Hello, lovelies! This is going to get a bit inside-baseball-y, so if you do not consider yourself A Writer or Someone With A Vested Interest In Copyright Retention, feel free to skip merrily ahead to the next post.
Cast your mind back to roughly a year and a half ago (please picture Nicole and self with Flock of Seagulls haircuts), when we started The Toast. We knew we wanted to pay writers from Day One, and we came up with a standard contract that asked for publication rights (partly to establish corporate value, because we wanted to make money too, and partly always to be able to have something to protect ourselves and our writers in the case of external plagiarism).
We’ve always granted republication rights to any authors who asked — we’ve always given writers their rights back for pieces that have been turned into book or media deals (like with Matt and Jaya’s Dad Magazine book). In fact, the writers who have gotten book deals out of their pieces have not only gotten their money back; we’ve also given them free advertising for those books and helped their publishers with numbers and demographics so those books can be sold better.
That said! We’re no longer that eensy little scrapper that came to be in 2013; we’re growing and expanding and have since heard from a lot of writers who’ve criticized our contract setup as overly possessive. And we’ve heard from enough people that Roxane and Nicole Callahan and I wanted to listen really carefully, and review our policy together, and figure out if it’s time to change.
So, with that said, we’re changing our contracts to ask only for First North American Rights (so rights revert to the writer after 6 months), as well as online serial rights so that we can retain the work on our sites in perpetuity. We’re also writing into the contract the promise that we will revert rights in the case of a book deal, so that what we’ve always done in practice will be spelled out in writing. I feel pretty good about this!
One thing that feels important for me to stress is that this change is new for us, but it’s partly about codifying something we’ve always done in practice, and it’s also consistent with the respect we’ve always had for our writers. It makes sense that, now that we’re no longer a small company that mostly publishes people who know us personally, we have to update our written terms to enable other people to trust us with their words.
But I’m also really open to hearing more from writers who have published with us in the past, or who would consider writing with us in the future — anyone who has thoughts or suggestions is welcome to reach us at [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] anytime, with questions or suggestions; we are available to you guys.
Tags: chattin’ about author’s rights, contracts, meta, PIVOT PIVOT PIVOT
I must say I lost a lot of respect for John Scalzi with that post — there’s something patronizing about a cis white male writer explaining to women how they ought to comport themselves wrt publishing. I have officially written him off.
There´s nothing inherently patronising about a cis white male criticising a woman?
Not every criticism is patronizing. And, more importantly, he was criticizing a company.
(Official Nicole stances: PRO TOAST, PRO SCALZI, PRO THOUGHTFUL DISCUSSION, EVERYBODY WON HERE)
Yes, I agree with the Official Nicole stances. 🙂 The inflection in my comment might be ambiguous, I was questioning Nicolarz´s assumption that Scalzi was being patronising because he´s a cis white male.
😀 sorry about that, I misinterpreted what you were writing.
No worries, my comment is definitely open to misinterpretation, I didn´t notice the ambiguity.
THOUGHTFUL DISCUSSION ACHIEVED.
There needs to be a .gif of this, featuring…well, I don’t know who. But I’d totally use it.
I’m guessing it wouldn’t get used much outside these parts…
This issue, as far as I can tell, was first brought up by Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware (http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2014/12/rights-grab-transferring-copyright.html). Scalzi, as former president of SFWA, is an advocate for writers–this certainly isn’t the first time he’s brought unfavorable contracts to light. Is your issue with his language specific to The Toast or that he addressed it at all?
I’m sorry, but that’s absurd. The contract terms were extremely exploitative and completely non-standard. Even if the contract terms weren’t being enforced, they could have been at some point. Pointing that out has nothing to do with gender, race or anything else.
It is much to the credit of The Toast that, having had the flaws in their contracts pointed out, they have fixed the contracts and brought them into line with good publishing practice that doesn’t have the potential to exploit their authors.
I didn’t care for the tone of his post at all. My initial response was a bit irrational, but I still don’t care for the way he (and his twitter compatriots) chose to go after Roxane on twitter the way that he did. I still find it troubling. I don’t think bullying on social media is the best way to get results.
I find this line of argument troubling, considering that many of the writers whose copyright the Toast was trying to buy in an irregular way were ALSO women, or trans/nonbinary people, or not white.
