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I've been demoted again. For full transparency, here are the reasons, feel free to judge me, I've got nothing to hide. S1nn0hC0nfirm3d you were right all along. Still even if I'm disgusted by this situation, I'm happy with what I did to ZU and I hope people will remember me as a great leader.
I think I speak for most everyone when I say ZU, and Smogon as a whole, lost a valuable presence in this commotion. It was fun (and easy!) to pick on you at times but your devotion to the tier and community you led was obvious and you can take pride in knowing this decision clearly does not reflect your capacities as a leader. Praise Kobo.
I know i was a vocal detractor of some of the decisions made but you were one of ZU's greatest advocates ive seen in my several years. We wouldn't be in the position we are in now without you.
Cant say I know 100% of the story but this seems like a major disrespect of the time and effort you put into rebuilding ZU with the way it was handled and the fact that you apparently can't share your side is telling.
it is always fun to make tuthur the butt of jokes but he takes it like a fucking champ. I've dabbled in ZU for a while now and while I generally disagreed with literally every tiering decision you ever made, I can't see anyone but tuthur as the face of this tier and anyone deeply integrated with lower tier communities will agree whether they like him or not. stick around tooth, the NU community has got your back
I’m far newer to the ZU community than most others here, but from my experiences it’s a wonderful tier. It likely wouldn’t have been possible without you, and it’s a shame that you were forced out like this. Thanks for making this community and its resources as accessible and helpful as it is.
Just wanna say that this is incredibly sad. As much as I make fun of tuthur, he has been a great friend and I've loved all my interactions with you. I've had my fair share of involvement in ZU and just wanna say thank you so much for all uve done for the tier. Good luck tuthur hope u find success in life, my dms are always open :D
Tuthur, you're the most influential and impactful leader ZU has had. Even if at times I didn't agree with your opinions, you always backed them up and pushed to make ZU better. You took the tier further than I thought was feasible. You had such a drive for ZU and are connected to more communities within Smogon, which makes this demotion that much more difficult to think about. Thank you for everything.
I've been going back and forth the past hour if I should go deep on how the decision to demote Tuthur was made and then handled. As it stands, this demotion feels like it was done with optics over substance in mind. Not giving Tuthur the chance to defend himself and doubling down at the end of the logs are the biggest indicators of optics over substance to me.
I get that leaders are held to a much higher standard than regulars. I get that Tuthur was demoted previously and faced controversies. However, what were the controversies? Was he always in the wrong? The logs in the OP and what was elaborated on in the ZU Discord feel too weak to me. Most importantly, I don't see a post by a Senior Staff member explaining the demotion. Maybe these posts aren't normally done, but if Tuthur gets to post logs of the demotion, then why not hold off on the demotion until a post is prepared?
Fwiw I'm not talking out of self-righteousness. I'm talking as someone that had to demote staff and see the same mistakes I made.
Very sad to see you forced down mr tuthur, ZU would not have been my main tier if it wasnt for how much i saw you care about the health of this tier and its community. I dont know what a zu would look like without tuthur
I remember back before I even joined smog I had joined the zu room to ask advice on a haunter set. There I would encounter esteemed room owner tuthur for the first time who would give me advice as I learned the tier. A great contrast to today where tuthur and I haven't been on the best terms but through it all I appreciate all you've done (yes even the unburden ban) for the tier and want to thank you for your service as dictatuthur. I hope the council and any future tls care as much about the tier as you do and I'll see you in the kobo fans vs kobo haters civil war.
Woah, end of an era! Thanks for all you did, and for the recent work on including ADV in more ZU activities. That’s been fun, and I’m grateful for the work you’ve done that’s made ZU feel so easy to get into.
I know opinions have always been mixed towards you, so perhaps this is a great opportunity to ask yourself why that is. And even once you figure that out, remember self awareness doesn’t absolve anybody of anything.
Wish you best on whatever’s next, goat!
Edit: After reading more and more perspectives on this I feel a lot of sadness for Tuthur. The evidence seemed to be weak, and the inevitability of the decision with no chance of defense is entirely unfair. I hope this is looked at again with a new set of eyes.
