I wanted to address the community around lizardinlaw, and actions I’ve taken as the business entity of E2 to remove them from the platform. My day to day work here tends to stay out of content matters, individual issues, and I focus on the things even a smaller number of people can do: the business and technical health of the site. However, as the operator of the business, it is ultimately my responsibility for community health.
Over the last few months, we’ve had a very healthy debate around the role and place of moderation practice, content policy, and community guidelines. We have some tools and structures in place but they certainly could use a fresh coat of paint and holistic re-look. During those conversations many of the examples around bad behavior centered around one individual. After taking a long look through the history of moderation, interviewing staff, and long history of volunteers working with them it was clear there were patterns of behavior that were largely toxic to the health of the overall community. We don't have enough in place codifying what our expectations were and what our promises to each other should be in order to keep a community healthy.
Lizardinlaw had spent a decade as a contributor, and communication during that time made it clear that discussions around behavior were not going to be fruitful and the best thing was to simply part ways. Though their actions did not explicitly violate currently codified community guidelines, I made the business decision to separate them from the platform, including alternate accounts. Their writeups as well as many others are getting a relook as a part of a recommitment to low-reputation pruning but the site removal was not due to content standards, content legality, or any quality concerns. We take copyright very seriously here, and they have been provided a copy of all of their data, and we will remove any content from publication that they desire, separated or not.
While this decision was made in consultation with the staff, it was my decision, and any concerns can skip them and come directly to me.
This was not an easy decision nor one that I made lightly. It highlighted that we needed to apply that coat of paint to community guidelines sooner, and it is something that we are going to address in the upcoming months. The longterm health of this community is my priority, it is incredibly important that we don’t lose track of that.
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Jay