We'd like to draw your attention to something that has been resolved today. We're doing this in the spirit of transparency and to ensure that we aren't being misrepresented behind the scenes.
Today, when checking a review to ensure that a poison being used in a thread was approved, we found out that the PC Malcolm had edited all of his posts to say the following:
Malcolm wrote: "I have deleted all my writing in protest of Pegasus STEALING my hard work, lore and stories. All work posted by Kingdom is MY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY. Stop abusing it!"
This is referring (we believe) to Kingdom's work in Blackbrine and Rynmere. The player behind Kingdom / Malcolm has returned to the site to demand that Blackbrine is taken down, as she claims it as her own. This is a public domain site. When you post something - it is still yours, but it also belongs to the site. Our Terms of Use are clear. When you post as a player or a moderator, you are adding to the continuing story of everyone on the site, be that in a large manner or small.
Link to ToU
Specifically:
Terms Of Use wrote:By using the site, you share the writing you post with the community and all contributions to Standing Trials, both IC and OOC are Public Domain. Should you later use your material in a different context, that does not give you rights over what is posted here and we can not be charged with copyright, nor can you demand we remove the work.
To be clear, Kingdom, during her time on the site, was incredibly hard working and produced a lot of lore. We are - as has been said many times - very grateful to her for that. As we are to all past moderators and anyone who has contributed. We have worked very hard to ensure that the work of any moderator who leaves is adhered to. Yet, there is a simple truth. Idalos is a changing, growing world. New rules happen, new events occur. We are in a dynamic, changing environment and, whilst previous work is the foundation, we can not ignore the rules for one person, nor would we. The situation on October 6th occurred because Kingdom / Malcolm did not want Malcolm to be made into an NPC as a Mortalborn. Despite that being a rule that she had written, endorsed, and enforced on a number of occasions for high impact MB whose player leaves the site and also despite the fact that he had not been used as an NPC - we would not do that unless the situation absolutely necessitated it. The rule is there as an emergency measure only.
Rather than discuss it, she deleted all her posts. This included reviews, plots, and guest moderated threads. This is not acceptable behaviour. Therefore, we have restored all posts. We could have taken the incredibly long time it would take to go through and only restore posts which impact other players in our collaborative site. Going through and editing over 1,100 posts must have taken her a very long time. We didn't do that, because frankly we have better things to do with our time.
Therefore, all of Malcolm's posts have been restored. If anything further comes from this or there are complaints and grumblings behind the scenes - then please feel free to speak to Basilisk - he was the equivalent of a TL (Narrator) when Kingdom joined the site, was one of the first members, and is very aware of the very much
other side of her behaviour. This site is a collaborative writing site where
adults come to write. People over the age of 13. This kind of behaviour is beneath anyone of that age or above, and we're not having it. So, for those who were involved in the Qe'dreki rebellion, for the Warrick plotlines, the stories with
existing pc's and the recipients of many reviews (even the ones which were contested because they were obviously bullying and, when appealed, were deemed as such) - things are back to normal.
For anyone who was expecting / had been promised anything from myself, Squirrel, Basilisk, or Pig Boy today - I'm really sorry. This ridiculous situation has taken all day to sort. Thank goodness for site backups, eh?
Thanks.
=Peg=