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I want to apologize for bringing this to your attention, but certain events that made some members very worried, force me give an official explanation of what is going on.

In short: Everything is great and will be even better

But if that is not satisfactory enough for you, then below i will be explaining things such as:
why Catalyst got demoted;
is tyranny over?
who is responsible;
what's going on at AudioZ;
rumors regarding scene releases.

As much as i'd like to this post won't be brief, so before i begin i want to clear something out:
I am the only owner and creator of AudioZ and AudioSEX;
I am responsible for everything that's happening on both projects;
I am the only person that can give official statements related to these web-sites,
and if you don't believe to what i say, please don't bother arguing as i'm only doing this in interests of my members.

1. Why Catalyst has been demoted from Moderators to Residents.
History: Catalyst has been assigned as a general moderator at AudioSEX forum by me, later on he complained about trash-talks in comments at AudioZ and asked me to become a mod there as well.
His official status at AudioZ was "moderator responsible for polite-correctness in comments". In regards to AudioZ he was not officially responsible for anything else and did not have the rights to manage anything but comments.
At AudioSEX forum, with time he became my right hand and his official status was "Vice-Administrator" with general responsibilities to support and moderate the forum.

Reasons for his demotion in short: we could not reach an agreement in AudioZ policy regarding members management.

For about a year I have been receiving multiple reports regarding tyranny created by Catalyst on both projects;
I did knew that he sometimes were obsessed with the power i gave him, but tried to ignore the few complaints i have received in the beginning.

Lately i was pretty confident that my moderators were doing good job and i could afford to concentrate on new projects for musicians. I wasn't always fully aware of what's going on in comments and were relaying on words of those responsible for that part of the site.
However, somewhere around august 2015 Catalyst's behavior raised my suspicions (mildly put).
Ever since the beginning of our relationship he wanted to make my projects private allowing access only to chosen people, which was completely against my beliefs about free internet.
He misguided me into limiting the forum registration and give him control over accounts approval, because as he said forum got flooded with bad people and spam;
I was highly against those limits because i myself wouldn't want to become a member of my own forum anymore; which forced me to move forum engine from IPB to XenForo, set word filters and multiple spam protection tools to be assured that nothing of that kind can be repeated again and AudioSEX could once again be free for everybody.

Despite all that, i kept hearing complaints from Catalyst who demanded to set the limits once again, only now it sounded rather paranoid because there were clearly no reason for such critical measures.

I began to moderate both projects once again to understand what is going on and what makes Catalyst so paranoid. I've integrated even more spam filters to both AudioZ and AudioSEX, making it almost impossible to register an account using so called "1-minute-email";

Many times i've asked him not to remove anything before i see it, or in worst case make screenshots to show me the proof of at least some of those horrible things that he described, but he continued.

At the end of august 2015 i had to order him to temporarily step out of his duties at AudioZ so i could take situation back under control, but what i saw then was a lot more horrible than what he misguided me into.

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The only negativity that i saw in comments were coming from Catalyst himself.
Diving deeper into this shit i've come to realize that he was actually sabotaging my own projects:

• turning members against each other, the scene and release groups,

• spreading unconfirmed rumors about releases and the scene, acting like Noah, the only one who can speak to God,

• creating virtual "social layers" among members - personally chosen by him users that supposedly received some benefits at AudioZ or from him personally:

btw, he never did sent me his comments ​

• inability to solve problems with members any other way but banning, which brought a lot of problems to AudioZ and AudioSEX like Ddos attacs, spam and flood attacts (involving self-made pictures of crap) and many negative impressions to my members,

• dictatorship and tyranny resulting in many members who disagreed with him being banned and removed;

just last week i was completely astonished when he complained to me on a newly assigned moderator at AudioSEX for downrating his one comment. he removed that downrating using his moderator abilities because in his understanding moderator cannot show a sign of disagreement with him.......

• he used his status at AudioZ to get to the scene and because i forwarded my suppliers to Catalyst, he used supplies dedicated exclusively to AudioZ to form his own team. Later after, he would limit access to new releases, and after that he would only share among the people from his "virtual social layer"...

once again - releases made from supplies of our members that only supposed to be shared free for everyone here, at AudioZ...

• he took credit for my work. because i trusted him with writing reports about the work that has been done.

he twisted words so it would look like he is the one who's doing everything, while in reality 98% of the work was done by me. you can see it in almost every report that he made (1, 2).
not only he lied to the public, he misguided his close friends into thinking that he is responsible for anything more than what he was assigned for:

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there were so many lies... did you know he's not even a musician? nor he's an epic master reverse engineer.

