Pxls staff

The Pxls staff are a group of users who are in charge of maintaining civility and enforcing general rules among the Pxls community. They have access to advanced permissions on the site and Discord server to meet this goal. Pxls staff has an extensive history with shifts in policy and responses to events.

Permissions and Privileges

Site

• Chat ban: Purges messages from a certain user (optional) and prevents them from talking in the website chat for x amount of time. Does not prevent them placing pixels on the canvas.
• Purge: Delete a users message history or specific messages
• User and chat lookup: View a user's ban history, chat history, and other information.
• Canvas ban: Prevents a user from placing on the canvas or talking in chat for x amount of time. This also (optionally) removes their pixels on the canvas, in a fashion similar to a nuke.
• Faction management: Can delete factions from the site list. (admin only)
• Staff Override: Allows staff to ignore cooldown to place pixels. (does not count towards pixel placed stats)
• Admin Panel: Allows staff to view reports and other information.
• Staff badge: Exists to set them apart in the chat. Both admins and moderators show up under this badge.

Discord Server

• Kicking/Banning: A one-off removal or a permanent ejection from the Discord server.
• Mutes: Can mute users for a specific duration for breaking rules.
• Announcements: Can send out announcements to a) the main Pxls.space server and by extension any Discord servers "following" the announcements channel, and b) an announcements feed on the website. (admin only)

Other Responsibilities

• Reset: Choose reset dates and future canvases.

Current Pxls Staff

Canvas name	Role(s)	Pxls Staff join date	Notes
Nanineye	Owner, Manager, Administrator	May 23, 2021	Owner of the Pxls.space Discord server, co-owns the site. Also a manager.
Sidestep	Manager, Administrator	June 1, 2020 (with breaks from staff)	One of the two managers.
Iceydwagon	Administrator	May 17, 2017 (with breaks from staff)	Zephyr on Discord, Pxls community manager, Pxls subreddit moderator, Leader of The Void. Also known as Dark.
Etos2	Moderator	February 26, 2019 (with breaks from staff)	Former owner of the Pxls.space Discord server.
filipus098	Moderator	March 9, 2023	Currently the only staff member to be both canvas and Discord banned previously
gaudi999	Moderator	April 5, 2022	Gaudi on Discord, Leader of Gura's Supermarket
Haku	Moderator	June 21, 2024	Admin in ManePxls. Also known as Dragon2075.
Laoarane	Moderator	November 12, 2023	Is Magistratus in Legion
Pannenkoek	Moderator	June 21, 2024	Template manager in osu! Logo Builders
Sen_Ruoka	Moderator	May 23, 2021 (with a break in 2022)
__	Developer	May 21, 2021	[ ] on Discord. Also known as Blank.
Doxylamin	Developer	April 4, 2017 (with a large break)	Owns the site.
Vanilla (FlyingSixtySix)	Developer	April 6, 2017 (with breaks from staff)	Previous owner of Pxls.

