Clarification on 12_Kelvin's Crash 3 Run

So, this "situation," I guess for lack of a better term, got more attention than it should have. True to Twitter fashion, it was an easily fixable solution that got blown out of proportion.

I was not directly involved in the situation. I'm not here to point fingers or say "he said this, she said that," etc. I'm here to present all of the information that is completely factual. I'm a proponent of the truth, rather than drama that may or may not be truth.

This is the exact timeline of what happened:

*Kelvin submitted an Any% (No IG) to the Crash 3 leaderboard. This was a blind run that broke three rules: 1) It did not start on the title screen, 2) It did not specify what emulator was being used, 3) It ended timing early. The last of these three rule breaks is easily fixable with a re-time. The other two, not so much.

*PeteThePlayer, a Crash mod, rejected the run. While there were grounds to reject the run for the reasons above, he instead simply left a message that said, "not a speedrun".

*Kelvin, understandably upset with the rejection reason, took to Twitter to complain about it. This caught the attention of Mohaf, who then reached out to him to figure out what was wrong with the run. After figuring it all out, he then got into contact with Tebt, who took the appropriate steps to get Kelvin's run accepted and verified.

*Pete was then confronted in the mod channel of the Crash server. Regardless of the intentions he may have had with his comment, "not a speedrun" is never a good reason to reject a run (unless it was like, quite literally, not a playthrough of the game or something, but that's beside the point). Several mods pointed this out and asked him why he rejected it. Pete acknowledged that he shouldn't have and said he would fix it, not knowing that Tebt had already taken care of it.

Those are the facts. The problem was addressed and resolved. This is where it should have ended. Unfortunately, it was only after the fact when Kelvin's tweet started gaining traction. Suddenly, I was seeing comments all over the place that skewed things out of proportion; comments on how it was only fixed "after the fact," or how this caused a negative view of the entire Crash community, and even some debates on whether or not it was justified.

Now that I've said all that, let me weigh in a bit on this with my thoughts:

*Regardless of what he meant to say, Pete's rejection message was undeniably wrong. No one is denying that. "Not a speedrun" is a terrible reason to reject a run; if it's a full playthrough of the game in a single sitting, it's a speedrun. If Pete meant to reject it on the grounds of the actual rules that were broken, he should have stated as such in the rejection message.

*While the rejection message was bad, the rejection itself was justified due to the rules that were broken that couldn't easily be fixed (the VoD not starting on the title screen, the emulator used not being stated). The fact that Mohaf and Tebt went above and beyond to fix these errors so Kelvin's run could be accepted speaks a lot about their character.

*The fact that a large number of members of the Crash community, rather than sweeping the issue under the rug, actually resolved to fix it and apologize to Kelvin for what happened, is very commendable.

*Pete does not need to be removed as a moderator for Crash just because of this one mistake. Yes, it was a very bad mistake, but I know Pete, and he is not a mean or evil person, and I highly doubt he did this with malicious intent. It was just a bad judgment call from someone who otherwise does a fine job as a Crash moderator. If this was a repeat offense, then sure, but I personally believe that one bad slip up does not mandate that the person in question needs to remove themselves from the equation (speaking from experience; I would have been gone last year if that was the case).

*Perpetuating the idea that this one error is a fault of the Crash community as a whole, or all of the community mods, is horribly misguided and wrong. This was one mistake from one moderator that was resolved very quickly thanks to the efforts of everyone else that got involved. Throwing the entire Crash community under the bus, as I had seen some people due, is horribly misguided and sheds a bad light on the community that several of us have actively tried to improve for years (and in my opinion have successfully made many strides in doing).

That is really all I have to say on the matter. Again, I am not pointing fingers or putting blame on anyone. I think at this point we all know what went wrong and what could have been done better. I am sorry that Kelvin's first experience submitting a Crash run was an unfortunately sour one, but I hope the fact that we tried to resolve this as quickly as we can does not permanently deter him from continuing to run the game if it maintains his interest. Judging by a tweet he made while I was in the process of writing all this, it seems that Pete reached out to him and gave a formal apology to him, so hopefully we can put this all in the past.

I hope this cleared everything up for those who weren't sure what exactly was going on.

~Riko