This is going to talk about RVLution among other things.

I'm not going to pretend I have been perfect. But as imperfect as I may have been, the issues are different and more complex than they say. It's easier to paint me as the mean immature asshole causing all the trouble, but I believe both sides are at fault.


I have been running Kuribo64 for 4 years now. The regulars there are happy with the way it's run, or atleast, I get no major complaints. But this hasn't been all nice either.

Most of Kuribo64's original userbase was the SMG2.5 team. At the time, most of these users constantly argued and caused drama instead of, you know, taking their project somewhere. I moderated strictly to get all the drama under control. Maybe too strictly. Some of the issues could have been solved without banning people. Regardless, there had to be some strictness-- Glem3 did no moderation at all, the drama drove the good members away and only kept the troublesome members in SMG2.5. As much as I hate to say this... it's one of the reasons why SMG2.5 was doomed before I got into it.

I had always wanted to release SMG2.5, we'd have been Newer's cousin. But you know how that went. The other reason SMG2.5 died was the overly ambitious goal-- 49 fully custom galaxies, when after 3 years they couldn't even complete one, and whatever was produced for the trailers was trashed. At that rate, SMG2.5 would have been completed in the era Avatar is set in.

Well, whatever. I'm drifting away from what I wanted to say.

When you admin a board, you get tricky cases to deal with. The complete idiots who get banned quick are the type of users most people think of, but it's the easiest to deal with. Even when they try to come back, keeping them out of the board is easy.

Worse are some cases, like that of Skelux at Kuribo64, or ray at NSMBHD. When a user who looks like a good person, contributing cool stuff, turns bad and needs to be banned, users are going to question the ban. You will have to reassure them that it's not an arbitrary decision. At NSMBHD I ended up writing a big post to explain why ray was banned.

And even then, some users are going to assume the ban was completely arbitrary, and refuse to listen to anything. They proceed to agitate other users, trying to convince them that the admin is going apeshit and that they need to be heroes leading an internet revolution. You can ban those users (and hey, they deserve it), but they have ways to contact people outside of your control, and the ban will serve to feed their drama machine. Dealing with the drama they can cause is no fun.

It's even worse having to deal with that shit when you're cooperating with other moderators and administrators, like was the case at RVLution.


Anyway, my first time with RVLution was when I was hired as a moderator to help run the board. I moderated strictly, and god did it surprise some people after years of nearly inexistant moderation. Can't really blame the other staff there, they were caught into Newer-- it was probably more fun than dealing with idiots.

Things went mostly fine. I eventually helped Treeki transition the board to Blargboard, because we hated phpBB. I spent a lot of effort getting Blargboard clean and somewhat standardized, from being "Kuribo64's heavily customized ABXD fork". I still regret it.

Things were cool. Although the 'ban ban ban' syndrome was there too-- as a moderator, my actions were limited to deleting posts and threads and banning people. I didn't have much leverage to enforce the rules besides that.

But I eventually got sick of it. As Blargboard was made public, soon enough RVLution mostly stopped producing NSMBW hacks, and spent all its time and energy producing Blargboard derpboards that created nothing but constant drama. Then there were things like having to clean up spam attacks from trolls like Nolan North. We eventually found out who Nolan North was, and that was the shit topping on the shit cake. I resigned and left RVLution with a big rant directed at the community.


This is where the history of bad staff decisions begins. You will notice a fun pattern: almost every time I was involved in RVLution drama, a stupid staff decision was involved too.


At some point later, megazig administrated the board. There are many things megazig is good at. Administration isn't one of them.

megazig did things like closing registrations with a completely unhelpful 'try again later' message, or running the board like North Korea. People got banned for the dumbest things, like following a link to an admin-only page -- because it obviously means they tried to destroy the board. I want to highlight this part of RVLution's history because, despite megazig being one of the worst admins you can get, it didn't generate nearly as much drama as what I got into.

Eventually, megazig 'resigned'. He just stopped caring and let the board rot, without telling anyone anything.


Later on, I came back to RVLution's IRC channel. Despite having resigned, I was still an op there, because nobody cared to demote me.

RoadrunnerWMC decided that it was a bad thing, and that he should demote me despite not having the authority or access to do it properly.

Since it was a mere /mode -o , leaving and rejoining got around it. I banned RoadrunnerWMC mainly to send a "don't fuck with me" message and to avoid getting into a silly /mode -o war. Which was quickly followed by him revenge-banning me from another channel. I did nothing there, but okay. Whatever floats your boat.

