different teams are just all the same people anyway. I finally got the message from RAdmin declining my site unmute today after 2 weeks (which I only got a response that fast because I messaged one of the admins directly through discord). The footer said the message was from DevCompliance, then they sent another message saying "Sorry, wrong template."
Hi, a fellow RetroAchievements player from Chile here.

This is something talked somewhat when there's a RetroAchievements thread on /vr/ because you can't say that on the site or the Discord server, but the worst part of the site is definitively the moderation doing whanever they want, breaking the rules they made and creating new ones out of nowhere just because they need an excuse to massage their own ego... Of a Discord Mod, out of all things.

First there is Bahamut kidnapping for whole 3 years some popular games, being a ironic m0ron incapable of speaking normaly without using his ego for having a fuck1n virtual power role in a niche Discord server and always using the "cease this conversation or 'the moderation' will ban you", and then coming next there's BenGhazi/FBernsomesh1t using CHEATS to test the achievements he makes, closing tickets without resolving bugs or literally impossible requirements saying it's doable/working (of course it's doable with cheats or tas YOU FUCK1N 1DI0T) and then also being a pain in the butt by always using his Discord Mod ego to say people are wrong, he's right and if someone says B when he says A then he also threaten people with a ban.

And then to me there are some moderators like Searo, Auburn, Suffa and LordAndrew who are more ghosts doing nothing other than reading some text without context from the "Discord Mods" and saying yes because why not? But at least they aren't Hotscrock, this absolut piece of garb4g3 of a two faces who says something to you and then relay something else completely different to whanever Team it is because at the end it's always the same Discord Moderators deciding everything by their own whim. And this is because i'm not taking it personal, because if i was then i would've to relay some information i got from my brazillian webfriend how Hots is an absolutely bad Discord Mod trying to make the portuguese/brazillian places of the site absolutely devoid of simple banter and fun because he wants to "sell a good image to the people who aren't from Brazil" to his fellow moderators team, which none of them seem to ever care about since like the others he uses the excuse of "the team decided X thing" when they take the decision solo and use a wall to protect their frail ego of a kid who didn't grow up inside.

I could go on talking more about some "protected users" like LadyAn4lKaren harrassing everyone for being a c8nt and going unpunished, or Infernum being the most obvious cheater of the site winning even against YamatoVergil on cheating and being unpunished for being of the "Power Discord Moderators" circle, but this text a.k.a rant is going too far so i just want to end it here giving some piece of my mind too and wishing you luck with your situation Blaze.
Unfortunately RetroAchievements is a great idea being managed by terrible people, and recently it looks like even evading the community part you're still affect by the principal thing which is achievements with bad designs, poor quality work, sets made by a template and devoid of challenging fun and also it's way worse if you play a moderator set because he can untracked/ban you without any way to reverse it.

Feels kinda bad for WCopeland and Jamiras who puts so much work not only into the site but the community itself for it to be ruined by a few assholes with a shit ego, but a simple user/developer can't do anything other than play games...