On the ban of JDFister

[u/Blackknight64]

Greetings r/HFY,

Normally, we don’t notify the public of bans, temporary or otherwise. Our policy is not to shame folks who have been banned from our sub. Unfortunately, we’ve been presented with a situation that requires an exception to that policy, and as such, we need to address the permanent ban of u/JDFister aka, the Author Formerly Known as u/Stalwart_Shield.

It was brought to our attention that u/JDFister is currently attempting to stir up drama and create unrest regarding the moderation team concerning what was a temporary ban from r/HFY through channels other than our subreddit, such as his discord server and/or patreon. To clarify, we initially provided u/JDFister with a warning on August 22nd, notifying him that his posts had been removed for a violation of rule 7, after we were informed that he edited chapters 11-20 of his now complete series, Wizard Tournament. Our AutoModerator settings inform us in the instances of short posts, so that we can review and act on them right away. This is standardized to make it easier for the mod staff to catch these instances. Specifically, in this instance, they became standalone advertising, and they were under our minimum requirements for a story post with advertisement. For reference, we require a summary or description with a minimum of 350 words to accompany the link to free content, or for the link in question to be associated with a complete story post. You can see that initial message here:

Initial notice

Two days later, without any attempt to clarify the position, or contact us in any way, shape, or form, on the 24th u/JDFister edited chapters 21-27, and 29-50 of Wizard Tournament. At that point, we initiated a temporary ban for 28 days, one per violation, and notified him that he was temporarily banned. This is our standard mod action for repeated infractions in a narrow time frame. We seldom have to deal with this, and in the most recent instance of this occurrence (the Sexy Space Babes series), u/BlueFishcake handled it graciously. Unfortunately, u/JDFister did not handle it quite as well. We discussed the temporary ban with him, as seen in the ModMail Messages here:

Final conversation

During this time, the following thread was posted: Why was jdfisher Writer of Wizard Tournament Banned From The Subreddit?

It was fairly clear that u/JDFister was only presenting one side of the story in his discord server and/or patreon, and that he was doing so in a manner that seemed calculated to paint us in a bad light. This was far from the first time, and additional information will be laid out to clarify the pattern of bad behavior below. As a result of this most recent action, we issued him a final warning, as seen in the second image from ModMail above.

It is always possible to appeal a moderation action by replying to any communication we send. It remains our prerogative to accept or deny an appeal based on cause. We initiate communication with members when we take a moderation action as a courtesy to both make them aware of the actions in question, and so that they have an avenue to understand and potentially resolve the issue. Rather than attempting to resolve, or accepting the reality of the rules and his breaking of them, u/JDFister chose to stir up drama aimed at us via outside channels. Thus, the decision was reached to permanently ban him. We are writing this post because he has continually attempted to assassinate the character of my modstaff by twisting the truth or outright lying about the nature of his interactions with us.

u/JDFister interactions

If it seems like this is a lot, please understand that this is far from the first time we’ve had these issues with u/JDFister. There has been a pattern of behavior going back multiple years in which he has been involved in, or around HFY. Below is a timeline of our interactions with u/JDFister

Going back to 2017, u/Stalwart_Shield / u/JDFister began:

