Hello Neopians!

This announcement is to address the recent situation that you may or may not be aware of.
So first and foremost, in terms of transparency since this has become a public matter and caused a lot of concerns, I will be giving a rough breakdown of the situation for those who are aware.

On the 10th of November around 00:50 (UTC +0) two artists were removed from the artist panel. This was due to another report from some artists on being harassed and ostracized by said users, and to give a broader history we have had such reports multiple times in the past, however we failed to act in a timely manner and therefore never gave infractions to the users involved, which is one of the big issues that caused this situation.

Looking back through the conversations had in the staff threads about these incidents it is clear we had the intention of sending warnings however never took it into action - letting the issues just build up without being addressed. I learned recently from the moderation team they feel like they needed my go ahead to do anything and that is partly due to the lack of tools on-site and partly due to them either lacking appropriate permissions on the discord or myself not being clear on the procedures and steps taken and who can.
That is another failing on my part which led up to those artists not getting the proper moderation treatment that they should have had.

Given the situation that was reported most recently to us we went back and saw the previous incidents and decided that since this behaviour had been going on long enough, and that we failed to act in a timely manner previously that we should act immediately this time, preventing inaction from happening again. Instead of starting at the beginning of the infractions with a warning, due to the previous threads we decided to remove them from the artist panel permanently.

In hind-sight this was a knee-jerk reaction from us purely to prevent inaction and failings like we had before.
However for the artists that were blind-sided and hit with a kick it was definitely unfair for them, and we regret skipping the warnings.
I would like to formally apologise to Wren and Velu for skipping the standards of normal moderation.
It was a major failure in our part and one that we will be working on not repeating.

I will be doing the following to make sure this doesn't happen again in the future:

Creating a full moderation panel on the website with incident handling, records of previous infractions and the actions taken at that point.
Implementing a "point" based infraction system that is used by some major sites to dictate punishments in a more appropriate and fair manner, based on the infraction and previous history (history that was actually warned for). Making sure that mod action is swift by letting my moderators know that they don't need my go ahead as they believed before, and providing my Moderators the permissions and tools needed to enforce said rules.

What transpired after this were Tumblr posts written by both artists expressing their very valid anger and frustration about the situation. Many have read them and were, again, understandably upset. Even if it had not been intended, this resulted in my staff receiving harassment from via DM's and behaviour which has required legal action to be taken. I'm not at liberty to discuss any of the legal issues, but this demonstrates how severely things had progressed. As an owner, I want to protect my staff and users, and this is no exception. Due to this, I banned the accounts of those who I believed to be involved with the threats, which included the two artists as they (intentionally or not) facilitated that behaviour, yet again bypassing any kind of procedure we had set into place, purely for the safety and comfort of those being harassed.

Velu requested their art be taken off the site, and I agreed due to the previous failings. Wren also requested their art to be removed as they felt exploited given the situation, and I agreed. Given some of the comments I had seen, it reminded me of the clause that art would be kept in the cases that the artists are just removing them out of spite over punishment. I considered thinking of using the clause, however, given how the situation was handled and this being an exceptional circumstance, I brought it up to the artist panel themselves for them to vote on how we should proceed with the removals. I wanted this to be fully up to them as they are artists as well, they know the struggle artists go through, the work that goes into it, and they all agreed to the same clause when they joined - not to mention those remaining will have to be the ones to remake the art assets (unless you want me to draw something in MS paint with my jacked hands)

After much discussion and deliberation, we decided to fully remove all requested assets as originally intended. This is what we're working on now, and that's when I made the re-imagining feature to organize all of the assets that need to be re-done.

Another artist came to me and requested that some of their assets be removed due to not agreeing with the clause/artist rules once re-inspected and some of the negative comments that were made in the panel towards some of the parting artists. I do not condone these comments and plan to review this in more detail and talk to those involved. (I thank this artist for bringing this up to me before they left, as things have been incredibly hectic these past few days.)

