Recently, the “collective admin team” here on 3DSPaint has made the controversial decision to strip active community member and 3DSPaint admin Draconid_Jo (who I will be referring to as Joashu from now on) of their blogmin, pollmin, chatmin, groupmin, photomin, BBmin, terminator, helpmin, profilemin, and linkmin powers, all because of a single shout that they made which was determined to be in violation of 3DSPaint's terms of membership. A blog posted here on 3DSPaint by Joashu describing the nature of their shout may be read here (archive).
Joashu has acknowledged that their shout was inappropriate, and also that it was technically a violation of Paint's rules, even though they intended no harm by it, nor was any harm actually inflicted by it. They have also already apologized to site owner HullBreach for posting this shout, especially considering the potential legal consequences that this sort of dark humor could pose if mistaken, deliberately or not, for an actual threat of physical violence against anyone. Joashu wants to make it perfectly clear here and now that violence is never the answer to political grievances, and that the language that was used in that shout was merely an expression of the outrage that they and a number of their close friends who were past victims of sexual violence have felt due to the current political situation in the United States.
Aside from that one shout, a number of false, misleading, and unsubstantiated claims were made about Joashu's conduct as a member of the 3DSPaint admin team in their joint statement. Specifically, it was claimed that Joashu was “irresponsible with their admin powers” and that “their constant abuse of power and undermining the rest of the admin team” had made the other members of the admin team “unable to do their jobs”.
As Joashu has themself noted on countless occasions, this is an extremely dishonest and biased characterization of past events, and one which overlooks the blatant double standards which members of the admin team have engaged in with regards to the enforcement of the rules of this website, such as by refusing to punish blatant violations of Paint's terms of membership that took place during “Nostalgia Night”, even going as far as to ban other members of the admin team for simply attempting to enforce 3DSPaint's rules when “OG” members were blatantly violating them.
As was noted in a recent blog (archive) of Joashu's, on September 24th 2024, active 3DSPaint community member DCTheGamr was permanently banned from this website for content that is completely legal under U.S. law and was posted on X (formerly known as Twitter), despite the site owner HullBreach explicitly stating that he was opposed to this course of action. As Joashu notes in their blog, HullBreach once told them:
“This decision to ban someone that long for external content was excessive, and an apology letter requirement to return was asinine. Stuff like that is part of why I removed your overlord privilege, as they were bizarre actions suggested by another member who wasn’t even an overlord. I was already speaking with DC about his conduct on social media when that happened without me hearing until afterwards.”
Joashu then goes on to explain the irony of HullBreach's statement here, since Joashu was one of the few members of the admin team who was opposed to permanently banning DCTheGamr, yet they were the only one punished by HullBreach for DC's ban, simply because they tried to broker a compromise between both sides rather than taking a side in a dispute between the site owner and the “collective admin team”.
It is this sort of unorthodox approach to the fulfilment of their admin duties that earned Joashu the ire of the members of the “collective admin team”. While most members of the admin team were categorically opposed to any sort of reforms or new ways of doing things, such as holding democratic elections to determine new admin appointments (archive), Joashu, UwUQueen, Amjam, and a few brave others had spearheaded these sorts of efforts, which resulted in a number of new admin promotions that were well-received by both the community and the other members of the admin team (archive)*, some of whom are ironically now supporting the “collective admin team's” decision to demote Joashu.
In their joint statement, the “collective admin team” spoke about the need to “rebuild trust between the administration team and members of [the 3DSPaint] community”, but do they even understand why this trust was lost in the first place? Do they understand or even accept why Joashu had that trust while they didn't? It is because Joashu is actually an active member of this community, and consistently talked to other members of this community as though they were one of them. They were always completely open, transparent, and honest with other members, and always preferred to find diplomatic solutions to problems whenever possible rather than immediately resorting to permabans or threats of permabans, as they have repeatedly observed other members of the “collective admin team” doing for relatively minor offenses.
