Yoto32

Hey W! My question is simple. I have you added on Facebook. You're a good looking dude. How have you been, and how do you pick your outfits? Anything you're excited about in the coming year?

Hey all, thanks for the questions. PM me if you have any questions about Zybez or if you just want to catch up.

I don't remember any specific names outside of robinhoodrs or Jim so I don't want to slander anybody, so I'll just tell what our policy on that was. Any mods that we suspected abused their mod powers were put on probation while we investigated the situation and cleared their name. This was done by putting a member mask on them so they still appeared as a mod but couldn't access their powers. If we weren't absolutely sure they were innocent, we would ask them to step down and they would be set to hmem.

Hey Yorick, great to hear from you! We should catch up now! To flip this AMA around, let me ask you this- what did you enjoy about being a mod? How did you like dealing with clannies? What made you stick through it long enough to become a mod? DF vs Corr but I didn't moderate much when I became an admin 1. Maurice05 in terms of obnoxiousness, PkPete in terms of personal toxicity, but that was outside the clan boards 2. Honestly, Saddamph or however you spell his name. I felt like he and NH were a necessary, healthy counterculture to the whole "honor" mentality of the clan world. I did like being part of a clan world that had honorable fights but in the end it was the wilderness where anything goes. And compared to how no-honor evolved to ddossing and doxxing, it was downright tame. I mean the whole politics view of timezones in the clan world made sense sense when fights were more compact, distinct fights that had a clear beginning and end. It definitely became obsolete as the fights dragged out to multi-hour affairs. We definitely should have been better at recognizing that each individual person behind the screen had a life outside of clans and likely had better things to be doing with their time.

Hey there! Was was your board name, I'm pretty good at remembering the names of CLs once I see them but S3lvah doesn't ring a bell atm. Whoever you are you must know me pretty well because those are all questions I had strong opinions on. I think I'll answer all your questions in one long, rambling paragraph. When I was an admin, I used to believe that CD did not influence the clan world and was simply a neutral ground to post rights. At the beginning of the clan scene, this was true. Clan officials would recognize when their clan was being outclassed and voluntarily concede and leave the wilderness, leaving a clear victor. This is what the "last clan standing" rule was based off of, the good faith of the participants to not waste everybody's time. At some point, this good faith eroded. Clans were no longer willing to just throw in the towel and would stay longer and longer. A combination of factors contributed to it: rune sets became cheaper and cheaper, easier and easier to come by as money making methods became better and better. No longer were clans bound the amount of rune sets each individual member could afford. Clan members were more willing to stick out for longer fights and not just dip out, perhaps because many of us were in college and could finally set our own hours. I might be biased but I've always felt that the power vacuum left by DS helped contribute to the decline too: without an undisputed #1 clan no clan would want to admit defeat and lose their shot at being #1 in the eyes of the community. And, of course, being able to claim a win on Zybez on their "last clan standing" rules also was likely a large factor. Not the only factor, but a contributing factor nonetheless. I really disliked how the clan community devolved into a "last man standing" mentality. I always felt like there were better ways to determine who won a fight: who had better organization, better shotcalling, brought more people. There's no shame in being the bigger person and leaving if the opposing clan is being obstinate. But on the moderating side, how else could you prove it? Clan fights are inherently chaotic events. There's no way to tell who has the better organization or shot calling after the fact just by a few pictures, and requiring video proof wasn't feasible, especially for smaller clans who might not have anybody who knew how to do it. And no mod would spend their time going through hours long clan fight videos to see who they thought won. The game certainly didn't track in the wilderness how each clan was doing. And we used the good faith of the community as an indicator for victory for as long as we could, but at some point it just wasn't tenable anymore. As for the timezone question, nah we didn't consider that. Yes, the timezone a clan was in did matter but in our view that was just the politics of the clan world: could you get a clan to fight you in a favorable time zone or not. 1. Ngl I always wanted to be a CL of General chat. :$ But I did have a soft spot for Achievements, and guessing from your araxxor comment you probably remember from my achievements post. I like browsing /r/ironscape for that reason too. I probably spent the most amount of time outside CD in the Off Topic board but that place was a cesspool. 2. I kinda like IRL boards. People posting pics of themselves or what they're doing, to show everybody there's a real person behind the keyboard. Helps humanize each other. 3. You mean the ones with the Duck? Mine 😉 4. When Telos came out I worked really hard to beat him at 100% to try and get my completionist cape back, but I was never able to do it. That sorta demotivated me and for probably like 3 years all I did was log into rs3 to do my dailies like POPs and sandstone. Two years ago I started an iron in osrs and I have not logged into my rs3 account since then. Although I'll still log into its osrs counterpart for TOB splits 😛

