First, as someone who has just rejoined the moderation team in hopes of providing useful information as well as hoping to establish a comfortable  environment for everyone involved on this forum, I would like to point out perhaps needlessly, that reading every single post is absurdly impossible.  Topics spring up on here; some of them gradually grow over time, while others seem to flourish within hours, sometimes even minutes into flame wars that can easily be prevented with a bit of common sense on the side of the forumites involved.  As it is, I do believe that part of the issue we face is an age range one.  I haven't the slightest idea who the youngest member of this forum is, nor do I know who the oldest might be, and I don't care enough to find out even if it's possible to do so.  if you are a parent and have any children, you know that your relationship with them is different than any you have with adult friends, not just because they're your children, but because they are children, younger than you in every sense.  If you are a child, teenager and or even a young adult, your closest to those who are closest to you in age for the most part; exceptions exist.
Next, I feel the need to share something with all of you for the sake of transparency.  while Dark usually takes the final stance on any matter concerning the forum, whatever the matter in question may be, particularly if the situation has spiraled out of control owing to circumstances that are a little more intense than others, he does listen to the rest of us.  Moderation warnings are not to be handed out lightly.  While we could assume a take action and ask questions later stance on every situation that arises owing that reversing a ban on here is rather easy, we normally don't.  I think such a stance would actually be more destructive than helpful.  For the most part, he trusts our judgment, knowing that sentinels in this world are not infallible.  Mistakes are made; that's the long and short of it.  We always do our best to act as neutrally as possible and without bias, but we are human, which makes us, each and every single one of us, at least somewhat judgmental.
Finally, some of us have gotten rather busy recently.  while this is public information, it's also possible that some of you may not know owing to the fact that you don't read various topics, but Dark is in the process of getting married.  Not only are he and his soon-to-be wife carefully planning their wedding for the best experience, which in itself is a hectic enough task, but they are both from different countries, which makes it that much harder to coordinate.  Understanding the situation a little better since I was somewhat there myself not too long ago though not having it anywhere near as hard as he currently does, coupled with my belief in this site and its forum, I've returned and brought someone else with me.  We are currently in the process of watching various topics and believe me, the current redspot topic has not gone unnoticed.  While we are only two new moderators, we will do our absolute best to try and ease some of the discomfort and overall annoyance level I'm sure many are feeling.  We will be just as, if not possibly more involved in checking reports as they come in and will do our best to deal with them ASAP.  For now, I personally would like to ask anyone reading this topic and who might have felt offended by previous matters which may have seemed like nonsense, to be as patient as you can with the moderation panel.  This isn't me trying to apologize for anyone but simply stating it from my perspective, as I'm sure other moderators will more than likely do soon enough.  They are a great team and, I have no doubt, work to the best of their abilities.  Most of the database and most recent news articles have been singlehandedly written by Dark, with reports being checked into and read by Sebbi, with bans on spambots and other such unfortunates being taken care of by everyone else as they come.  We're here to help, and will be checking things out as much as possible.

Hi, well, i have been more active around here lately, so expect me to step in as well, and deal with situations like the recent blink wizard drama as effectively as i can. I'm sure between all of us, the drama will not be as frequent as it has been over the past few months or so. Remember we mods are human, and we can even make decisions that we later go back on because we are given new perspective, not because we are taking sides. I will personally look at any topic you want Sam, and take appropriate action if needed. So please try to relax and enjoy your time here. Play games, and keep up the great work on Redspot, i love that game dude, your doing a great job on it. We want you to feel welcome here, not put out in the cold just because drama pops up here and there.

As a moderator I'm also going to have to step in here and say that I've not encountered so much drama before, and it's taking a while to sort out the mess, or becoming even more difficult at times as it's just increasing. We don't want to just act and find out that we're wrong (and I mean very very wrong) and cause unrest. By the same token I realize that things have been sort of quiet lately for instance getting some stuff sorted and also the Steam situation, and it's because for me personally I want to deal with things quite delicately and definitely not rush into it.