When creating the announcement for the re-imagining I should have addressed the situation publicly too, but I was of the mindset that moderation action is usually not disclosed publicly on sites and it would be inappropriate. However, given the situation (our/my failing at moderation), and the removal of beloved assets, an explanation should have been given alongside that announcement. I apologize that you were left in the dark given the situation and that it cultivated an environment of fear and worry.

For transparency's sake, many artists have also stepped down due to disagreeing with how this situation was handled and fear that something like this may happen again, and that's completely understandable and we don't fault them for that at all! This situation has been stressful for everyone involved and I apologise to our artists for making them feel fear of their position or lack of trust in our actions and staff, and for those who left I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors and thank you for your service on Moderneopets.

Another concern that was brought to us is the lack of a staff page where people can see the current members of staff for contacting for moderation issues or other reasons. I will be working on a staff page which lists all current staff members. For the artists I will also work on them having their own page showing all their contributions to the site and if applicable, a link to their ko-fi/patreon/other donation service so users can directly give their thanks to the artists that work on making MN a vibrant and lovely place.

On the subject of staff, we have had two moderators step down from the position for their own mental health, one being the_seventh_circle who states their stepping down here, why and some of what they have gone through during this. This is the reason I stress for people to remain civil as I get feelings are hurt but it doesn't justify putting anyone through something like that, and that applies to all involved. The other moderator to step is Kat/Katnoir who wanted to leave you guys with this:

Deebs has also decided to step down from Art Director as it was more intertwined with moderation than they wanted it to be, and what we intended it to be to begin with, something which they stated they were not comfortable with to begin with. Once more systems are put in place fully separating moderation and the art director role, they may return, if they feel comfortable doing so (and once they're no longer as busy in real life as they are now, which was also one of the reasons)

I'd like to thank all staff that have stepped down for their help and I wish anyone who is suffering from stress - be it to this situation or not, to take a break from it all and focus on things that make you happy, as that is what truly matters. Anyway, before I get sidetracked back to the main topic.

Communication has been a failure and hopefully, this post will begin a healing process to remedy that. I am working on means to improve our structure and how people provide feedback and critique -- we now have a anonymous feedback form on google for you to provide feedback and suggestions on how we can improve going forward, and voice your displeasure with how things were handled without fear of being reprimanded for it. (Though I please ask you to remain civil and avoid any further harassment of staff. We are using these forms as a tool to improve and harassment will become counter-productive to your fellow users attempting to communicate their feelings and ideas.)

For those who wish to discuss the issues with other users and give public feedback we also have a discord channel called feedback-and-discussion where as long as you're being civil and not breaking any rules, you don't have to worry about being warned. (Again, as long as you follow the rules and remain respectful).

This leaves us with two moderators and still a lot of users to manage, which has been one of the ingredients to cause the issues in our infrastructure -- we grew too fast, let too many users in too quickly and outgrew our methods of managing the site. It went from a small hobby site to a frankly massive community and we failed to keep up with our tools and ways of handling issues. To prevent this from further spiraling out of control all applications have been permanently closed until further notice. Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to joining but we need to get our ducks in a row before we let any more users in and give more workload to our staff.

I understand this whole situation was handled badly, and I (Hazer) take responsibility for that, I once again apologize to Wren and Velu for failing them as an admin and not following the procedures of moderation properly and failing to communicate in other ways.

One last note is that I would like to again request people be civil throughout this situation and remember that everyone is human, no one deserves to receive threats or insults. Though many of you may be upset at how this was handled and upset at me for my failings, please also keep in mind that there are people who call MN home, come back to it to de-stress from a hard day, and use it to take care of their mental health. I please ask for you to respect and not pressure people into leaving if they do not want to, thank you.

What now?

I will be working on more moderation tools, receiving and implementing feedback and insight from those who have managed large communities in the past to put into practice, as well as establishing a proper point system to abide by so that procedures cannot be skipped in the future.

I will be opening more channels of communcation and feedback both for the artists on the team and the moderators. I will also be maintaining feedback channels and forms for users as well. Alongside this, I plan to create pages for users to see/contact staff members, see their contributions if they are artists, and get the artist's efforts far more visible.

