A Disclosure Regarding Privacy and Recent Events

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It was brought to the attention of the head admin team that the chat logs admins have access to on the Nerd.nu Minecraft server were accessed by Barlimore in a fashion inconsistent with what users would expect. Chat is logged on our server along with connection attempts and actions in game to assist in enforce the rules set out at http://nerd.nu/rules.

 

Admins have access to chat logs that contain all messages sent in-game, and as a result are expected to adhere to a standard of behavior that protects users’ privacy whenever possible. However, upon investigation the head admin team discovered that there had been a pattern of incidents where these standards of behavior were not upheld by Barlimore and searches were made without good reason or in a way that was inappropriate. We have compiled a timeline of the searches in question and the surrounding investigation which you can view here.

 

During our investigation we also uncovered a pattern of hostile and manipulative behavior by the padmin team, particularly Barlimore, to other admins, staff, and players. Many of the people we talked with shared similar stories. Most preferred to remain anonymous. However, both Zomise and ieuweh cited behavior from the padmins, and Barlimore in particular, as their main reason for leaving their positions on staff.

 

Following this investigation, Barlimore is no longer on staff at Nerd.nu. Silversunset and Sir_Didymus did not agree with the conclusion of this investigation and have stepped down in solidarity with Barlimore. Any users who we believe to have been affected by these searches will be contacted shortly by a member of the head admin team. We take our users’ privacy very seriously and any violations or inappropriate use of staff powers will be investigated and addressed. We will also be creating an official privacy policy for Nerd services, an early draft of which will be available in the upcoming weeks. We welcome and encourage your feedback on the policy when it is provided.

 

We also recognize that these actions do not undo the contributions made by the former padmin team and we appreciate the work they have put into the community in the past. Their farewell post was made in good faith and with the intent that it would facilitate our community moving past these issues and we would like to thank them for that. This post is made in the spirit of transparency with the hope that being forthcoming about what has happened is best for the long term health of Nerd.nu.