I have demoted Catalyst at AudioZ a few days ago and today i found out that he's conspiring my members at AudioSEX to move to another forum with him, so i had to demote him at AudioSEX as well, although we were still in the process of discussing how to make it work.

I would like to end this story with one of many complaints that i have received from affected members:

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Like i said to Catalyst in one of my last letters to him, the worst thing for me is that in the end i can't really blame anyone but myself, because it is only my fault that i've blindly trusted him with my own children and this shame will be on my shoulders.


I know it's late, but still i would like to sincerely apologize before all who suffered from Catalyst's actions. I will learn my lesson and try to never repeat the same mistake again. So i hope you can give AudioZ another chance as i were always inspired by individualists and doors of AudioZ are opened for you.

It's never too late to apologize (c) V, from "V for Vendetta"​

What's Next
- Everything
no more tyranny, no more hatred in comments, no more false rumors nor social layers. Rules are one and they are the same for everybody, and you can feel safe as long as you follow them


Rumors Related to Scene Releases
Rumors spread by Catalyst regarding scene and R2R releases are false. In a few days I will get an official statement and will update you if i find out anything new, but for now the only official information that R2R wanted to share with us has been in the .nfo file to one of their latest release,
and it said that for some time they will be releasing most of the stuff internally.

However, right now you can put R2R keyword into the search field and see that there have been fresh releases just a few days ago.

When i found out about it I asked PiRAT to make a post with R2R Encryptor The Suppliers Tools to support R2R with some fresh supplies.
on the way, these tools have already been posted two times at AudioZ and both times taken down by Catalyst...


Also reminding that if you want to support AudioZ you can supply your stuff to me directly or to PiRAT. It will be cleaned, prepared and posted under your name, absolutely free for everyone, Exclusively at AudioZ


P.S. I know there will be many, many comments to this post and i will not be able to reply all of them, so i want you to remember that i have a lot of work to do and i will not get into arguments - if you don't believe me, it is your choice and you are free to express it as long as you act within our rules.

Also, you might find it interesting to read related comments in this post. Most questions have already been answered there. Thanks Rico88 for help

I also want to say sincere thank you to all the people that trusted me on this and remained objective. I respect you enormously

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UPD: my First Reply to Comments
my Second Reply to Comments

 

Last edited: Oct 9, 2015

October 6, 2015​

Hello everyone. Since i made this post i got completely swamped by letters of support at both AudioZ and AudioSEX.
Unfortunately, only now i have the opportunity to read and reply this thread. At the moment i witness 9 pages of comments and it would take robot to reply all of them, so i'll try to read your comments, summarize them and write a combined reply


First of all, I deeply appreciate your support and understanding.

I am sincerely shocked by the amount of members that were affected by Catalyst's ruling,
but what i find even more shocking is that only a few of you actually reported his behavior to me

It really saddens me and i would like to change that in the future. I will make it a part of our rules to report moderator's abuse,
and i want to make it clear that this is your responsibility as a member.


Replies:

we never met in real life, if that's what you're asking, but we did speak a lot over these years so i do have some idea about him.

no, absolutely not. i've never been up to programming nor reversing.

thank you for your support
however, from what i know Mykal never wanted to be a moderator here on the first place and publicly asked for his demotion many times. Catalyst asked me to temporarily "hire" him to help with moderation. There are no hard feeling between me and Mykal. I respect the man.

you mean the quotes in my original post? no, actually, i've only went through 4 pages of his comments at AudioZ using keywords "teams" and "audioz". needless to say that there is a lot more and worst things he said in the public that you can still find if you're interested.

very good point that really needs to be discussed.

I've actually mentioned this in my original post:

i did tried to manage Hydro for as long as i could, as well as The Messenger.
while you might not remember what happened with the last one, most of you probably saw the horrifying comments that Catalyst wrote to Hydro's posts and i believe he was the one who started this whole Hydro Hate thing, because when members see that even a mod says shit about another member in comments, of course they will think it's a normal behavior
that was very, very stupid of him and i told him that many times.
Although i was the one who banned Hydro, i believe that Catalysts actions led to this. Otherwise, with proper handling, Hydro could bring more good to us all. And instead of that we have him spamming AudioZ with shitty comments at least once a week.

The Messenger is even a worst example of Catalysts improper members handling. After all that was done even i can't talk the guy into sense. I believe that he will continue to spam the forum even after these changes, although i'm still trying to talk to him.

do not mistaken yourself. "feel of community" is not one man's job. it is only thanks to our amazing members we have this community feel.


Ok I've covered 5 pages and unfortunately have to attend to another task, but i will come back and reply to the rest later.

Personal Messages​

I also want to assure those who are waiting for my reply to their PM - your messages will be answered! please have patience and understanding

 

Last edited: Oct 6, 2015