Should male publishing professionals not say something if they see a woman-owned site doing really sketchy things?
In this particular case, the Toast was always on the side of the angels and everything is/was/will be fine; what if that were not the case? Should an industry professional who has always been supportive of other writers stand back and let other writers be taken advantage of?
Additionally, in the hypothetical scenario where the Toast was using its powers for evil, a lot of the people being taken advantage of would be women, PoC, and trans people.
Additionally, in the hypothetical scenario where the Toast was using its powers for evil, a lot of the people being taken advantage of would be women, PoC, and trans people.
Exactly. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone who has a history of supporting writers and informing them of standard industry practices to continue to do so in situations where marginalized writers are (or could have been) being taken advantage of by other marginalized writers/publishers.
Still, I’m glad the Toast is moving to change this quickly and honestly.
would you also say a cis white male doctor can’t diagnose breast cancer…? or suggest the use of birth control pills? which isn’t even an appropriate metaphor, as accidentally getting into bad contracts isn’t a particularly sex-and-gender-rooted issue and so -maybe- you could advance such an argument, if you thought personal experience on a topic was more medically relevant than education.
he’s just leveraging his expertise in an attempt to protect young writers from a common early-career mistake of signing too much away, and thetoast seems happy to concede that he made a good notice.
don’t be a straw feminist. it’s bad enough that the whole internet bubbles nonsense about how feminism is about angrily rejecting men and all their works without there actually being people who do.
Nicolarz doesn´t need to feel responsible for everything people on the internet say about feminism or men…
of course not, but given that he may be the first person I’ve ever actually seen say the kind of thing the crazed misogynerds constantly claim feminists do, it brought up bad feelings. those people don’t need live ammunition.
Pretty sure he’s criticizing Nick most heavily. You may have noticed that Nick is a man.
CLASS
And STYLE!
Thank you for this.
i’m really glad to hear this.
Will the new contract be retroactive? Meaning, will the copyright for pieces published under the old contract revert to authors? Or does The Toast still own the copyright for them?
That is a good question! I am going to say YES and double-check with Nick.
thank you for addressing this.
Ah, fabulous! I had one piece published here, also with a Flock of Seagulls haircut, but have been reluctant to send anything else because of the scariness of the contract (and also because you’re a Big Deal now and might reject me).
Yep! Samesies. And true to misandrist stereotype, I am a very delicate snowflake who handles rejection not well.
Every experience I’ve had writing for The Toast has been overwhelmingly positive, so it doesn’t surprise me that your reaction to this criticism is so thoughtful and swift. Thank you.
As a Toast writer, I am very glad to hear this and as always, impressed with Mallory’s grace in the face of a changing environment.
Thanks for this! My experience with you guys has been almost entirely positive (I didn’t get paid right away but was paid immediately when I said “oh uhhhhh nothing has shown up in my PayPal”). I was operating pretty much on good faith – which is a privilege of someone with a full-time job and no dependency on freelancing – so I’m glad to see that wasn’t misplaced.
In the same situation, and I’ll add that I was never bothered by the stipulations of the previous contract. That said, it is truly wonderful to see such a transparent change to policy here.
Agree for sure. It’s definitely something that needed to be changed, but my perspective is that obviously things like TOS/work contracts will change as a website grows – one of my BFFs does a great “kids these days” bit re: Facebook and privacy (she’s been on it since BEFORE IT WAS COOL!). So yeah, it definitely needed to happen, I’m glad they’ve been responsive about it and don’t plan to actually use the old verbiage to shaft freelancers.
Oh, is that how you get paid?
This is so fantastic, and I can attest that this is always what’s been done in practice! Good job on having open ears to legitimate criticism, and I’m so proud to be a part of this site.
I wish I lived in a world where all people handled their mistakes and missteps with the care and grace that The Toast does.
I’m not a writer but I wanted to chime in and say how much I have always respected the ability of everyone involved with The Toast to listen, accept criticism and apologize when they have done something wrong. The ability to be caring and careful in your anger and frustration is another amazing quality many of you seem to have. All these things make the site great.
ditto. A friend of mine mentioned this issue to me earlier today and my response was basically “the Toast is usually really good about responding thoughtfully to criticism”; I am glad to see that trend continue.
Thanks for promptly and thoroughly addressing this issue! I’m still perplexed by Nick’s rude dismissals on Twitter though, as previously I’ve found him to be nothing but charming.
