On 7/7/26, Fishish posted an inappropriate meme in 19cord while acting as a member of moderation. After the incident was brought to the Disciplinary team, both of Fishish's captains agreed that they should be removed from both teams (Discord Moderation & Internet Outreach) and demoted from staff. Fishish resigned and will not return to staff without administrative review.

torcsandantlers

After reviewing the feedback from staff members here, the Disciplinary Team has determined that the consensus of staff is:

• A one month ban.
• Removal from staff.
• A blacklist of an indeterminate length. Please see this thread for voting on this point.

A PM has been sent.

First thing I want to say is that it's clear to me from having talked with Fishish at the time that he felt shame and remorse from his actions. If allowed to continue on with no repercussions I believe that Fishish would not do this, or anything like it, again.

However, that would be exceedingly preferential treatment.

Fishish used an alt account to become a member of the wiki and post a work, that's against the rules. If Fishish were a new user, rather than a staff member they would certainly receive a ban of some duration for this.

Before discussing any consequences in terms of staff position I feel we should ask ourselves what the consequences would be if Fishish were not a staff, and not a community member many are fond of, but instead a total stranger, and we should enforce those. And this goes for the entirety of these offenses, but primarily the alt account.

People are talking about a ban of one month. I believe this is more lenient than we could give a non-staff stranger, but given I believe this whole series of events to have been done without malice, and ultimately to have perpetrated very little harm, I concur with one month.

—

Now insofar as staff membership. I feel that by his actions Fishish has lost a lot of trust as a staff member.

I can understand wanting to seek anonymous crit, I can understand wanting to post anonymously. To my understanding Fishish did these things due to a feeling of receiving praise for his work that he would not were he a new author. The Crit Team seem to be of the opinion that this wasted time and resources and so permanently banned him from Crit spaces, I can't really speak to that, I'm a bit conflicted on the severity of it personally, though I agree that behavior must have consequences.

But when confronted privately about these things by me, one of his captains, he lied about the details. Claimed it was a different username. After looking into the username and finding nothing, I confronted him again and was told the actual username, and that he had lied, concerned that he'd receive a lengthy ban.

You don't want to see that out of a staff member.

I like Fishish, he's done good work on the Discord Team, I don't believe there was truly any malice in what he did, and I'd like to think he wouldn't do it again.

But I've lost trust in him as a staff member, and I don't think I'm the only one. He shouldn't be staff right now.
I'd advocate for removal from staff, indefinite blacklist, but with appeal

Disc perspective:

I mention that I wrote this thread, because there's been some issue with the use of the word "harassment". We use a special definition of harassment here on the wiki - when it applies to the actions covered by AHT, but harassment has a definition and a use that describes the behaviors documented here. When choosing that word I referenced two definitions.

The first was the dictionary definition: "aggressive pressure or intimidation". What Fishish did was absolutely aggressive pressure, and I don't know that there's any reading of the events where it can be seen as non-aggressive. Intimidation is a little less clear here; I see it - especially in the structuring of the messages, but that's interpretable.

The second was an HR version: usually phrased along the lines of "Harassment is any type of unwanted behavior, including physical contact and verbal abuse that causes emotional distress to the harassed." Fishish's behavior here clearly caused emotional distress. It could be argued that the first few messages weren't intentionally doing that, but continuing after distress was evident puts us firmly in the bounds of harassment.

Changing the goalposts on what "harassment" means in interpersonal interaction is at best meaningless and at worst actively harmful. It is the correct word to use here.

As for the actual recommended disciplinary action, I think that what is recommended in the post is the absolute minimum. I think that the minimum is what Disc should be suggesting.

As far as removal from staff - I just don't believe that we can have a healthy staff body if staffers are afraid of this type of interaction - even a small amount of this kind of fear is unacceptable. To me there's no healthy recourse except for Fishish to be removed from staff, but I didn't include a blacklist suggestion. I didn't make that suggestion, because to me it should be decided through staff's general comfort level on Fishish returning. (Looking back, I didn't express that in disc-sensitive; I should have. That's why I'm speaking of it as my decision here.) Yes, that does open it up to the possibility that a Captain could immediately bring Fishish back onto staff; I think that would be reckless and would call that Captain's judgement into question. But if staff as a whole was comfortable with not blacklisting Fishish, then so be it. Personally, I think we should blacklist; I just don't think that this is a situation where Disc should suggest it.

