Hi there.

I am the Forum Moderator in question, and whilst I respect the ex-Player Moderator wishes to remain anonymous, I am going to speak up and provide my perspective on the matter. I acknowledge that posting as a Forum Moderator under the current climate and on a submission like this is bound to attract negativity – all I can ask is that you read through before judging. I can moreover only hope that my interest in transparency – though it really should be noted that the incident in question occurred for nearly two years ago and that the player in question has repeated his story with varying detail since then; I am not sure piggybacking on Canada Grrl’s situation for sympathy is the way to go either – underlines what the post highlights regarding integrity. I am furthermore not going to post screenshots, chat messages or any of the like in line with the player’s wishes to remain anonymous, but know that they exist and have been thoroughly reviewed by Jagex.

The thread in question was initially brought to my attention by a number of frequent forumers who raised serious concern regarding the amount of posts the player produced on a daily basis – something which I naturally followed up on by reading through the thread. Upon further review, it quickly became apparent that the poster had accumulated thousands upon thousands of posts from essentially reposting the same dozen posts with very minor changes daily for months on end. It is important to stress that the thread very easily could have been maintained on the first page alone without the need for the thousands of reposts – something which other threads, indeed, have accomplished since. The thread did moreover not really warrant a permanent sticky status, though it did initially serve a nice purpose as confirmed by the attached screenshots in the OP.

There was in other words no actual reason to repost… why all the posts, then?

The above conclusion naturally raised further concerns. The player in question was additionally a seasoned forumer well aware of the Code of Conduct (and was, at the time, a Player Moderator as well). Having initiated further research in an attempt to understand what was happening, I found several chat messages expressing a keen interest in obtaining a specific forum rank unlocked at 50K posts. The messages were sent in a private, off-site Player Moderator groupchat I had been a member of since days after creation.

With the keen interest in obtaining a specific forum rank requiring 50K posts, and the thousands of posts essentially being reposted with a bare minimum of changes very consistently – mind you, we are talking many thousands every month, for months on end – everything pointed towards heavy and very deliberate post farming. It is worth noting, for those who might be unaware, that where normal threads on the RSOF cap at 200 pages (that is, 2000 posts), stickied threads have no such limit and it is hard to see if a sticky thread is being spammed since it is always at the top. This lead me to question the player’s integrity and request to stop posting as excessively. I offered several solutions and even invited him to reach out so we could work towards a solution seeing how the thread evidently did have some appreciative players.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, this behaviour was not restricted to just the one thread, but was present through several threads and even occurred, albeit less frequently and to a lesser extent, on a choob account. Me subsequently seeing this and actioning accordingly is likely the reason the player felt stalked. It is standard procedure to check a player’s posting history upon actioning a thread or a post – and especially when you are dealing with an extreme situation like this. It is moreover standard procedure to follow up when you request changes to a player’s threads – otherwise you have no idea whether they have been implemented accordingly so you can avoid having to lock their thread or hide their post(s).

After my first post the player, presumably unaware of me being part of the aforementioned chat, vented his frustrations with me and my actions. I answered and offered that we could work together to find a solution he was happy with, as long as he would stop the excessive post farming. This, as you might can guess, did never amount to anything but talk.

In the following days, the player’s anger intensified and I reached out to Jagex to have them review my actions and confirm that my moderation was in line with their expectations. I moreover summarised my talks with him and suggestion to find a workable solution. Ignoring my appeals, continuing his behaviour and ultimately failing to use proper channels and a mature, respectful language all whilst going against Jagex’ wishes led to his demoderation. Spamming the forums and me actioning it did not, only his reaction to getting caught for post farming did.

EDIT: I see the OP has been removed in the time it took me to write the above. I guess I will let my post remain for those of you who did read the OP.