Former Pxls Staff

Canvas name	Role(s) (Held at some point during tenure)	Pxls Staff leave date	Notes/Reason for leaving
_Etta	Moderator	June 15, 2024	Personal request. Quit Pxls.
Mikarific	Developer, Moderator	May 21, 2024	Removed from position (see user page).
drake	Moderator	April 20, 2023	Personal request. Also known as koro.
Snegovich	Moderator	March 9, 2023	Personal request.
dani26795	Moderator, Administrator	December 29, 2022	Did not return to staff after staff civil war.
TheWaffleLord	Moderator	September 16, 2022	Removed for inactivity, took a long break from Pxls.
Nya	Moderator	July 16, 2021	Personal request.
Funta	Moderator	May 13, 2021	Removed, see this document.
Faust	Administrator, Moderator	May 12, 2021	Personal request.
Helislothic	Moderator	April 14, 2021	Removed for inappropriate behavior. Also known as Heliotic.
Netux	Developer	March 12, 2021	Personal request.
SR17740	Moderator	January 24, 2021	Removed for inactivity.
Chalkless	Moderator	September 24, 2020	Personal request, lost interest.
1	Moderator	September 16, 2020	Personal request, work/time constraints. Also known as Rasputin.
Styx	Moderator	August 30, 2020	Removed for inactivity.
GlowingSocc	Developer, Moderator	May 31, 2020	Personal request.
Pahanya	Moderator, Administrator	May 19, 2020	Personal request.
c4rt	Admin Assistant, Administrator, Moderator, Media Team	May 13, 2020	Personal request, loss of interest.
nerfarrow	Moderator	January 19, 2020	Personal request.
pharot	Moderator	January 16, 2020	Personal request.
Atomic10	Moderator	January 14, 2020	Removed for inappropriate behavior. Also known as Andrew.
Fruity (Cutiefruity/qtFruity)	Moderator	January 12, 2020	Personal request.
Ske	Developer, Administrator, Moderator	November 18, 2019	Retains staff to this day, but retired. Created Pxls.
Royal_Chaos (Elaine)	Moderator, Administrator, Community Ambassador, Media Team	September 17, 2019
squiddies	Moderator	August 18, 2019	Demoted for unprofessionalism. Later permanently banned from the site.
Simius	Administrator, Moderator	March 27, 2019	Maintained staff and reserve admin for some time.
Lana (Karling)	Moderator	March 15, 2019	Removed for condoning a terrorist attack.
Hoppy Tiller	Moderator	March 8, 2019	Personal request, Vanilla's brother.
Rainsford	Moderator	March 4, 2019	Personal request.
Sorunome	Administrator, Moderator, Devleoper, Reddit Mod	January 7, 2019	Retains staff and developer to this day, but retired.
Kori	Moderator	December 11, 2018
Snawbollz	Moderator	November 28, 2018
Mizuxe	Moderator	September 9, 2018	Permanently banned later for grooming. Also known as Jade/Nyx.
deferter (GROCSIG)	Moderator, Media Team	June 9, 2018
LittleEndu	Developer, Moderator	June 9, 2018	Made a template tool. Is now permanently banned from the site.
Quazillionaire	Moderator	June 9, 2018	Made the original Pxls logo. May have had other staff roles.
nudl	Moderator	April 6, 2018	Removed. He was theorized to be dead for 3 three months at one point.
Alanha	Moderator, Administrator, Community Ambassador	October 21, 2017	Quit. Managed Pxls community for some time. Also known as Tea Love.
Kaide	Moderator, Community Ambassador, Reddit Mod, Media Team	October 21, 2017	GHOST on discord.
N1ftyBiscuit	Moderator	October 21, 2017
ReportingIn (Lastya)	Moderator	October 6, 2017	Removed for inactivity.
Mayube (Kaho/gunnerwolf)	Moderator, Administrator, Developer, Community Ambassador	October 3, 2017	Quit due to lack of interest. Helped Ske make Pxls and was the first staff.
Ludus light	Moderator, Developer	July 6, 2017	Quit.
Darky dash	Moderator, Community Ambassador	July 5, 2017	Quit after being told not to build nazi pony artwork.
Steven	Developer	June 15, 2017	Was a developer for a few hours.
Kooleyy	Moderator, Community Ambassador	June 14, 2017	Quit.
Rose	Moderator, Community Ambassador	June 13, 2017	Banned.
vanilla (novella)	Moderator	June 10, 2017	Quit. Later permanently banned for grooming.
XGeNXX	Moderator, Community Ambassador	June 3, 2017	Removed for leaking Pxls staff chat logs on 2ch.
Cyntalli	Moderator	May 24, 2017
Chocolate	Moderator	May 21, 2017	Was fired after using his staff position to spy on an opposing faction. He used a selfbot to clone the entire void server and log messages.
CherishedZero	Moderator	May 15, 2017	Removed for inactivity.
RastaBobby	Community Ambassador, Reddit Mod	May 6, 2017
Former Staff with missing leave date		2018/2017
Elly	Moderator
chill0r (haruna/mike)	Moderator, Reddit Mod		Made a template creator tool.
Topsie (Rayne/Slicerdice)	Moderator, Reddit Mod
Kairavii (Kai)	Community Ambassador
El3ven (Thxbault)	Community Ambassador
Wilhelm von Hasburg	Community Ambassador, Media Team
ranitidine150mg	Community Ambassador
Koi	Moderator, Developer		Banned?
Lyse (Rivernal)	Moderator
Anxious Genius	Moderator, Media Team
FruitPunchSamurai	Moderator
Torofad	Moderator		Removed for inactivity.
Voltasalt	Reddit Mod
Slynthos	Reddit Mod
E1Offical