The suggestion for a one month ban for sockpuppeting is probably light. The nearest precedent I could find for it was a different staff member's censure where they got a one month censure for sockpuppet shenanigans. To be completely honest, the fact that we're even discussing this here is a sign of the inherent favoritism in the system towards staff, but the charter gives this protection to staff (Staff Rules and Rights - B. Disciplinary Action - Line 2); this kind of thread is the option that Disc has. And to be clear, Disc and Admins can have this type of thread for any rule-breaking behavior for staff - including on Discord.

I'm willing to entertain an argument that there was some sort of initial intent to do some clandestine good through the use of the sockpuppet. And faced with a hypothetical justification I just can't bring myself as a member of Disc to start with a suggestion of a harsher punishment than the one month ban.

Personal/staff perspective:

Nothing here needed to happen. Nothing here was really even spurred on by others. If it was about crit being mean to new people then this interaction could have been brought up as a staff matter, but it wasn't. This was all Fishish. I've read and re-read this conversation a few dozen times, and I can't find a redeemable moment in it. I just don't know a way to read this other than aggression and cruelty. There's a slow, methodical trickling of accusation in Fishish's messages here that just doesn't seem accidental.

And I don't believe that this was a heat-of-the-moment type thing. This confrontation starts with Fishish telling a new discord member that "also critstaff straight up abuses new people" and already starting off the hedging of accountability with ":nothingisayisadmissibleinncourt:". And then he starts in on attacking Fish^12 - constantly phrasing it as a joke: "wanna know something really funny", "Much to think about", "everyone clapped too", "im the evil man of evil".

I'm beyond angry that this happened and horribly disappointed that the Discord team didn't remove Fishish for this. We didn't remove Fishish from MAST initially, because we didn't want to preempt this thread; he's been removed now.

I'm going to do something weird, but when am I not? My vote for punishment is not going to agree with my recommendation as a member of Disc.

My vote:

For behavior unbefitting of a member of staff:

• Removal from staff.
• Blacklist of 6 months.

AND

For the use of a sockpuppet:

• 6 month ban from the SCP wiki.

Fishish has a lot of trust to rebuild, the three to six months off of staff is more than enough time to do so, and a one month ban on top of that only slows that process down.

This makes it sound as though Fishish's return to staff is a foregone conclusion. I have to object to that. Fishish regaining the trust of community and staff is an if rather than a when.

Reading your post has made me realize the extent to which Fishish is receiving preferential treatment due to being on staff. (I'm including myself in this, mind you.) When a staff member violates site rules, they should receive at least the same punishment that any other user would receive in addition to any loss of staff privileges or censure. I cannot imagine that a non-staff user would be let off consequence-free in a scenario like this one, or with a one-month ban as I had originally recommended. I'm therefore changing my recommendation to a 6 month site ban, which is just about the shortest ban I could imagine any non-staffer getting under these circumstances.

I’ve heard a number of public and private complaints about Fish12’s tone and behavior while greenlighting. Regardless of the truthfulness behind these claims, problems with a member of staff need to be approached through the necessary channels. Festering resentment towards one person/one team can and have led to major issues between site members and staff. See early to mid 2021 #Meta-SCP-Discussion.

This was the complete and total opposite of how issues like these should be approached and dealt with. This is almost hysterical in its execution — I’m utterly infatuated by the audacity of it.

Fishish is a good guy. Was it stupid? Very. At the same time, this feels like a small mistake that sort of snowballed into something major that now needs to be dealt with.

I agree with a removal from staff and a three-six month black list. I feel a ban for sockpuppeting is tacked on here. Yeah, he had to make a new account for this, but other than joining the site, no malicious rule-breaking behavior occurred on the SCP Wiki. As far as I know, there’s no sock puppet rule on 19cord, where most of the malicoous behavior occurred.