While I'll admit I've been a huge critic of Tuthur in the past, I think the amount of work you have done both publicly and behind the scenes can never be understated. I hope you are able to turn things around because you have been a great presence to the server in the past and your efforts have been immense for ZU's development.
Regardless of everything that has been going on, I wish the best of luck to you Tuthur and everyone else in the ZU mod team
Even though i appreciate the staff guys being open to talk it over in the discord server, i still find this decision very poorly justified and extremely detrimental to the entirity of ZU. I just hope the next TL puts in even just half the effort Tuthur was investing in the development of the tier.
If this is the standard of behaviour that TLs / mods are held to then you need to demote half the staff and senior staff. The reasons given in the pastebin are honestly so half baked, especially the LTWC "issue" which basically reads as disagree with an smod = demotion. I was involved in that entire conversation and everyone was being just as abrasive to each other, Tuthurs reaction was not out of line or out of context. For that to be the trigger for this (which it certainly appears to be) is a joke.
To follow the pastebin reasonings up, there's then been allegations on Discord of Tuthur defending misogyny and transphobia, with no proof available for that? If someone wants to make an allegation that serious they should absolutely be able to back it up with proof, otherwise it sets a really dangerous standard. I don't really want to rag on SS but the way this was handled seems extremely poor. I appreciate them joining ZUcord and trying to answer questions, but answering with "Tuthur defended transphobia in smogtours, no I don't have any proof just trust me" is crazy. If the proof exists, we should see it, if it doesn't then in no way should that allegation contribute to the decision making process.
To Tuthur - thank you for all the contributions to this hobby. You put a lot of work in and yes, we disagreed sometimes, but I love that you actually have an opinion and are willing to argue it. If that's controversial enough to not be fit for authority then alas, we will lose a lot of personality and character from this website very soon.
Wonder how someone could willing contribute to this site knowing that all their effort can be denounced over the following statement:
Tuthur: yeah ig i can fuck myself and i know nothing about what's happening
Tuthur dedicated invaluable time and energy into ZU and to be demoted over this alongside some vague notion of defending misogyny (he wasn't) is insane. Shame on all involved in this decision
I don’t think there’s ever been anyone more misunderstood on this entire website than you. As someone who has watched you grow and thrive in this community, had the privilege of leading the room alongside you, and above all, considers you one of my closest friends in this vast island that is Competitive Pokémon, I can say I’ve never met anyone with a more retentless drive of justice than you. Throughout your entire leadership, you believe in justice and fight for it no matter was the cost, even if it didn't benefit you politically, sometimes making friends, sometimes enemies.
You were promoted Room Owner by necessity when higher ups made a difficult but wrong call in demoting one of the most appreciated and friendly Room owner who was czim. The entire community turned on you that day, blaming you wrongly for the fall of their friend. We both feel that it was unfair but you had more strength than I did to build back our common home. It is easy to be appointed Room Owner in calm time when nothing is happening but you had to deploy your wings as a leader confronted in one of the most chaotic situation that can happen for a newly promoted moderator.
The situation was dirty, you had to play it dirty. And it worked. At the cost of some stubbornness and probably countless unnecessary dramas, you eliminate one by one all the toxic obstacles that were draining ZU. The staff became at peace which didnt happen since at least one year. The room was thriving with more and more users coming to the room. The discord became a healthy place to have discussion. New ZU faces were being integrated into process such as sleid and diego. You succeed but it was too late. Due to the amount of drama ZU had and personal friction with your supervisor, you got demoted - with Ho3n too for some reason that I still dont comprehend today. Ho3n, as czim before, started trolling due to the tragedy of the situation. I understand them. But you were stronger. You still contributed tremendously for ZU doing everything the tier needed even just after your demotion. Everything tier, council, tournament related. For that, the entire ZU community is thankful to you.
You naturally climb back all the steps of the leadership in ZU. Corthius fought for you to get back into your position because himself saw how you improved the community. He did not have the power to prevent your demotion as neither Ho3n nor I had the power to prevent czim demotion. But he always believed in you and allowed you to deploy your wings for a new time as a leader. It would have been a happy end. But once again, your sense of justice makes you a character of different situations across the website. You fight for what is right, not for what you need. And here we go again. Some logs build on and the axe falls. ZU lost his biggest contributor once and once again, always in the same fashion.