I call his behavior “condescending asshattery”, but that’s just me and I told him so on twitter. That gave me the privilege of being muted by him. I’m actually glad of that, I won’t be able to read in next potential gasket blowing retaliation at criticism.
*shrug*
As far as the new rules, they sound a whole lot better. Congrats to all of you, coming off on top after a cycle of criticism.
I thought that there’s no way of knowing when you’ve been muted by someone on Twitter.
Just relaying that he did apologize and said they were the result of being a tired person who shouldn’t have had a phone in his hand at that time.
But if condescending sexism is your go-to when you’re tired/drunk/playing poker/losing blood/driving or whatever other reason you shouldn’t have a phone in your hand, that kind of suggests that’s the reality with the filters off. If anything, that “apology” was nothing but a backhoe for improved hole-digging.
It’s sad to see Mallory and Roxane in particular having to answer for him on Twitter, and trying to rescue some of the good will he’s destroyed with readers, writers, and prospective readers and writers when their own work has been insulted and devalued by the same statement.
Not arguing with this, except that his use of “kittens” wasn’t inherently sexist to my ear — but that’s because I’m used to hearing it from a certain pair of friendly bloggers. Of course it sounds different from a stranger, or someone you know in a different context.
I’ll agree it was condescending as all get-out, but I didn’t think it was sexist. But maybe I’m in the minority in my reaction.
Tom and Lorenzo!
Right in one. 🙂
It is a good question.
You will always have the same rights that future writers will have. As I said in an interview, we will always allow an author to repub and freely have their rights back when they want them. Thank you for asking and giving me a chance to clarify.
Thank you for your responses, Mallory and Nick. So, I take this to mean that the old contract still stands for those of us who were published under it? In other words, if I want to repub my piece I need to ask The Toast for the rights back? That’s fine, I just want to be 100% clear on who has the copyright to my piece going forward.
You have it now.Feel free to repub.
Thank you!
The Toast is a class act. Always.
How much are you missing Nicole Cliffe now, on a scale of 9 to 10?
As a potential writer for this site, it’s refreshing to see such a swift and thoughtful response. I get that everyone here who has published has had a positive experience – and fair play to you! that’s great! – but no one should sign a contract on the faith that some of it won’t be enforced because the people enforcing it are cool.
It’s nice to see The Toast putting their practice into words; they love writers here, obviously, but when it comes down to it, a freelancer can only look out for herself/himself.
Interestingly, I never would have thought that the old contract was an issue. Not being in the publishing world at all, I guess I always assumed that a publication owned the rights to a piece published by them. Isn’t that why you always see pages of “reprinted by permission of” pages in books of collected short stories and the like? Or is that just a courtesy thing?
Often, it’s just an acknowledgment. A copyright page should make clear whether the work is appearing for the first time–in which case, for a book released today, it would say (c) [author] 2014–or if parts of it already existed, in which case the copyright of that piece dates to its first publication.
Also, if something was originally published in a book, I suspect those rights are different–book publishers buy more rights than periodicals do, and have a different payment structure to go along with that.
I don’t freelance at all (not writing, at least; I do some editing as a consultant here and there), so I’m intrigued by this. All my publications have been academic, and I’ve had stuff that was published in a journal then reprinted in collections/books. Those journals all had much more labyrinthine and intimidating permissions/rights, and yet they all allowed me to reprint. Is there a big difference between academic and freelance publishing when it comes to that sort of thing?
Seconding deitybox’s perplexity over Nick’s tweets. That was the saddest part of reading Scalzi’s post today. I understand the reasoning behind the contracts and that it musts feel frustrating to come under scrutiny when you’re doing your best to be fair, but… Man, what a terrible couple of tweets!
Glad to know it’s easy to fix the contracts and that you’re still wonderful, and that I can keep on loving you without reserves 🙂
Thirding, except I’m not perplexed, just appalled. “You’ll always have your dream journal, kittens. We can’t take that from you.” I don’t care how tired or snarky someone feels, it’s completely dismissive and unprofessional.
I appreciate the swiftness and transparency of the toast’s response.
“Kittens.”
Ugh.
Lol especially after Mallory’s post today ABOUT DREAMS.
