Welcome to Gaia! ::

Well, I have to say, that was an interesting read. First of all, I'm going to say that theft is theft, no matter how small it may seem. It may seem small to you, Legion, but to Achi it's a big deal. Hence her reaction of removing the coding from your shop. Now, there are a lot of points about this I want to cover.

First of all, rule six applies to actual roleplay posts. That rule doesn't apply to out of character posts like shops. However, does that make it okay for Achi to edit your shop without your permission? No, it doesn't. But, and pay attention to this part, that doesn't mean it was okay for you to take her coding. We'll come back to that though. For now, rule six doesn't apply here.

Second, you indicated rule nine to call her out for her messages to you, you failed to mention how you called her childish and said she maliciously attacked you. Because you retaliated with name-calling and insults, you have cancelled out rule nine. Neither of you handled this with respect or politeness.

Next, step back for a second, stop thinking of Achi as crew and see her as another member of this guild. A member who you took coding from without asking first. At the core of this whole situation, that's exactly what she is. She's a member who had coding stolen. Unfortunately, she also happened to be a member who could remove the coding.

Now I would like to address this part of the last paragraph of your post, in parts.

There were precautions you could have taken to avoid this theft. Firstly, you could have contacted Achi and asked if you could use the code. Failing that, you could have added at the bottom of the code that it was made by Achidanza, so that she had credit for the code you were using.
Also, a blooper is a humorous/embarrassing mistake; this is theft. Not the same thing.

Overall, what you did, whether you thought you were complimenting her or not, you took the code without asking and without crediting her, and that's on you. Action will have to be taken, and I will be discussing it with the mods.

On the other hand, Achi's actions against you were also wrong. She was in the right to be upset about the theft, but she should not have abused her power as a mod to remove the offensive material. That action was not okay, she should have messaged you and told you to take it down, just like you should have messaged her to ask for the code. Her attempt to right a wrong resulted in her acting rashly, and this situation caused her to be demoted.

The fact of the matter is, you both did something wrong, and Achi has already paid for it by sacrificing her mod-ship. Legion, despite her editing your shop, she didn't delete anything but her code from your post. I'm sorry to say, but you are not the victim here, you have stolen from Achidanza and, as I said, action will have to be taken.

I think it's time I weighed in on this and made a judgement. I don't want it to carry on because, well, it's giving me a headache. Y'know? It's like on of this annoying little things where it feels like your thinking in one part of your brain and it keeps jabbing but, in all seriousness, even though I am trying to make light of a situation it needs to stop and it needs to stop NOW.

So, here's Thor's Hammer being put down (and, yes, I know that was a Marvel analogy):

I think that both parties in this could have conducted themselves a lot better than they have. I mean, I understand both points of view very well and even though both parties are my friends I have tried to think about this rather objectively and with as much care to detail as I can. It's hard. It really is and I think my coldness and my somewhat autistic approach to the situation may have ruffled some feathers but hey-ho I can't please everyone.

I think that this whole situation is simply down to a communication error. Legion should have asked Achi to use her coding or whether or not Achi would help her make her own. However, once the problem was discovered Achi should have been a little less... Ummmm... Volatile? I'm not sure if that's the word I want to use but it's the one I'm going with. Achi could have simply posted a "Cease and Desist order" to Legion and just been like "Hey, not comfortable with you using this without my permission." and I think after that, all would have been well and we wouldn't have gotten ourselves into this slanging match now.

Legion shouldn't have used Achi's coding out of courtesy because technically Gaia ToS states that Achi doesn't have trademarks over the coding. They belong to Gaia. However, Achi could have went the extra mile to help Legion instead of being very defensive. Legion didn't mean any harm I don't think but made a bit of a faux pas.

We are "mostly" adults in this guild. I think we can resolve this without being so harsh to one and other.

Also, to clean things up, Achi stepped down from Modship when this was brought up because of a difference in opinion. She should not have edited Legion's store without her asking or contacting her first. Her modship was not taken away as a punishment. We as Mods don't have the right to do that to people whether we think we own something or not. We as Mods are also subject to a fair representation and don't just lose our Modships with a click of our fingers unless something is really, really, really bad.

Rule 8 will also be made a little more lenient in this case. Legion will not be banned from the guild because of this because for a start I don't think it was malicious, she wanted to use Achi as an inspiration and couldn't quite separate herself from her source material. It's like when you accidentally come up for plagiarism on an Essay because you didn't quite work around your source material. But she is culpable and needs to have some sort of price to pay.

As such, I would like to ask Legion to remove her shop from the guild for the foreseeable future until such time is deemed appropriate for it to be reposted. If she wishes to do commissions on a personal basis with PMs and what not that is fine but she cannot use a guild based store.

I am sorry that it had to be this way. Achi's judgement for her conduct must also be rectified and I will come to a fair judgement after discussions with the mod team.

Thank you all for your time.

After thinking for some time about what to do with Achi, I have decided to simply give her an official warning. Hopefully, this will make it so this doesn't happen again. Thank you.