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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 7977773" data-attributes="member: 18">I think there's a lot of dubious commentary here. You ask for evidence, but what could they possibly have, beyond an email from Zak S that came to an address they didn't think he should have? That was actually provided at the time in at least one case. And would that even satisfy a lot of people? I suggest it would not, because it did not.But what is clear is that Mearls acted bizarrely and unprofessionally.Instead of acting like a responsible adult, in a senior, public-facing role in a large corporation (which is a subsidiary of an even larger one), he may some skeptical and sneering comments, took Zak S' side (which is utter madness - he shouldn't have been taking a side, that's despicably unprofessional), and generally behaved like this was some sort of minor spat, he could totally "make go away".Who thinks like that? Just how unprofessional do you have to be to make any of the posts he made? That call people call him professional is bizarre and strikes me as clear cognitive dissonance. Professional is something he never has been particularly, in his communications, note - "affable" or "likeable" or "friendly", sure, he seemed like those things (that's part of the problem, I suspect, he was too "friendly" with a guy who is unquestionably a sleaze or much worse, and acted like a "friend", not a senior employee at a corporation). Professional? No. You want professional? Try someone like Jeremy Crawford. He repeatedly strikes the balance between human and professional with grace.Even his "apology" post was done extremely poorly, and I doubt legal, HR, PR or anyone else was at all happy about it. I know people like to believe in "persecution" and so on, but that's not what happened here. Mearls messed up, and he messed up due to unprofessional behaviour, and deciding to handle stuff entirely outside his competence. The whole calling him a "playtester" when it said "Consultant" right there in the PHB was just face-palm-worthy.I have friends in senior, public-facing roles in NGOs, in the NHS, in corporations, in law firms. Guess what? They're professional, they know that when something involves them or people they like, and/or which is outside their competence, they talk to other people inside the business. They talk to HR, they talk to PR (which is rarely called PR, note), they talk to people more senior than them and make them aware of the situation. This is really easy to do. It's not onerous (particularly not compared to not doing it). Then they do the right thing.Mearls clearly did none of that. He decided to "go rogue" and handle the whole thing himself. To just "sort it out". Put people "in their place" (because he clearly didn't believe a word of the allegations, which shows he's a terminally poor judge of character). People do that. Not professional people who has a WIS above 8. But people, some of them senior. Particular people who think they're "self-made" or believe they've been promoted solely on the awesome merit of who they are, and thus never need to behave professionally or follow pesky rules or guidelines. You see this a lot in start-ups. Some of it is even totally well-meaning. Some big idiot at or near the top of a company will decide he's going to "sort out" some matter involving HR stuff, and will manage to completely heap dung on himself and his company with terminally stupid behaviour. Then he gets put in a non-client facing position. Then 1-3 years later, he's either rehabilitated, or more likely he "moves on to other opportunities". I like to think people learn from this, but I do wonder.Lest anyone suggest I have an axe to grind or whatever, quite the contrary. I was a huge fan of everything Mearls did (as you can see if you look at my old posts here), but his behaviour here... not okay. Even you didn't believe anyone, this some real 8 WIS behaviour. And that's not okay for someone in his position. The most generous interpretation of events is still "not okay".</blockquote>

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