THE TOAST IS OUR DREAM JOURNAL NICK COME AT ME BRO
I would like more Nick crawling. Like… like a lot more.
Yeah, that was really bad. Considering that the Toast is pretty explicitly ladies first, seeing something that nasty and sexist from the publisher was a genuine shock.
Honestly, I would have been willing to give the Toast the benefit of the doubt wrt contracts (although I don’t anymore, hooray!), but the contract stuff + that response made me seriously think twice about it.
The fact that he has no editorial power makes it slightly better.
Felt like it could’ve been lifted straight from an Aaron Sorkin email and I would not have batted an eye.
Yeah, that’s the sort of comment that sounds different coming from a man than it would from a woman.
I’ve written for the Toast several times, and each time has been a pleasure. I’m happy that you’ve listened so graciously to people’s concerns and have responded and made considered changes.
This was LIGHTNING fast. Thank you, guys.
I’m a little sad that y’all were required to be so fast, especially under the circumstances (morning East Coast time, with Nicole on leave). There’s this whole THINGS-MUST-BE-MADE-RIGHT-NOW thing going on on Twitter and I don’t know what to do about it.
Major, major kudos to Roxane, who responded promptly and with dignity and strength throughout the morning. (I did retweet an initial report about the contracts, since it hadn’t been brought to my attention before [which is my fault], but I also immediately retweeted her statement that it would be fixed.) She doesn’t need my admiration, but she has it.
Thanks so much for this! I was a little taken aback at the contract wording but always figured that you would allow writers to republish their own work in an anthology, etc, because y’all are lovely and decent. I’d also assumed that the wording was standard across publishers, so I was surprised when I learned that it wasn’t, and glad that you guys addressed it so quickly. The Toast’s honesty and commitment to transparency are wonderful.
A+. Glad you’re listening to writer’s concerns.
I´m so glad about the quick response, and the comments here from writers who´ve had good experiences writing for The Toast. 🙂
If he was disagreeing with them about anything related to heteronormativity, race or gender you might have a point, but I don’t see why any of that would matter in a disagreement about equitable publishing rights. A writer, with publishing expertise and an established history of criticizing unfair writing contracts, who happens to be a cis white male, should feel perfectly free to criticize what he regards as unfair writing contracts, whether they were written by men or women. And in any case, he wasn’t explaining to the Toast how they should comport themselves; he was explaining to prospective Toast writers why they should refuse to write under exploitative terms, and from the writer’s prospective, the gender, race and cis-ness of the publishers exploiting them is irrelevant to the fact of the exploiting.
That said, I believe that the Toast in practice (if not in writing) has done right by writers before, and I’m glad to see that they’re updating the paperwork to reflect that.
I appreciate the clarity and speed and open posture with which these explanations were given. That’s why I stick around here.
Thank you, The Toast!
I have a question! I signed the old contract, got paid, but my piece hasn’t been published yet. Does that mean that my piece will be published according to the contract I signed, or according to the new contract? Or, since it is presumably in the queue somewhere, do I not have to worry about this?
To be clear, the wording of my previous contracts has influenced what pieces I’ve submitted to The Toast, precisely because I wasn’t keen to give up those rights. (The explanation makes a certain amount of sense to me, and I’m glad to see so much assurance from Nick and Mallory both that I could always have requested those rights back, but a contract is a contract.)
So not only am I glad to see the change made so swiftly, but it might well expand the range of my future submissions.
Ditto! I had a lot of heartburn over this the first time I signed a contract with y’all. Thanks so much guys for making the unofficial policy official!
I’m really glad Mallory wrote this post. This prompted me to go back and look at my own freelance contracts. Some restored my rights and some didn’t — The New York Times owns my words until the sun burns out. Honestly, I didn’t question it at the time, and doubt the NYT of all places would have negotiated w/ me. But I am glad to know more about all of this now — thank you to everyone who’s contacted us and been part of the discussion.
“The New York Times owns my words until the sun burns out”
Come to think of it, Toast contracts could use some of Mallory’s witchcraft writing:
“The Toast will retain the copyright of the work until such time as the earth gives up her dead and the blood of the stars drowns the Moon; or until such time as the author wishes to republish the work, at which point all Rights will revert to the author, save the Right to recite the work whilst wearing the Horned Crown during the Feast of the Worm.”
and thank you for the much needed laugh.
