[Federation Executive Office]

Hello everyone,

We must regretfully inform you all of an incident with a member that has resulted in their dismissal from the community, and in the interests of transparency we wish to let you all know of the circumstances that lead to the decision.

As many of you have had the misfortune of witnessing, Strathkin has been constantly derailing threads with his rambling, disjointed, and frankly strange posts; switching between topics so far away from the original purpose of the thread that it resulted in it killing all discussion. The moderators attempted to approach him on this behavior, but they were consistently ignored.

After this behavior continued with no signs of stopping and all PMs to him still being left unanswered, FEO became involved and unanimously decided to issue him with his first strike. However, the same pattern of forum spam didn't end, and whilst further ignoring moderator/administrator communications, we had reports from community members that he was attempting to sow discord with others over PM, as well as stating he would be engaging in unauthorized communications with the STO ambassador on our behalf, in an attempt to get UFPlanets into legal trouble due to Bridger's signature title being "Head of Star Trek Online". The contents of the PMs included a number of self-made conspiracies trying to implicate the leadership in the removal of members, and the supposed deletion of threads. This resulted in FEO once more sending him a PM, informing him that he had received a second strike.

Unfortunately, it did not end there. Shortly after, a community member reported to us that Strathkin had sent them a PM, directly attacking Three of Seven's intelligence, discriminating against her sexuality and mental health, before breaking silence and sending Three of Seven herself a message stating that she will be going to hell. This was clearly unacceptable, and unfortunately necessitated a third strike; resulting in his removal from the community.

However, in one of the final messages he sent to a community member, Strathkin included a link to his Facebook account, where the member let us know that after he was banned, he started to publicly attack and discriminate against the UFP leadership; including posting derogatory messages in the chatbox. This is all included below for completeness.

Strathkin's Chatbox Response:

Strathkin's Facebook Correspondence sent to us from a Community Member:

Sample of Strathkin's Private Messages Forwarded by the Recipient Community Member:

Due to his actions, Strathkin violated the following principles of the Code of Conduct:

3.1 - All users must respect and obey the chain of command. Users should comply with any reasonable requests made by superiors.
3.2 - Flaming or spamming is not permitted on any platform, regardless of whether the platform is operated by the UFP or third party.
3.3 - Use of abusive or vulgar language, imagery or any actions that may be deemed deliberately offensive are not permitted.
3.5 - All UFP Members must represent the UFP to the best of their ability and take no action that could bring the website or its community into disrepute.
4.3 - When posting on any UFP asset or forum, ensure the content submitted is appropriate and on focus.
4.5 - Respect every user. Speaking to them with intentional spite will not be tolerated and may result in the loss of some or all of your forum privileges.
4.6 - Racist, sexist, homophobic or any other inequality-related remarks will never be tolerated and may result in immediate serious action being taken against the offending individual(s).
4.7 - Moderator requests should be followed at all times. If a user feels the request is not reasonable or inappropriate, they should bring it up with a superior officer.
6.4 - Harassment of any UFP user through any means is strictly prohibited and will be subject to action by FEO/Forum Moderators. If content is serious enough, this may result in criminal/legal charges being filed in the country of the offending user's residence.

We hope that members will understand why FEO had to take this action, and whilst there have been a number of instances with Strathkin over the months, including his poor treatment of the SFO CO and his created work, this post serves to cover the main points that resulted in his dismissal.

If you have any specific inquiries or concerns about the matter, please contact Jonathan for further information.

Kind Regards,
Federation Executive Office

[Solace]

All I can say is.. WOW. A complete religious freak, albliest, homophobe? Good riddance, some of what he posted is just sick. Absolutely vile person.

[Lars2510]

WOW indeed. Quite shocking to say the least. Good Riddance

[Three of Seven]

A regrettable situation, a lot of time was spent trying to avoid this, but we are here now.

[Taku]

Well, I guess I can finally block him in-game without feeling bad about it.

[Vox]

Good Riddance to bad garbage I say.

[Asteropax]

The only time I ever had any sort of discussion with Strathkin was when he tried to make changes to the Roleplay awhile ago; which he wasn't even a participant. Seeing how much he would force things elsewhere made me see him as ignorant and toxic.

I couldn't help but notice in that facebook message he tried to blame the FEO for removing a CL5 member for deleting a post, claiming the FEO was "lying, cheating, and misrepresenting" the facts. We had an entire announcement thread dedicated to that scenario, in which everything was explained and all the details were brought forth.

Strathkin has no business bringing that up again and I will call him out for straight up LYING in our faces.

