I found SM63 (Super Mario 63) and its Level Designer about three or four years ago and I fell in love with it. I played lots of portal levels before registering and I wanted to make a big name of myself in level designing business. This was my first joining of a freeforum, and in retroperspective
I have to say that I didn't have enough humility for that. I wanted to take this universe by assault, and I had to learn a lot of how to communicate properly. Bad thing is, this got me early punishments (for backseat moderating and complaining about unfair LDC scores, for example) and this brought me a bad reputation that some people, especially staff, wouldn't ever let go off - while some other people started seeing my friendly side and my strengths, and they are still my friends these days.
I both earned respect for becoming a good level designer and overall contributive member, but I also saw plenty examples of poor staffing and moderating policies. As time went on (with a few more conflicts and drama here and then), around August 2015 I also became active on the Runouw chat, and I wanted to become a staff member myself (level moderator, to be precise). There was a time when two level mods became inactive, and a replacement was called for, and I wanted that to happen. But I wasn't accepted. My past caught up with me.
This was the first time when serious arguings were stirred up, both around me not wanting to accept my hand, and talking about general grievances in terms of stagnancy of the site and poor maintenance by the staff, and it was them (mostly Raz, FrozenFire and Oranjui among a few others) reacting very toxically and aggressively. This tug-o-war was violently broken up by banning me for almost a month.
When I returned, I was welcomed back surprisingly friendly, and at first I wanted to let time pass before starting another attempt at a staff discussion, but just one week later, Star king retired, after he also made a significant influence on getting me banned by his behaviour. The same ordeal of me-vs-staff happened again, and before any further damage was done, I stepped back from the subject begrudgingly, this leaving a serious grudge against each other on both sides.
After two more months passed and after getting 3rd place in an LDC, winning a Runouw Votes Award for Best Level, and moving up to 14th place in the official SM63 Tier List, and the staff team being thinner than ever, I wanted to talk again. I approached the problems more directly, and after some extensive discussion of theirs, a compromise was found in February 2016, and I was hired on the lowest staff position, Site Representative (has the power to access staff forums and staff chat, and also can move and lock topics, but nothing more). But they set the tenor on this promotion being extraordinarily experimental. I aimed at it being more than that, though. I wanted to take my imaginations of good staffing into action.
I started efforts on better maintenance and pushed on various things, which seemed to become uncomfortable for the three I already named above, and also some others who didn't care about the site with as much passion as I have. My reputation as staff was also damaged when I've been played a godawful and villainous prank in the FoA (a lawless spamfest-subforum for veterans that I was only given access to because of becoming staff, never asked for it earlier and never will ask again), when I wanted to get official rehabilitation on the previous ban and I wanted to make them acknowledge the injustice.
Around early April, we had problems on getting an April Fools organized, and a permabanned member (PositronWildhawk) reregistered, wanted to be given a second chance. Because I already knew that there were crudities on his permaban (he's a sibling of another permabanned and very immature member (comparable to e.g. Bertie or suckhacker here) and mostly was banned because he failed to protect his account), and besides, it wasn't a malicious kind of rereg, he was asking for a way to send a former appeal via E-mail. I thought he should be given a second chance, despite he started posting in Forum Games with his new account. Others wanted him to stay banned, and I was lashed out both for my help for Pos and for my complaints about the way they treated him. These complaints eventually leveled up to general complains about their dishonorable and abrasive attitude in general, as well as their fault on being an egoistic clique and making the community stagnate, not caring about new members or even being wary towards them. I went so far that I asked to demote the two worst of them if they weren't willing to improve their behaviour.
You can guess the result. I was demoted myself. This didn't happen instantly, we kept discussing and vomiting words for a full five days. One more impartial moderator, nin10mode, was willing to give me another chance and allowed me to make an official statement. I did that and went on admitting flaws of mine as well. Yet many others - the three named above, as well as other clique friends of theirs - formed an overwelming majority that kept requesting my demotion. I was defended by Doram, an almost 40-year-old very wise and sophisticated but also sometimes rather blue-eyed and unpragmatic man, who had put big hopes in me, but he had to bow down to the pressure and carry out the demotion at the end.
The pain of this was a lot worse than the ban before. I thought I was finally on the right track and got over all of the bad days, and that everything would turn out well. But the bullish resistance of haughty, grumpy, irritable and hypocritical adolescents rendered everything void, and I also felt really sad for a couple of newer members who I became an idol for due to my passion for the community and due to my expert guidance for them.