This should be a discussion in Fishish’s fitness to be a member of staff, not his site membership. The blacklist/removal is enough, on top of this forum being a public showcase of his behavior and our opinions. Fishish has a lot of trust to rebuild, the three to six months off of staff is more than enough time to do so, and a one month ban on top of that only slows that process down.

You know that the crit team is open to feedback on how we operate, and you know how and where to approach us with that feedback. Your actions here are amazingly disrespectful to our team and Fish^12 especially. You've taken our time and resources, and used them to effectively publicly mock and humiliate someone well past their clear point of discomfort. I sincerely do not understand what your goal was here, I don't understand what you were attempting to accomplish from all of this. At the very least I do appreciate your honesty when we approached you about this.

Unfortunately I currently don't actually know if I believe the remorse angle. I don't want to claim I know your feelings, but right now I feel like actions are not matching words. I've seen the posts in chat right before this thread went up (CD already linked them prior), and to me they read as aloof at best and generally not taking any of this seriously. Vagueposting about this thread in chat at all was already a bad move, but to treat it all like a joke? It's not a good look.

I currently cannot trust you as a member of staff, and right now I'm not entirely certain what I'd need to see to be able to trust you here again. That said, I feel like almost any ban should have the right to appeal. Ergo, I support removal from staff, a 1 month ban, and a permanent ban from staff positions that can be appealed no sooner than 6 months after it is issued.

Edit: I'm upping my recommendation from 1 to 6 months because I realized that I was falling into a behavior that I've called out in the past: giving someone preferential treatment because they're staff. I can't imagine a non-staff user ending up with less than a six month ban for deliberate sockpuppeting under any circumstance, so that's what I'm supporting here.

Even if there were some legitimate problem with Fish^12's critique, there were acceptable ways to raise that concern and this was not one of them.

Given what little I now about Fishish, and his sincere regret, I think a three month black list from staff could be sufficient to rebuild goodwill and re-earn trust. I don't think this is unforgivable, but it's going to take time to make right.

Supporting a one month ban and removal from staff and a three-month blacklist from staff.

Fishish, you're normally really cool. I don't know what came over you. It's good that you expressed regret after the fact, but this was seriously not okay. I hope you take this time to improve yourself.

Edit: After thinking about it a bit more and reading other’s posts, I am changing my thoughts to 6 Month Ban, Permanent blacklist from staff with appeal after 3-6 months. I was under the false assumption that a 1 month ban was standard for sockpuppeting; if 6 months is standard for non-staff members then it should be what happens here. I don’t see why Fishish should be an exception to that. As for my change in opinion for staff blacklist, I realized that I think the kind of bullying behavior shown here should not be allowed between staff members under any circumstances. If Fishish wants to rejoin staff, I think he should first demonstrate that his behavior has changed.

I think a minimum of a three month blacklist is necessary, as part of this ban. The VoNC Policy stipulates a one year blacklist (at my arguing), I think anywhere between those periods would be an acceptable result. My preference is six. Some level of a blacklist is appropriate (beyond the blacklist for the duration of the ban, which should be obvious), or else that punishment is effectively meaningless. Case in point, one of fishish’s current Captains has advocated in this thread that the blacklist only last for the duration of his ban.

Did the Discord Admins/Captains defer judgement on this matter?

there was a discussion when the report initially hit discord admins - i personally argued against a removal from mod because i thought it was outside of our scope. i'll let the other discord admins decide whether or not they want to reveal their points in the discussion publicly.

that point aside, i agree with lord on proposed actions and reasoning

I would prefer to add a blacklist from staff for a while (preferably 3 months) as well. I do not feel that they should be able to get back on 19cord moderation once his ban expires, that feels too short for the abuse of power and trust. I’d prefer him to earn back some trust as a community member first, before being eligible to be on staff again.

I have gone in depth before why I feel this is extremely upsetting, and I’ll summarise here.

• Sockpuppeting

This is a necessary punishment for the reasons stated in the original post, even though it’s not the crux of this case.

