As most of you have probably noticed, I’m no longer very active on the Garfield Wiki. In recent years my interest in Garfield has decreased significantly, and this, combined with increased responsibilities in my personal life, has made editing this wiki a low priority for me. However, I do still check in here occasionally, and when I did so a few days ago I noticed this (now locked) thread. As someone who was very involved in the recurring controversies surrounding TeeJay87 between November 2021 and January 2023, it immediately piqued my interest.
In that thread, Bonzo Wag takes issue with my actions in January, when TeeJay87 was re-promoted to an administrator here. To be perfectly honest, at that time I was sick of the needless drama TeeJay87 was creating (such as the “LS032-Gate” thread he made to harass me) and just wanted the situation to be resolved. I did, however, feel he had moderated his behavior enough to merit a second chance and expected him to continue that trend. But has this continued moderation actually happened? I can’t honestly say that it has. Since January TeeJay87 has been better in some ways, but he seems to be regressing now, and (as Bonzo Wag said) his core attitude isn’t much different than before.
At the same time, as a fellow administrator I have also seen TeeJay87’s private behavior and comments relating to the wiki, and that's where most of my concerns come from. On the Garfield Wiki admins’ private Discord server TeeJay87 is no different than before. He still randomly accuses users on the wiki of having mental disorders, sees conspiracies everywhere (he has recently concluded that former administrator Cooljoe01’s brother is behind the Bonzo Wag account, for example) and complains about anyone (such as FANDOM Staff) who doesn’t take his side in disagreements. Yes, it’s true that he’s toned down that behavior on the wiki itself, but if his attitude hasn’t changed (and I don’t think it has), there’s no doubt he’ll soon get the “itch” to go all the way back to his old tactics.
What’s most concerning though, is that in the past two days I’ve seen this prediction begin to come true. Yesterday, TeeJay87 accused Nursedeath, a new user who’s made a few silly discussion posts but caused no actual harm, of libel for the following (correct) statement: “He is pretty rude overall. I'm sorry if I seem disrespectful. But TeeJay, is Much worse than you are making him up to be.” Not only is this not libel by any reasonable definition, the user even apologies in advance for potentially being disrespectful (which they were not). While it was EllaStrudel who publicly warned Nursedeath for “libel” in that thread, TeeJay87 was the one who first proposed they be issued a warning, as seen below:
TeeJay87 then proceeded to send Nursedeath a nasty message on an unrelated three-week-old thread, a completely unnecessary action that is reminiscent of the worst of his previous behavior. He has continued that behavior today, replying to three more threads unrelated to the previous one just so he could write harsh messages to Nursedeath. Again, this was one of the most frequent harassment tactics TeeJay87 used before. Many times in the past he would go back through a user’s old comments and messages and leave nasty replies (under the guise of “correcting” their behavior) if he didn’t like some other comment they made. FGN Crew Fan was one major example of this that I can remember, but there were many others.
Now, it’s time to get to the point of this blog post and say something I really should have said a long time ago. I have no interest in continuing on a wiki where this kind of behavior is not just tolerated, but encouraged by the administrators. Therefore, I am resigning as a bureaucrat and administrator on the Garfield Wiki, effective immediately. Looking back, I should never have consented to TeeJay87’s re-promotion in January. As someone who was in a position of authority and neglected to stop TeeJay87 when given the chance, I take full responsibility for this. All I can say is that I sincerely apologize to anyone who has been negatively affected by TeeJay87 since his re-promotion and those who inevitably will be harmed by him in the future.