Soon later, some veterans left the site, after they were only stickying around anyway because of their friends, not only because of games and events, and for some of them the continued drama around my person was the straw that broke the camel's back for them. Especially the resigning of nin10mode was saddening, and even more, I was blamed for it.
I didn't want to give up, I wouldn't have been happy with taking a step back. I kept fighting for a better future. For getting myself repromoted, and for getting the bad guys demoted. I was left alone. Doram had taken a week or two away from the site after the demotion, and when he returned, he was a different person. Relentless, merciless, hypocritical, cynical, blindfold, not ready to compromise. He tried trembling my voice, he didn't want to see my concerns and issues. He cast his lot with his "friends" Raz and everyone else who was responsible for my demotion, he called the demotion a "lesser of two evils", he called my goals a "horrible campaign", he didn't offer any kind of perspective for me. His worst sentence was "Another thing you have misunderstood about being staff is: It is not our job to make this place nice or happy or anything, just supporting it in the terms of general jobs of government", and "Stop trying to FORCE this world to be a better place". This attitude summed up the flaws, and what made the internal atmosphere so heated and unpleasant.
Around the same time, I heard that Raz was about to ban me out of pure spite, and only the intervention of Venexis, soon to be promoted to mod, saved my back. Ven is the light where there's only black, the one who stays calm and factual and productive even in the worst of situations. He's my biggest friend, he said that he didn't want to allow a ban if I wasn't heard out. After the demotion I kept PMing with Ven a lot, and that made people like Raz or OJ very upset, they wanted me to talk with them directly while they didn't show any willingness to discuss properly. In retroperspective it's not far to seek that they wanted a quick inducement for a ban. I was also told by them that "there would be zero chance for repromotion within a year".
Right after Doram's statement, I sent a final manifest, a final general accusation of flaws and shitty treatment, a final explanation of what was going wrong for all the time. Stating that there always was a massive split between new members and overpowering peers, stating that the staff had a very lacking attitude of taking care of the community, but almost only doing things in their common interest, as a closed clique. My message was "Get over your shadows, drop the hatred, make a peace agreement, I'm approachable. Make the injustice undone."
The worst thing is, I asked Doram for another talk, and he seemed willing for it. I sent him my words, and one hour later, the first thing I saw in the public chat was him pinging me a thousand times and eventually saying "well, this is a root point because I'm permabanning him. Shroom, for your constant spitting venom and negativity, and for lying to me and trying to manipulate me, I'm going to ban you for at least a year."
Venexis and a few others tried to step in, but they couldn't reach any more than reducing it to 3 months (until August 14th). I guess that I also was too naive to believe that I would be sufficiently protected by Ven in the worst of all cases, once everyone else was too deadset on it.
Did I have possibilities to act differently? Did I have the chance to not let this community be such a huge obsession of mine that I failed at in the end? In retroperspective this is always said so easily. Life hardly comes the way you imagine it. Many "mistakes" I've done wouldn't have been mistakes at all if there was just a slight bit of willing to listen and cooperate on the people I've mentioned - they're NOT utterly bad people, they're not just describable by what I listed, they could be good people in fact; the story I've told and written up within an hour doesn't nearly encompass everything that happened. You can easily say that if I could only turn back time, the situation would be completely different this day. Generally, the following holds: Both in real life or a "virtual" community, we sometimes see the most prudent and reasonable people go steps in everyday life that we'd have to shake the heads for.
Overall, the story ends like this: The reason that got me banned, is the same reason that made some people take me seriously and that made me an idol for some others.
Other than the previous ban on Runouw in late 2015, this repeated drama has also made me disillusioned, and I won't come back there like Phoenix out of the ashes. I'll just be there to keep talking about SM63 and level designing and participating at Forum Games or such, and as long as the staff there is the same and its attitude doesn't change, I can only wait for it to disappear or for everything to be closed down one day.
I am very sorry, Pivot40Channel, Enjl, RudeGuy... It was my fault, i was just very young..
I like to do levels, graphics (making and recoloring), and others. Beside SMBX, I also play Pokemon, Mario Hacks, Geometry Dash, Cytus, Rhythm Heaven, and other games that are related to platforming, RPG, rhythm, and strategy. I hate rushing, disturbing, and cleaning 
. And I have a little brother here in this forum, Tios Republic, which is always busy.