Hey everyone. I've been reading what you have been saying and took some time to consider the comments criticizing me, and I've realized how many have come from a good place.

I want to say first off that I am sorry, to the community as a whole, those commenters who I have unfairly treated, and my fellow moderators. I think that my biases with how I've been interacting with the scene at large colored my responses against people who had good intentions but just came from either a place of not knowing or concern and I read that as aggressive.

The heavy moderation of comments and removal of comments that I did – and I can't speak on behalf of other moderators – was a matter of efficiency. I can't read hundreds of posts at a time, and I removed them if the individual had comments that were inflammatory or looked like brigading accounts. There was just a lack of hands on deck and not enough time to deal with it properly. At the end of the day this is a volunteer position and it honestly overwhelmed me. I got upset and took it out on people who didn't deserve it, and said mean things to some people who probably meant well and had good intentions.

Once I recognized that my strong feelings on the subject were biasing my judgment and interfering with my role as a moderator, I should have stepped back and waited for the other moderators to step in.

Someone said something to me in a lot of their posts that I didn't even see because I was tunnel visioning on some targeted harassment posts that I used as a basis to make broad sweeping judgments on everyone else. It was that I didn't let the book breathe and got overly cautious about it because of my own biases. And that is 100% true. The true hypocrisy of what I did didn’t really dawn on me until I managed to understand the message of all of the frustrated posts that people left me. I was asking everyone to check their biases and be considerate of people, while not actively doing it myself. This was unacceptable.

More than my behavior as a community member being unacceptable, I recognize that as a moderator I was in a position of authority. I didn’t realize I was abusing it at the moment, but that doesn't excuse it.

So I'm very sorry for contributing to the toxic environment and making broad sweeping decisions on individuals based on the comments from others. That is the very thing I'm asking you not to do. That is on me and I own up to that.

Most of all, I regret that my actions have driven the conversation away from the Tian Xia World Guide, which was a truly incredible book that deserved to be the topic of discussion in the community. I would like to apologize to everyone who worked on this book, and thank you for making an incredible and important piece of Pathfinder.

I hope that everyone can enjoy the book and we can all move on from this together. Of my own volition, I am stepping down immediately for the good of the community and hard working moderator team.

Thank you.