Dracophile

Dracophile (formerly known as RFS) is a former Miniclip employee who served as the lead administrator of the Miniclip Forums from 2006-2009, and was the creator and lead administrator of the Miniclip Club Penguin Forums from 2007-2011. Prior to this, Draco had served briefly as a volunteer moderator on the Miniclip Forums before his knowledge of vBulletin caught the company's eye and he was offered a paid admin role on the Miniclip Forums and later MCCP. When Draco was fired from his position in 2011 following departmental retructuring within the company, he left the forums and hasn't returned since.

Regular Member (2004–2006)
Dracophile joined the Miniclip Forums in November 2004 under the name RFS. A fan of the game Robot Rage, he mostly hung out in that forum, before being issued an extensive ban by AmberMouse following a number of trolling incidents. He was encouraged to return to the forums in September 2005 by his friend KABOOM EVERYTHING. A handful of users from Draco's own website, RFSHQ.com, also joined, including Chz and deverger. This time around, Dracophile ventured into other areas of the board, such as the general and console games categories, and quickly emerging as a well known and popular member within the wider community. His propensity for sarcasm and trolling had not diminished, and he frequently cut down and mocked members whom he deemed to be behaving immaturely or talking nonsense (i.e. about upcoming games and consoles), to the amusement of those not in the firing line.

Dracophile had spent time on the Something Awful forum, where you had to pay to be a member and discussions were generally quite stimulating while immature of childish behaviour wasn't tolerated. It annoyed Draco that by comparison, the Miniclip forums were full of young teenagers spamming and posting one-word replies, and the small moderation team led by AmberMouse was doing nothing about it, thus impacting on the quality of the discussions and the overall enjoyment of the forum. Tetsumonchi, one of Draco's new friends since returning, shared his view that the forum shouldn't be used a chat room, and spammers should be "encouraged" to change their ways. Controversial methods of backseat moderating were used to achieve this, such as calling spammers out, humiliating then or chastising them. AmberMouse knew of this and seemingly condoned it, while Draco and Tetsu also received back-up from other veteran members. Dracophile was nominated for Member of the Year in 2005, along with The Cheat, KABOOM EVERYTHING and Tripacer99, but lost out to Tetsumonchi.

In February 2006, AmberMouse issued a short ban to Dracophile and Vandappetal after a heated argument broke out between the pair. The following month, Club Penguin was reseased on Miniclip - a game which, unbeknown to Draco at the time, was to shape and dominate the next 5 years of his life within the community. In April, Tetsumonchi had his account stolen by StormierZiggy, prompting Draco and others to attack Ziggy on the forum and demanding that he be banned and Tetsu's account be restored. Draco even offered to help break into Ziggy's invision board to look for evidence, however the situation was eventually resolved peacefully with Ziggy being banned and Tetsu regaining control of his account.

By late April, activity within the Club Penguin forum had started to swell as the game's popularity increased and more people registered. The Club Penguin players, or "Penguins" as they came to be known, were predominately in their early teens or younger, and for most this was the first forum they had ever joined. They generated a huge amount of spam within their own forum, before pouring out into other sections of the Miniclip Forums and annoying much of the mainstream community who regarded their posts as immature, off-topic and spam. AmberMouse and her moderators seemed unwilling to get involved with Club Penguin, so Draco spearheaded a small team comprised of himself, Tetsu, Heli_Attack_Kid and other veteran members who entered the Club Penguin forum and initiated a sort of backseat moderating campaign, hoping to improve and fix the penguin community from within. Dracophile wrote a series of guides and rules, which he then asked the moderators to sticky. For over two weeks the team also tirelessly attempted to answer questions, offer advice, end disputes and keep the peace when a troll would attack. Their involvement ultimately had little effect, but was seen as the first small step towards an organized Club Penguin forum.