This situation has demonstrated how woefully unprepared I've been to handle such a large community and I feel taking these steps, as well as closing applications, will help me catch up and improve things significantly. All I can do in this situation is learn from my mistakes and make sure they don't happen again, it's the least I can do for everyone involved.

Given my situation with my wrists (severe carpal tunnel in both) I have an update on that. On the 15th I had a consultation with the surgeon and he has offered to perform surgery on both hands at once, which whilst it would severely restrict what I can do (for everything) for a week or two whilst I recover, it will help me get over this sooner. I have decided to take this route and I've been told his waiting times are roughly around 6 weeks or so, so hopefully that should be happening around January.

Of course given those two weeks of recovery I won't be active, but after healing I plan on diving head first back into developing for the site and finishing the aforementioned features if I haven't done so by then. So please expect a bit of an intermission or silence during January for a bit as I recover, and then expect me to come back full force afterwards (if nothing happens during the surgery or infections, etc.. I'll keep you all updated)

All in all to the users who were made to feel afraid and left in the dark, to the artists who felt like their efforts were exploited and to the moderators who had to go through harassment and mental health crisis due to the situation I am incredibly sorry for my failings, and all I can do now is work the hardest I can to improve as an administrator/owner to prevent this ever happening again.

Hey there Neopia!

We wanted to let you know of the implementation of a few notices/features!
As some of you may know we are adjusting certain pets that may contain insensitive materials (such as island), however just changing the images to show "temporary" isn't the best fix, is it? We've added in an official notice on pages where you can change pets and also on the rainbow pool to better explain the fact they are temporary and will be changed in the future. Linking to our new page which explains why and what happens when it gets changed.

This does not just apply to insensitive materials, as we also have allowed our artists to withdraw their art from their site and though we usually have clauses and protections in place to avoid this situation we are all human and can make mistakes and have an exceptional circumstance which can be used in said cases, as we want to respect the artists wishes. This system will also be tied into the "re-imagining" system (the notifications, compensation and information page) as it affects pet colours in the same way as insensitive material (as in, letting people know it's going to change, etc..)

Today we're releasing the feature which shows such pets in a more official manner.
You will see notifications at:

- The Rainbow Pool View Poses page.
- When attempting to Paint a pet that is being re-imagined.
- When attempting to Fountain a pet that is being re-imagined.
- When attempting to Genetically modify and choose an alt that is being re-imagined.

In the later three cases, you will also get a full confirmation to let you know that the pet will be changed, allowing you to change your mind and use the item on something else instead. Along side this, the notifications link you to our new information page which explain the process in more detail including the compensation a user gets when their pet is changed (which tldr: you get an item to make that same colour, and a pet slot as well as keeping the new version of the pet if you wanted to keep it!)

What pets are being re-imagined?

The new information page helps with that too -- letting you know a list of pet colours and alternative colours that are in the process of being re-imagined to a fresh coat of paint, where as before you'd have to guess if a pet will be changed and it was a bit of a shock to some users when some pets were changed without warning, so no more!

What about the old art?

The old art was removed for reason, be it on the artists wishes or it being insensitive or offensive material, so we discourage all continued use of the art as overlays or in profiles/pet pages as to respect the artists and those who might be offended by the insensitive material that was removed. We also strongly request that you do not harass any artists or staff over their choices of art being removed as that will result in appropriate punishments, even though the situation may be sad if a pet you love the design of is changing, we're all human and should be treated as such.

We appreciate your understanding on this subject and hope you're all doing well!

Auto-Refreshers: A Friendly Reminder!

Time for a quick chat about something important in the world of Moderneopets. We're all about fun, fairness, and a great Neopian experience, and to keep it that way, we want to remind everyone that auto-refreshers are not and never have been okay here.

Why Do We Care?

It's simple – auto-refreshers can mess with the balance we work hard to maintain, they give users an unfair advantage to those who do not have such scripts running.

