Ginlang has been suspended indefinitely for leaking admin discussions (specifically, a short excerpt of a discussion regarding a fairly controversial ex-admin as of recent) to a group of non-admins, which eventually dripped down into said ex-admin's hands. This suspension is the result of a lengthy investigation that was initially top secret, with only a select few knowing about the situation. Once I ruled out all Senior Admins as suspects, the investigation became knowledge to them as well. As I've concluded the investigation, I'm making the results public in the interest of transparency.
What happened?
On March 30, _TheRedX sent me a screenshot of a few recent messages from an admins-exclusive channel on the Discord server, giving his thoughts about the matter. When I demanded to know who was leaking the screenshots, unsurprisingly he refused to give the identity. The fact that he of all people was able to see messages in admin channels immediately raised the alarm for me, so I swiftly began an investigation. However, to avoid making the mistakes made when Anti was suspended, I decided to handle this investigation by gathering evidence first and then talk to suspects afterwards.
The approach I took to this was highly unusual: I actually collected little details about the leaked screenshot and compared them to screenshots posted by all staff members with access to the channel. The three important things I figured out from the leaked screenshot that I used to figure out who was responsible for the leak is as follows:
- Horizontal screen resolution (original was cropped)
- Country of origin (calculated using timezone differences)
- Discord theme
If all three factors matched the leaked screenshot, the admin was considered a probable suspect. The reason I didn't consider it the smoking gun was in case there were more than one admin who fit these parameters.
Evidence
This is the screenshot that ended up getting leaked:
From that screenshot, I learned a few things about the screenshot and its leaker:
- The screenshot was taken on a mobile device with a screen that has a horizontal resolution no greater than 720 pixels.
- The leaker was using the AMOLED dark theme exclusive to the mobile app, with profile pictures being set to a rather large size.
- The screenshot was taken by someone in a European country within 2 hours of the messages being sent.
When I compared those details to details gathered from screenshots posted by every admin, ginlang fit all three pieces of criteria. His phone screen had a resolution of 720x1600, he had the Discord AMOLED theme enabled, and he was from the United Kingdom.
The smoking gun was the fact that all the icon and font scaling lined up perfectly in addition to the others. Nobody else fit the description as well as he did.
(Background is the leaked screenshot, the foreground is a screenshot Ginlang posted elsewhere).
I confronted him about it, and thankfully he admitted that he was the source, though he claimed that he wasn't the one who screenshotted it, but someone else who was watching a screenshare he was doing elsewhere when he was briefly in the channels. You can believe him or not, it doesn't matter as he still allowed non-admins to see an excerpt of a serious conversation in admin channels.
What's going to change
The situation highlighted a flaw in how much of a gray area the staff conduct policy is when it comes to what information can be provided and what can't be. In the near future, I am going to start working on a policy that clarifies what information can be provided and what cannot be, so non-serious things (like joke remarks posted in the admin chat) wouldn't be considered a big deal. It would also introduce more transparency as players can then request things like how many entries they have in the punishment log. However, for the time being, this suspension will fall under the old policy, but future cases will be treated with this new policy once it is completed.