I am a part of the staff team who works to make Hellominers a better place. I do not get paid for my time, nor do I benefit in any way from my position. I have read through the notes thoroughly and have decided to construct a more transparent understanding of what has occurred.
Background
Thendil was made a part of the Hellominers staff team in February 2023 due to his large scale works across the server and much larger than average playtime. Thendil would go on to make himself a member of the transportation department, elect himself mayor of Helloclan City, and a variety of other roles.
In September of 2023, Thendil was removed from the moderator team. The reasons I am unaware of, due to me not being on the staff team.
Thendil would go on to work on a large highway system, and begin to “update” several other highways. These updates would include several updates like the changing of gray wool to gray concrete, but this would also include expanding the roadways between cities that had a much smaller road size standard, ballooning the roadways out as they left the cities, and shrinking them back down as they re-entered them.
One of these “updates” involved the griefing of a private highway system that did not follow the same design scheme as others, he would claim that the owner was removed due to inactivity, but this was later proven to be false.
https://hellominers.com/t/report-thendil-water-griefing-abuse-thru-staff-members/25050
Thendil had deliberately avoided forms of communication in order to enforce his design on the private roadway owner and had taken advantage of an incorrect form of the inactivity system to allow him to be added to the region.
This was one of many incidents where Thendil would take advantage of lack of supervision and his role in government to force his vision of things on other people, and this would be far from the last time that it happened.
Before Thendil could be officially removed from the infrastructure department, he would make the following post claiming that he had resigned
https://hellominers.com/t/department-restructuring-and-my-resignation-from-infra-and-events/24990
In hopes of allowing him to save face, it was decided to not make a post and instead, blacklist him from being a member of any other department.
After several months of good behavior, in November of 2023, Thendil would be given the Developer role. A role that allowed players to design and create content for HM without having to give them any major powers that could be abused.
This was also around the same time that yours truly was promoted to Admin. One of the first things that I wanted to do was work on Helloclan City, a project that according to the admin team, had been left undone since Thendil had been removed from all departments.
Once I began work on the project, I would discover that Thendil had continued to work on HC, despite being barred from any department work. Thendil claimed that in his resignation post, he had not resigned from his role as mayor, making it unfair for us to remove him despite it being a voted on admin punishment.
Out of a mixture of laziness due to my frequent workload in the real world (I was in my senior year of college), and a desire to give Thendil a second chance, I decided to allow Thendil to continue his work despite other admins recommendation. This agreement was predicated on the idea that Thendil would keep me, or other admins in the loop about what was being done to ensure full transparency.
This would go on for several more months until March of 2024, where Thendil made a mistake in regards to world edit that required a technician’s help. Upon this event, it was brought to the staff team’s attention that Thendil had been taking advantage of the lack of communication in the staff team to gain several permissions including world edit and adding himself to several government and private regions that he was not supposed to.
It was also brought to light that Thendil had been given permission to work on Helloclan by myself, and had been using world edit (something he had gotten from another admin), on Helloclan City without permission.
Another conclusion of this was in regards to the highway system that Thendil had been working on. Once again he was no longer a part of the transportation department, something he had resigned from himself. However, Thendil had continued to work on these highways despite this. It was also brought to light that the person who had originally signed off on a majority of Thendils decisions regarding the highway system, had been Satan (AKA: nightemperor), who had not been a part of the administration team from September until December, meaning Thendil had not only been working on these highways without permission since his resignation, but had been working on them without any form of supervision, council, or approval since before he was removed as a moderator.
However, the largest conclusion from this investigation was that Thendil had repeatedly taken on roles in HM that directly benefited him. While mayor of Helloclan City, Thendil had several unsuccessful attempts to evict many of the front row plot owners, which later likely led to his creation of several new front row plots, one of which he acquired. He had also gained becoming the only destination in the new Helloclan City train station by changing a historic railway that went under several private land areas to connect to his city directly, along with acquiring one of the larger city skyscrapers that he himself evicted months before, remarking it as historical and remodeling the surrounding area with his role as mayor.
This was also the case with Thendil’s highways. Thendil created one of the largest highway systems in server history with the claim that it would connect all the major government cities. However, this came with the added bonus of connecting them all to two private cities, Narnia, and the HMSU. Every government city in HM now connected to his city, something he had ignored several other private cities (like Charleston and Ferron Island) and several private regions to do, leaving huge gashes in the landscape, half demolishing buildings, carving unfinished tunnels, and likely blatantly disregarding eviction protocol to do (something he has proven to be willing to do in the past)
It was then decided that Thendil would be removed from the Developer role and that it was a bad precedent to set that players could take advantage of their roles for personal gain, and even be found guilty of it, but still retain the benefits. So it was decided that while the highway system would remain, it should be reduced to follow either the old highway system standard, or a more updated one.
The first screenshot that Thendil shows communication with Luc (AKA: mister_misery) was made in August, predating his own resignation.
In regards to the other, the staff team vote was a screenshot taken by a staff member before everyone had voted, with the final vote leaning much more towards that same decision.
Before an official removal post could be made, Thendil once again resigned from the role himself, claiming that it was in regards to personal feelings and not in regards to the investigation that had yet to be concluded.
https://hellominers.com/t/resignation-leaving-staff-as-dev/25238
Deciding that the lack of transparency regarding Thendils removal was what likely led to many not understanding that he was not allowed to be added to certain government or private plots, a public statement was made.
https://hellominers.com/t/investigation-into-thendil/25242
Thendil would refute several of the statements made claiming that our lack of communication with him was our own fault, despite the many claims that he had ignored protocol and had made several executive decisions without prior approval.
