HEY WHAT'S UP GUYS, IT'S FORGE HERE.
Holy fuck, it's been four months. I'm definitely sorry for not making more of these... this is definitely going to be an irregular series, where I make an episode when I feel like it. Of course, this has to come with the passion, and not just the evidence. But don't worry too much, it's not like this series is very special anyway.
Anyways, the subject of today's episode is a rather infamous user known as ZeroByteS, also known as PixelzOnYoutube. He has been on the Wiki for about 9 months, with about 3250 edits as I'm writing this, so kudos to him for being more active than me. So you may be asking me, why am I making this? Well, some drama surfaced today, and I realized that how much is going on with him. So, I'm going to be making my second episode of Content Mod on him. Let's get riiiiight INTO THE NEWWSSSSS...
DRAGONS![]
One of the main controversies that have always swirled around Zero is his species, the Agarifs, especially his primary OC Emily. Whenever I see her, I keep on seeing the term "Special Snowflake" popping up in my head. From the beginning, Emily was a cute little dragon that had stats higher than Asgore, the King of all Monsters. In addition, Emily's species, called Dragons at that point in time (Original, I know), was considered separate from Monsters, and more powerful than Humans (You can't make this up!). It was far too OP.
BUT FORGE, THOSE PAGES AREN'T LIKE THAT ANYMORE!
True, true... but that doesn't mean Emily can't be considered a special snowflake anymore. In fact, she may be considered even more of one. You see, when the Dragons were renamed to Agarif, Zero created two legendary dragons, named Reflath and Ulder. The issue here, is that Zero made it so that Emily would essentially have Ulder's Soul inside of her head at all times... oh, that's normal. It's not like having a random Agarif house the Soul of a God inside her head is considered special at all. (Oh, and Agarifs had a city larger than Cincinnati) Delete all my pages, YES!
And let's not forget how many Agarifs Zero used to have in the past. At one point in time, I think 75% of his OCs were Agarifs... you can't see that percentage anywhere on my list of OCs... except maybe Monsters, or Males. Either way, someone must've really loved playing Spyro.
Passiveness[]
I must say, Zero isn't really bad at RPing, but it's just... there's one issue that always gets to me. At least from my point of view, Zero has been one of the most passive RPers in UTRP, and it's not even funny. Whenever Zero is in an RP, unless he's leading the RP, I tend to see his OC either playing with themselves, or being asleep. And Zero pushes the effort that we should actually pay attention to an OC minding their own business like that. Why should Luke shift his attention to an asleep Agarif?
And even worse than that, is how Zero can force such passiveness during the middle of an RP! My OC could be threatening the life of Emily, and she just suddenly falls asleep... because narcolepsy definitely works that way. And trust me, that doesn't prompt my OCs to touch an asleep Agarif then, it just prompts them to walk away.
One additional thing that kills me, is when I make a long, two-paragraph response... and all I get back from Zero, is "Oh.". Nice and well-thought-out response, I know. Zero argues however that it gives a chance for others to respond... what? He does it in PMs, so that argument is pretty much invalid. I ain't going to give large responses if I'm not going to receive responses of similar size or quality, end of story.
Drama[]
I must say, for being quite the passive RPer, he can be quite the aggressive individual in person... or at least passive-aggressive. Zero has quite the tendency of unnecessarily arguing with staff, especially over arbitrary or pointless arguments, such as whether or not some symbols arranged in a shape is considered spam. This causes Zero to easily get in trouble, which usually follows up with a kick and/or ban.
Zero also has quite the aggressive way of dropping a conversation or argument. Instead of just saying "Okay", or apologizing, he tends to go "I'm going to leave chat because the staff is aggressive", or "I'm going to leave chat before Forge finds a reason to get me banned". That's a pretty cocky way to end things, implying that you're right, but you're going to be the better man and drop the conversation. News flash, that's what got you banned.
In addition, Zero tends to complain about users in chat at times, including me when I decided to enter RP once. Apparently, I was going to "steal the entire plot", and not let him enter it. Well, while I may garner the attention of some of the RPers, there should be at least one other user you can RP with. Chill out, man. If you're going to make a complaint, say it in PMs. You could easily kill off the RP and get staff involved with that crap.
Oh yeah, he's threatened to leave the Wiki in the past. Okay? Why hasn't he left the Wiki, then? Is he wanting more people to join his cult in his own Wiki? I don't know what his current status is with this particular problem, but I know it's happened in the past, and it could happen again.
Species Control[]
This segment is the main reason why I'm making this, along with some of the Drama. You see here, when it comes to the Agarifs... Zero kinds of takes control of it far too seriously. When the species was first made, Zero forced specific stats on certain Agarifs that would have him mark OCs as "Uncanon" if they were even a single point or too off. Too me, this was too much control for a species about dragons that look like cute babies. At least Zero made that more lenient, and this problem never arose again... right?
"By using this species, Agarifs, in name and/or design, you hereby agree that the owner, ZeroByteS, retains partial ownership and full control over deletion of the character as applicable. Furthermore, you agree to notify ZeroByteS of the creation of said Agarif and a link to their page, whether here or elsewhere. By making an Agarif here or anywhere, you agree to this Terms of Conditions."
Oh what the fuck is this? Let's look at this together... Zero has partial ownership of the OC. This means that you can't really make any changes to the OC without his permission, and if you leave the OC, he automatically gets it. And let's see here... Zero has full control over deletion of the character as applicable. THIS doesn't simply mean that Zero can mark the OC for deletion if it's breaking canon... in full context, he can delete the OC at any time, under the denomination of Author Request. He can also prevent the actual owner from deleting the OC via Author Request, and like I said earlier... take the OC for himself. This change to the rules seems like a copyright claim to me.
When I spoke to Zero about this rule change, he said that it was meant to keep Agarifs from being stolen across the Internet... okay? Who the Hell wants to steal an Agarif? Odds are, if someone makes an Agarif outside of UTRP, it's unintentionally, and they thought they were making a baby dragon. Plus, if someone steals an Agarif OC, we would basically give them the same treatment as if they stole ANY of our OCs. We'd ask them politely, before reporting them to the staff of the site. It's not like we're going to take them to court for stealing some artwork.
And even if you did remove the part about partial ownership, you should still reword the part about deleting the page as applicable. It should be marking the page for deletion if necessary :P
The Verdict[]
Overall, Zero has been quite problematic in the past and present. In an essence, he could be considered one of the Wiki's most problematic regular users. The only regular users that seem to have been blasted on more by staff, seems to be people like Ferry... I don't know why they have such a problem with him saying "A shame", tbh. But anyways... Zero needs to improve on these issues, or else we may end up with more drama and punishments.
Sentence: Lifetime sentence in the Soul Cairn. (Trust me, you'll love Durnehviir there. A good Dragon)