Xantam

Server-Clearing Cynic
Contributor
All,

This is a suggestion thread to remove @Jermaphobe from staff. I have tagged him knowing he'll see this anyway but also so he can try and reply, justify or explain himself. I know this thread will have to be heard by @Bottiger and the end result for removal is highly unlikely but the issues that are presented in this thread cannot simply be ignored.

There are no formal guidelines, forums or forms for staff complaints. I feel there should be, legitimate cases of admin abuse or admin misconduct, or even admin error, should be raised so we can better ourselves. TF2 is a dying breed and if Skial wants to be the best (let's face it, we're definitely in the top rankings!) we need proper channels to deal with staff issues. So for now, a suggestion thread will have to suffice.

I'll be as detailed and thorough as I can in this suggestion/report because obviously I have a personal desired result which I feel would only be a benefit to the team and the community. Others may have a different desired outcome which is fine.

I'll split this into a few sections. The sections being how I and others perceive J's behaviour, his attitude, how he deals with things, how he speaks to people and his overall performance. I don't imagine this will be a large section.
The second section will be the evidence of misconduct and errors I and others have noticed so far which have lead me to make this thread.

I became an admin here in Feb 2019, a year ago this month. Jerma became an admin shortly after in April 2019, I had never worked with him as a mapper or contributor but I have seen and watched him as a staff member, an admin, for his entire "career" here in Skial. I've had ups and downs with J, more downs than anything. I am a very easy going guy, I try to get on with most people, but I am also very critical and try to not only point out issues, but solutions. I have found time and time again while observing Jerma handle reports, appeals, discord public channels and even speaking on the servers, to be extremely hostile to the community and even to other staff.

As an example of this, let's do a quick search for his name.
https://stats.skial.com/#summary/chat/All/Jerma
Which brings up immediately the following which catches my eye;
DEATH RUN | US ████ 02/02/2020 - 03:16:54 AM Milk [Overlord] Jermaphobe : Nah, Milk's dumbass can remain muted
I could go on, there are literally pages of this. I am an admin and I punish for some small things people don't like sometimes but yet I am still liked amongst the players. I have banned @Sir Trooper and yet he still likes me and talks to me regularly, it's the same with others. I don't know how he manages to do it but Jerma seems to manage to upset everyone he comes into contact with through his superiority-god-complex or just his rudeness or attitude.

We have these posts here where Jerma was quite abrasive or rude for no apparent reason;
https://www.skial.com/posts/786843/ - this is a rust app. We're trying to staff it, not make people think we're rude staff. If I were to reply, I'd have probably said "Sorry for the delay, things take time in Skial" and fluffed it up a bit more.
https://www.skial.com/threads/appeal-nightwing3000.85568/ - while the appeal was denied rightfully so, I just don't see the need to speak to players in this kind of manner, I have denied appeals as other staff have and it's been the end of it after a decent explanation.
I don't want to continue dragging these up as I feel this thread is going to go on forever.

I have done some recon work around Skial and gathered a few bits of feedback. I have spoken to 5 active staff at random and asked for their thoughts, every single one of them agreed with my position and my feelings. I am obviously not going to name these staff as I am not going to start a conspiracy - this thread is mine and off my own back but they are free to feedback if they want, though I doubt they will.
I have spoken to over 10 players, most of which have had no direct dealings with Jerma, all of which agreed with me except 1 who valued his activity over his issues for some reason, despite recognising he had major issues. Again, I could survey the entire community but I don't want to start a witch hunt or conspiracy, I am just here to relay facts.

I am a TF2 admin. I have expressed an interest in fixing up the skial forums for the community to make them all appealing and productive but have never asked for any ranks. In my time here, Jerma has managed to secure TF2 Admin, Rust Admin, forum mod, has been asking for forum admin for months and has begged for discord admin which he finally got last night, citing there were no discord admins online, despite Biggie and Toxik being online and responding. I questioned this for the reasons I stated and got met with ignorance and this;
MKbvfXE.png

The "salty" emoji. He changed that after I asked why he was promoted to discord admin. This is a prime example of his attitude towards his staff colleagues.

A thread was made at some time in 2019 suggesting Jerma step down or resign. I believe it had something to do with @Kaleido and bloop. Obviously this did not happen but that thread seems to have disappeared? No staff have the ability to delete threads. No staff except forum mods, which Jerma is for some reason, did Jerma delete his own complaint thread?

