Hello there.

I wanted to make a post addressing the latest controversy because I feel like it’s our duty as administrators to make sure this community stays a safe space for its members.

Context

On March 22, we received reports that pizzaboy was 17 years old. We only banned her today when her age was made public on the site.

The reasons behind our initial reluctance to ban her immediately were:

1. We frankly believe that this community is a useful resource to everyone regardless of their age. This site is one of the few communities where everyone can freely discuss DIY HRT and other resources without fear. It is because of that that we were reluctant to ban someone who was 17 and probably didn’t have many other communities to turn to.

2. Banning a minor is only going to make the minor create another account and be quiet about their age. We didn’t feel that banning her was going to meaningfully protect her, as she was probably just going to create an alt account. Pizzaboy has admitted to creating alt accounts for some time now.

3. Our approach at enforcing rules is contextual. If we feel that a person who is breaking a rule is being a dick about it, we enforce it. If the rule being broken does not really disrupt or endanger the community, we just let it slide. Since pizzaboy’s age was only revealed to us through leaked direct messages with her, we considered that the rule didn’t need to be enforced at the time, since she did disclose that information in private.

We recognize this decision was wrong in retrospect and we understand that it has made a lot of people uncomfortable. We are truly sorry, and we promise to do better.

Moving forward

The “no minors” rule will be enforced with a Zero Tolerance policy. If anyone has proof that someone in here is a minor, be it from public posts from the server or from private conversations, feel free to contact us and we will terminate the offending account.

---

We understand that a lot of you feel very uncomfortable about this situation, especially given the recentness of the /r/mtf debacle. We encourage you to comment below your opinions on the matter and suggestions on how to improve our moderation.

I’m also tagging this post as a Megathread to hopefully redirect all conversations about this drama here and preventing spam. We urge you to please keep the conversation about the drama contained here.

Thanks to everyone.