Long-Standing Policy

Just a heads up, we've had this rule in place since the beginning of our conception. We stand by it because we believe in a level playing field for all Neopians.

What's on the Horizon?

We're keeping a watchful eye on things, as always. Our team is here to ensure everyone's playing fair. Anyone caught using auto-refreshers will face consequences as per our policies. Though we haven't had time to focus on such things in the past due to our quick growth, the rampant use of them have caused it to become a priority, and we will be doing a full scan of our users activity in the near future, once my hands have had a bit of a rest.

Admit It for a Softer Landing

We get it – we all make mistakes. If you've used an auto-refresher, there's room for honesty. Own up to it before we catch you during our regular checks, and you'll get a lighter punishment. To contact us please feel free to send a neomail to any of the following:

Hazer
Kat
Star
Nidrew
the_seventh_circle

We're all about second chances, that being said:

Ditch the Auto-Refreshers, Now!

We're keeping it real and keeping it fair. We're asking all of our amazing users to say goodbye to those auto-refreshers. Let's keep Moderneopets a place where everyone can have a great time on even ground. Please note that if we detect continued auto-refreshing past this announcement, we the punishment will be more severe for the accounts involved.

This place is all about fun, fairness, and friendly vibes. Let's keep it that way!
We do not enjoy punishing our user-base however our rules are here for a reason.
Due to this being a widespread issue and ongoing misunderstandings/obliviousness to our rules on this regard we will *not* be freezing peoples accounts permanently when we do the next sweep through due to this. However continued use after punishments will lead to a permanent freeze.

Please take the time to re-read our rules and get re-aquainted with them, here: https://www.moderneopets.com/help/rules

Everyone at Moderneopets wishes you a very Happy Halloween! With it comes an extension to the Halloween event and a whole lot of goodies! So many goodies in fact - that if we tried to post about all of them in this news post it would stretch the page a bit too much for our liking. So how about going to the halloween event page instead? There you'll be able to find out about all the delights and terrors in store for you...

Hello!

I'm writing to let everyone know about my current health situation and the cause of my absence and lack of updates on the site. Most of the users on the Discord will know of my situation however there are many of you lovely users who aren't on there, and have deserved an explanation on why the site's updating has slowed to a near halt.

I've had many health issues over the year and one that arose about 4 months ago has gotten in the way of me doing any coding; I recently got the tests done (a second time due to the hospital messing up the first time) and it was revealed I have carpal tunnel in both arms. Our health system judges the severity on a scale of 1 to 6 (1 being mild, 6 being the most severe) and one arm is a 5 and the other is a 4. This leads to no other choice but surgery, which will have to be done one arm at a time and still might take a couple of months before I get it. (Will be pestering my doctors to speed up the process though.)

Coding/typing in general has become extremely painful for me, and has resulted in the lack of updates, so I do apologize for that and also for not writing up a news post earlier. This situation might take a while to resolve given how busy our health care system is and the recovery times for the surgery I will have to take (as well as waiting for the referral).

Don't worry - our artists are still powering on and there still will be art/colour updates; that won't stop. Plus, when I'm having good days and the wrists aren't hurting as much I will still get a bit of coding done here and there, but it will be few and far between, moreso when I am recovering from the surgery that's ahead.

Thank you for your understanding and continued patience. <3
I appreciate and love you all.
- Hazer

Arrr, me hearties! 'Tis Talk Like a Pirate Day, and Neopia be teemin' with a scurvy crew of pirate Neopets fit for a swashbucklin' adventure! 🏴‍☠️⚓


First off, we got Captain Drakarrrr the Draik, soarrrin' through the skies with wings as grand as a galleon's sails! He be plunderin' the skies for rare treasures and golden doubloons, for he be the fiercest of all the sky pirates!


Next be Scallywag Acara Anne, with her sharp claws and even sharper wit. She be sneakin' through the shadows, stealin' booty and givin' landlubbers a fright they won't soon forget! Arrr, she be the sneakiest of 'em all!