I've never gotten shit in all my time as an admin because I don't suck
To quote a wise, wise man...

I'll move on to the misconduct now as I have ranted on enough I think about his demeanour.
I am not saying everyone should adopt my stance and my methods when it comes to administrating the community but I personally maintain a standard where I only ban when I am 100% certain they are breaking the rules. Not 99%, 100% always. If this means a hacker gets off for a few more hours while staff review a demo of mine, so be it. I'd rather not have an innocent player removed from Skial because of a "hunch", they could be potential future donors or even future staff, which I'd drive away by wrongfully punishing them, not to mention I'd have to apologise after... ugh.

That being said, there are cases cropping up more regular than I'd like which show an absolutely careless and reckless attitude to handing out punishments to our players, some of them being regulars. I am not going to rip apart Jermas ban or silence list because I don't have the time and I am not that sad but the ones I have handy speak enough for themselves.

https://www.skial.com/threads/appeal-viper.85012/
In this thread a player was banned and a demo was produced. A player even said this in the appeal which speaks volumes about Jermas attitude:
"Jerma's next line will be: You were caught cheating, you will not be unbaned" - this comment was removed for violating the unban thread policy. The thread from start to finish lasted an astonishing 7 days. It took 3 days for Jerma to reply despite being on the forums daily and being tagged on day 1. I had to personally review the evidence my self which Jerma had reviewed and recorded and I saw no hacks at all, not even remotely, not 1%. The player was then unbanned on the 7th day. For 7 days, a player was unable to play on a community he had accumulated nearly 1000 hours on, for a ban that should never have been applied, and an appeal that should have been handled 6 days prior to the date it was finalised.

https://www.skial.com/sourcebans/index.php?p=banlist&advType=ip&advSearch=199.8.13.248
I am unsure what the deal with this is, I just stumbled across it by accident in honesty, but again, it shows a player being permanently banned on the 30/09/2019 - I can't see a removal date unfortunately so I dread to think how long it was in place for, but the unban reason is "lack of evidence", yet another dusty f-up of hasty banning without reason.

https://www.skial.com/sourcebans/index.php?p=banlist&advSearch=[U:1:905061841]&advType=steamid
This thread probably upset me the most out of them all for reasons below. This player appealed his permanent ban for hacking, Jerma responded on the same day (thank god..) explaining he'll remain banned while other staff review the demo. It seems that other staff did review the demo and it was discovered the player was indeed innocent as his ban was lifted. But, the part that upsets me is, rather than admit he was wrong and apologise for the inconvenience to a loyal player, the thread was simply just marked as "resolved". This is a regular pattern with Jerma, he refuses to acknowledge when he is wrong, never truly apologises and gets very defensive about any time he is challenged.

https://www.skial.com/threads/appeal-♦•general•hawka•♦.85672/
This thread being the most recent. I have played probably over hundreds of hours on DR with Hawka and he plays some god awful music, not to my taste. I initiate votemutes on him all the time, when they fail (as they do 99% of the time), I use !ignore.
"Whether music over voice chat is spam will be left to a server vote. However music is NOT allowed on trade servers." - I follow this to the letter.
!ignore exists for everyone on all skial servers, you do not have to listen to anyone you don't want and you can ignore them and unignore them on a whim. The fact that Hawka was not votemuted tells me 2 things; 1, people liked it enough to not try it to begin with (as they usually do like it, honestly), and 2, Jerma didn't follow the server rules, ignored the players on there who may have been listening (as they usually do) and silenced him for a week for music.
I confronted Jerma on the appeal thread and got no response.
I questioned Jerma in our private staff discord channel #Admin and got no response until I piled a bit of pressure on for a reply. It took hours, despite him being active and handling other reports and talking to other people, Jerma ignored my request for information to why he silenced a donor, a regular and someone ultimately who did nothing wrong. The reply I got was... odd. To prevent leaks from our staff chat I will not be putting publically the chatlogs but all staff can see them on demand. The bottom line was jerma told me he did it by accident. When I questioned further, Jerma said he was playing music loudly (not against the rules) and that Jerma joined the server where a vote to mute another player was already ongoing and passed, which Hawka began playing music again after. I again quizzed further and asked why he didn't put it to a server vote as per the rules, the reply I got was "lmfao, I don't keep track of my punishments".
To put it bluntly. Jerma silenced Hawka for a week for playing music which is not against the servers rules, forced Hawka to appeal and forced him to apologise and agree to server rules he never broke before un-silencing him.

https://www.skial.com/sourcebans/index.php?p=banlist&searchText=Billymays&Submit=
I don't know much about this situation but the unban reason, from permanent ban, speaks volumes about Jermas ability to admin, once again being too hasty, too harsh and too incompetent to actually detect hacks. Jerma issued an over the top punishment without thinking or being 100% certain, keeping a regular off the servers, once other staff verified the proof was insufficient, Jerma issued the unban with reason: "The others "think" he isn't cheating" - despite being told by a few staff, failure to admit fault.

