Gothic Kitten Leaving TSR

Hi guys, I have some news I want to share with you all today.

After seven years at The Student Room, I wanted to let you all know that Gothic Kitten has left The Student Room.Gothic Kitten has been an ever-present presence on TSR and I want to take the space here to say how appreciated her work has been in keeping the site functioning and safe over that time.

I know that many of you will have had a close relationship and connection with Gothic Kitten on site so wanted to let you know about this change as soon as we could.

We still take the safeguarding and safety of our users on site extremely seriously, and the impact of this decision has been mitigated with a reshuffle and increase in available moderation hours for other members of the moderation team. I also apologise if this is missed by some users, I realise that we don’t have the perfect way of sharing news that is relevant for some but not all users.

Please do feel free to ask any questions you have. If you have messages or well wishes you would like to pass on I can make sure they reach.

EH.

We still take the safeguarding and safety of our users on site extremely seriously, and the impact of this decision has been mitigated with a reshuffle and increase in available moderation hours for other members of the moderation team.

EH, can you be more detailed about this? Will you be either recruiting a replacement, or moving an existing member of staff into GK's position, including all of her hours (and then recruiting a replacement for them)? In other words, will GKs exit result in an overall decrease in the overall resource for moderation, in terms of man-hours? I'm asking this because it's hardly a secret that TSRG is in considerable financial distress, and it would be a worrying development if a decision to not fully replace GK but try to spread her workload out over the remaining staff due to financial constraints resulted in (a) worse, less timely moderation, and (b) an exit of more moderation staff due to unreasonable pressures caused by the extra workload.

There will not be an overall decrease in the moderation resource.

I understand that you are limited as to what you can say on the public forum, and I would of course not expect you to give me a detailed breakdown of rotas, but I"m not asking for that.



Does that mean that there will be no overall decrease in the moderation resource in terms of the number of manhours allocated to this task?

I've been brewing on this for a while, and I am compelled to make this post to recognise how influential GK has been on this community for nearly a decade.

When TSR brought moderation in-house and made the report queue only accessible to paid staff, GK was there. GK was there when the "mods" became the Support Team and when the Support Team became the Volunteer Team. When the counting threads were being plagued by PinkTeddy accounts and the chat forum was filled with Baba ji spam threads - GK cleaned it up. When 3am TSR had troll threads targeting individual users with vicious and hurtful comments and even privacy breaches - GK sorted it out. When thousands of people queried why they had a card or their post was binned - GK answered. When there were so many reports it used to take 2 days to have a report reply, GK was there fighting the good fight. When young people were in serious need, GK made sure their TSR posts were in the right place for them to get help.

GK has been a constant in this community for my TSR-lifetime. Without GK the Faith and Spirituality forum would not currently exist, nor the Mental Health forum for that matter. GK worked with at least 4 different staff members responsible for safeguarding at TSR (Queen Cersei, Captain Jack BlinkyBill, Pink Unicorn) over the years and without GK's constant presence there may well have been some issues when handovers took place. GK deals with everything that gets thrown at the mods with the patience that a teacher would dream of, acts with such authority that a police officer would be envious, and conducted themselves with the professionalism to bring a tear to HR's eyes. I sounds very flamboyant when I say this but I mean it very sincerely. Gothic Kitten has been the best of TSR for as long as I've known this site. No matter what gripes you may have with the company, the site, other users, other decisions. Anyone who knows anything about this place knows that GK has been utterly bloody outstanding, fair, reasonable, and consistent.

I am especially grateful for working closely with GK over the past year to develop better standards of discussion in D&CA and also to bring the mod team and Volunteers closer together in working to develop the communities on this site.

I am writing this post to help express the longevity of GK's work to this site for anyone who hasn't been around as long, and also to say one big bloody thank you to @Gothic Kitten. You will be missed.

I've been brewing on this for a while, and I am compelled to make this post to recognise how influential GK has been on this community for nearly a decade.

When TSR brought moderation in-house and made the report queue only accessible to paid staff, GK was there. GK was there when the "mods" became the Support Team and when the Support Team became the Volunteer Team. When the counting threads were being plagued by PinkTeddy accounts and the chat forum was filled with Baba ji spam threads - GK cleaned it up. When 3am TSR had troll threads targeting individual users with vicious and hurtful comments and even privacy breaches - GK sorted it out. When thousands of people queried why they had a card or their post was binned - GK answered. When there were so many reports it used to take 2 days to have a report reply, GK was there fighting the good fight. When young people were in serious need, GK made sure their TSR posts were in the right place for them to get help.

