Hi all

I have been asleep through the whole drama, and wanted to put in my two cents - firstly as a mod, then as a user. Feel free to take it or ignore it. 

AS A MOD

FIRSTLY, I can in no way disown the mod team's decision regarding Jay. I might have been asleep in a bad timezone when it all went down, but I was made aware this was coming, like every other mod. And as unfortunate as it is, I agree with the decision.

Jay has a long history of being an awesome poster and crutch for the Xbox Community. Sadly, he also had a pretty extensive moderation history. Please trust me when I tell you mods were more lenient with Jay than most other users, specifically because of his standing within the site's Xbox community.

Having said that, the last few months it has become clear that Jay's priorities lie elsewhere. I have been to his beta site, I LIKE the look of his beta site. If he'll have me, I will likely POST on his site once its running (in much the same vein as some moderators here frequent vizioneck). But the straight up and down fact is that Jay began to actively use VGChartz as a recruiting ground for his own site, and it became clear he was willing to damage VGC to do it. There is plenty of public evidence to attest to this. I know I am asking you to take me at my word here, but there is also plenty of private evidence that I was - frankly - quite shocked by.

Over the months, I don't think the mods have always dealt with Jay as well as we should. There are probably a dozen points in the past where we, or Jay, could have done things differently and avoided this. Hopefully we as a team take lessons from that. But at the end of the day, at this point, the mods really didn't have other options. For all the talk that this is a big surprise, from our perspective (and, I suspect, from Jay's), its hard to see it that way.

AS A USER

Jay really contributed fantastically to the Xbox Community here in his own way. I like Jay personally, and from memory we've never had a bust up (hopefully he'd agree). I am disappointed with the direction he decided to take towards the end. Change is often painful, but it would have been nice if we'd all found a better way to get his new site and VGC working together. As I said above, that wasn't all Jay's fault in my view, but this is where we ended up.

I would like to say I think it would be a sad indictment of the rest of us if Jay's departing meant the end of the Xbox Community here. I understand a lot of the strong feelings that clearly came out in the last 6-8 hours, I have some of my own too. But I have loved reading this thread just about every day for a year, and I love having you guys elsewhere on the forums (except Ryuu - damn cave dweller). I know being a mod has always thrown up a bit of a barrier and I have tried not to intrude on other mediums outside this site, but I greatly appreciated being involved in the Skype chat last year for E3 as well.

I do agree that regulars in this thread should have a say in who takes over - it seems like Slade is emerging as a favourite, and I would wholeheartedly support that. Please do remember that myself and the other mods (especially the Xbox guys) are always happy to make thread edits if Slade is out of action here and there, just send us a PM.

Cheers

Starcraft