As I said, I am not going to rip his bans and silences apart further, but I dread to think how many more there are.

It is at this point that I am quite... disgusted? to work with such a person who cannot take criticism, who handles cases so harshly and speaks to the community as a whole (players and staff alike) like shit, except for bottiger who he begs for more power from. Jermas only goal seems to be getting more power. I reitterate that to date, he has garnered the ranks of TF2 admin, Rust admin, forum mod (which no other TF2 admin has), asking for forum admin and begged until he got discord admin.

I know that this thread will likely not be responded to by staff as they would rather remain impartial, but I am sick of this being ignored and swept under the carpet. I have messaged Bottiger a few times with my concerns to be brushed off. I feel this my last resort to put my case forward and maybe get some external support for this.

Thank you for reading my life story :).

DISCLAIMER:
It's long.
There is no TL;DR.
I probably missed stuff. No, I definitely missed stuff.
 

THE Milk

Scarcely Lethal Noob
There is no misinformation coming from me. I admit all my faults and wrongdoings. That is one thing Jerma can not do.
Based off of my chat logs I am your average skial deathrun player. I do nothing but reciprocate the energy of the players there. If you looked at ANY chat logs from active death run players you would see the same thing, if not considerably worse things, because that is the type of player deathrun attracts.
Allow me to be more descriptive and explain my extensive mutes. I am frequent on the mic and often times people votemute me which is fine, because that means the general consensus of the server at the time is that they wish to not hear me. My actual mutes are from much more than just that.
My interactions with Jerma have been nothing but negative. The first time I ever had any sort of interaction with him, there was a joke !votereport made by Prismo on Titus. I guess 2 people didnt realize it was a joke and also typed votereport in chat, since apparently thats all it takes to report someone and call an admin into the server. I do admit my use of the n word, but not a hard r, and i was not bullying anyone or using it negatively, only expressing my displeasure with people griefing on the two dissapearing platforms somewhat later in the map of dr_valve_hq. Jermaphobe shows up in the server and bans titus for falling into the first trap. The first trap. He said he was "exploiting" and "chilling out of bounds avoiding motivator and griefing". It's the first trap. It's a 50/50 bridge that if you fail the motivator of Gabe Newell dances over you and kills you. That immediately triggered most of the people on the server and we realized a lot of skial admins dont even play the maps theyre administrating, furthering the disconnect between the members of the moderation team and the playerbase. Once he realized his mistake, he immediately unbanned titus. He did not apologize until titus told him to. He left me and prismo muted for both of our offenses, but was incredibly toxic about it. Hence "Jermaphobe : Nah, milks dumbass can remain muted".

I have had one other interaction with him. One day while playing on dr_trollrun, there was a child on the mic. He could have been anywhere from 6 to 11 years old. His voice was obviously jarring, and his mic was cheap and awful. I then told him to be quiet, and that no one wanted to hear his squeaker voice. Instead of realizing his childish incoherent rambling at 120 db wasnt fun for anyone but himself, he attempts to get me votemuted. And vote banned. Neither of which work. Which only serves to frustrate him. He then makes a report on the skial forums saying i threatened to kill him, his family, and the admins, which i found hilarious the fact that he could have thought of that. He also linked the wrong profile in his initial report. But here is what got me banned. NOT the actions against this child no. The child had gone into my skial chat history to find some dirt on me, anything he could get me banned for just because he didnt like that i told him to shut up. He found a chat of mine from an actual week before then. I do admit my fault. My fault that was something I did long before and had nothing to do with the situation. My fault that allowed me to get muted for a week by a child. Since then i have been very tame in comparison and have learned my lesson. But again what angers me is jermas attitude in handling things. Jerma was rude and abrasive to all the people responding to defend me, because everyone realized the variables in the situtaion and served to only further the disconnect with the admins even more.

