January Controversies

The January Controversies were a series of discussions regarding the validity of the Technician role and subsequent allegations of grooming on January 9, 2022.

Background

Given Sleepy’s work regarding bots on 852 Resurgence along with her administrative excellence in the Hongkongggag Study Server, flutters opted to promote her to Moderator, advocating the decision since December 23, 2020.

Sleepy's work includes three bots: 852Confessions Bot, Anti-Nitro Scam, and Study Buddy.

Card0 responded on the same day staing Sleep’s ineligibility for the position, along with concerns about her maturity due to her young age compared to the rest of the Staff team.

History

Technician Validity Disputes

On January 9, 2022, Card0 suggested the implementation of Technicians as a new staff role for managing technical aspects of the community. The proposal was met with opposition from flutters, who expressed their discontent for the role and claimed that it was purposefully created to attribute Sleepy for her efforts without giving her an official promotion to Moderator. Under the assumption that Sleepy would be promoted to Moderator out of popular vote by the community in five days, flutters believed that the role was gratuitous and accused Card0 of inflexibly abiding by the server's rules.

In response, Card0 added that Technicians were intended to include members with an aptitude in handling technical aspects of the community, bringing up Tolmo's work on refining and polishing the wiki, and friedchilli's eligibility for hosting the Minecraft server of the Tsz Kong Political Simulator.

After the issue was brought up publicly, Tolmo argued against the introduction of Technicians, claiming that the implementation was unnecessary as, given his perceived enormity of the staff team, the community does not need an increase in management. Tolmo believed that all current staff members should be able to work with bots, regardless of whether they were custom-made or not, and argued that higher-ranking members of staff should have technical knowledge as a basic requisite.

The argument died down after Tolmo stopped responding, ending without a clear-cut consensus.

Grooming allegations

During the discussion, allegations of flutters grooming Sleepy were brought up by Senpaii, whose stance was supported by SKully, claiming that flutters treated Sleepy preferentially despite a lack of definitive evidence.

This aroused a wave of disagreement from other members, splitting the discussion into two sides. On one side, members such as Sage and Sleepy argued against the accusations, saying that flutters had not participated in sexual grooming; on the other side, there were members who claimed that flutters had an inherent bias towards Sleepy. saying that flutters favoured her by giving special attention. This side included Senpaii, SKully and ImMcNutty.

Sage added that "urging someone to be modded doesn't make them biased or a groomer it just means they want someone to be mod" and sleepy argued that "i dont care what you say in private but don't accuse someone of something this serious in public especially when you have barely anything to back it up."

Card0 then went for dinner while flutters tried to calm the chat down with sleepy trying to convince flutters to stop talking to Senpaii and SKully as they aren't worth flutters' time.

With no solid evidence that flutters was grooming, sleepy added that "If you truly believe flutters is a groomer, please provide concrete evidence and take it to the police. This is a very serious accusation, so take it seriously then if you're intent of pressing charges."

flutters then put ImMcNutty, SKully and senpaii in timeout. Later on, Joel was put on timeout due to being an alt of one of the three members. Senpaii would later be banned for a week under the old warning system as well as Joel.

SKully would leave on the same day as the two sanctions while some of McNutty's other friends would follow suit soon afterwards.

Aftermath

Sleepy was promoted to the first Technician shortly after the vote passed on technicians. Later on, flutters pressured Card0 to have Technicians hired rather than chosen via popular vote.

On January 22, 2022, Tolmo was promoted as a Technician and was re-added as part of the staff team. Allegedly, Card0 claimed that he wanted some discussion among staff before a final decision on whether Tolmo should be promoted or not, but flutters had gone ahead and promoted him anyways.

McNutty reacted negatively to Senpaii's week long ban to which Card0 and Tolmo fired back alongside Andi. Furthermore, this marked the last time ImMcNutty would be engaged in a community issue, as he would later become inactive afterwards.