• Harassment

This is public humiliation and bullying. It is publicly pointing a finger and laughing at tricking another user who’s volunteering to better our community and help new users. Calling this breaking rule 0 or “capital H harassment” doesn’t change the facts that this was bullying behaviour.

Fishish initiates this confrontation in public and notably in a public arena in which Fishish has some authority. Fishish does have access to multiple staff spaces in which this could be done in a more private setting. This speaks to a want for public accusation and makes it clear that this was not about resolving any issues with Crit as a team.

I’ll repeat this again from the original post, because this is exactly why I feel this falls under harassment. There is no good faith explanation of this behaviour.

• Wasting critter resources

Fishish was permanently banned from the Deer College channels as a result of these actions, with the possibility to appeal after a year. I fully stand behind that.

Fishish used up resources of another team under false pretences, without their permission or invitation. They didn’t disclose their experiences privately, but used them to shame a reviewer and volunteer. No part of this is acceptable as a member of staff in any capacity, which is why I don’t feel comfortable having him as a staff colleague at this point.

Lastly: I’m glad to hear from others in this thread that he has shown remorse. I’m all for second chances, and remorse is a good first step in that direction. I personally believe that those second chances should be earned though, by showing growth and being a positive force in this community without a position of staff. I prefer trusting a person based on their actions rather than their words.

Fishish was permabanned from Deer College on October 1st as a result of their behaviour, with the ability to appeal after a year. We didn’t port the ban to o5 until this thread was posted while Disc was doing their investigation. The ban was enacted already and can be found in the moderator-actions channel on 19cord, though.

Furthermore, we’ve asked Fishish to abide by this ban (since his modpowers supersede our ability to ban people from Deer College) and to refrain from weighing in on cases related to crit or Deer College in 19cord.

I would say that this ban is a step further than revoking Greenlight Privileges. Greenlights are only useful for Deer College and the Forums, so a ban from Deer College is a (partial) removal of GL privileges already.

I am also against Fishish joining a critflight: these flights take a lot of resources to run, and are meant to teach critique to new critters, or critters who want to get better at critting. They are not a punitive measure. I see no reason to require Deer College critters to invest more in Fishish as part of his punishment, that’s a bit of an opposite world.
On top of that, mentors choose who they’re going to mentor during a flight. I have no interest in forcing a volunteer to work with a user as part of said user’s punishment.

He later showed remorsed for his action - which is good - but that doesnt remove the necesity of taking action. So i support the proposed action.

To make this a bit clearer, I’ve edited my initial comment.

Reasoning:

Ban: Unauthorized sockpuppeting has, as stated, always been worthy of a ban. Rules should be consistently applied. However, the harm done through the sockpuppet was, in the larger scope of things, minimal. It wasn't used to subvert an existing ban, double votes, or troll. In fact, it was only used because of the security gates built into discord so only site members could access crit spaces.

Greenlight privileges: One of the offenses was a legitimate abuse of greenlight privileges. Therefore, the preventative measure should be to remove said greenlight privileges. It's weird to me this wasn't a recommended measure to take. Perhaps the crit team has already done this, though I would be unaware of it at the moment. As for reearning — I think a demonstration of intent to interact in good faith with the crit systems would be adequate, and the obvious example of such would be a crit flight, as that is how other users without greenlight privileges can earn them.

Removal from staff: Honestly, the recommended punishment as given is… vague, at least in my opinion. Removal from staff could really just be a perfunctory thing; as far as I know, the prior censures that resulted in removal in staff at least included a blacklist duration, even if said duration was permanent. There is nothing in the recommended punishment that says the removal can't be arbitrarily short. Given that multiple members of the discord team have outright said that Fishish is an active and effective staffer — most active, one of the best 19cord moderators — and that the moderation team is in a state of active transition and growth, I cannot imagine why a duration was not included. Like, people have left staff in bad standing before. I assume this would be a "bad standing" case, but to my knowledge people who leave staff in bad standing just aren't allowed to come right back to their OS rank — is there anything barring them from rejoining as JS and working their way back up, if they were to just be "removed from staff" without the specification of poor standing? I don't believe so. Given that the likely candidates for Discord Captain both speak to Fishish's character in this thread I think we need like. Some discussion of how long we actually expect Fishish to be off staff.

