Poniverse claims "Breach of Professionalism"

You can't have a nightmare, if you never dream 


Poniverse has an official response to Silver Eagle's open letter from earlier, claiming a "Breach of Professionalism" on his part. Now, we're not a part of PVL, nor are we Poniverts, so we don't know what the hell is going on over there, but OF ALL THE WORDS TO USE, they chose "Professionalism".

Let's take a look!


Collected from:

"Poniverse prides itself on its sense of community, both on our services and within our staff. As an entirely volunteer-run organization, Poniverse is extraordinarily grateful to the individuals who give up some of their free time to run the various parts of Poniverse, including Ponyville Live!. As every member of Poniverse staff up to and including its leadership are part of the same community, all of us want to preserve the bonds that tie our staff together, so that we can provide the best possible experience to the pony fandom with each and every one of our projects.


Unfortunately, we've been put into a rare situation where it is necessary for us to make a statement of this nature, both to explain recent events regarding Ponyville Live! and to inform the community of our actions in the aftermath.


As you may know, Ponyville Live! was run by Silver Eagle from 2013 to 2015. In late December 2015, Poniverse was informed that Silver Eagle would be stepping down from his position as head of Ponyville Live!. As part of this transition, he turned over the leadership of Ponyville Live! to Dusk and ownership of the organization (including financial concerns) to Poniverse. Silver Eagle remained as a staff member of Poniverse after the transition within the development team to continue working on the technical side of Ponyville Live!, but was no longer was involved in the administration or leadership aspects of the site.


In February of this year, Silver Eagle requested a position within the administration of Ponyville Live!. While everyone at Poniverse is extraordinarily grateful and appreciative of everything Silver Eagle has done to build and run Ponyville Live!, PVL's current leadership ultimately reached the decision that it was in the best interest of Ponyville Live! to continue under its current leadership structure for the time being. Silver Eagle resigned from his technical position with Poniverse and Ponyville Live! after this decision was made.


Before Silver Eagle’s privileged access to Ponyville Live! was revoked, he used this access to take Ponyville Live!'s website, radios, and a wide array of other resources offline, causing a significant outage of Ponyville Live’s services and the radio stations which depend on them. While we absolutely understand his frustration with the decision, such abuse of privileged access is a serious breach of the professionalism and integrity our staff are expected to exhibit.


It is worth mentioning that in regards to this first request for an administrative position, no appeal was made by Silver Eagle to Poniverse Council (Poniverse’s executive leadership) regarding Ponyville Live!’s decision, and thus this decision was not reviewed beyond the level of Ponyville Live!’s administration prior to Silver Eagle taking Ponyville Live!’s site and social media offline. We welcome all of our staff to take their unresolved disputes with project leadership to Council for mediation.


Not long after these events, Silver Eagle once again requested an administrative position with Ponyville Live!. Dusk deferred to Poniverse Council on this second request, and Council concluded that Silver Eagle’s abuse of privileged access and causing an intentional outage of Ponyville Live! were severe enough that we could not, in good faith, allow him to return to Poniverse or PVL staff.


We'd like to assure you, as the community, that the decisions made by the leadership of both Poniverse and Ponyville Live! were made with the ultimate goal of preserving Ponyville Live! for the fandom.


Furthermore, Poniverse does not exist for anyone's financial gain. PVL itself does not run ads or lock content behind paywalls; its only revenue comes from a few Patreon contributors. Most of its costs are subsidized by other Poniverse projects. While Poniverse as a whole is financially sustainable, none of our staff - up to and including Poniverse's owner, Feld0 - receive any financial benefit for their time on staff. 100% of Poniverse's revenue is spent or saved for the benefit of the network's projects.


It is extremely unfortunate that these events have occurred. We are doing everything possible to safeguard the future of Ponyville Live! and to continue providing this valuable resource to the pony fandom.


~Feld0 - Poniverse Founder, Council Member
~Simon - Head of Public Relations, Council Member

~Dusk - Director of Ponyville Live!"

Comments (38)

  1. "The Poniverse Council"

    Jesus Christ, these are a bunch of fansites, not the fucking Jedi order.

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    1. What would you rather they call it? They have a fairly extensive staff with a couple different echelons, not to mention staff who work on totally different sites altogether; it's not a status symbol, it's just to keep things organized so people know who's who on staff. Trust me, I've been on MLP Forums for quite some time, nobody there goes around flashing the fact that they're on Poniverse's staff. They're all volunteers (besides Feld0) who just want to be involved in the fandom to a somewhat greater extent than just being a fan.