Wait, clearly the solution to this problem is to BLOW UP THE SUN
Thank you for the clarity of this response.
Awesome response, the Toast! I saw the Writer Beware post yesterday and I’m really happy you’ve quickly addressed it. As someone who has written weird things for weird people, but only ever been paid for it by the Toast, I’ve only had great interactions with this site.
This isn’t my question/suggestion, but it is a question/suggestion. John Scalzi updated his blog post, and in the update he wrote:
The only I note I would add to the above is that I would want it to be clearer if the online serial rights were exclusive or non-exclusive; this could be an issue if the publication which bought something for reprint has an online component.
Can the Toast clarify that?
(edit: fixed link)
Thanks for writing this. I feel a lot better about reading The Toast/The Butter now!
I've looked through Scalzi's timeline, and what I see is that he posted a series of tweets about the issue, Roxane was the first Toast/Butter representative to reply, and he made a few replies back, all along the lines of "Glad to hear you're working on it". I absolutely see other people, many of whom probably became aware of the issue from his post and tweets, who are singling Roxane out and targeting criticisms at her in a way that strikes me as nasty, and maybe Scalzi could have done more to discourage that, but I don't see him participating in it and I don't think it's reasonable to hold him responsible for other people's behavior.
I love you guys, I knew you weren’t doing anything wrong or bad intentionally, and frankly I’m disappointed that so many people were ready to hang you out to dry over such an obviously leading, poisonous little blog post.
<3
How was pointing out that the original contract was not at all standard a “leading, poisonous little blog post”? Especially considering there are long-time readers and Toast contributors in the comments of this very post saying the Toast’s contracts made them think twice (or dissuaded them altogether) from submitting certain pieces?
I think I said somewhere else in the comments that I would be inclined to trust the Toast, since they’ve always been supportive of past writers and the community here. That being said, the idea that writers should just take the stated terms of a contract as a guideline instead of, you know, a contract because the people on the other side seem pretty cool in limited online interactions is a bad idea to bank on, especially for people for whom writing is a career.
I’ve happily and incredibly proudly published on both sides of your warm homestead here, and felt very supported by every interaction. The chance to be edited by Nicole, Mallory and/or Roxane and to be promoted by The Toast/The Butter is huge, and the wellspring of good will is more than evident.
I love you guys. Serious love.
Scalzi and WB were doing what they do and looking out for writers, and I’ve always appreciated that. I’m glad to see that you’ve responded and done the right thing.
The tone of some of the comments I’ve seen on Twitter and John Scalzi’s blog are majorly bumming me out though. Lots of outrage from a bunch of white dudes (one even called for the site to go up in flames) and once again I’m reminded how those men (not all, ha ha) don’t understand how important a site like this is for so many of us. You’re a small, new-ish site, you’ll make mistakes, you won’t be able to pay very much (though maybe with increased ad revenue you could pay writers more? Especially considering the marginalized voices you published who are often taken advantage of anyway). Still, this has become a safe space for me and I think for others. For white men to so callously write the site off for a mistake (granted, a pretty big one, and Nick’s comments really didn’t help) I think highlights their privilege. White cis het men have how many sites and articles written that they can relate to? But I have far fewer sites where I can see the experiences of me and my friends reflected.
Yes.
This site is genuinely unlike anything else available. I see myself so rarely and so completely as I do here.
I also love Scalzi’s work (read Old Man’s War in hs, have been reading him since).
I’m sorry that inadvertently or no there’s now a little flurry of fans of his actively dismissing this place. I’m going to go out of my way to not find those comments.
Agreed. I do hope The Toast will consider raising its rates, particularly for this reason: specially considering the marginalized voices you published who are often taken advantage of anyway.
This is just to say what a bummer it’s been to watch one of the most kick-ass woman-run companies around have their one freakin’ male partner screw up so thoroughly, so glibly, and so thoughtlessly, and leave the mess for the ladies to clean up. Really pathetic, Nick.
Cosigned.
While I share your opinion that Nick’s tweets were at best disrespectfully glib*, I can see the wisdom of letting the actual voices of The Toast address readers directly without funneling it through Nick.