There is no evidence whatsoever that Joashu was “irresponsible with their admin powers”. There have been repeated criticisms by certain members of the “collective admin team” and their close associates of Joashu's somewhat lax approach to the enforcement of the blog guidelines when determining which blogs to feature here. Joashu had recently addressed these concerns in their usual “snarky” style in this blog (archive), and they have always listened to the other admins when they clearly stated that they disagreed with one of their decisions, and always corrected such mistakes whenever they were made. With regards to Joashu's other powers, they took the same approach as described above with blogs with regards to the use of their pollmin powers; they showed extreme restraint with regards to how they used their powers to ban other members, only doing so in the most extreme situations where it was deemed to be absolutely necessary; it is unclear to the community how Joashu might've “abused” their photomin, BBmin, helpmin, profilemin, and/or linkmin powers. The signatories of this letter categorically reject these baseless claims, and believe that they were made simply made to defame Joashu, in an effort to get the community to support this extremely controversial decision.
Trust cannot be rebuilt through telling lies and making unsubstantiated claims. If the “collective admin team” truly “[believes] that transparency going forward is the best avenue to rebuild trust between the administration team and members of our community”, then perhaps they should start actually being transparent about things, like Joashu has always been.
Following the initial writing of this joint statement, the “collective admin team” has already broken at least one of their assurances given to the community here. Specifically, it was stated that “the admin team, besides [Joashu], will remain unchanged.” It can now be clearly observed by using the /adminlist command in any of the chatrooms here that this is no longer the case.
The community actually welcomes some of these changes. We do not, for example, have any issues with the appointment of Kris (RedwoodMeowers) to the position of helpmin, nor do we take issue with “democratically elected” admin JinxCade receiving more admin powers. In fact, there is only a single addition to the admin team that the signatories of this statement take issue with: Thi500 (who I will be referring to as Aaron from now on).
A full discussion of all of Aaron's offenses is well beyond the scope of this statement, and, in the interest of not creating more unnecessary conflict and divisions within the community here, all evidence of his worst offenses will not be presented here publicly. We do not bear Aaron any ill will, but it must be plainly stated that his promotion to an administrative position on this website is completely unacceptable to us.
We would like to remind the “collective admin team” that on April 4th 2024, Aaron had published a blog that had publicly defamed Joashu and repeatedly implied that they were a pedophile, by using edited and out of context screenshots, as well as repeated insinuations and implications. There was also blatantly ableist, ageist, and otherwise abusive language in Aaron's blog, and despite all of these blatant rules violations targeting a community member (Joashu) with a well-known history of suicidal ideation and depression, a member of the admin team at the time had actually featured this blog, under the pretense of “exposing” Joashu.
The publication of Aaron's blog was immediately preceded by an aggressive cyberbullying campaign on an unofficial Discord server led by Aaron against Joashu, and was immediately followed by the deletion of the blog by and Joashu's removal from the admin team, not unlike now. Thankfully, Joashu hadn't noticed the cyberbullying effort against them when they were at their most vulnerable, as they had been avoiding using Discord at the time. It was Joashu discovering this cyberbullying campaign and exposing it to HullBreach on June 25th 2024 that ultimately led to him reinstating them as a blogmin here.
It must also be stated here that Aaron had already been demoted from his position as an admin here by HullBreach on May 29th 2025, specifically because of his actions targeting Joashu.
“Did Thi post a blog and feature it that accused Draco of being a pedophile to harass him? How’s featuring content to harass someone OK?”
—HullBreach
To reiterate, we bear Aaron and the other current members of the “collective admin team” no ill will here, and we do not wish to engage in any hypocrisy with regards to our criticisms of Aaron's past actions against Joashu and others here by engaging in any inappropriate actions against him ourselves. Put simply, we do not believe that a person who has done the things that Aaron has done to Joashu is fit for an administrative position on this website, and we take issues like cyberbullying and defamation extremely seriously, for both legal and ethical reasons.
For more information about the seriousness of the issue of cyberbullying, please read this blog by Vermillion.
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