Moderator (2006)
Dracophile's efforts within the Club Penguin forum did not go unnoticed by the administrators, and on 22nd May 2006 he accepted an invitation by Ben, Miniclip's head of web development, to become a moderator on the Miniclip Forums. While he was specifically assigned to the Club Penguin forum, his powers, like all moderators, covered the entire Miniclip Forum. The appointment came as a surprise to most, although members were generally supportive. Draco set about trying to bring the ever-growing Club Penguin forums under control.and now had the ability to delete posts, lock threads and ban problematic members. However, as the game's popularity continued to skyrocket, the Club Penguin forum only got busier, and Draco was forced to dedicate more and more time to moderation duties. Draco was attacked by trolls and banned users from within the Club Penguin forums, as well as a few members from the mainstream community whom he had issued short bans to for trolling Club Penguin members. They posted obscene messsages on RFSHQ.com and heavily critisized him on the Miniclip forums. Following this, a rule was introduced stating that attacking moderators on their personal websitea would be considered the same as attacking them on the forum, and warrant a ban. In the meantime, Dracophile was in regular contact with Ben, suggesting plug-ins and features that could improve the forums and make moderation easier. Draco already had extensive knowledge of vBulletin, which the Miniclip Forum used, thanks to his years managing the RFSHQ forums, which used the same software. On July 3rd 2006, Ben promoted Tetsumonchi to the rank of moderator to assist Dracophile.

Club Penguin on the Miniclip Forum
Dracophile's extensive knowledge of vBulletin was considered particularly valuable by Miniclip, and on 27th July 2006he was contacted by Ben, offering him a paid position as forum administrator. Upon accepting, Dracophile became an employee of Miniclip and replaced AmberMouse, who had become relatively inactive, as the lead administrator of the Miniclip Forums. This promotion came as even more of a surprise to the community than his promotion to moderator had, not only because of how soon after it happened, but because many recalled Draco's reputation as a troll and didn't imagine Miniclip would entrust him with such authority. Some of the moderators also felt snubbed, believing that they had done more to deserve the administrator rank but being unaware of why Miniclip had promoted Dracophile - his knowledge of vBulletin. Conversely, many others within the community, and moderation team, were delighted with the the promotions administrator, r congratulations and support.

As administrator, Dracophile had a much greater ability to keep out returning trouble-makers through the use of IP bans. Despite this, the first weeks of his administration witnessed a massive backlash from the mainstream Miniclip community who argued that spammers from Club Penguin were ruining discussions with their spam and driving users away. The staff team was heavily criticized for not taking a firmer approach against them. In response, Draco and Tetsu reevaluated their moderating and began being more strict with the Club Penguin community. Draco switched on the forum's infraction system to assist with this and created a dedicated staff discussion forum where his team could discuss significant happenings and request support, allowing the team to act with greater unison.

In September, Dracophile posted a new set of rules for the Club Penguin forums while Tetsumonchi spent three days going through over 500 pages of threads - deleting any he deemed to be spam, unnecessary or not in line with the new rules. The pair made extensive use of the infraction system, issuing dozens of infractions each in an attempt to bring the Club Penguin community under control. In addition, Dracophile gave Club Penguin its own general chat chat forum and switched post-count off within the Club Penguin section, in an attempt to suppress the desire to spam oBenr venture into other parts of the Miniclip Forum. When all of these things failed to have a significant effect, the rules were tightened further, so that members would receive an infraction for every single rule infraction they committed, without warning and regardless of severity. Between the, Draco and Tetsu ratcheted up close to 1,000 infractions between September and November, before parents of the Club Penguin players being banned complained to Miniclip about the heavy-handedness of their forum staff, and Ben asked Dracophile to cut back on the issuing of infractions. r venture into other parts of the Miniclip Forum. When all of these things failed to have a significant effect, the rules were tightened further, so that members would receive an infraction for every single rule infraction they committed, without warning and regardless of severity. Between the, Draco and Tetsu ratcheted up close to 1,000 infractions between September and November, before parents of the Club Penguin players being banned complained to Miniclip about the heavy-handedness of their forum staff, and Ben asked Dracophile to cut back on the issuing of infractions.