Before I get into this, I feel this is necessary.
Disclaimer I have written this with the information that was provided to me by sources that I'll keep confidential. They were kind enough to explain to the situation and grant their view upon it. My view may be skewed and may in fact favour you more than it should but regardless this is the way I currently feel about all of it. If more information is revealed to me that might disprove your absolute minimal involvement I'd love to see it and will edit this post to be appropriate. Until such a time this verdict stands.
All of this is written with my own opinion in mind and is not meant to insult, accuse, slander anyone or otherwise grant unconstructive feedback. I'd rather someone contact me about things they disagree with rather than blatantly removing parts of this post as its cohesion will quickly fall apart if parts of this are missing. I am more than willing to remove and or edit parts that may be seriously offensive towards some or parts that misstate or misinterpret facts.
Now for the reply
I have no idea about the exact specifics of what has happened but I have heard things mouth to mouth and it might have been watered down. As a result, I feel that I cannot make a 100% accurate statement but I do want to say something regardless because I feel that this is just beyond stupid.
Based on the things that I've have heard you'd have known about a doxx having occurred on a specific member of the community and you would not have reported it to any LT or Community Team member. According to what you have written that story would indeed hold up to be true. In which case I can definitely see why action would be taken but I certainly do not agree at all with the action taken. Had you been the person to doxx someone and got demoted (hell if not community banned) I would've wholeheartedly agreed with what happened but as the situation to my knowledge has played out this is just plain silly.
You should
NOT have been demoted for any of this, you did not doxx anyone yourself nor did you spread it or do anything harmful with the information. You merely saw it happening and should have perhaps reported it, yes, but there was absolutely no merit to take action as extensive as a full-blown demotion against you. Especially considering as far as I am aware you had a somewhat clean slate. Yes, you may have had a warning but it was removed and should not be taken into account in future use as the appeal was accepted. Someone does not hold an appealed punishment against a user when they apply for staff either now do they?
I feel that they should rectify the mistake - if what happened is indeed true you might receive an official warning at the most. I understand that for some even that might be too much as this occurred outside of a ZARP environment if even it was ZARP related. Which would mean that by the time I was still staff no one could've done anything about it, let alone full-blown demote a decent staff member
*.
* As far as I noticed you've always been helpful towards me and been willing to answer and help me out whenever we'd be playing together (even if that is with others) Yes you may have had some shaky bits occasionally but even then I never saw anything major pop out from it. Hell, one of the major things an official warning that was given to you was even revoked which would show that you did something right.
Now, I sincerely hope that they will accept your appeal and your dedication is admirable, however, I am sad to report that I do fear for the worst. And in my honest opinion, I do have to admit that I am getting the feeling that you in a certain way have been specifically targeted in this scenario. Who can say however many other staff may have seen it and done nothing about it, why would only you get demoted for it?!
I tend to put trust into people and I really, really hope that the Community Team and the Lead Team would not do such a thing as specifically targeting a staff member they may not like as much,
I am not trying to accuse them of doing it either, it's just a feeling that I have as an outside observer to the situation brought to light here as well as the questionable official warning that was given prior.
Regardless, I feel that you should've reported it, sure, I think we all feel that way. But no one from here till the moon would be able to convince me to vote to fully demote you. Even to have you be demoted to moderator is something that I wouldn't have stood for. I'd have much rather seen you get a talking to or an official warning
at the very, very most.
For those who may say something like "oh he betrayed our trust" well, in the past we've demoted people to moderator for abusing as an admin, we've given them official warnings and we've sometimes even just done a talking to. I've very rarely seen someone be demoted straight from Admin (or higher) to a user. And even if I saw it happen that is with the most severe cases of abuse that affected dozens if not the entire server. Many of the ways that rulebreakers are handled have gotten a lot more lenient why wouldn't you be that way with staff?
You getting full-blown demoted for simply not reporting something is just absolutely horrible, and it sets a massive example of how not to deal with your staff members, especially for someone whose been getting so much support from users and staff alike. Good staff is rare and the people at ZARP should be appreciating their staff for putting in the time and effort that they do, they should not immediately demote someone for something like this. If anything they should've spoken to you first, you seem to have been willing to admit your mistake and I'm sure that in the future nothing like this will ever happen again.
All they need to do is give you the courtesy of another chance, and be less trigger-happy on demoting someone because I fear that if things go at the rate they did for you the staff team on SSRP might end up like deathrun... dead.
TL:DR: I feel your full-blown demotion was way too severe for the actions you (failed) to take and that they should not just fix their mistake but also apologize for the poor handling of the situation, and I cannot help but press on how many pointless things like this can be avoided if they would staff explain themselves.