GK has been a constant in this community for my TSR-lifetime. Without GK the Faith and Spirituality forum would not currently exist, nor the Mental Health forum for that matter. GK worked with at least 4 different staff members responsible for safeguarding at TSR (Queen Cersei, Captain Jack BlinkyBill, Pink Unicorn) over the years and without GK's constant presence there may well have been some issues when handovers took place. GK deals with everything that gets thrown at the mods with the patience that a teacher would dream of, acts with such authority that a police officer would be envious, and conducted themselves with the professionalism to bring a tear to HR's eyes. I sounds very flamboyant when I say this but I mean it very sincerely. Gothic Kitten has been the best of TSR for as long as I've known this site. No matter what gripes you may have with the company, the site, other users, other decisions. Anyone who knows anything about this place knows that GK has been utterly bloody outstanding, fair, reasonable, and consistent.

I am especially grateful for working closely with GK over the past year to develop better standards of discussion in D&CA and also to bring the mod team and Volunteers closer together in working to develop the communities on this site.

I am writing this post to help express the longevity of GK's work to this site for anyone who hasn't been around as long, and also to say one big bloody thank you to @Gothic Kitten. You will be missed.

Hi guys, I have some news I want to share with you all today.

After seven years at The Student Room, I wanted to let you all know that Gothic Kitten has left The Student Room.Gothic Kitten has been an ever-present presence on TSR and I want to take the space here to say how appreciated her work has been in keeping the site functioning and safe over that time.

I know that many of you will have had a close relationship and connection with Gothic Kitten on site so wanted to let you know about this change as soon as we could.

We still take the safeguarding and safety of our users on site extremely seriously, and the impact of this decision has been mitigated with a reshuffle and increase in available moderation hours for other members of the moderation team. I also apologise if this is missed by some users, I realise that we don’t have the perfect way of sharing news that is relevant for some but not all users.

Please do feel free to ask any questions you have. If you have messages or well wishes you would like to pass on I can make sure they reach.

EH.

Do please pass good wishes to GK - I hope it's a 'running to' not a 'running from' and that new horizons and challenges await. Best wishes.

I've been brewing on this for a while, and I am compelled to make this post to recognise how influential GK has been on this community for nearly a decade.

When TSR brought moderation in-house and made the report queue only accessible to paid staff, GK was there. GK was there when the "mods" became the Support Team and when the Support Team became the Volunteer Team. When the counting threads were being plagued by PinkTeddy accounts and the chat forum was filled with Baba ji spam threads - GK cleaned it up. When 3am TSR had troll threads targeting individual users with vicious and hurtful comments and even privacy breaches - GK sorted it out. When thousands of people queried why they had a card or their post was binned - GK answered. When there were so many reports it used to take 2 days to have a report reply, GK was there fighting the good fight. When young people were in serious need, GK made sure their TSR posts were in the right place for them to get help.

GK has been a constant in this community for my TSR-lifetime. Without GK the Faith and Spirituality forum would not currently exist, nor the Mental Health forum for that matter. GK worked with at least 4 different staff members responsible for safeguarding at TSR (Queen Cersei, Captain Jack BlinkyBill, Pink Unicorn) over the years and without GK's constant presence there may well have been some issues when handovers took place. GK deals with everything that gets thrown at the mods with the patience that a teacher would dream of, acts with such authority that a police officer would be envious, and conducted themselves with the professionalism to bring a tear to HR's eyes. I sounds very flamboyant when I say this but I mean it very sincerely. Gothic Kitten has been the best of TSR for as long as I've known this site. No matter what gripes you may have with the company, the site, other users, other decisions. Anyone who knows anything about this place knows that GK has been utterly bloody outstanding, fair, reasonable, and consistent.

I am especially grateful for working closely with GK over the past year to develop better standards of discussion in D&CA and also to bring the mod team and Volunteers closer together in working to develop the communities on this site.

I am writing this post to help express the longevity of GK's work to this site for anyone who hasn't been around as long, and also to say one big bloody thank you to @Gothic Kitten. You will be missed.