Admins overstepping bounds
From an ex-furocity admin. FA Admins are overstepping their roles:
I’m a published photographer with nearly 20 years of experience. I’ve been the head of photography over at Furocity for over 2 years. I was asked by one of FA’s site owners to come here and use my experience in the photography field to knowledgeably resolve photo tickets and help users. The same holds true for the other Furocity Admins and their departments.
The site owners repeatedly gave all administrators, old and new, an Administrator Code Of Conduct, which stated that we were to only handle tickets that pertained to our departments (so that rulings could be made by people who understood the intricacies of the art form), as well as how to act professionally. From day-one, some of the original FA administrators have blatantly ignored the Admin Code Of Conduct, repeatedly handling trouble tickets outside of their departments (after countless warnings from owners, and while their own departments’ Terms Of Service tickets go unresolved), undermined and overturned Department Heads’ rulings, shown gross ignorance towards the AUP, spread false information about the AUP and site policies, botched countless trouble ticket rulings, acted unprofessionally, leaked private site information, and have intentionally hampered the ticket/administration process at every turn (we have found proof of this from chat logs, notes, and trouble tickets). Their actions have been childish, petty, and detrimental to the site and its users. The original site owner has known about this gross misconduct, but no action has been taken and nothing has improved. We found evidence in trouble tickets, chat logs, and notes that some of the original FA admins were intentionally leaking private information, ignoring site policy, and trying to sabotage the administrative process. The original site owner (Dragoneer) has not effectively reprimanded or fired ANY of the offending admins under his leadership. Every gross violation and problem is met with weak excuses, indifference, and endless second chances. There is no leadership, accountability, or consequence, and so rules continue to be broken and administrator privileges abused.
FA’s owner and the admins have stated and made it clear through actions that they’re more interested in preserving an exclusive circle of friends and socializing than they are doing their jobs properly (or at all). A business, website, and community can’t function if you’re more concerned with an “admin” title and bashing your fellow workers than you are performing the job you were hired to do.
I also found that people with little or no administrative experience, who know nothing about photography, are striving to alter the AUP and destroy the works of fellow photographers and the art form I love.
I’ve seen FA from behind the scenes. The administrative foundation of FA is badly broken, and the site owners seem unwilling or unable to make the tough decisions that will better serve the site and its users.
These issues have made it impossible for me to perform my duties and serve FA’s users in a way that I feel is effective and beneficial. Therefore I am stepping down as an administrator.
I understand that the FA owner and some of the staff will deny these issues to try and preserve their reputation, instead of holding themselves accountable for their actions and honestly addressing FA’s problems. But I must be clear that my departure is due to the documented issues stated above, not a single troll site post or other imagined reasons.
I am very proud of the amount and quality of work the Furocity admins performed during our tenure here at FA. We arrived to a backlog of trouble tickets, and despite some of the original staff providing an uncooperative work environment we were successful in handling our departments fairly and professionally.