Hi. Yes, I totally understand and am glad that everyone is trying to make the forum as good as possible. Of course I know you are just human and everyone makes mistakes. Also, I know that aprone is completely right about one thing, but slightly wrong on one stance. I got my self farther into the bad guys than I wanted to, maybe that just has to do with me trying to figure out everything I shouldn't even be touching. But weather it is a conversation I got randomly added into or something I saw in a chat or whatevs, these guys like blink wizard and others, they don't think there is going to be mod action. They don't make these choices because they think the mods are going to make a bad choice, they do it because they feel the rediculis need to proove that the moderation teem is terible. Do I agree? No, I don't, of course. I feel that there have been a fiew situations that even now I question aka walter, but i'd never do what they're doing. What they do lowers the forum morale, simply because they post this stuff then go around off the forum saying to everyone possible, hey, look what I did. The mods arn't doing anything. Again, I totally disagree with all this. I understand that you guys are actually propper humans who have both a life off of the internet and that you have to agree on things. However, harsh as this may sound they don't. They sleep, wake up, eat, then go right back to hacking one guy or another. I say this out of what i've scene, none of it is asumption, but so as to not start anything, I won't say anything more about that. One of everyones biggest problems right now, why these people are getting away with it, why the walter situation started everything, was because of how walter was just boom! gone. No one quite knows what he did. Then, when the ultrapower clones and all these other flame wars started, and nothing happened, people thought they could get away with what ever, and then started trying to get the inisent people banned, to ruin there reputation as walters was ruined. Like I said, I understand that dark has is reasons for doing what he did, and the mod reasons for not being able to do something, but asdly this changes nothing from the actual users. The more mature people will realise you have stuff going on, but even to them, even to me before I actually read your guyses posts, the one sentence, walter was banned with out a reason and these people are geting a way free, oh, red flag, bad moderation! That's what everyone thinks instantly. That's why everyone wants the walter proof so badly. Speaking of which dark, if it's ok with you, I may contact you privately about the matter. Again though, I feel as if personally I get it, your busy and have to agree on things, dark has his reasons for banning walter and the busyness stopps the action on these guys trying to ruin the forum, but I hope you understand ware i'm coming from in terms of what i've heard from the general comunity. before I can do what I always do and repeat my self, based on what I've heard so far from you guys and others I can't think of anything else to say right now. At least, I think a topic should be created in a room that's a bit more public to tell people your side of what's going on. Problem is, that could start a lot of stuff if it isn't put out there in just the right way.

With the Walter situation.
That is the one instance when, in nearly 9 years of moderation, I have actually felt there was a legitimate, real, and physical threat to members of the community. This extended rather beyond Walter's behaviour on Survive the wild into other things he's done. no, normally we would not intervine on such a matter, but the case was so extreme that members were reporting to me they did not feel safe on the forum.

Yes, all the evidence and the several testimonies I recieved  could! have been falsified, but the corroboration by different people was what convinced me and I had to act in the judgement of what I felt was best for the community in that case, knowing indeed that it would! make me unpopular.
I will also say that it disappoints me that people are so quick to assume that lying has occurred and blame the victims. I cannot and will not ask anyone involved to publicize the information regarding Walter's behaviour, but with attitudes as they are from some quarters it's not too surprising that they choose to do things in confidence, and I'd be a pretty cruddy moderator if I went and broke that confidence.

As to the trouble making, I will say another problem is that I have likely been less involved with the forum recently than I could be due to basicaly getting married and changing a lot of circumstances in my life. I can no longer spend several hours a day reading the forum, checking many topics and dealing with things on the spot. This is also why I encourage people to use the report link when people like Blink wizard cause issues regarding hacks etc, since the moderators are not omnipresent, and the more we know about drama trolls and such, the more likely action is to be taken, since while as others have said we like to take things easy for the most part and hope people will calm down, a point is reached when enough is enough and if posts are reported it's likely certain people will reach that point sooner than later, or at least see that point approaching and hopefully clean up their act.

I'll also say that I've noticed that certain people have a habbit of wanting to cause trouble for the sake of causing trouble, and as part of that will also try and  aggrandise themselves by exasserbating the size of the trouble they actualy caused.
In truth I'd say %95 of the topics on the board are still drama free, and generally the hacks and drama only occur with a specificset of individuals, indeed the drama as I said above seems to occur in individuals of! that set, so while I take these points very seriously and will be keepin a watch on reports (as much as I can), I equally don't think we need to be sounding the claxons for defcon one quite yet.

Ishan, although you said that you only want to hear from Dark, I think that I must disagree with two of the things that you said in your post. Firstly, Laurie was not receiving sympathy just because of her femininity, but because she was being threatened and abused, and that is something that Dark chose not to tolerate. Secondly, Colton's depression is not a "drama" but actually quite serious. Depression is a very severe mental health issue and it should be treated as such. I would find it very difficult to believe that Colton would joke about such a thing on a public forum.

Colton's depression is something I will not discuss here because it is a very personal and serious matter that extends far beyond his involvement in game development. Laurie did post accusations against Walter on audiogames.net, and several other people also posted accusations against Walter. From what I can see of the below-referenced topic, Walter liked to threaten females who he thought would not be able to defend themselves. You even posted on this topic, and I find your remarks there to be as blunt and insulting as your comments in post 12 here. Dark even explained there that "lori has been a long standing member of the community and I'm quite aware she doesn't accuse people of this out of the blue, indeed I encouraged her to speak out about this precisely so that others will be better able to keep themselves safe." The topic is at http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?id=18320.

I'm confused. What was Laurie doing that you were a victim of?