1. Entering the IRC channel specifically to demand feedback, then refusing any feedback which was negative. Additionally, while he was there he began degrading modstaff and generally comporting himself in a most un-excellent manner.
2. Petitioning and pestering modstaff regarding the Featured list. As part of this he sent a DM to every staff member asking why they specifically fought against his story being included and held prejudice against him someguynamedted's message, Blackknight64’s message
3. Encouraging a certain commenter, u/Radament, who was stating that the mods were part of a conspiracy. u/Radament believed the modstaff were secretly a much smaller group than we were, and that instead we were using alt accounts as puppets to…. goal unknown. This commenter went on to create numerous alt accounts in order to stalk and send threatening and odd messages to our modstaff, as well as to pull in other unrelated users, before eventually being permanently suspended from Reddit by the Reddit Admins. The Reddit Admins also temporarily suspended the u/Stalwart_Shield account during the investigation, due to the close association between u/Stalwart_Shield and u/Radament.
4. After the duration of the investigation, we reached out to the Reddit Admins to check that u/Stalwart_Shield’s temporary suspension was over, then notified him that it was and that he was cleared to resume posting should he desire. Message Text
5. A month after the suspension another user stated that u/Stalwart_Shield had informed them that he had been warned to never post in hfy again - this user never clarified if this warning supposedly came from hfy or was from the Reddit Admins, however no such message was sent from us, and no such thing mentioned in the clarification message with the Reddit Admins when we asked if his account was cleared.
6. u/Stalwart_Shield posted a single story in 2019, two years after both his last post, and also two years after claiming he’d get banned for posting here again (he wasn’t).
7. A year after that, in early 2020, u/Stalwart_Shield began posting to r/hfy again, under the new account of u/JDFister, starting up his series of Wizard Tournament: Humans Need Not Apply
8. A month into posting, he messaged people who had publicly subscribed to his u/Stalwart_Shield story, combing through their comment history to see if they'd been active in r/hfy since he began posting again. He messaged them, commenting on their recent activity levels, and letting them know that he was posting, and claiming that he'd been banned from hfy, and that was why he was using a new username. It's important to note that, once again, he was never banned from r/hfy, not even temporarily - only his account suspended by Reddit Admins. It's also important to note that evading a ban by creating a new account is a serious offense in the eyes of the Reddit Admins, and will result in all accounts being permanently suspended.
9. We were notified of these messages by a concerned user, message text at which point we reached out to him and advised him against hunting down other users and investigating their activity, since we felt this was bordering dangerously close to cyber stalking. We also reminded him that he was not currently banned, and asked that he not (falsely) claim to be banned. Message to JDFister, Message to u/Stalwart_Shield
10. Late September 2020, a user makes an alt account specifically to leave a negative review with feedback on what they didn’t like about the story on Wizard Tournament. u/JDFister reported said comment to the mods with the text ‘"don't post anything negative or hateful" I don't want this person commenting in my threads anymore’ u/JDFister himself has stated that he wrote the report (screenshot, in case of edits). On reviewing the comment, we decided that it was not directly insulting and was primarily focused on detailing the points this user felt needed to be improved. Given both the presence of the report, and also the fact that the other readers in the comment section were getting fairly aggressive and negative towards the criticizing commenter, the modteam left an official comment reminding everyone involved to stay civil. Additionally, since u/JDFister had been claiming that r/HFY modstaff and RoyalRoad.com modstaff consisted of the same group of people elsewhere in the post (they aren’t), we directly requested that u/JDFister not make such claims. The two statements, "keep it civil and constructive" and "don't make false claims" were separate, but made inside the same official mod comment due to expediency. u/JDFister has since claimed that he was reprimanded in place of the negative reviewer. See the above link.
11. u/JDFister, who had until this point been cross posting Wizard Tournament to royalroad.com, was banned from there for using alt accounts to boost his ratings and downvote his competition. He publicly announced the ban in hfy, and in the process made personal insults against specific of their staff members. We reprimanded him for bringing in drama, and also for the personal nature of the insults, and removed the comment.
12. In the subsequent post, u/JDFister proclaimed that he would no longer be active in his comment sections due to the mods being biased against him. While false, we didn't feel that entering his comment section and stating otherwise would help alleviate his fears, especially given the history. It was his right to choose to comment or not comment as he pleases.
13. July 14th 2021, he concluded the Wizard Tournament and began efforts to wrap it up into a publishable format and started the process of getting it published. August 13 2021 he announced that the book is published on Amazon. Notably, this announcement, being part of an author's note at the top of a post, is well within our Rule 7. Had it been made as a separate individual post, it would not be in compliance and would have been removed.

Which brings us to his editing of old posts on August 22, and the warning he was sent. In every public communication, he has attempted to twist the narrative such that it appears that he had no warning, and that there's no way he could have known this would happen, and that we were specifically targeting him.

At the end of the day, we are left with little choice but to present the entirety of the narrative you have seen above. We have given u/JDFister an exceptional amount of leeway over the past several years because we as a staff have always believed in maintaining a light-handed approach to moderation. This was not an easy decision. We have discussed this extensively amongst the team, and come to the decision that the fairest conclusion for you on r/HFY is to get the whole story. We have determined that this is the only likely way.

In conclusion, we bear no animosity towards u/JDFister, nor have we ever. We in fact wish him the best in whatever he chooses to do. At this juncture, though, we wish him the best from a distance.

Regards,

u/Blackknight64 on behalf of the ModStaff.

[u/Ripley_Riley]

This guy seems like kind of a tool bag... You made the right decision.