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    2. I've always found the best staffers take the approach of not being known at all, so don't call it anything. Maybe have a little page showing who does what but not have them parade around like they own the place. It's hard to say who truly does it for the fandom rather than putting themselves as being 'horse famous' these days...

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    3. Well that's all they really have there. They have a page showing who staffers are, and they have labels under their usernames designating who they are on staff, mostly so people know who to go to for staff-related inquiries. That's it. That's as much as they "parade" it around, if you want to call it that.

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    4. Well yes, but the bigger problem is that once you get outside those sites I leave my rank at the door. Many people tack their credentials on their Twitter bio/Facebook while still maintaining a 'personal' account. So not only are they Pubic Relations but they're also easy prey.

      It's more or less either parading it around or being insecure about it depends on how they engage with social media. I personally don't understand the need behind it.

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  2. Translation: Dusk is an asshole. Feld0 is an asshole. Simon is an asshole. Possibly even Silver Eagle is an asshole. No wonder the brony fandom has such a shit name compared to others...

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  3. It's... rather disgusting of PVL, using his code is a controversial thing... even now.
    Considering that code in situations like these, can be very grey legally.

    But, I myself feel unsure of that, But what I am sure of is thee fact that Silver Eagle here most likely didn't shut down the sites out of some hatred but rather because he wasn't getting any attention that was necessary to quell the situation. His concern over their use of his code was insane in my opinion


    Sounding like a pseudo-intellectual Achieved.

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  4. Fuck off, PVL.

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  5. Give the man back his site I say. I'd flip my shit if someone stepped in and stole EQD from under me.

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    1. To be fair it looks like the story is more complicated than that. Silver looks to have lost the site on his own accord due to ego issues.

      Of course there are two sides to every story.

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    2. PVL was voluntarily given to Poniverse by Silver Eagle. Originally PVL was just going to shut down entirely.

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    3. Seth, no-one stole PVL. Silver gave it to Poniverse rather than shut it down. He said so himself in his own article on here.

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    4. Only on wednesdays, CCCD9.

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    5. But Seth, they already stole Equestria Daily from you and turned it into Shilling Central 101.
      The last straw was accepting that Illustrious Q faggot a a staff member when you know he's a huge laughing stock among any pony communities for his blatant IDW shilling and his self admited wishes to someday write pony stories for them.

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  6. I know both these guys to a greater or lesser extent, and this just sounds like shitty communication. Silver Eagle says that Poniverse volunteered to take over a service he was going to shut down - bear that in mind, it's important. Then he complained that they wanted access to everything (well, yeah - how else are they going to run it?). Now he's saying they "kicked him out", and there's Seth on here saying the site was "stolen from him".

    No, stop that. He gave the site up. The copyright notice changed because that's how copyrights work. Silver handed over ownership, and the copyright became theirs. I know Feld0 pretty well, worked with him a lot, and while the dude can be a bit oblivious sometimes - dude has a lot on his plate - he wouldn't intentionally stiff anyone. I don't know who to believe on the circumstances of how Silver left, but he hasn't been making things easy for himself recently with his volunteering for FA (something I advised him against), then going up against them in a wage dispute (where he was in the right) and by replicating their site with the code he wrote for them (where he was not in the right). He got stressed out to the maximum about that whole thing, and now during all of that he was trying to re-take administrative oversight of PVL? During a time when he was *hospitalised*? That seems naive.

    These two groups need to talk to each other, not fling shit on Horse News. Neither of the people at the top are dickheaded people. I know this to be 100% true. Just step back, calm the fuck down, and try this shit again.

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    1. Poniverse is a lot more than just the forums.

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    2. I agree with you on the aspect that it all seems to be quite the miscommunication. However, I'm not too sure Silver simply handed the thing out to Poniverse. Quote from his open letter to HN:

      "Poniverse (already a fairly big network, with MLPForums, the old PonyMC minecraft server, and Pony.fm under their belt) volunteered to host it. I agreed, and I also agreed to hand over the director position to a friend of mine, Dusk, as long as I could remain an administrator and developer for the site."

      Keywords: as long as I could remain an administrator and developer for the site

      Now, we go and take a look at what Poniverse themselves stated to have done.

      "Silver Eagle remained as a staff member of Poniverse after the transition within the development team to continue working on the technical side of Ponyville Live!, but was no longer was involved in the administration or leadership aspects of the site."

      Seems that Poniverse didn't exactly understand all too well what Silver Eagle was hoping to happen, or Silver Eagle himself didn't express it correctly at the moment.

      Either way, Silver Eagle's claims where he felt Poniverse had stolen the site from him seem legit. They took away his administrative rights without him wanting them to. They gotta work some stuff out, it seems.

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  7. Fucking commenting system.

