Trivia / Habitica

• Dear Negative Reader: On December 1, 2022, Habitica's volunteer mods went on strike after one was fired from being a database admin after trying to bring attention to problems they saw regarding how staff were treating volunteers (both the mod team and Habitica's contributors). On December 5, staff announced in the Aspiring Socialites guild that they were taking moderation "in-house" and shortly afterward forbid any further discussion of the topic at all. This silencing didn't sit well with a number of longtime users, and people trying to express how they feel on-site—including some who did not know discussing it was forbidden—have been met with varying consequences that have sometimes been quite harsh, like chat mutes or even full site bans, often without explanation about why the user received the consequence until the user asked. Most of their direct admonishments have happened in private, direct interactions with users who were punished, though in late January they did provide a public follow-up post in the socialites guild, urging socialites to "do better", which was roundly criticized by many contributors who saw it, to the point that a number of them specifically asked for their contributor tiers to be completely removed.