"pxls Writer", "Twitter Team", and "VK Team" are consolidated into "Media Team" on the table.

History

This section briefly details the creation of Pxls Staff and its history over time. Information in this section was derived from publicly available messages in the Pxls Discord server and information provided by Dark/Zephyr.

Beginnings

April 2017 - May 2017

Ske began working on Pxls while the original r/place was still ongoing. She kept her friend, Mayube, updated on progress with the site and he gave some input. By technicality, Mayube was the first member of Pxls Staff. Pxls was opened to the public on April 3, 2017. Users began joining and placing on Canvas 0. A user known as DerpyDose created the first Pxls Discord server and subreddit, but they started spreading Nazi rhetoric and refused to transfer power, so a new Discord was created. Pxls was very simple at its inception and there was not a solid rule system yet, so on April 4, a user called Koi brought up the need for moderation. Koi would also go on to become a moderator themselves.

Message log of the origin of Pxls Staff

After this, Ske began appointing moderators on the site. A public application form was released on April 5. There was also a form to apply to be a Developer and Community Ambassador (a staff role whose job it was to maintain healthy relations with Pxls factions and the community.) Some users were exclusively reddit moderators.

When Canvas 2 started on April 9, staff decided that the canvas was to be PG-13 (with other rules.) During this canvas, staff used new moderator tools to add clothes to characters drawn nude. One of the first major controversies happened when staff decided to ban lolis (April 13). This was met with discontent in the Pxls Discord server. Half an hour later, Ske announced the first "botpocalypse" where the site would automatically ban users who were detected using a placing script. This was done due to rampant botting during the first two canvases. Staff gave users advance warning to turn off their bots before they would get banned.

Alanha (Tea Love) started taking on more responsibility managing staff and the discord server. She fully set up the staff role on the Pxls Discord on April 16. 17 users in the server were given the staff role on the day of its creation. On May 6, the Pxls Staff Head role was created, with Alanha being its first holder.

Early Instability

May 2017 - February 2018

Early Pxls was filled with uncertainty. People were unsure how long the site would last and things were still getting figured out. Many early staff members quit or lost interest after a short period of activity. Early Pxls also had many staff that were removed for various reasons. This could have been due to there being more staff than there are now, or less intensive requirements. 4 staff members left in May, and 5 in June, making these two months the highest ever for staff turnover rate.

On May 21, Pxls staff removed a moderator called Chocolate from their position for using his role to spy on an enemy faction. Before he was removed, he used a bot to clone The Void Discord server and log every message.

On May 18, a moderator called XGeNXX leaked logs of the Pxls Discord staff channel onto 2ch (a Russian imageboard site.) This went unnoticed by the rest of Pxls Staff for a couple weeks until a user reported it to Darky Dash, another Russian moderator. Darky Dash set up a group gm on June 3 to discuss the breach with other staff. XGeNXX was removed from Pxls staff, but he remains in the Pxls Discord to this day.

Vanilla (Flying) became head staff on July 6. By the end of October, Alanha and Mayube had already resigned, marking a shift in Pxls staff as the leadership changed.

Sorunome became Pxls Head Staff on December 2, 2017. Around this time she was also the project lead and handled most of the site development and canvas resets.

Stabilization

February 2018 - May 2020

By February of 2018, Pxls has stabilized substantially and no staff member had resigned or was removed since October of the previous year. On February 10, the Pxls Queen role was created, which acted as a role for the project lead. Sorunome was the first Pxls Queen.