Ahh yes I remember now. I was hacked before too and it only slightly delayed my promotions. Top brass got a lot more strict about hackings in your time than they were in mine, but iirc you were hacked on multiple occasions. I mean yea, the clan world is obviously really big and keeps a lot of players invested in the game. A few jmods would come on to zybez to interact with the clan world and we gave them hmem status. I'm a straight, cis, white male. I currently work at a patent law office. Fun fact: I got this job because of RSC. When I was in high school I had no idea what I wanted to go to college for. I took honors chemistry as a senior in high school and DB75 was a freshman in college, also studying the same material. We would help each other study and one day he told me I was good at it so I should study chemistry. So, I did. And the only reason my boss interviewed me for this position was because I had a degree in chemistry. Yea do it! I'm pretty sure his rsn is now Venteus and I've seen him online sometimes, but I might be wrong.

I pretty much single handedly made the decision of auto-merging contested fights using a pre-written staff's post. At that time making a decision as to who won a fight was a huge headache for any staff member. The proof that a clan won a fight was never clear: ending pics could be taken at any time in the fight and short of requiring video proof or staff physically being present at the fight it was impossible to tell who was really left standing, or if they thought they won and then left and their opponent came back. And of course no matter what decision you made you'd have the losing clan arguing and whining that you're making the wrong call and how dare you be so biased. It was seriously affecting staff morale and as a purely voluntary position, why would someone voluntarily subject themselves to that sort of abuse and harassment? We were going through staff faster than they can replace them, because there were always less and less new posters we could try out as the clan world became more and more inbred. So I led the discussion with the CD admin team, the CD staff, and the Kings and we all agreed to have a blanket policy of leaving that decision up to the clan community rather than have a CD staff member decide who won and who didn't. I also was a big advocate of third-party posting, as more and more clan boycotted posting on RSC. Activity on the board was dwindling and I felt that was the best way to get people to continue posting on the boards, even if it meant it would be used for trolling purposes.

1. Aragon and Tmal34 2. He was a nice guy, Achievements mod if I recall. Typically the non-CD mods were all generally nice people, outside of CD RSC was a much different place. There was always an unspoken rule that non-CD mods would stay out of CD affairs unless someone was posting porn or something. You really needed to understand CD culture in order to make proper decisions so Brad/Tha Hanzz really hammered it in the early days that non clannies were to stay out of CD, and that mentality stuck the rest of the years. 3. So mod actions were tracked in the admin panel and we would usually gauge a mod or CL's activity based on their mod count. Not going to name names (because it's been awhile and I don't want to get it wrong) but at one point there was a CL who would delete posts individually instead of as a group, which would give ~3x the normal mod actions. 4. Molson's the type of guy who would barge into a space like he owned the place, and more often than not that would be the case. For some reason I felt like he didn't really like me all that much. Got to plat in League of Legends and I usually hover around mid gold, but I haven't played it since the pandemic started. I'm still an avid player of Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons. Yea one time I shouted lyrics of "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield at a RoT official cause I wanted to do homework instead of dealing with RSC stuff. Dealing with aggrieved clannies was always a headache. Sometimes people would give me an IP they already knew about from their boards and ask me to check if it matched with anyone on RSC, which for the most part I would do but would sometimes ignore if they had been pestering me too much. Unfortunately no. I tried reaching out to him a couple of times on WoW but the chemistry just wasn't there anymore. Haven't talked to him in awhile. I know Krystal played hella amount of WoW with him after they left RS so she would know better. Hey Noble, good to see you too! My impression of you was that you were someone who really wanted to prove yourself. My memory is a little hazy but wasn't there some drama around you?

