Apples

Apples was a full moderator who can be found at account 2465. She stepped down for personal reasons in October 2013, but returned to her modship in December 2013. Below is a bit of a history written up by the lovely Apples herself:

It all started when I turned 50 in August 2005, and I got a laptop for the first time, together with new broadband internet connection. After a few months, someone on a cat forum mentioned about a web game where you bred cats. I had no idea these things existed, so curious, I joined Purefelinity in May 2006. It was an eye opener, and the place that led me to Wajas, when someone posted about it on the forum in the September of that year.

Not long after I joined there was a big downtime, the site needed recoding, as it was growing in a way that hadn't been anticipated. I was back to lurking on forums, this time it was the Wajas downtime forum. I didn't make my second account till the November when the site returned.

As I learned the games, I always liked to lurk in the help forums, and give help and advise where I could. Even so, I was taken by surprise to be contacted by the site owner on Purefelinity some time in the second half of 2007 to ask if I’d like to be a moderator on the site. (I know this part isn't about Wajas, but it's the foundation that gave me the confidence to become a Wajas mod, so please bear with me). As I'm extremely shy, and done nothing like that before, my immediate response was to make excuses. “Going away on holiday”. “Too busy” etc. And forgot about it.

Then one day I logged in late one evening my time, around Christmas 2007. I checked the forum I found there was a foul mouthed and nasty troll posting. There were no staff on line, and I wanted to protect the younger players, and felt very frustrated. All I could do was PM them and tell them to not interact with the troll, and even stay away from the forums for the time being. After what seemed like forever, a mod came on line, and I PM'd her, and, before I went to bed, I PM'd the site owner saying that if she ever needed another mod, I'd be ready to accept. The next morning, I logged in to discover I was a mod.

That was my training ground. So, when Estuko sent me a message in April 2008, inviting me to be a Wajas mod, I was more confident and ready for the challenge ahead. I was a “new mod” for a while, it was a classification we no longer use. We had very limited tools, and had to keep pestering full mods to do things for us. It was a frustrating time that seemed to last forever.

As with my first experience, I've always liked to be able to keep the forums safe for the majority of the players. There was a period of time when the staff numbers were rather low, and I enjoyed doing news post giveaways, and trying to think of ways to keep things active. Now we have a great team of active moderators and forum moderators, and they are full of ideas. I keep busy checking the glitches forum, fixing the layers on peoples paintballs, and keeping an eye on the modbox and the moderator email account.

I really hate finding people that have been cheating. I often check, and double check trying to find an innocent reason for the behavior, but sadly that’s not often the case. It’s just someone who thinks that the rules don’t refer to them. I also hate finding underage players, I feel mean freezing them from their account. But usually try to find a way that they can get it back when they turn 13 if it can be verified, or if they get their parents to provide adequate permission.

I'm now 57, and a grandmother of 3. And I don't see myself leaving either of these sites, although many others have been tried and left behind in the wake.