On June 10, 2018, a user known as Haykam hacked into c4rt's Discord account. He nuked most of the existing channels and kicked/banned many members (around 7,000). This resulted in a massive loss in information from the first year of Pxls.

Zephyr became the Pxls Staff Head on September 21, but the role was dissolved sometime shortly thereafter.

There was some tension in staff about an administrator called Elaine. She was perceived to be randomly dictating rules in channels, so she was pressured to resign and moved to reserve admin along with Alanha. As a result, Vanilla became an admin of the Discord server on September 2, 2018. "'oh no, it's the flying inquisition' -elaine's bad pun" -Elaine

On November 18, the role of Pxls Queen was transferred from Sorunome to Vanilla. This was done to take more initiative on how Pxls was being run and managed. This was in addition to Sorunome taking a less active role in Pxls development.

During the later months of 2018, 2ch had risen to prominence. Users from 2ch had encouraged DDoS attacks, repeatedly harassed users, and collectively broken rules. Due to these reasons, Pxls staff decided to do a mass ban of 2ch users from the platform to preserve the community. This decision was controversial at the time, and received even more scrutiny as time went on, leading to 2ch being allowed to return a few years later.

In August 2019, an on site chat was added, along with a host of new moderator tools for it. The chat was created by GlowingSocc and merged on August 1. This new addition created an entire new dimension of moderation on Pxls. Since its addition, Pxls chat has been temporarily disabled several times, usually due to it being too out of control to effectively moderate. A couple months after the addition of Pxls chat, a TikTok brought thousands of new users to Pxls. This is known as the TikTok Invasion. The Pxls server was upgraded to help deal with influx of users. Additionally, two more moderators were added on this canvas, with another 2 a month later. The TikTok Invasion was one of the most chaotic times on Pxls and constant moderation was required.

During a period of low interest for Vanilla, the Discord server ownership was transferred to Etos2 on January 8, 2020. He also became the new Pxls Queen (though Vanilla remained project lead.)

Between mid-2019 and mid-2020, Pxls had 3 developers working on new updates to the site, so it enjoyed many new QoL and UI updates. In April 2020, Pxls had issues with the domain and the site went down for 4 days before being resolved.

Challenges

May 2020 - October 2022

During Canvas 38 (June 2020), there was an artwork known as "banned lives matter," which depicted banned users in a situation similar to George Floyd. Pxls Staff banned some of the users involved in building it (more details below). This caused a bit of a stir in the Pxls community with mixed reactions, though mostly positive ones. The art sat for some time before the banning, and there was a coalition of users trying to take matters into their own hands by placing over the art with a banhammer.

On September 26, 2020, a moderator called SR17740 accidentally pruned 2,500 users from the Pxls discord. This brought the member count down to 3,000.

In the first half of 2021, Pxls staff had frequent debates over how strict they should be. These debates got heated enough to occasionally spill out and reveal the toxic environment of staff at the time. In March it was announced that staff would be cracking down on transphobia. The next month in April, chat was disabled from the 14th to 24th due to it being out of control and more debates over how strict moderation should be. During these debates in staff channels, a moderator called Funta was often combative and aggressive towards other staff, and called for less strict moderation. He additionally received many reports from users upset with his behavior. It reached a point where staff members created private group DMs to discussion moderation without Funta. Staff started drafting up a plan for reform, including problematic staff removal. Other parts of the staff reform included new staff guidelines, new members, and a zero tolerance bigotry policy. Funta was removed from staff on May 13, 2021. The full details of Funta's behavior and this staff reform can be found here. The decision upset many Russian users and members of Legion and 2ch.

On the same day of Funta's removal, a moderator called Mikarific was temporarily removed for offensive comments about Russian culture (More information here). This outraged the Russian playerbase ever further, causing Legion to issue an ultimatum leading to Mikarific's demotion from moderator. (She was made a developer, staying on the staff team.) A public discussion was held where legionnaires and others offered their own ideas for staff reform.

