sportsfest | An Important Announcement

Dear SportsFest Participants,

Many of you have expressed your concerns about a member of our mod team. We (the head mods) have heard you, and we’ve had to make some very difficult decisions. The mod in question is no longer a part of our mod team.

Some of you might be feeling a little lost right now. For those unaware, one of our mods was involved with an incident that happened in the Haikyuu Big Bang last summer. The event had a major issue where a mod knowingly allowed a minor to access NSFW content for an extended period of time. This incident had huge repercussions throughout fandom and has deeply hurt a lot of people, many of whom are participants in SportsFest.

The mod from the Haikyuu Big Bang was also a mod for our event. Understandably, this made many of you deeply uncomfortable. This situation was first brought to our attention three weeks ago. We contacted the mod in question, reevaluated our minors policy, and thought that the situation had been resolved. Unfortunately, we did not understand the gravity of the situation, and how widespread the feelings of hurt and distrust were among all the affected participants.

In the last 36 hours, many of you have helped make it abundantly clear that significantly more action needed to be taken. We sincerely appreciate those of you who came forward to tell us your thoughts, because without you, we would not have been able to make the best and most informed decision. At the end of the day, we’re running this event for all of you, and this situation was overshadowing our central mission: to run a fun sports anime-centered event that promotes community building, inclusivity, fanwork creation, and mod transparency.

Our solution has been to ask the mod in question to step down and to redistribute their responsibilities. This mod is still allowed to participate in SportsFest. The event will go on.

There are a number of things we regret not doing as head mods. When selecting our mod team six months ago, we should have been more cognizant of the fandom climate and the details of our mods’ past experiences. We also naively did not recognize the severity of the situation the first time you brought it to our attention. We should have been more thorough in our evaluation of the incident and taken stronger action earlier to avoid the escalation we’re dealing with now. Finally, we apologize if it seems like we’ve been dragging our feet to release this statement to you; we’ve been dealing with many real life responsibilities simultaneously, and have also wanted to give this situation the careful consideration it deserves before making our final decision. We did not want to repeat our past mistakes.

If any of you have lingering concerns about this, please do not hesitate to contact us, the head mods. We want to make sure this event is as enjoyable as possible, and if there’s anything more we can do, we’d love to hear about it. That said, do not contact the former mod directly about your concerns.

Thank you all for bearing with us. We hope that this doesn’t dampen your excitement for an event we’ve put considerable time and effort into preparing. We sincerely want you all to have a great SportsFest filled with many amazing sports anime fanworks.

Best,

Zoe & Ruby

Head Mod & Vice Head Mod

June 9, 2018

Questions you might have:

What about Bonus Round 0?

We will be delaying the start of Bonus Round 0. It will now begin June 10th, 2018 at 12:00AM PT and will end June 15th, 2018 at 11:59PM PT.

The Bonus Round scoring will also change. The recommended workload to reach each medal threshold will no longer require participation in Bonus Round 0. Instead, any fills in Bonus Round 0 will be bonus points, worth 5 points each. You can get a maximum of 75 bonus points.

The scoring information will be updated to reflect this change.

What about team switching, sign-ups, team worksheets, etc.?

If this public statement or our decisions have made you reconsider your participation in SportsFest, we will be reopening the ability to sign-up or drop the event through Bonus Round 0 (June 15th, 2018 at 11:59PM PT). Team switching will also remain open until the end of Bonus Round 0. The deadline for team worksheets will also be extended until this time.

If your team’s qualification status changes during this process, please contact the mods. The mods will also be happy to deal with any other concerns you have about the process.