Recent Events
In April, upon the decision to alter the highways being voted on for several days, and with myself having the first window of freetime that I had had in weeks, I decided to start working on the alterations.
After Thendil complained and pinged several administrators, it was decided that we could instead offer Thendil the opportunity to alter the highways to better reflect the previous highway standard, or create a new standard that could be followed.
This however was made difficult by Thendil blocking a majority of the admin team on discord back in March, with several personal statements and regards being sent to them prior to doing so.
In regards to the statements about my time in Helloclan, several of them are partially true. I removed a majority of the new plots that Thendil had created in hopes of solving several problems Helloclan City had, such as the lag spike several players had due to the amount of chests, signs, item frames, and more that were added with these new plots, and the overall cramped impression the area gave.
Thendil was offered several forms of compensation, which he never considered for even a moment, and instead only offered one acceptable transaction. A historic plot nearby. I was hesitant at first because I was trying to avoid demolishing any historic buildings, but after Thendil reassured me that it would remain with a few small updates, I was willing to make the trade. At no point was I contacted by any other staff member regarding this incident. Every other plot near Thendil was given a similar offer and all players’ concerns were addressed.
Thendil regards in his own post that he had rather negative feelings towards me given that I had been the one to start working on the highway, and that I was the one who had taken over his job. Two things that fell on me purely out of availability of free time.
Any earlier attempt to discuss things such as his highways and making alterations with them were met with responses to the vein of “those highways are not changing” and “the staff team is delusional if they think I am going to alter them”, which to me seemed like a conclusive answer to the offer that several staff team members, who were not still blocked on discord by Thendil, claimed that would talk with him about.
Overnight from the 19th to the 20th, I had a free evening to begin working on the project, something I made the entire staff team aware of, and was responded to with confirmation to do so.
Any complaints Thendil has in regards to a lack of communication are for the most part, on himself. He has repeatedly thrown temper tantrums in public chats, blocked members of staff, removed himself from conversations that would lead to his punishment, and given no regard for any authority other than what he has given himself.
Response to Complaint
Thendil has resigned from the transportation department giving him no say in how government owned roads are designed and updated, something he chose for himself. While the offer to work with him was not clearly communicated, the offer itself was a formality at best. Thendil has no rights in regards to what happens with these roadways.
Any form of compensation he wishes to claim in regards to material loss at best can be compensated and at worst are undeserved due to his decisions to make the highways as large and elaborate as they are. He chose to make them this way, he chose to make them a government project and have the government pay for them, he chose to invest as much time and resources as he wanted to, and he chose to resign from that role and make the decisions that led to him being removed from that role, giving him no definitive say in what happens to them. Once again, just because he has an agenda regarding roads he does not own, does not mean they are his.
Thendils membership to the roadway system should have been removed months ago after his resignation from the transportation department as should be the case with any player. Any removal from private regions is up to the owners of those private regions.
I understand that there has been a lack of communications between the admin team and the player base over the last several months and years. This is mostly to do with the fact that this administration is made up of several grown adults who don’t have as much freetime as we used to. A lot of us have been trying our best to make things better, Ultra has made so many new additions, Egg works on the wiki, Kili made a great holiday event, and I have slowly been working on re-opening Helloclan as best I can.
We want to give players more opportunities to be involved in Hm, but when players such as Thendil come around and take advantage of the powers we give them, it makes us have to reconsider how we approach this. Are we perfect? No. But we have seen in the past what happens when an admin has no regard for the community they serve and what happens when someone is given power without restraint.
We are trying. Trying to be better than our previous mistakes, but there is only so much you can do with good intentions and a handful of people working on stuff in their freetime.
Remedy
First and foremost, I do apologize if it felt like we did not communicate with you. Like I said, most of us have lives and we can’t all be talking about everything on the server all the time. The project spanning years faced the issue of changing roles and powers, and there’s not a ton I can do about us not knowing things someone before us did.
Government jobs for players and roles in departments will be returning. It is honestly way too much work for us to do it all, so we just need some capable hands to take on this work and start pushing it in the right direction. It’s just gonna take some time so that we don’t screw it all up again.
In regards to the highways. No. The highway had several points that needed to be completed and obviously you are not in the running to work on it. And since there’s not a lot of people on HM who want to spend hours working on a giant road nobody will ever use, someones gotta world edit it (probably me, and is something I’m gonna do with RC soon anyways). These are government owned roadways therefore they must follow the transportation department regulations. So in order to follow regulations we will be making them the same as all the others. However, we will be meeting the request to “not touch my fucking roundabout”.
You will not be added to any government highways due to your resignation from the department. If you have any concerns regarding specific details, please use the transportation department chat.
We don’t have plans to compensate you for anything in regards to your work in your many voluntary positions, though we would consider it in regards to materials used if you would be willing to provide documentation of it.
Final Remarks
If you have any additional claims, please message me or one of the other staff members by unblocking me on discord for something other than to message me your political views. Posting your weekly complaints about everything everyone does except you is not super productive.
I have done my darndest to give you every opportunity to make up for your past and you have repeatedly returned it with throwing me under the bus every chance you got, nasty comments, personal attacks, removing any form of communication with me, and having temper tantrums in public chats.
You have done a lot of great work on HM, and I hope that this place can continue to be somewhere that you can express yourself creatively. I also hope that going forward things can be more positive.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
TLDR: The Whale politely would like you to leave him alone for just doing his job 