I wish that someday, we could forgive people instead of removing them as punishment. Countless situations in our little history would have improved just by one "let's forgive him". None of the people I mentioned are dangerous, none are mean, none are ill-intentioned, all are competent, all are big contributors to ZU. All of them make our community better. And yet, we lose them—over personality clashes, bad days, and conveniently timed screenshots.
My friend, I find it climatic that the last action I did as staff member was to promote you back driver while your last one was to give my legacy voice. I selfishly hope that you will stay one more time to improve ZU. I know you will not do it though.
i would've never thought that i would find myself, on the day of both my birthday and my graduation, being incredibly mad at an action taken on a person that i've never even met, but here i am.
tuthur, thanks for everything. you were there for my entire ride in zu, standing as an example for many (including me), and even though i wasn't always agreeing with your takes you were always pushing for them, and that might even be more important. even when people were trolling you, you still would take this banter, and you've never been mad at an entire server spamming kobo memes or pilofrench or whatever.
your tl decision were sometimes controversial, i'll admit that; people in the community every once in a while were completely disagreeing with you, but you still took this constructive criticism, and believe me, i've seen you grow and change because of this.
your driving force in zu was unmatched, keeping up projects, tournaments, sheets, tiering, and so much more that i am simply unable to list. zu lost one of its biggest contributors of all time today.
you'll be greatly missed by many in the community, i hope you know it.
i hope you'll decide to come back and stick around, just like you did last time. zu wouldn't be the same without you.
farewell brother <3
wanted to say something about the demotion itself, but Django already said it much better than i would've in their post. ss has been arguably more controversial than tuthur ever was, especially in recent times.
As someone who didnt even know you that well, i feel this demotion was completely unfair. But ignoring my personal opinion, youve been a great presence to be around in servers, and youve completely helped lower tiers flourish. So thank you.
You deserved better. I'm sorry it is this way. What you did for ZU won't be forgotten or treated as a minor thing by any means. We had some disagreements on minor things but I'm sure you're aware that at the end of the day we were on the same side.
You were someone that not only me but mostly anyone in ZU looked up to, when I joined and didn't know basic shit I didn't ever need to ask you for help or explanation, you were just always willing to help. Head up friend. Don't think you're sticking around, and honestly I wouldn't either, but if you ever come back ZU's got your back.
My time with ZU ended when I left DPP council so I don't have much to say about ZU and we haven't interacted much but I have been around long enough in the lower tiers community space to see that you've been a diligent user and like people have said previously said, you being the face of ZU, I can agree with that.
What I can thank you for is the contributions you've made for BDSP and stepping up after lalaya and Eve. If your time with Smogon is done after this, then it is what it is but take into account that you've made a great impact on this site and you've done everything you could've and more.
I find this all super crazy, I can't imagine ZU being ran by anyone else but Tuthur. It's very strange ZU leaders have been demoted so often when I don't see this happen in any other tiers on site in my anecdotal view.
You have been an immeasurable gift to ZU and many other areas of the site. Without you, I don't think ZU would be even close to the way it is today.
We will never be able to repay you for that, and it upsets me that this is the way you had to leave your role as Tier Leader. But, you'll go down as one of the most influential Tier Leaders in history, and if it were up to me, then you would be our Tier Leader for eternity.
If you were to ever come back, we would greet you with open arms. I'm not surprised you have left over this decision as it is a disservice to everyone in this community, and we will miss you greatly.
I have honestly been in shock since I heard the news just a few hours before Tuthur made this post. I have only been co-TL with him for a few months, but the things I was able to learn and see beside him won't be forgotten. I was excited when I got promoted because I knew I would get some time with Tuthur to really learn the ropes and grow as a leader. Everyone knows that Tuthur can be hardheaded at times and isn't the best at handling controversy when he gets into situations that he is very passionate about, but we know it's because he cares and has a distinct vision for ZU. He was the best damn leader I've ever seen and had realistically been running the tier even when Corthius was in the chair. Someone who takes the time to start all over again from the bottom after being demoted years ago really gives a fuck about this community. His presence will be missed, and his shoes will feel impossible to fill. I wish you the best of luck Tuthur in your future endeavors. After seeing the chats today and yesterday, your work here will not be forgotten. I will continue on what you left behind.