Let me just be clear. The behavior is indefensible and embarassing. Yet at least one person who could in theory rerecruit Fishish to a similar position are already confident in Fishish's ability to grow and mature beyond such behavior. Now obviously I trust both their judgement not to do something like that if they don't have confidence that Fishish has grown, but I do think it is worth pointing out in case anyone else has thoughts on a specific period. I will say that I don't believe such a staff blacklist should be much longer than 3-4 months, if that — just looking at the November 2020 thread recommendations as a benchmark, Tuomey just got a poor standing removal , specifically worded as "removal from staff in poor standing", not just "removal from staff" — a pertinent and analogous phrase here is "treatment of the team as a force to dominate staff affairs". Hence why I'm going with the perfunctory "off staff for as long as they're not on the site", since while this behavior was unacceptable and similar, it's not worse so the punishment shouldn't be worse. Though I assume poor standing is implicit? It should really be explicit given that we just had a ban be revised from perma to 1 year based on ambiguous wording.

Some other procedural notes:

I am "Dr Joybringer" in the linked evidence. My statement about Jan 6 is a joke in response to an earlier part of the conversation. My statement "This is good for slowing down 8kon" is a joke. My quoted statement "Ok Have you written any stories before" was an actual question. I do not remember the context of my quoted statement "Sure let's go with that". I do not remember the intent behind "Can you imbue words with beauty and make poetry from crass mud" but it was probably irony poisoned. My statement "Maybe the idea is just one that most newbies would fuck up, In which case" was serious, and I believe it was meant to be in defense of Fish^12's behavior alleged by Fishish. "The greenlight system prevents any sort of experimental works from newer authors who can't get draft crit :unloyal: emoji" was intended to be ironic, as evidenced by the use of the :unloyal: emoji. My statement "Black hat hacking" was made without knowledge that the situation would escalate to this level, but, to those who know the meaning of the phrase, should make it clear that I was aware at the time that the actions were unauthorized. My statement "The greenlight system is meant to discourage people from posting actually" is serious, and is based off of my genuine belief that some member of the crit team in the past has stated this in response to complaints that it's too hard to get through greenlights. My statement "it would be funny" was meant as a serious guess as to Fishish's intent from the previous statement in the message.

I must disclose I consider Fishish a friend, and while I acknowledge and am grateful for the volume of Fish^12's work, I personally mentally excuse his abrasive moments by considering that in the course of that work he has to deal with the newest and least seasoned members of the community, which would be a recipe in burnout for even the kindest and friendliness of us. Both of these facts are coloring both the arguments and conclusions I make in this thread.

I think cdi's primary complaint in the thread above amounts to tone policing; I think people should be allowed to participate in a little gallows humor related to impending disciplinary consequences for themselves, which is what the linked discord comment is, and in my opinion is not much different from using information from the private staff discussion channel to inform an 05 post that only alludes to the conversations had there without going into details.

Honestly, the phrase "public harassment" to describe those messages gives the wrong impression. It might fit the common and colloquial definition of what harassment is, but on the SCP Wiki there is an obvious and heavy connotation of permanently bannable behavior that is handled by the Anti-Harassment Team. I don't know who wrote this, but I'm going to assume it was a member of the Disciplinary Team, who should be aware of those connotations. There should have been more of an effort to make it clear that this is lowercase-l harassment and not capital-L Anti-Harassment Team Harassment because I think this is likely to be a point of confusion.

Why is this a full staff matter? Did the Discord Admins/Captains defer judgement on this matter? But Disc could do a month ban for the sockpuppeting without consulting all of staff, right? I guess I'm just confused by the purview.

I'm not willing to work with him in a pseudo-professional capacity like staff anymore. I am uncomfortable with him being a part of this body. This is a level of conduct we cannot accept from our coworkers. This is not productive, it is not healthy, and we have to clearly show it is unacceptable.

Fishish must be removed from staff.

The ban for sockpuppeting is less necessary, but I agree with the recommended punishment.