The foxy Kitzen, known as Foxeh Fitz the Fox, be a crafty matey, trickin' foes with sly tricks and clever schemes. With eyes as sharp as cutlasses, he be findin' hidden treasures where others see nothin'!


Vanda the Vandagyre, be she a swashbuckler of the skies! She be divin' from great heights to snatch shiny trinkets from unsuspectin' ships below. Watch out, for she be a true sky bandit!


Moo-nificent Captain Kau, with his mighty horn and sturdy hooves, be commandin' a ghostly pirate ship said to be cursed with riches untold! He be sailin' the haunted seas, seekin' out lost treasures and spookin' scallywags!


Aye, 'tis Seadog Usul, with xeir trusty petpet Xepru, who be takin' charge of the Neopian seas! Xey after the mystical Dubloon-octopus, a creature said to grant unimaginable wealth to the lucky pirate who captures it!


Ruki Roger, known for his many legs and slippery charm, be a master of navigatin' through treacherous waters. He be chartin' courses to uncharted islands, seekin' hidden riches and ancient artifacts!


Lastly, there be Captain Ixi Nobeard, with their magnificent horns and fearsome presence. They be commandin' a crew of loyal neopets, and they be roamin' the seas, terrorizin' rival pirates and layin' claim to their ill-gotten gains!

So, me hearties, set a course for Neopia and claim one of these fine pirate Neopets as yer own! With their swashbucklin' spirit, ye be talkin' like a pirate and livin' like one too! May yer adventures be grand, and yer treasure chests overflow with Neopoints! Yo-ho-ho! 🏴‍☠️💰🦜🦊🦅🐄🦢🐞🐴🏴‍☠️

Due to some things in the rules section being missing due to us believing it to be common sense, they have now been added into the rules page.
The changes and additions are:

We have also added this rule to our Prohibited Conduct clause:



Please note by continuing to use our services you agree to the rules and the following changes to them.
Have a nice day!

Something new must be in the water... either that or Dr. Sloth has been experimenting more with his horrific mutants! Three new mutants have been discovered due to his unethical work. I wish that was all we had to report however... it gets more disturbing...


The mutants are... true to their name... mutating in different ways. Four new types of mutants have been discovered lurking in the shadows of Neopia. We're unsure if these are natural mutations or more heinous experiments, either way you can find the following new types of Mutants:

Blight, Brute, Cave Dweller, Ocular AND we've found some of the original experiments from Dr Sloth under "Classic"


All the subterranean digging and exploration that these cave dwellers and other mutants have been doing has stirred up the activity of the Ginkos! You can now find Eight new types of Ginko exploring Neopia, isn't that awesome?!


There are two new Transmogrification potions that can be found for the Lulamu and Kitzen! Is that really a good thing, though?
It seems like the experiments weren't limited to Neopets... The Marafin has also been mutated, oh no!

You notice a magical sparkling book on the ground... that's a good sign you think, you're so used to magical grimoires being left everywhere after all. When you pick it up you notice that it's just an ordinary album... or is it?

The stamp album is here! It's time to go hunting to fill your album with all sorts of goodies to get some delicious, delicious avatars.
You'll even find that when you turn to a page of the album it will offer you the ability to fill it with any appropriate needed stamps that it detects in your SDB, Inventory or Gallery! isn't that neat?

Eventually this stamp album will grow and have Moderneopets custom albums with different, repeatable albums and rewards, so that is something to look forward too in the future! For now only the original stamp albums are implemented. You will notice that many of the newer stamps are missing, as we still need to update our item database. Do not worry, we'll update it eventually so you'll be able to complete those too!

For now, have fun collecting!

It's the Discovery of Meridell day today and what better way to celebrate it than to... roll... some cheese.... down a hill? Okay. I guess we're doing that today! If you're fast enough you'll even be able to keep the cheese for yourself! Not sure if most of them are safe to eat though...

As a bonus - every August the 1st / Discovery of Meridell day will give a bonus 450 points to your cheese roller score!
So what are you waiting for? Get rolling!