I was skeptical the entire time I was informing myself on this debacle, but here are my main takeaways now that I'm up to speed: 1) I don't necessarily think that what Roll20 did prior to NolanT's public response was out of line. When NolanT laid out how it appeared from his perspective, I can see why he made the decisions he did. Moderating is hard and sometimes a gut call is wrong. Saying "Two hours ago we got the response from reddit admins that the accounts do not show an IP match. And for this unfortunate and frustrating coincidence, I'm sorry." was a good start. The problem was that he didn't stop there. 2) The rest of NolanT's message is confusing, riddled with grammar mistakes, rambling, and decidedly reads more like a justification rather than an apology, and that immediately undermines the credibility of the brief apology part of the post. It's similar to the tone of an "I'm sorry you were offended" non-apology apology. 3) Why on God's green earth is the co-founder of Roll20 directly overseeing the moderation of a subreddit? On that note, why is ANYONE from Roll20 moderating the subreddit? Most subreddits are fan-driven, and Roll20 already has its own dedicated forums. And you guys are a small team. This feels like a massive waste of time and resources for the Roll20 team, and by not insulating the co-founder from this kind of direct interaction with customers, it has lead to a much greater reaction from the community. If this stunt had been pulled by a volunteer or a fan, it would only reflect poorly upon that person. Since this was caused by the co-founder of Roll20, it reflects poorly upon the entire company. As I said in Point #1, moderating is hard, and when you are also the co-founder of a (hopefully) growing company, I would imagine that one would lack the time necessary to perform that duty adequately. 4) NolanT's response did very little to explain why u/ApostleOfPeace (the banned user they confused u/ApostleO of being) had been banned in the first place. He claims that he "had been rather personal in attacking staff", but nothing from his prior posting seemed to support that claim. Perhaps his attacks were via private messaging, but we have no way of knowing that, so it does nothing to counter the impression that both of these accounts were actually just banned for laying out criticisms of the service on a subreddit curated by people with a clear conflict of interest. I'm not saying I believe that impression, just that NolanT did little to dispel it. Also, since his entire justification for banning u/ApostleO was that he thought he was actually u/ApostleOfPeace, it's vitally important that he make it clear that that banning was also justified. Aside from the one vague part I already quoted, he did not. 5) "We do not need users who feel a need to verbally threaten the livelihoods of staff, and eat our work hours with bile." Threatening to drop a subscription over poor customer service is normal. Would you prefer we just drop our subscriptions now and actively endanger your livelihoods without giving you a warning, or would you prefer we make our grievances known so you have an opportunity to set things right? If you have an employee who is underperforming, do you just fire them on the spot, or do you let them know what they're doing wrong and explain that if they don't improve, they may face termination? Furthermore, u/ApostleO made his grievances known PRIVATELY, specifically to give you an opportunity to handle this without making a scene. It is understandable that when those attempts appeared to fall on deaf ears, he would escalate to telling the mods, in no uncertain terms, what he would do if he continued to be ignored. And he WAS being ignored, probably because the mods assumed he was lying and actually was the previous offender. Now that NolanT knows their assumptions were wrong, their decision to ignore u/ApostleO was clearly reprehensible, and u/ApostleO's threatened escalation seems more than justified, if a little extreme. I think most reasonable people would have done something similar, and though his threats were serious and blunt, they were not rude or disrespectful. Furthermore, what about the work hours we put in to be able to afford to pay you for this service? Do you have no respect for the fact that most of us choose to budget so that we can continue to support a service we love? If you want customers to respect you, it has to go both ways. 6) "When someone's response to a ban from an ancillary forum..." Ancillary? If the subreddit is ancillary, why take this matter so seriously? Why risk the company's reputation by having the co-founder directly weigh in? Why refuse to take your own customer at their word and reverse the ban if it means so little? You can't imply that u/ApostleO overreacted because he threatened to drop his subscription over how he was handled by the company on an "ancillary forum", and then use that as a justification for your own apparent overreaction. It just makes no sense. Suffice it to say, NolanT's response to this situation was more damaging to my impression of the company than the debacle itself. The first rule of customer service is "the customer's always right". And I know that sometimes that mentality is toxic when taken too far, so I would revise it slightly to what I think is more appropriate: "always give the customer the benefit of the doubt". You don't have to let customers walk all over you, but if there is a reasonable chance your customer is not a jerk and you are the one being the jerk, you owe it to yourself and your company to take that chance seriously. That's what it actually means to be "erring on the side of caution", not banning a user who had yet to do anything particularly toxic because you doubted his protests based on fault intuition. That's the opposite of "caution". That's just "erring". Roll20 failed to give a long-time paying customer the benefit of the doubt, and as a result, the service itself is now in jeopardy. There were SO many ways that this crisis could have been averted: Roll20 could have left the moderation of "an ancillary forum" to a volunteer or fan rather than curate it directly. They could have appointed someone who wasn't a high profile figure in the company to deal with these kinds of issues. They could have responded to u/ApostleO more quickly (even just to say "we've seen your concerns and are reviewing the details before decided whether to reverse the ban"). They could have seen his threat as less of a threat and more of an opportunity to turn a negative customer experience into a positive one. They could have just apologized rather than double down. But no, apparently this is the hill Roll20 wants to die on. And for what? From my perspective, as a paying customer, I'm upset that Roll20 is apparently so heavy-handed with its curation of its subreddit. I'm upset that a co-founder apparently feels that directly overseeing the moderation of that subreddit is a better use of his time and staff than actually improving the service. I'm upset that the co-founder apparently prioritizes his own frustration over the frustration of a paying customer. And I'm upset that a service I've loved is apparently content to pour gasoline on this fire rather than just admit fault, apologize, and try to make things right like literally any other company would do . Roll20's staff (and NolanT in particular) have better things to do, and as Lee S. pointed out, Reddit actively discourages moderators with a direct conflict of interest, pretty much for exactly this reason. Since apparently they don't respond well to it (and since I've put a lot of work into a campaign I intend to finish), I don't intend to threaten to end my subscription. However, when that campaign is done, there's a good chance that a lot of people will refuse to play with me on this service at this point, even if I want them to, and if I can't get a game together, I have no reason to maintain my subscription. That's not a threat, that's just reality. I can't afford to pay for a service I'm not using, and I can only use this service if other people want to. In that light, this isn't just about whether or not I'm willing to forgive this, it's about whether or not the rest of the pen-and-paper gaming community is willing to forgive this, so I plead with Roll20 to please take this seriously and not try and bury your heads in the sand. This service is actively on fire right now, and I'd appreciate if you took that seriously. To sum up: - NolanT shouldn't be administrating a subreddit, particularly not now. He should step down (from Reddit, not the company) and leave it to actual customer service reps or fan volunteers (the latter would be cheaper and eliminate the risk of a Reddit-related fiasco directly reflecting poorly on the company). - u/ApostleO's ban should be undone and the mods should apologize (without equivocating) for assuming the worst in him for no reason other than circumstance and coincidence. - Roll20 as a whole should completely rethink its approach to customer service. If a customer tries to drag you out publicly, I can understand not wanting to encourage that. If a customer is being blatantly toxic, I can also understand not wanting to encourage that. But this customer was banned for appearing to be someone else, and when he was offended by this (and the subsequent lack of a serious response from moderators), he privately threatened to take his business elsewhere. No company should respond to that kind of situation the way Roll20 did, and if this really was a decision that was supported by the entire customer service staff, then the whole thing probably needs restructuring. I really wanted to take Roll20's side on this, but I'm sorry, this is just not how you run a company.