Eventually, we talked in private, unbanned eachother, and it was solved. Or so I thought. I later learnt that he was conspiring against me in the board's staff forum. I confronted him in the IRC, he denied, I banned him. I ended up banning other people. In retrospect, it wasn't the best way to deal with the situation.

The real gold was when they decided to preemptively ban me from the board, while I had done nothing there. Way to go! Either way, couldn't do much as registrations were closed.

It eventually solved itself. I later got access to the staff thread RoadrunnerWMC had made, and it reminded me of what kids say when they run to the authority after bothering you. Not only did he make up bullshit like "he needs to stop acting like he owns the internet" to make me look like the villain, he conveniently forgot to mention what started the incident in the first place-- him attempting to demote me. He turned his post in a way that made it look like the ban he got was entirely gratuitous.

As that was solved, I figured RoadrunnerWMC learnt to stay within his authority. Spoiler: he didn't.


There was another incident that happened later, but I was mostly responsible. I came back to the board mostly to troll it -- for example, running an 'admin election'. It was a lighthearted way to point at a very real issue: the lack of caring admins. But regardless, my attitude was very "let's troll the board for the sake of it". I eventually got into an argument with LifeMushroom and we were both banned for one week. I caused drama about it, reregistering to contest the ban and attack the staff. But in all honesty, I deserved a ban anyway, trolling the board alone was pretty much asking for it.

At some point during the admin election thread, I also got into an argument with Zementblock, but it doesn't matter. Although we can learn from it that just because someone is good at what the community is into, doesn't mean they'll make a good admin. We also learn that a surprising amount of people think otherwise, even after Zementblock goes out of his way to basically prove he would be a terrible admin.


Anyway, the incident above eventually led to a new installment of RVLution. I was hired as an administrator, along with MrRean, RoadrunnerWMC and Grop. The old moderators were kept to complete the staff.

As things went on, I progressively lost faith in RVLution III. I cared less, and didn't hesitate to do things that were silly in retrospect. Like 'disabling' the profile comments on my profile with CSS, and setting up an automatic ban for whoever tried to circumvent it.

As for the other staff, while MrRean did okay, the other staff members pretty much did their own thing with zero communication-- or more than often, did nothing. It felt like I was the only one who still tried to take the board somewhere. When we were initially supposed to be an 'elite four' team, it took its toll.

The new game hacking scenes we tried to introduce, NSMBU and NSMB2, were eventually moved to separate boards, respectively RHCafe and Kuribo64.

Something I have done here and there was extracting comedy out of some banned users' idiocy. It makes for a good laugh (who hasn't seen GreggGlem's emails?), and public humiliation can be used as a weapon against some persistent lamers (not always efficient, some only care about leaving their stain). In the past, Jul often used it against me when I was an idiot and tried to come back or attack them. I didn't really enjoy it. I guess that's why I have been replicating that behavior.

It was enjoyable when it was GreggGlem. It didn't work nearly as well when I tried using it against some people I'd ban after an argument-- what was an attempt at publicly tearing down their dumb logic came out as bullying more than anything else. It's one of the things that didn't help my reputation, especially when I was already one of the most controversial admins you can get. In an analogy to French politics, I would be akin to Nicolas Sarkozy-- always involved in shady affairs :P

Anyway, this fed a group of complainers. Group whose most active members were LifeMushroom and AidanLumina, eventually both banned (LifeMushroom was banned before; AidanLumina got banned for repeatedly causing drama because she couldn't take criticism that didn't go her way). Surprise.

While I was at fault for the aforementioned bullying, the complainers eventually picked up any damn thing I would say or do, completely discard the context and try using it against me.

The 'big clarifications thread' was a thread I had opened in an attempt at staff transparency and calming things down by giving users a chance to get clarifications on certain events (like 'why is X banned'). Obviously, it devolved into the place to complain about anything I did and implicitly demand an apology. I never wanted to apologize, I felt that doing so would basically be telling them "ok I am weak and you have carte blanche to use me to run the board by proxy".

I got sick of it. Why should I strive to get up to their standards when a) they don't hesitate to circlejerk against me and agitate other users, and b) they don't follow what they demand, gladly shitting on others' boards for example?

I closed the thread.

Obviously, they went crazy. OMG! The evil overlord is silencing us!

We overreacted and took the whole thing too seriously. Groups of complaining lamers shouldn't be more than a minor nuisance. But as I said, dealing with that kind of drama is no fun.