1. Tip.it was a good example of why unbiased moderating is so important: they lost the trust of the clan community early on because of biased moderation and never could earn that reputation back. As much as people liked to complain about it, I really believe that RSC's moderators were fair and unbiased (with some notable exceptions that slipped through the cracks). We took biased mod allegations seriously and I think it showed. 2. Sounds like a great idea to me! Discord is a very popular platform for gamers. My advice would be this: be sure to draw strict boundaries between which channels are alright for shitposting and flaming, have an absolutely zero tolerance policy on irl insults, and to be absolutely sure to have unbiased moderators. There needs to be a vetting process for the people you promote and their actions should be reviewed. Often it's a good idea to give someone a little bit of power and see how they handle it. There will always be people looking out for a power trip of some sort or to feel special, even on something as minor as an OSRS clan shitpost server. Oh and that politics and gaming will always be a mess.

Honestly never really interacted with the guy all that much to form an opinion of him. He was a little before my time on the RSC boards. WM's greatest strength as an admin was that he was actively engaged in the clan world and very knowledgeable about it, which was something that was always sorely lacking in the admin position (see: myself). His biggest weakness I'd say is... public relations. Yea a number of times, but when I'm ready to be able to commit.

Often the best leaders are the ones that don't want the position 😉 But you made the decision that was best for you and I respect that.

1. Shitposting meme board. 2. The UN. Honestly it was just a board so clan leaders could feel good about themselves. 3. Honestly never, which was my problem. I'm the sort of guy who always believes in following the rules and I have trouble recognizing when the rules don't lead to justice. Hell no. My time as an iron has been the most fun I've had on Runescape in my whole life - including the 08 gwd trips. Every item in my bank I earned myself and I have a sense of accomplishment about it. Every item upgrade is a huge boost, and the game mode forces you play content you wouldn't otherwise have. Right now I'm grinding out the KQ cause I need a dragon chainbody for a master clue - no way I would be killing the boss for any other reason. Although it helps that I was spooned as hell on this account 😛

1. Jaacco was by far and away the best moderator I worked with. Always level headed and fair, great interpersonal skills. Was glad he was made King. 2. Applerune would have made a great moderator Lot of mixed emotions, it was a board I had basically spent my formative teenage years on and where I socialized. It was because of that board that I got into the career I'm in now. It was always my "old stomping ground" where I could go back to. But at the same time it was a dying board, nowhere near the activity it had in its heyday. Every day I would log on and there'd be like four or five people on and no new posts for me to browse or answer back. And it was probably time for me to move on from the board anyways. So bittersweet I suppose. They had a clan board???

1. Not regular. Just this one if True pesters me enough about it. 2. Just remember them as a more serious version of Adelais. 3. Any non-staff RSC users we felt had potential were made into staff. We would put people in the Great Hall first to see if they could stay active on their own, and to get them involved in the behind-the-scenes discussion to get acclimated as to how things worked. I will say that throughout the years His Lordship was consistently brought up as a potential staff member but was always denied because we felt he would be more interested in grandstanding than modding. 1. RoT was always the worst/best at pestering mods to get favorable rulings. Can't remember any specific names unfortunately. 2. I was not involved with how they caught robinhoodrs, that was before my time. I just know that's why he was banned. I'm not too sure myself but IIRC he was promoted to Smod for non-CD purposes with the express condition that his rank status did not transfer over to CD (i.e. he was not part of the CD hierarchy). I'm pretty sure he crossed Molson one too many times. 1. Don't tempt me Hug Jugs.

That was the new system. At the start it was ban evading = banned for life. And I'm glad I was a positive influence on you! That's what I loved about Zybez, the mentoring roles and bringing up new generations.

I'm not gonna throw my peeps under the bus like that but I will say because we're on good terms now that I butted heads with Aragon the most. He was very stubborn. Yes, my original top 5 like was BK listed 5 times but thought that would be obvious.

1+2. I don't really know any new clan, but it really surprised me how long DI lasted. Hard to imagine they died. 3. DS can always come back and smash change my mind. 4. Yea, I thought about it, when I get bored of my iron. Did a couple fights with Tempest, might join this one considering this is where all my friends are. I watch Strong Bad Emails all the time. ngl Wee Man lasted a long longer ias Zybez staff than I thought he would be. I didn't think he would be the type of person who would really like the job, but he proved me wrong! Billy was my boi, we rose through the CD ranks the same time together, although I took so long he retired by the time I got to mod.

