Let's say the accusations against Evilore are NOT true, here's where he went wrong
Evilore's mistake isn't that he was accused of the acts in question or even that he denies them. To be fair, we don't know what happened and there's a 50/50 chance he's telling the truth. Either way, it's an ugly thing to accuse someone of, and it's an even uglier thing to have happened if it did in fact happen.
However, this thread is not about that. This thread is assuming that Evilore is innocent as far as the sexual assault is concerned. And I'm not saying that's what I personally believe, (it's not), I'm just assuming that for the sake of argument within this post.
Rather, his mistake was he did not communicate with the NeoGAF community properly, left his mods out to dry without releasing a statement for days, and had too much of a strangle-hold on moderating the forum and determining its discourse over the years which led to a lot of resentment... especially since he profited so much from it.
Whenever you have 1 person in a position of power that relies upon the contributions of many for him to maintain that power, you have the potential for a revolt the moment that any appearance of impropriety emerges about that 1 person. NeoGAF was a sole proprietorship (as far as I know) but Evilore was clearly not the reason why this place was so great. Instead, it was the posters like you and me who created tons of great OTs, shared breaking news. created crazy gifs, and had each other's backs that made NeoGAF what it is. In other words, even though its content was generated democratically, its leader acted like a dictator. No one else could do anything that contradicted him. He acted above criticism and banned those who laid into him hard within these forums
However, as I insinuated before, this community is about us, not him.
Ultimately, we are the reason why it was so great. We generated the content in massive numbers and kept things moving and fun.
And because this forum is great because of us and not him, when Evilore was accused of the sexual assault in question, he had a duty to take the spotlight off himself, either by stepping down, apologizing (if he is in fact guilty of doing this thing), or by donating funds generated by NeoGAF traffic to a worthy cause related to sexual assault victims. When he did not do any of these things, he made us all look bad by association and tamished what we love about this place. He is not an adequate spokesperson for our values.
His response, instead, was basically: "That bitch was crazy. No more OT My bad regarding the mods Talk about games only. Carry on or I'll ban you if you accuse me of shit."
And, quite frankly, that is not an adequate response. Nor was it timely And if he bans me as a result of this civil explanation as to what I deem his mistakes were, well, then it only proves my point that he thinks the forum is about him and that he is above criticism. And make no mistake - he is not. No one is.
In fact, locking/closing all the threads on Friday/Saturday that consisted of people wanting answers was probably the biggest mistake in the history of NeoGAF. If he allowed the criticisms to flow and responded humbly, then this community would still be strong In other words, the cover up on this forum was far worse than the underlying sexual accusations. Today, everyone who posts here about games is choosing to bury their head in the sand and ignore the elephant in the room. The community could have come out stronger in the end if we DID NOT talk about games for a few days and instead made the focus about investigating these actions and airing our grievances about them. Rather than dictating how we move forward in a sticky, he should have asked us in a thread - how CAN we move forward?
In other words, he should have deferred to us as to the best way to handle it because again, who is this community about? (Yep, us).
Yet, he did not do that. He assumed the same role that he always has, and made a decision about our community without input from the community. He is still projecting the same proud dictator image today that he always has. He is not humble even in a moment when he should be (and likely is) feeling incredible shame. And when someone is that out of touch, I completely understand vvhy so many people do not want to contribute to his wealth. I also understand why so many people want to very publicly insult him and ask for bans in protest.
Furthermore, by silencing most of the discussion about the underlying accusations anci talking about games, Evilore, and most of the gamers here, miss the point and don't understand what made the forums great for so many people. NeoGAF no longer feels like a place of truly honest discourse. It's an inauthentic brand going forward and will never be the same until the gaming discussion falls by the wayside for a bit so that the seriousness of the allegations can acknowledged by the entire GAF community. So, Evilore should not have gotten rid of OT and only kept gaming (as he did yesterday). Instead he should have done the opposite - focus on the OT section and create a discussion thread on how we can move forward as a community. He should have participated in the discussion humbly and allowed people to criticize him instead of what he did via the sticky at the top of thread list.
Yes, he can deny accusations. But he should have not denied accusations and closed off discussions. That was a tremendous error. And saying "I was slow and weak. I failed to handle it quickly enough and let the team down " is not a worthy apology and will never satisfy the major contributors to this community. That "slowness" and "weakness" is why he does not deserve to be a spokesperson for this forum any longer, and also why I will not be posting here in the future.
But keep on solely talking about videogames guys. That's not awkward or anything.
And Evilore, if you ban me today, you're beyo. help dude. And you're fighting a battle you cannot vAn. Take a moment to realize what NeoGAF was for so many of us, and then re- read your official statement and ask yourself honestly: "Did I do enough? Is this acceptable?" Because I think you know deep down in your heart what the answer is.
And remember, all this assumes the allegations are false. I could say more of what I really think is happening and who Evilore really is, but I decided to keep it civil on what he clearly deems to be his own turf.