TLDR In favour of month ban, no opinion on removal from staff.

In favor of the recommended punishment, but I also hold the belief that Fishish will reflect and grow above this kind of thing in the future.

At the very least I think a removal from staff is due as a consequence for Fishish’s actions in this case.

Edits for clarity.

In favor of recommended punishment.

On October 5th 2023, the Disciplinary Team received a complaint regarding Fishish which has been determined to be valid and worthy of further discussion. The initial complaint was in regards only to the use of the sockpuppet. Further discussion and complaints generated accusations of harassment of a member of staff and wasting staff time and resources.
The Disciplinary Team determined that these complaints and evidence did warrant disciplinary review proceedings. Afterward the Disciplinary Team gathered this evidence, connected cases and evidence, evaluated them, and determined that they should be presented in this thread.

Claims:

This section will break down each of the general claims levied against fishish and the evidence found to support these claims.

Fishish publicly harassed another member of staff.

On September 28, 2023 Fishish made a comment that critstaff “abuses new people”. When Fish^12 attempted to turn this accusation into a joke, Fishish confronted Fish^12.

In this confrontation Fishish admits to joining the server under an alt to go through idea crit. Fishish then claims to have been “harangued” by Fish^12. Fishish claims to have posted the idea “under my own account” and claims to have “deleted every trace of it” - an abuse of mod powers. Fishish later admitted that these claims were false; the article was posted under the (now deleted) sockpuppet and they did not in fact delete the idea thread.

When Fish^12 asks them why they didn’t bring this up so that critstaff could fix it, Fishish responds with a dismissive joke. Fishish continues the confrontation switching between joking and accusing.

In this interaction Fishish is the aggressor but also claims that the accusations aren’t serious anytime Fish^12 demonstrates upset. Fishish continues this pattern of accusing and then dismissing any harm alternatively throughout the interaction. This reads as an effort to both attack and belittle Fish^12 while keeping Fishish clear of blame.

Fishish initiates this confrontation in public and notably in a public arena in which Fishish has some authority. Fishish does have access to multiple staff spaces in which this could be done in a more private setting. This speaks to a want for public accusation and makes it clear that this was not about resolving any issues with Crit as a team.

Fishish wasted staff time and resources.

Fishish accessed Discord Crit spaces under false pretenses and utilized crit services in bad-faith. This wasted the time of that team which is their most important resource.

Fishish lied about actions to cover up this anonymous access of Discord Crit spaces. They originally claimed to have deleted the thread. When asked what the username had been they claimed it was “unseenlmao” and that they had deleted the thread under that account. This did not show in the activity log and when pressed Fishish admitted that the username was “snapple”, and that they did not delete the thread.

Fishish also greenlit the thread themself.

The thread in question: Thread

Fishish utilized a sockpuppet to access Discord crit spaces anonymously and used this sockpuppet to post to the wiki.

Fishish created a wikidot account and joined the wiki with the express intent to access Discord Crit spaces anonymously and to post a work under that sockpuppet. They have admitted to each of these actions although have not strictly admitted to the intent.

Sockpuppets and the use of sockpuppets are against site rules - unless approved under very specific circumstances. This is a rule that has been punished without exception.

Recommendation:

It is the recommendation of the Disciplinary Team that Fishish receive the following consequences (note that each consequence is associated with a separate action):

For behavior unbefitting of a member of staff:
• Removal from staff.

AND

For the use of a sockpuppet:
• 1 month ban from the SCP wiki.

These are only recommendations. Any staff member in this thread may support these suggestions, offer an alternative, or advocate for no action to be taken.

Process:

The specifics of this punishment and the passage thereof are the subject of this thread and open to discussion. In line with our current charter, the punishment given to Fishish will be whatever the consensus is among staff present for this discussion. If the staff body determines Fishish should receive a more lenient punishment counter to what is recommended above, it will be enacted. For clarity and ease of tallying, please bold your suggested punishment.
This thread will be open for seven days and is open to OS+. Any questions or concerns regarding the process of demotion should be sent to torcsandantlers or another member of the disciplinary committee.
Please remain civil and on topic.