Yea honestly we were definitely too strict with the ban evading stuff. Clearly ban evaders wanted to be part of the community, I woulda been fine unbanning/rebanning the trolls and give the people who actually cared and changed their ways like yourself a second chance.

No, the absence of the ge during osrs's initial launch just prolonged the inevitable. Props to No1 for recognizing the void and coding the solution until they put in the ge. I mean, ya'll probably coulda handled swearing. 1. DS, DI, DF, THE, and Corr will always be the top 5 in my head but that's definitely not true. 2. Can't name 5 but Ghjjf is probably GOAT considering his longentivity. 3. I would pick DS just like two years before I actually did. 4. Torreoria basically forces me to keep track of Zero Tolerance Learned this from reading the archives of the admin board, but apparently during the early years of Zybez, W13 had a penchant for randomly promoting people without telling the rest of the admin staff, which inevitably lead to conflict as they didn't go through the vetting process. He did a lot of ad-hoc unilateral decisions like that. Lord Grug was a machine and had far more mod actions than any other person alive. I would let a lot more people banter and tease each other. Seems like the entire point of clanning is just to shittalk each other.

Oh I knew I was going the solo route the moment I created my first Runescape account. And yea! I'll always love that first modding team, going to sara gwd with you guys will always have a special place in my heart. Got your fire cape yet? I'm ready for round two. 1. If the fights I've been invited to are any indication, true's already got enough ass kickings 2. So what I always found fascinating is the amount of people who had pure accounts that also were into clanning. Never thought there was enough people doing it but all the more power to them if that's what they liked about the game. Ok so by far reintroducing Third Party Posting. I don't mean the concept, I was fine with the concept, but I mean posting that we were keeping it after the "trial" just reminded people how much they hated the concept. The hate for it had mostly died down once they saw it in practice. And it wasn't even really a trial run, we always knew we were going to keep it. I've gone through so many staff it's hard to keep track. Can you be more specific? Every single staff member who gave up some of their valuable time to do the thankless job that was moderating CD was valuable. One staff member who I always thought had potential was gkitti, but she was too busy irl to stay as long as I wanted her to. Applerune was another one I thought had great potential but fizzled out for whatever reason. Honestly most of the major decisions we made in CD was ways to lesson the work load of the staff because clanners did not make it easy. So when I was a Senior Member, a VR member tricked me into giving away the answers to my security questions, so he hacked my account to pin VR topics in CD. I was super worried that cost me my chance at being a mod at the time. So yea, not a big fan.

Rs3 or OSRS? Oh my GOD you should have seen the arguments between Lego and Robtokill, DF vs Corr. They just would not stop bickering even the CD HQ, always over the most trivial bullshit. It was so bad that Robtokill even resigned as a Seme cause Lego kept getting favorable treatment. 1. Any of the ones that called me bias. Believe me I didn't give a shit about your clan, I only cared about what was fair within the rules. 2. Nope not at all. 3. See my other posts. Lightning in a bottle 4. From what I can gather about the clan world, RoT just completely dominates with nobody close, which makes for a pretty boring clan scene imo. I've done some fights with True against other clans and they seem pretty fun. Feels like clanning's in a pretty decent place atm outside of RoT? Correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't really been paying all that much attention. 5. I started an iron two years ago and he's almost maxed now! I've also done some fights for Tempest when True asks me. RSN is still Yoto32 Honestly I enjoyed skilling more than clanning at the time and never really had a desire to go back. I'm a god awful pker. Question 2 answers question 1. Robinhoodrs was also banned for leaking IPs, but I believe it was more for pking activities than clan related. Saxo single-handedly got Mr. Anderson promoted to Smod because the top brass felt it would be easier to make him admin rather than deal with all his requests to ban Saxo's alts. DF was a nice clan, I just for whatever reason didn't feel like I fit in as well as I did with DS. Can't put a finger on to why that was. Was that the really famous one? I was just mostly concerned about the reputation of Zybez. It was a really bad leak, and members should have their information safe when using our boards.