We? Yeah. Remember when I said RoadrunnerWMC didn't learn? This is where he comes into play.

I overreacted and started banning the complainers, with a "don't like it? fuck off" type announcement.

RoadrunnerWMC figured that the best way to deal with this would be to stage a coup d'état with a couple other staff members, namely Grop "I give up but I'm still around" and Kinnay the local moderator of nothing.

Once this was acted, he proceeded to backstab me, basically demoting me to normal user. Once again, someone went out of the scope of their authority-- you get fired by your boss, not by your colleague. Coming from Treeki or Aaron, the demotion would have been seen as such, but coming from RoadrunnerWMC or any other admin, it was only a big joke. It was pretty much a wild west thing-- I could have as well kicked the other admins out and seized the board, if I really wanted to be an ass.

(fun fact: if you bring this event up to the current staff, they brush it off as "oh but StapleButter was being an asshole so what we did is fine")

The real gold was when RoadrunnerWMC expected me to silently accept it.

I had a few hidden backdoor accounts, which I had placed because I knew something like this would happen. This should have been a warning sign for me though-- the idea of a team falls apart when you don't trust your teammates. I should have humbly resigned at that point or even before.

Anyway, I proceeded to use the backdoors to get back at RoadrunnerWMC, making the staff forum public, messing with the permissions, mixing some forums, and generally causing trouble. Feel free to consider it immature. I consider it a fair retaliation.

The board going down was an unintended side effect of this, but it was the pinnacle of this event.

It took this much for Aaron (the server owner) to get out from under his rock, it says a lot. The board was fixed, RoadrunnerWMC got SSH access, MrRean who had given up (demoting himself, then asking for secret admin permissions, then eventually doing nothing) suddenly came back at the sight of server access.


The board, well, went back to its previous state. With nearly no administration, some lamers running rampant. Some people started making threads to point out the board's state.

Of course, they mentioned that I was no longer an admin. Feeling that the remaining staff would reply with their vision of the story, I posted mine. The staff used "oh noes the crybaby StapleButter is whining for power" as a shield.

Me, whining for power?

Ahahahahahahahahahahaha...

Okay, let me get this straight.

You seriously think that after all the events, I would want to hop in the RVLution staff clown car again?

You seriously think that I would want to fool myself into believing that board can be taken anywhere?


Eventually, Zementblock was promoted to an administrator, and started censoring any discussions about the staff or the board under the pretext that it caused drama.

(oh hey. Did I ever say Zementblock would be a bad admin? Yes. Did they ever listen? No. Am I surprised? Not at all.)

Anyway, he made an announcement telling people not to make threads, and gave me a warning.

I complied. I posted in existing threads, but I didn't make threads.

He then proceeded to stealth ban me by revoking my posting rights. I made another account to call him out about that shameful practice. You guess how it went.

It was eventually replaced with an actual ban, reason 'Goodbye' which really reads 'Zementblock is raging hard'. I swear, at some point he spent a few hours constantly watching the board.

More accounts were made to call him out, call out the whole staff clown car, and generally be an asshole. At a certain point, it was merely fun to make him rage.

Zementblock was eventually called out by the staff, and ended up banning himself.

My ban was undone. Only for them to ban me again out of the blue a while later.

skawo: oh hey, some idiot told me it would be safer if we banned you 'for the time being', so I carried it out without thinking and without specifying a reason or telling you anything. have fun.

(actual words weren't that, mind you, but the spirit is basically that)

Either way, this is how the staff clown car goes. As they were called out for applying a ban without a reason, they later made one up by taking all my actions out of their context and compiling them into a giant "StapleButter is the most despicable person you can get" reason. It doesn't matter that every incident occured from a stupid decision on their part, I clearly am an evil asshole and my actions are a perfect excuse to trash me further and further while forgetting all the effort I have poured into the board.


I don't even care anymore, beyond the occasional fun to poke at them. I don't want to be an admin or even be unbanned. The board already shows it's in a terrible state-- most of the announcements were posted by a banned user, that sure gives a good image. In the staff forum, the thread ratio of me vs. others is similar, too.

The history of RVLution is remarkably similar to that of board2.


The morale of this is that the RVLution story is more complex than "the staff is right and StapleButter is an immature twat" as some people love to recite. I believe all of us were at fault.


I generally want to avoid getting into important positions anymore. It's like politics, it's full of drama. It's much more relaxing to just hang out with a friendly group of regulars. Only reason why I like having power is that it's convenient-- I can smack idiots myself. :P