As aforementioned, 2ch was allowed to stay on Pxls when they made a surprise return on Canvas 40. Over the next 7 canvases they demonstrated behavior detrimental to the site and community, similar to how they first got banned. Because of this, Pxls staff announced on May 25, 2021, that they would be nuked and mass banned once again. The community reaction was very positive, yet there were still some users against the nuke. Some of the users banned in the nuke have since been unbanned, like Antde and notEnough.

In late October 2021, Pxls staff and retired Pxls staff held a discussion on leadership and the future of Pxls. It was agreed power should be more spread out and to have no sole person calling the shots. The behavior of the current Pxls Queen, Etos2, was also brought into question. The results of this were Etos2 being removed from staff (the situation with this was more complicated, but Etos came back after flipflopping from other staff and further discussion), the Pxls Queen role being retired, and Sidestep and Nanineye being added as "Managers." Vanilla remained as "Project Lead" but was to have no say in moderation. With all of the changes in Pxls staff and policy, public confidence was low as things seemed to be out of control internally throughout the year. The new change in leadership was a start in repairing that relationship.

Throughout 2022, Pxls faced intermittent DDoS attacks and server issues that affected people's ability to use the site. That being said, 2022 was largely free from drama involving staff until the end of the year.

"Staff Civil War"

October 2022 - January 2023

The previous year, Pxls staff had held the discussion about leadership, however, staff had no real way of enforcing checks on Vanilla's power, since she owned both the site and Discord server.

This all came to a head in late December 2022. Vanilla brought up an image of a partially completed Kekistan flag in staff chat and requested to ban the users that were building it. (For context, a Kekistan flag is a meme flag from 4chan that is based off the Nazi flag and made for a fictional country called "Kekistan.") A couple staff members agreed no questions asked, but several other objected and a discussion happened. A list was created of various problems the decision created. Many staff members decided what they would do if Vanilla banned the users. Towards the end, Vanilla said “I'd like to add that with this action, I've decided that as staff, we need to be pushing towards a policy of harsher punishments towards bigotry. We've put it off long enough, and the community is fed up with it.” With that, the users were banned. By doing this, Vanilla posited that she indeed had the authority to make executive decisions. On December 29, Sidestep, Nanineye, Etos2, Dani, Snegovich, Sen_Ruoka, and Drake resigned from staff. It is to be said that these staff members did not resign due to banning users for making a kekistan flag, but rather the nature of the ban being permanent and Vanilla's sudden shift in ideas about policy/authority, which was not discussed at all. Vanilla knew that the decision may cause resignations, but perhaps did not expect most of the staff team to do so.

This result put lots of pressure on Vanilla and spread unease in the Discord. On December 30, after discussions in the retired staff channel, server ownership was transferred to Nanineye and all of the staff members who recently resigned came back (except for Dani and Sen). Dani had been in Pxls staff under the condition that there would be no drama, so he didn't want to come back again after this incident. Though it was never said publicly, it can be assumed they decided to transfer power away from Vanilla and have Nanineye be owner in name only, with the same say in decisions as everyone else. Vanilla regretted their actions stating "in the end, I want whatever is best for the place, and the way I went about it was definitely not the way." Additionally, the users who were banned by Vanilla were unbanned.

Adapting

January 2023 - Present

In 2023, staff adjusted to the new leadership. Pxls went through another period of stabilization with relatively low staff turnover.

However, that is not to say things were perfect. Some users, former staff members, and even a current staff member had reservations about the way Pxls was being run. They had a group dm to share grievances and discuss what could be done to improve the situation. The conversation largely had to due with perceived staff inaction. A critical piece of information is that images from staff discussions and tickets were shared. The group dm slowed down around the turn of the year. Later in May 2024, the group dm was reported to Pxls staff and the end result was a few users receiving temporary bans and Mikarific being permanently banned from the Pxls platform (More information here). This was the first time something like this had occurred in several years. The situation affected some people's trust in Pxls staff. During the investigation period, several false rumors were spread about what had happened, which stoked fears of stolen data.

As it stands today, Pxls staff is comprised of 13 members (3 administrators, 7 moderators, and 3 developers.) The last change in Pxls staff was on June 21, 2024.