Pieman said: I feel like SO much trouble could've been saved here had Leon just gotten out ahead of this, admitted what he did, apologized for it, left everything to do with WAM (MostWAM, his own site, his payment processing stuff, etc), promised to work on himself, stopped taking profits from people who borrowed his studio, and stepped away from the WAM business completely. Instead he (and others) tried to cover it up and just hoped no one would know. He was extremely selfish and self-centered.

He put Messmaster in a position where no matter what he did or how long it took to do it, someone was going to be upset about how he handled it and leave. He also put a lot of other innocent producers, models, etc in positions to lose a lot of money. People were going to be hurt financially regardless but the damage would've been minimized had he come clean to start with. Your anger should be with Leon, not MM. No matter what MM did, someone wasn't going to be happy. It's unfortunate, but that's life.

Obviously I don't get to dictate things, but it would've been cool had some of the models been given the opportunity to taken over MostWAM and got him out of it completely.

[Edit: It's not in the queue. Where did you submit the picture?]

ACE PIE said: On further review, I support MM in wanting to disassociate with mostwam, but if it's not about ruining him financially, then you all can think about the 8yr old boy he has to support, maybe Lisa as well. Shutting down all avenues of revenue going into a bleak winter with inflation and energy prices even worse in the UK then in tbe US might be a little harsh/cruel on top of everything else.
I'm a husband and father of a small girl, I don't support Leon's actions but sometimes people need to stop and think about the big picture and all the people this affects not just Leon.

Sleazoid44 said: The person I feel most sorry for is Messmaster. First the Ariel problem, now this. I've managed online forums before. There is no perfect way to handle situations like this.

caramba said:
The sentence was in March 2022, that might have been the same time as the trial would have taken place, so I'm not sure what could have been disclosed regarding being charged earlier.

But frankly, MM, you were in a no-win situation. There's no right answer as to what steps you could or should have taken.

moreslime said:
Nice idea, but I don't think it's that simple. As has been stated a few times, Leon is the sole director and 100% owner of the legal entity behind Mostwam. All roads, not to say all profits, eventually lead back to Leon. Poppy (say) would have to buy him out of a business worth a five-figure sum as at the last accounts. And even if that's practical, I suspect more than a few would interpret that as Leon being rewarded for what he's done with a cash windfall, which would be very unpopular.

Unfortunately, Mostwam isn't just some hobby where they were filming at weekends and so someone could simply say "Leon's not welcome anymore and we don't film in his garage now either". There's a proper, legally constituted business there and Leon's the ultimate beneficial owner. That's very different.

ulliet said:
I must respectfully disagree. A company can potentially be worth a whole lot more than just its balance sheet value (or even less than the balance sheet value though that is uncommon). Also, we cannot deduce the trading profit just by comparing the value of the balance sheet in 2020 with 2021 because we don't know what dividends, if any, were issued.

I agree that the 60k and 300k figures are likely too high for 2021.

Nairoz said: Said with the best of intentions - MM, can you not see how not vocally condemning his posts to him makes him think, alright, I'm in good company, the owner of the site doesn't disagree

jontamson3 said: I've generally avoided commenting on what Leon may or may not have done for obvious reasons, but what I will say is that everything shared about that trip to Crete sounded really weird and gave off more red flags than a Chinese state dinner. I wouldn't be even remotely surprised if more came out about that, though obviously I hope I'm wrong.

dalamar666 said: MM, I have seen your pattern over years and you have been consistent. I think we can both agree some conversations with certain languages were allowed to continue longer than they probably should have. I think that all of these conversations are important. However much like my telling someone to fuck off was edited as a personal attack and not needed. There is other language that went far too long without something being said. It really felt like you were the only one policing things until Filthy Girl stepped in.

I should as far as Mods go Wam Chantelle has been ace, very caring, trying to not make a mistake and trying to find out if there were legal problems etc hence locking some threads.
This was whilst facts were checked (bear in mind it was my facts they were checking!)

