Hi everyone,

We're reaching out after some stress arose in discord from the flatsale last weekend.

Moving forward for flatsales:

1. If we allow GAs to choose to do flatsales in the future we will require users to type out or copy+paste the whole design name/no partials or typos. It's honestly the only way we can have a hard and fast rule about this where it's crystal clear to everyone without entirely banning GAs from a fcfs flatsale option.

People have a 1 hour preview period for flatsales currently and should read the entire post so outside of this formal announcement. Hopefully having better wording on the dA posts themselves will help us avoid concerns as well.

We will be revising the top of flatsale posts to state:

"When comments open, please include the full design name (listed in the description below) for the design you wish to claim in your comment. Typos, partial names, etc. will not count as a claim. We highly recommend copying and pasting design names when possible for claims."

Examples of acceptable claims if the design's name is "Bright Stars":

• "Bright Stars"
• "Claiming Bright Stars!"
• "Bright Stars please!"

Examples of claims that are not acceptable if the design's name is "Bright Stars":

• "Briht Stars"
• "Claiming Stars!"
• "Bright please!"
• "Stars!"

2. In the future if a user has any concerns about their own flatsale claim or other official sale comment, we ask that they send in a ticket on site and use the "Community" ticket type. Then in the #questions discord channel we ask they ping @Modberry and inform us that they have a time sensitive question/concern relative to the current flaffle and to let us know right away they've sent a ticket. This will bring a concern to our attention and we will correspond with the parties directly involved from there.

We understand that our community members can be very protective of one another and care a lot about their fellow group members. At times, though, actions like these while supporting some members can unintentionally harm others. Rapid fire commentary on things that may be undergoing further evaluation and communication applies a lot of stress and pressure on both the group members involved and the moderators working to resolve an issue. It creates sense of urgency to respond quickly that is not always the best, and we recognize that in this case, having everything happen so quickly did more harm than good. For this reason we're asking communications be left to directly involved parties.

It's important that we all recognize that these mistakes and incidents are isolated and take time to work through. We understand there are strong opinions that people want to share but posting those in the lounge and group discord are not the right places. If you want to support a fellow community member please let them know privately. If you're worried they have been wronged in some way privately suggest they submit a ticket and let them choose how they want to proceed.

If you have a concern about how moderator staff handle a situation you may DM Manaberry, as she is in charge of the staff and can express concerns to us anonymously if needed. We acknowledge yesterday our lounge became an uninviting place to other community members in the process of community members voicing their concerns. The lounge became a grounds for hostility, dispute, and inappropriate language. This is not acceptable. We believe there are better ways of addressing concerns than making it a public affair.

Moderators have made mistakes in the past. When approached about possible mistakes by those directly impacted or when we notice internally mistakes have been made, we make an effort to try to evaluate the concern, hold ourselves (and one another) accountable when appropriate, and find resolution. Perhaps it's because we usually handle accountability and group concerns privately but there seems to be some misunderstanding that moderators will just let mistakes happen without concern for users involved. This is absolutely not the case. Please give us some good faith when mistakes happen. We are not unfeeling, lacking empathy, or unsympathetic when these types of ordeals happen.

Thank you for your patience with us on this but we really do not want this to become a common occurrence. We never intend to have mistakes and misunderstandings crop up but when they do we try to do our best in a bad situation and reach out to individuals privately to address concerns.

Sincerely,

The Modberry Team