Hello,
Action against @The Mayor was taken due to a reported and verified leak.
It is administrative policy to take all leaks very seriously, which means that the policy is to immediately demote, pending an investigation. This is outlined pretty clearly in the rules, which have been quoted many times already.
The reasoning for this should be obvious to any member of this community, but I'll clarify it here. First it's important to understand why we have a tiered community in the first place. It facilitates a merit-based progression as evaluated by your peers, which in turn leads to incentivizing participation and contribution across the board. This community has stood it its current form for over 8 years now, and this system has been proven to be effective. This tiered structure also leads to a large number of natural benefits, including managing the release of scripts and debates and discussions to a smaller, provably skilled subset of the population, which in turn creates a positive feedback loop that continually improves the community, giving back to the rest of the community through the promotion of contributions of public scripts and updates to SRL, Simba, SMART, and the rest of the community efforts.
Leaks undermine this positive flow, the trust of fellow members, and threaten the very foundation of this forum. Leaks can occur in many forms, for many reasons, and can have many side effects. These can take the form of leaking or stealing scripts for fun or profit, leaking the details of application or promotion deliberations, leaking operational details from the staff, leaking personal information that members felt comfortable sharing at a higher forum level, but not with the general member base, and many other types of leaks. In the past, members of all ranks have been demoted back to member for many forms of leaking; from Developers to Admins to Members to Mods, everyone has been held to the same standard, and treated in kind.
In this context, it should be easy to see why we take leaks seriously, and act swiftly to stop them, via immediate demotion, especially when the details are not immediately clear. After this immediate action comes the chance for the user to appeal and explain the details of what happened. What we look for are there things: motivation, magnitude, and damage. Please know that while the rule talks about the appeal as something a member has to do, the staff also conduct their own investigation into the details and specifics in order to figure out what steps to take to mitigate the impact and to prevent similar leaks from happening in the future. Final actions are the result of this investigation, including any input from the member via an appeal process, and can range from the demotion sticking, to ban, or other penalties as the staff see fit. If the leak is found to not be the result of a malicious motivation, to be isolated, and to have not caused any damage, it is possible that the member is reinstated with a warning and an understanding that this type of behavior is not acceptable and further infractions will be treated with a greater severity.
We would also like to reiterate SRL Leader WT-Fakawi's point: That being said, let's return to The Mayor.
It is prudent to acknowledge, for the good of the community, that the situation was poorly handled in general. While it is normal practice for confirmed leaks to result in an immediate demote pending further investigation, other action taken against The Mayor, including removing his developer status and github access, was neither properly thought out nor properly considered in the heat of the moment. Given The Mayor's numerous contributions over the years a lighter touch would have been more appropriate. While the past cannot be changed, we should strive for a better future.
After evaluating the situation and taking into consideration The Mayor's motivation for leaking, the magnitude of the leak, and the damage caused by the leak, as well as communicating with him and other affected parties, we have concluded that the leak was not intended to be malicious, that it was an isolated incident, and that the damage caused was limited and repaired. In light of this, The Mayor will be reinstated to his full position before the incident. The remainder of this incident will be handled between The Mayor and the staff in a private setting.
- SRL Management