Tales from CE: Krystal in Decline

From time to time CE will swell with a sort of anti-mod, or anti-specific-mod, sentiment. The topics will go on and the people who complain will have their topics closed, then people complain about the closed topics until those topics get closed, then that's usually it because people who try to restart closed topic discussions get modded. Fresh off a screenshot competition, I caught up with one of these cycles this past week and it doesn't look good for Krystal109. Some have already argued that there is an abuse of power going on, among other things below.

As for this writer, we were originally optimistic about Krystal but decided to head more toward neutral, since we can see the reason behind some of the complaints, but not for some others. We'll let readers decide. The criticism came in the following forms:

Unprofessionalism: Users pointed out how Krystal's posting style is...how do we say...not always up to a typical adult's level. Spelling and grammar errors? Not so bad when they're rare and mistakes are corrected. But with Krystal it seemed to some users that, while she was being paid for this position, she made multiple mistakes in her messages and even in official site announcements. People are perfectly willing to give out some mulligans, but the grace period has to end at some point. Hopefully Krystal's FAQs are written better than her posts.

Krystal was also criticized for using the official gamefaqs twitter account to give her personal opinon about a game, and it seemed strange that this happened when she could've brought it up the normal way on the site like anyone else.

Some complained when Krystal said she wouldn't date black people due to cultural differences, a point which they argued was racist. Others thought that she was bringing up inappropriate subjects, in a manner not fitting for an admin. In one topic she talked about "vag smells" and when someone said this was unprofessional, she asked why it isn't refreshing to have an admin who doesn't act like a robot. But no one has complained so far that she acts like a robot. If anything, they have complained that she's too far in the other direction. Better to be a robot than a punchline.

Krystal's race comment came up mere months after a moderator was removed after posting a similar message, and this point was not lost at CE.

Krystal herself didn't handle the complaints as well as some would've liked, with critics saying she was dismissive or insulting toward the community that she was supposed to be drawing to the site. In one topic she asked her critics: if they think they can do better, why didn't they apply to the position? The problem with that is that regardless of how they act, the typical user expects a paid administrator to act more professionally. When one of Krystal's selling points was that she knew the community, as a regular user just like us, her new argument - that no one else could hope to perform the job as well as her - was another dismissive claim that downplayed others, even as she was acting more unprofessionally on the boards than quite a few other users and even some of the trolls.

Abuse of power: critics stated that Krystal had revealed someone's usermap over the board's chat, which she denies, but also made clear that she could do it whenever she liked if she wanted. Users also complained that when they brought this up on CE, Krystal would delete their messages and it added to the impression that she was covering something up.

Not only was Krystal closing down topics that complained about her actions, topics that simply asked about what was going on were closed. Even after the swell of complaints, Krystal continues to close down topics that she deems "complaint forums" on the board. We here at GUAC have long suspected that moderators have closed topics simply because they were getting criticized in them. Did Krystal need to lock these topics, when they would've purged on their own in a day or two? Her actions only added to the idea that she was covering up something and was unable to accept criticism.

Finally, Krystal joked about shutting the board down for a little just to see how annoyed people would get.

Taken together, many posters said that Krystal was having a "meltdown."

Quote compilations below...