From what I'd seen and heard leading up to this in other sections of the community; he's had this coming. I won't miss his rants.

[WelshAvenger]

I had the misfortune to read one of his thread derailments today and wondered what kind of malfunction was going on between his head and the keyboard. I'm glad that the FEO took decisive action against his abhorrent behaviour. No-one should be subjected to vile comments. I feel a swell of pity for someone who seems as detached from reality as his posts and rants indicate.

[Elnian]

Honestly, I'm shocked. In one of the New Member Welcome Sessions, he seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders. I did notice the thread derailments, but never realized the scope in which he took things.

As I always say, eventually one will show their true colours. Despite the helpful facade, his true colours were eventually revealed.

I commend FEO for this decision, as it helps protect the integrity of the community.

[casualsto]

This is really strange. The guy was pretty cool, at least as far as I knew. This signals other issues and regardless of the outcome, each conflict inside a community concerns both involved parties.

There are certain attitudes that require improvement and they should be working on that.

Moderation is not easy. Transparency is not easy.

Sorry to hear actions are being taken against members who "had an opinion". About that "head of sto" thing, hahahahahahhahahaha. That's so silly, legally speaking. And if you take that away, you can judge facts clearly. The guy had a rage fit, out of... What reasons?

[aceman67]

There is quite a difference between 'having an opinion' and being discriminatory and hateful. The moment you transition from voicing a position to attacking another individual or group, especially for things that cannot possibly change (like age/race/sex/creed) it ceases being an opinion and becomes something else entirely.

Hate is never acceptable, under any circumstance. There's only so much allowance one can make in regards to some people who are having mental/emotional issues, be it of their own making or being in a situation out of their control. At some point, the greater good must take precedence.

I know this from personal experience, being a former moderator on another site and running a forum myself, as well as being a security guard in a city with a sizeable minority that is actively discriminated against (and they lash back any way they can). I personally had to deal with threats against my life just the other week because I evicted someone from the College I work at for sleeping in the main study commons. (seriously not looking forward to court...)

Being fully transparent in my dealings at work professionally helped me greatly in that situation as not only were my notes and shift/incident reports detailed, I had video evidence and a reputation for being fair and composed in everything that I do.

I have to commend the FEO for being transparent here because I have seen sites torn apart because Staff decided to keep things to themselves (citing 'privacy' concerns, even though some of the moderating staff, myself included, objected).

The Ban Hammer™ is a powerful and terrible thing to wield, especially in a community as tightly knit as this one.

Wield it honourably. Wield it true.

Keep up the good work.

[Bridger]

I am shocked how quickly this derailed after I went to bed, but the openness that is continuously demonstrated from our CL6 Leadership in such situations has shown once more how important the set actions have been and how well it was handled by them.

[casualsto]

Let's wrap this up into a nice knot.

Bridger did nothing wrong. That title states that he is the head of the star trek online ufp forum subsection.

We are not entitled to encroach on people's expression or feelings. If they hate, we do not teach them not to hate. It's their free right to hate. Or to discriminate. Discrimination becomes a risk when the one doing the supposed discrimination is in a position of power and prone to abuse the hated/discriminated. Here we had exactly the reverse roles.

From what people say, he went into a furious downspiral. I've had my differences with the moderation team here as well, but I didn't slander them up, regardless of what they said in private messages.

We all need to grow from and beyond this experience, especially Jonathan and our borg-girl here There are trolls out there who pierce and fish hook your thin skin (metaphorically) on the internet.

If the guy was difficult, he was difficult and things probably had to be done. As far as I knew the guy, he was a bit strange (we're all a bit strange, so no real issue here), but he was really friendly and civilized towards me on the few topics we've engaged in. I was surprised to see this post, to be honest.

His words did not discriminate or prove any homophobia from what we've seen in this post, but maybe this was the tip of the iceberg.

Knot tied, as far as I see it.

[Mack]

He's put several CL5 through grief (that's me describing it lightly), especially the STO Command since he was member of STO Staff - prior to being removed.

From what I personally know, he was spoken to and given advice from CL6 & CL5 couple of times prior to being awarded the community strikes

[Infinity]

I've had the unfortunate experience of interacting with Strathkin on several occasions, something did feel a little bit unusual about him and I am disappointed that he would consistently make the wrong choices and that it has come to this. In no way is his behaviour tolerated in the UFP and I'm angry that he would target one of my friends like this. Fortunately we are done with this individual forever now.

I would like to extend a thank you to all the individuals who were on TeamSpeak last night dealing with this, I know we were all tired by the end of it.

(I'm bad at blurring images and it was midnight, defiintely not a Photoshop god)