34gate said:
People here agree with us that you all are nuts, they're just not willing to say it. I'm deciding for them. When you're not looking, they admit we're right about what you're doing to this place.

Messmaster said:

I'm not crying victim. I love this and this is what I do, but this job is already a 12-hour-a-day job. This past incident in and of itself took 20 hours a day just to deal with that... literally. Unfortunately there are not 32 hours in a day, so some things took a little longer this time.

naughtyjim said:
See MessMaster, when you let the little fascists and incels in here and you put them ahead of pillars of our community like Kelsey and Penny, look what happens. Look at the damage you do! You can't please all the people BUT Kelsey and Penny HELP MAKE this community; from Messtival to their own stores!

WTF did this guy or @lchris001 ever do??? Bums on seats results in some absolutely toxic people rotting away the core of this place! When they're making open attacks like this against female producers and you only placate, how do you think that'll work out in the end???

Potatoman-J said:
Reminding you to actually eat something please.

VAVAVIE said:
Just to clarify the offence was August 2020 and Leon was apologising to the victim that same night. Al stated he knew straightaway. Then the court case and sentencing was March 2022.
So even if Leon/Al/Lisa kept quiet only from March 2022 it's unacceptable. The fact that in May 2022 Leon was still taking girls away, having a thing with one of them and the other girls only found out he was a sex offender whilst stranded abroad shows life was carrying on the way it always had.
Unacceptable. They had to go.

DungeonMasterOne said:
I already approved it for them. Knew it was controversial but it didn't breach any of the Admin Rules for unverified user pic posting so I assumed you'd want it treated like any other image, and let it through. It's at the bottom of one of 34gate's previous posts on Page 7 of this thread.

naughtyjim said:When they're making open attacks like this against female producers and you only placate....

dalamar666 said: I know you are just one person and it is a lot. I was more referring to a mod stepping in and making a comment like what Filthy did. Then going back through and cleaning things up. On a side note it does load faster on mobile than it used to.

Nairoz said: "The way I moderate is that I make attempts to "reach" the person and get on the same page, and if that doesn't work then they will get gagged or kicked off the site. Gauging the underlying intent is a huge part of what I do, and if I feel this person is genuine in his feelings yet wrong in his expression I will try a little longer."

That... pretty much feels like the definition of placate.

caramba said:
But that's a grey area. I can certainly recall situations where people have had apologies used against them in criminal trials when they had genuinely misread signals and were acquitted. It's a really tricky position until there is a verdict - or at least a plea. It's not how I would have approached it - but I've never been in that position, and I work where full disclosure is a legal requirement rather than a moral one.

Messmaster said:
I'm sorry, but you haven't been paying attention

Messmaster said:
I ask that you fall back on what you know about my "pattern over the years" and give me a little bit of benefit of the doubt when I'm handling one of the biggest crises this site has ever been through. I am just one person. The mods help me tremendously but I have no team of developers, no engineers, no communication staff to handle user messages. So it took a little longer.

Removing messages that contain pejoratives that would just rile people up is easy. Parsing a live, ongoing argument and trying to be consistent, lest you get eviscerated by every person who you've moderated and have it thrown back in your face for eternity, takes a shitton of mental overhead. Sometimes I have to prioritize what I'm doing, and handling the core situation was it. Meanwhile UMD's forum pages are intermittently taking 30 to 60 seconds to load right now. Gotta fix that. In the middle of securing additional merchant accounts so that we can continue to HAVE a site. Doing customer service for every download store on UMD takes a lot of time too. It all has to be done at the same time.

I'm not crying victim. I love this and this is what I do, but this job is already a 12-hour-a-day job. This past incident in and of itself took 20 hours a day just to deal with that... literally. Unfortunately there are not 32 hours in a day, so some things took a little longer this time.

Nostalgic Erotica Prod said:
Whether you were overwhelmed, froze or whatever, I don't think the site administration was anywhere near equipped to handle something of this magnitude (or the backlash to follow) in which, you have my empathy.