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  8. From everything I have seen PVL is majority at fault in this whole thing. Their actions were a peek of "unprofessional"

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  9. A lot of this reminds me of PonySquare. Create the biggest network, it goes to shit (although PonySquare and every site like it is no longer acknowledged by the core fandom...I don't know about Poniverse), admin quits and bails for attempting to rehire to an administrative position. Poniverse I've disliked since it was announced on MLPForums and is the primary reason why I left those forums. Forums only have so many members before it gets too crowded (and many of that size tend to be segmented) so I suppose Feld0's solution is to take over a bunch of other communities to try and spread out so everyone is on his property. I say take over because of PonyMC...

    I didn't keep up with it afterwards but I've understood when PonyMC turned over its keys to Poniverse the latter completely killed its community. Before it took place it tended to have at least 20 to around 60 people online and nowadays it's a ghost town. I do understand...It's a lot easier to sell a server/site/community than it is to destroy it due to being overwhelmed.

    Also, why do we need to have Pubic Relations out there. Just fuck each other already!

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Alright so as somebody who's been staff on Ponymc for like, 2-3 years I feel like you're exaggerating a bit :v Community is definitely not dead, and mainly decreased a bit since its ridiculously awkward to get Poniverse to advertise stuff online. Mainly get around 20 players overnight on weekdays and 30 on weekends. Don't get 60 on but I feel like other factors are also involved including minecraft/pony servers in general just being less popular.

      [Also deleted since I intended to post as anonymous, never really used these aha]

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    3. and deleting stuff doesn't work anyway so I'm not sure why I bothered <_>

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    4. Honestly, I felt like the biggest problem is that when I was online (which is generally in the evenings) there was always that 'follow the mascot' sort of deal going on. Remove him and those that stayed for him would leave. My online times have been consistent, but there have been times earlier where I'd check the population just for the heck of it. The last time I was on it for a while it only had 4 people over a course of about two weeks I think?

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    5. Entirely depends on the time of day you're on. During the earlier stages of the day it goes from like, 0-11. And then during peak times it'd be from 15-30. Seen it at 40 once or twice but its about as rare as the times we had 60 so I won't count it :P

      I definitely don't recall it ever only having 4 people on overall for a day, except for the period when it was down for a week of maintenance.

      Also I'm not entirely sure what you mean about the follow the mascot thing if I'm honest.

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    6. I believe I mentioned that from before and after my times are generally consistent. I might look at the server list earlier in the day but when I actually logged in it was around the evening. It just so happened the two weeks I was online going from spawn back to my bed not many people were online or the chat was completely dead.

      I've felt that some figureheads in smaller communities tend to be unofficial mascots for the community. I honestly don't think it is the case with PonyMC solely because I don't have enough information to prove it but I kind of felt that when certain key people leave, staff or not, some people will follow suit accordingly and move.

      The same also applies to friends, but that's on a much smaller scale.

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  10. Yeah I used to be on the PonyMC myself. Seems the survival server is just a pale image of what it used to be and the Equestria world is just totally broken.

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    1. ? EQ has been working fine for months. Haven't had players building on it because we needed to get Dynmap fixed (Which took far longer than anticipated mind).

      Not going to lie that its decreased, but its definitely not completely screwed lmao, think we're past the worst of the issues that always occur when transferring to a completely different administration

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  11. You guys could not have admitted "we are slimy, sleazy dicks and entirely to blame" in a clearer way.
    Good job faggots.

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  12. PURPLE TRANNY
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  13. PURPLE TRANNY Sticking his jew nose where it doesn't belong:

    https://twitter.com/prpltnkr/status/722825574431862784

    https://twitter.com/prpltnkr/status/722825291844886530

    And there goes the last bit of sympathy I had for Silver Eagle

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    1. It's not his fault, his nose is almost as big as his dick, it tends to flop everywhere.

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  14. Sometimes I question why we're bothering to keep it up anymore, but then I remember what a cancerous shitfest MLPForums and Poniverse is. http://friendshipismagic.org

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  15. PURPLE TRANNY!
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    !

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  16. This to me really just sounds like some PR attempt to cover up their own bullshit. Like it's even worded as vaguely and non-humanly as a letter you'd get from like Warner Brothers regarding some shit like this.

    Honestly they can claim they are non revenue venture all the like, until I see the earnings report, I am doubting that. On MLPForums alone they have MONTHLY subscribers, donations, ads from adsense, people can purchase ads, they collect a percentage of all artists commissions, and runs "charity auctions and donations" which I am sure they collect from.

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  17. I liked Silver Eagle, and I don't feel I yet have a reason not to. I had never even heard of these other randos.

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