I think hes an egotistical person who is also oblivious to everyone but himself while being extremely closed minded about everything he does. I think he takes administration on this dying video game way too seriously. When confronted with criticism he holds his hands to his ears and closes his eyes like a child. Jermaphobe is one of the main reasons I have become disconnected with one of my favorite servers to play on in my favorite game. And many other people feel the same as well.
Hence why there is even anyone is OSGS at all. It was a joke that i started while muted to communicate with my skial deathrun friends, and it ended up being an anti-skial circlejerk. I can admit that. Can you admit that this thread is ignoring actual critisism or will you continue the admin "im right" circlejerk?
If anything I am not neccisarily a proponent to have Jermaphobe removed as admin. Only for something to change. Only for there to checks and balances with other admins and more communication, or a change of attitude. I made an account just to respond to this thread. Your bias is showing.
 

Truetiming

Sufficiently Lethal Scout
Contributor
Go find someone with only one punishment on their record that genuinely looks like they have a case in the matter of removing Jerma.
I mean, this entire thread was started by an admin who works alongside Jerma, and according to Xantam 8 other admins agreed with his post including a few who posted in this thread. But that's a good point, I'm sure with the amount of cases Jerma handled you're gonna get some salty people who just have a grudge against anyone that punishes them fairly or otherwise.
 

Metroidz

Australian Skial God
Contributor
No bias. Just making sure there's balance amongst all the kids and trolls.

Again, I'd like to see someone here that has viable proof without long records of punishment.

Or that isn't in a skial bashing group.

I'll be waiting.
 
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White Moose

Positively Inhumane Poster
Well if the matter is settled in order to prevent further issues with the community and staff members, wouldn't it be great to explicitly list what staff members can do and not do.
Like miranda rights for the players. Explicitly stating how admins should behave and proceed would clear up most of the issues present here. By also stating what players are subject to the staff member would also clear up misunderstandings.
It would also dissuade false abuse posts that clutter the forums as the player could be directed to that staff procedure page. A page like that would take work, and I can also see how the staff members would like the freedom to handle their reports without binding regulations.
 

THE Milk

Scarcely Lethal Noob
No bias. Just making sure there's balance amongst all the kids and trolls.

Again, I'd like to see someone here that has viable proof without long records of punishment.

Or that isn't in a skial bashing group.

I'll be waiting.
So instead of listening to my argument, you ignore all of it just because of my character? Can you not even see your responses like this are the reason this disconnect exists in the first place, besides you commiting every logical fallacy known to man? I am not a kid, nor a troll. I am a human being expressing my dissatisfaction with the standards and practices of my favorite server, and am happily enjoying the opportunity to express that dissatisfaction.

Well if the matter is settled in order to prevent further issues with the community and staff members, wouldn't it be great to explicitly list what staff members can do and not do.
Like miranda rights for the players. Explicitly stating how admins should behave and proceed would clear up most of the issues present here. By also stating what players are subject to the staff member would also clear up misunderstandings.
It would also dissuade false abuse posts that clutter the forums as the player could be directed to that staff procedure page. A page like that would take work, and I can also see how the staff members would like the freedom to handle their reports without binding regulations.
A fantastic idea, which is what should be being proposed, a healthy discussion.

I mean, this entire thread was started by an admin who works alongside Jerma, and according to Xantam 8 other admins agreed with his post including a few who posted in this thread. But that's a good point, I'm sure with the amount of cases Jerma handled you're gonna get some salty people who just have a grudge against anyone that punishes them fairly or otherwise.
:neutral:
 

Metroidz

Australian Skial God
Contributor
Also and if the major case of your post is that Jermaphobe is "rude" that's understandable, but just be rude back. Call Jerma a cunt-faced ass-licking fuckboi for all I care.

As far as I know there isn't a rule against being rude or shit-talking an admin. Fuck I was an admin elsewhere and was super nice and lenient and still got flamed and bashed.

One dude told me that he hoped that if I do have kids that I drop dead of a heart attack on my daughter's wedding day. And then she lives the rest of her life with severe depression.

Told him "cool story bro" and let it roll. If I would have punished him because he hurt my feely feels it would have been admin abuse. We didn't have a rule against being toxic.
 
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THE Milk

Scarcely Lethal Noob
That's not me. That's a funny picture I found on the internet that i thought would make a funny steam profile picture.