1. Curse owned us, and their business model was buying dying forums of old, obscures games and generating ad revenue on that. Obviously, not the best business model. 2. Eh not much. Ya'll moved on from Zybez by this point. But I always felt it was nice to have a neutral board to discuss clan activities. I feel like twitter does a good job of that nowadays. 3. Forgotten them all unfortunately. It's been awhile. 4. What I loved most about being an Admin of CD was trying to see the potential in posters to see who would become a good staff member. It was always a crapshoot, but was always worth it when someone stuck through it. 5. Doubt it's possible. The work that the old guard did (Brad/Tha Hanzz/Tim-/CJ) did to make Zybez the clanning hub at the start of the clanning world was lightning in a bottle. There was a void that needed to be filled in the early days and they did it, and CD basically ran on their reputation for the decades afterwards. Sharkbrew was a meme in the CD staff. Every so often people would be claiming "Sharkbrew's the way the clan world breaks free from the oppressive yoke of the biased Zybez moderators". Was never gonna be a thing. One time when I was a mod, a RoT leader was bothering me about a topic on MSN I just really wasn't in the mood for dealing with that day. So I "handled" it by just shouting in all caps the lyrics of "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield, which I had happened to be listening too at the moment. I got yelled at that by higher ups. 1. RoT was really good at just annoying the crap out of moderators. They knew that we were simply human and could be worn down to get a favorable ruling. They were truly the Karens of the clan world. 2. I felt like they were all trying to fill the void that DS left behind and just simply couldn't. DS left at the height of their strength and therefore no clan had to be as strong as they were in order to claim #1. Buuuut I could just be biased on that matter 😛 All of them. To me.

Jim. You were ban evading?? I thought you part of the CD staff?? We talked about anime and stuff Slang for "a hot mess" 1. I knew he was corrupt, he always talking about baking. Figured he was cooking the books. 2. Two spring to mind as the most annoying: Maurice and Crest227. I think Maurice was a troll but Crest227 was serious in his annoyances. 3. Nah, let the dead rest. 4. Always Nothing Zybez did. Sure we made mistakes, but forums were/are a dying breed. Curse had a terrible business model.

1. Jim by far. 2. My biggest gripe was clan leaders that refused to post on Zybez. I felt like Zybez was merely a place to discuss recent fights, and that they were shooting themselves in the foot by not having the free advertising that came with the board. 3. All of them. 4. Pleading the fifth on that I did not handle 2016 very well Great bloke, glad I first promoted him. That was the thing about running the board, you never know who would fizzle and who would rise to the challenge Nah not really. By the time zybez closed, we were no longer as influential as we were. Looks like the clan world has mostly moved to twitter for shitposting which is a much better platform for it.

Greetings all. My name is Yoto32. I used to be the on-again-off-again admin of the Clan Discussion board of Zybez. I was involved in –or at least aware of- most of the major decisions made in CD during 2007-2018, and was most active from 2010 to 2013. A little history for how I got there: I first joined the small, unknown clan Aftermath. Soon I learned there was a topic about one of our fights on some strange forum called Runescape Community, so I immediately signed up to defend my clan. On these forums I saw an up and coming Senior Member called Dark Blade75 post victory topics for the undefeated Dark Slayers, and a couple of my fellow Aftermath clanmates left to join DS. The moment I met DS’s requirements I left my co-Leader position in Aftermath to join DS. In 2007 I was first promoted to the CD staff team. After DS died I went with DB75 to Divine Forces for a couple months, but eventually quit out of boredom of the clanning world. And yet, despite no longer being in a clan I enjoyed moderating CD, despite how incredibly frustrating it could be at times. In 2010 I was made a moderator and in 2011 I was made a Senior Moderator. For a couple months in 2012 I was the leader of the CD board, mostly due to the fact there wasn’t anybody else. My interest in the boards would wax and wane but never truly go away, much like my love for Runescape. And to anybody who has ever claimed I was biased in one of my decisions, I can honestly say with complete honesty and peace in my heart, that whatever clan you happened to be in at the time did not matter enough to be worth being biased against.