I have been thinking about this for a while and I have been sick for the past few days, now I feel somewhat better to make a post about it and share my frustrations.

As most of y'all already know, one day some account was made called FanspoTerrorist and left comments on people's posts saying stuff like he is here to end fanspo cause it is turning to filth and that someones follower or GM score accomplishment means nothing when he takes over the site. All of this looks similar to past events with fansponews67, WAZZUP, femiknowsball and theonlyeducated, and there might be more examples as well, but those are the more notable ones at the moment. It was obvious at the time it wasn't harmful, but more of a distraction on the site so I thought I figured out who it was based on what I saw as a massive giveaway and I took that and made a post trying to water down the flame, I was wrong and it only made it stronger. But after that, it soon turned from an unharmful gag to a violation on this site. It started with encouraging alt creation to harass other users, then trying to work out a peace treaty, and using the n word on this site freely. If you look at the NBA Zone Rules and then look at every comment and post and you will realize that he has already broke nearly every rule. During this time, maybe a day two or three, I decided I will contact a few mods and see if I can get a response from someone and at least review the situation. Out of the four people I contacted (and one other someone else contacted on my behalf), I only heard back from one of them who told me he does not have permissions to do so. I even left a comment to Invincible (purpleandgold) with proof of his n word usage and decided to delete the comment after a day and a half for a few reasons, a. I thought I can find an alternative who can review the account and handle it to his best ability with no complaints, b. He hasn't responded and the last time he appeared to be active was three months ago, and c. The past, the immaturity he shown for using a comment I made as the reason for no active moderation, so I decided that he will be my last resort.

The whole goal was to have someone review the situation and that was it, and kept trying and hoping to get a response from someone who would be able to. A few days, three weeks after I first started my search, a few of the discord members appeared and made remarks of the situation which I inevitably knew purpleandgold will appear and he did and was able to suspend FanspoTerrorist from s/general and post or two of his. Though I greatly appreciate him stepping in and taking care of the situation, it shouldn't have taken three weeks for someone do something about this. There isn't any excuse purpleandgold can use, he hasn't been on the site during this time and someone put one of FanspoTerrorist's posts on the discord and he had to check it out for himself, but I am not here attacking him cause in reality he did the best he can do when he first seen it. The issue stems from two key reasons shown.

The first issue is Zach. I have reached out to him multiple times via fanspo and email about various issues from the potential update of the NFL side to the ongoing bot issue on the site. I am not the only one who has reached out to him about these issues, multiple people has and it seems he only picks and chooses what to answer and it is usually about adding someone as a mod to their favorite team. There is no transparency, not a little heads up or gives us a little information on what is taking so long about the product roadmap or the NFL side updates. The app, GM simulator, and the MLB side has been on the product roadmap for as long as I can remember, and I remember seeing it back in 2022. I asked him about it previously where he did respond saying that they are still a go, but the resources and the app was the main priority. He told me that back in October. Then he updates the due dates back in February giving what is now false hope that they are coming soon, but when asked why it is taking so long that he has yet to answer that and instead the site has had some kind of malfunctions with a few days long shutdown of the trade machine and the mock draft simulator and then the mysterious deletion of CadeAndEm's account which he claimed was due to his new bot detection he is trying to implement, which does not appear to have been used since then as there are still plenty of bots and spam accounts on this site after that initial comment he made to Cade. In a whole, it is hard to blindly trust Zach when he promises something to be done by it's due date and take much longer than it really should. If he was transparent and upfront of what may be taking so long then we would give him some grace, but the fact the product roadmap has been taking over four years with no explaining on what is taking so long is the frustrating part.

The second part is the lack of active moderation. Here I go again about this issue and I know I am irritating some people about it, but I wouldn't be talking about it if it wasn't an issue and continues to still be an issue to this day. Like I said, we still have a massive bot and spam account issue and team spaces like s/jazz and s/celtics has been able to combat it as soon as possible, and same goes with s/general on the NFL side. But there isn't any active moderators on s/general on the NBA side. And then also look at the faux pas government accounts made that are more of a distraction on the site, and since there is not a dislike button anymore, those posts go all the way to the top because everyone has to comment and put their opinion on the matter on there. We shouldn't have to worry about having a very educated NBA trade, article, or post get overshadowed by an obvious troll account. Is it silencing? Not at all, that is still breaking the rules on fanspo which are both 2 and 5. No trolling and baiting and no harassment as, according to the rules, qualifies for a ban not just on s/general, but on the site in a whole. I didn't create the rules, the rules were created years ago, I am just trying to make sure they get enforced properly and it took three weeks for anything to happen. Not because nobody was aware of the situation, again Zach was informed from day one, but because no one with privileges reviewed it and willing to enforce anything until purpleandgold caught wind of it and reviewed it himself.

As I know this is a long post, I just want to thank purpleandgold for taking care of what you can despite our differences. I have spent these past three weeks trying to contact everyone I knew I could to that is listed as a moderator while also dealing with the start of college at my new university and handling new software systems (to think how different colleges are from each other lol) while also dealing with personal family issues and now some kind of strand of COVID, it's just been a whole lot and just thankful that we are getting near the end of this situation even though there is still more that needs to be addressed.