If people on the internet were actually the people in their profile pic, I guess in real life you would be the kid from Zombies ate my Neighbors.
 

Metroidz

Australian Skial God
Contributor
That's not me. That's a funny picture I found on the internet that i thought would make a funny steam profile picture.

If people on the internet were actually the people in their profile pic, I guess in real life you would be the kid from Zombies ate my Neighbors.

Yep
 

Metroidz

Australian Skial God
Contributor
I'll probably stfu and stay out of this now. I just don't want to see people taken to the gallows by people butthurt they keep getting caught and punished. Unless they should be.

I'd be saying the same thing if this was Xantham on the chopping block too.

Stay cool Skial, y'all the best for a reason.
 
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Crash.ca

Wicked Nasty Engineer
Contributor
Just curious, Xantham, shouldnt this be an "in house" issue though? something discussed amongst you as admins, if you feel someone is becoming to "power monger" for their position, like just from what i've seen with this post its almost a witch hunt, those who dont like Jerm are here bashing him and those who like him are here praising him, but honestly this is something that ( in my opinion) shouldnt be a community vote. Reason i say this is that he was brought on to work with you and the rest of the admin team, and the public really has no bearing on that final say, that's up to Bottiger and you all ( admins), I know just from reading alot of the posts, you have your opinions on the matter and a couple other admin see it differently, but opening this up to public scrutiny wont gain anything other than to let the trolls get their dick wet.
 

Bottiger

Administrator
Just curious, Xantham, shouldnt this be an "in house" issue though? something discussed amongst you as admins,.

He already discussed it in private channels. He didn't get the reaction he wanted (immediate removal), so he took it public expecting the public to force me to do it.
 

Metroidz

Australian Skial God
Contributor
Just curious, Xantham, shouldnt this be an "in house" issue though? something discussed amongst you as admins, if you feel someone is becoming to "power monger" for their position, like just from what i've seen with this post its almost a witch hunt, those who dont like Jerm are here bashing him and those who like him are here praising him, but honestly this is something that ( in my opinion) shouldnt be a community vote. Reason i say this is that he was brought on to work with you and the rest of the admin team, and the public really has no bearing on that final say, that's up to Bottiger and you all ( admins), I know just from reading alot of the posts, you have your opinions on the matter and a couple other admin see it differently, but opening this up to public scrutiny wont gain anything other than to let the trolls get their dick wet.

^ this guy knows a thing or two about trolls
 

Truetiming

Sufficiently Lethal Scout
Contributor
He already discussed it in private channels. He didn't get the reaction he wanted (immediate removal), so he took it public expecting the public to force me to do it.

It's almost like people assume I haven't tried to talk to him. There have been many instances where I have asked Jerma something about one of his punishments or his dealings, I get met with a very defensive toxic attitude, or just outright ignorance. If I can't resolve something with the user, I usually escalate it, which is what I did yesterday. I messaged Bottiger my concerns and got brushed off.

He clearly said that when he did bring it up in the private channels, he was met with toxicity or just ignored completely. I'm just guessing, but the reaction he wanted wasn't immediate removal, but just a legitimate, open conversation regarding Jerma.
 
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Chance

Australian Skial God
Contributor
He clearly said that when he did bring it up in the private channels, he was met with toxicity or just ignored completely. I'm just guessing, but the reaction he wanted wasn't immediate removal, but just a legitimate, open conversation regarding Jerma.
he shouldn't have named this thread "remove jermaphobe from staff" if that wasn't the reaction he wanted
 

Truetiming

Sufficiently Lethal Scout
Contributor
he shouldn't have named this thread "remove jermaphobe from staff" if that wasn't the reaction he wanted
I should have clarified, i meant the initial reaction he wanted when he brought it up in private channels.
 

Metroidz

Australian Skial God
Contributor
He clearly said that when he did bring it up in the private channels, he was met with toxicity or just ignored completely. I'm just guessing, but the reaction he wanted wasn't immediate removal, but just a legitimate, open conversation regarding Jerma.

To be fair to you and Xantham the first few pages seem to be legitimate posts.
 

Gamer4605

Banned
That's not me. That's a funny picture I found on the internet that i thought would make a funny steam profile picture.

If people on the internet were actually the people in their profile pic, I guess in real life you would be the kid from Zombies ate my Neighbors.
Me too