*I can also see how the tweets fit with the overall playful tenor of his Twitter feed addressed to women and men both, even the “kitten,” but using that tone in actual argument (rather than the friendly mock argument that so many of us employ on Twitter) was a very poor choice at best and smacks of dismissive sexist undercutting, whether he intended it or not. I don’t know whether that was revealing or just an ugly coincidence, and I don’t expect I’ll ever know, because other people’s minds aren’t knowable, and intention isn’t as important to me as actions.
My initial thought upon reading the criticisms of the contract was that it’s just over a year old, initially started by like, three people, and dealing with rights for individual authors when you’re publishing multiple pieces five days a week is a MASSIVE undertaking. The language may be non-standard, but it’s non-standard in a way that makes sense–it’s simply not possible for three people to manage that massive load of complex rights, produce content, have time to be human beings, AND pay every writer for every piece right from the start…unless you find a way to seriously simplify the ownership of rights.
Is there room for exploitation there? Definitely! Be wary of things like that, for sure! I am not an expert on this stuff, I’m just speaking from my limited experience of the immense workload involved with getting the rights to reprint poetry journals in a digital edition.
And I realize that this kind of blowback is frustrating to deal with, but Nick could definitely, I don’t know, not have publicly rolled in that dead skunk and then traipsed through the house? Was more response than “we acknowledge this criticism & will be discussing it in the morning” actually necessary?
Yay. I’ll get started on that “The Case Against Kale” book proposal then. Or not.
What about a film deal?
I feel kind of silly because I am realy really happy with the way this played out today (criticism; agnowledgement; resolution)* I feel it bears repeating: Dad Magazine is getting a book!!!
*except for people being mean to RGay because that is never okay.
Ps Motion that Pavitch have to go by “kitten” instead of his name for the next month?
May I (kindly) ask, what is your stance, re: Film Rights?
But did you get the rights to X Men yet?!?
I deeply love The Toast, and having my piece published this week was a joy for me, but man was Nick’s response on twitter deeply, deeply bad. I couldn’t get his apology interview to load, but no apology would really make up for the contempt of the original response.
In any case, thanks to the rest of you for making this whole thing right.
The interview wasn’t an apology interview, and I would consider it fair to say that Nick hasn’t actually apologised. Hiding it at the end of an interview on a different website — instead of on twitter or here — isn’t appropriate, and it came super close to fauxpology as it was.
No, they should be judged according to the contract they offered their writers, which is exactly what happened. “Poisonous little blog post” is ridiculous. That’ s a website dedicated to looking out for writers, and that’s what it did.
Also, see here: http://www.pretty-terrible.com/2014/12/17/nice-doesnt-pay-the-bills/
I say this all as a big fan of The Toast and someone who’s written for them. That still doesn’t negate the need for criticism and calling out problems. That’s called critical thinking. It’s what helps keep us safe, whether in contracts or in life.
OH INDEED.
I'm guessing it wouldn't get used much outside these parts…
The interview wasn't an apology interview, and I would consider it fair to say that Nick hasn't actually apologised. Hiding it at the end of an interview on a different website — instead of on twitter or here — isn't appropriate, and it came super close to fauxpology as it was.
While I share your opinion that Nick's tweets were at best disrespectfully glib*, I can see the wisdom of letting the actual voices of The Toast address readers directly without funneling it through Nick.
*I can also see how the tweets fit with the overall playful tenor of his Twitter feed addressed to women and men both, even the "kitten," but using that tone in actual argument (rather than the friendly mock argument that so many of us employ on Twitter) was a very poor choice at best and smacks of dismissive sexist undercutting, whether he intended it or not. I don't know whether that was revealing or just an ugly coincidence, and I don't expect I'll ever know, because other people's minds aren't knowable, and intention isn't as important to me as actions.
Oh, I totally agree that I still wanted to hear from the editors on the overall issue. And yes, I acknowledge that this is informed by some knee-jerk reactions to larger gendered patterns. But I think we all kinda know that the eds here would be very unlikely to speak like he did on a subject like labor issues in the first place. And I would’ve appreciated it if at least, while they were handling things, he had more readily put himself in the line of fire. Actively stepped in to deflect what Roxane was facing on Twitter, or *something*.
Of course, I don’t know what happened. For all I know, maybe he was even asked to just zip it. I mean, it’s kind of moot at this point, but it just made me mad. I have full faith that the eds did/will deal with him and the situation in whatever way is best for the site. But I just – ugh. I want dudes to DO BETTER.