Thread Rating:
  • 2 Vote(s) - 1 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Community Toxicity Bans. The Follow Up.
#31
I plan on leaving soon and making a small post just to say so but just as a small gesture:

But Nuru as FACE of the community? For her well detailed, thought out responses, accepting of responsibility, communication, and levelheadedness through all of this?

Not as a community leader or head or anything, but I personally believe, if anything, she represents what a good staff member and community member should be. I have my biases towards certain members and staff, I know a lot of us do, but I think many of us (with a select few in disagreement) can agree, that throughout all of this, she has handled this with incredible poise and kindness. I know this has been stressful, especially since TTT isn't even her side of things, but she has done a tremendous job doing what this community really lacks from the top down and back up:

Communicating.

Thanks, Nuru.
[Image: 39wzdm.jpg]
#32
"From what I see, actively going out to target someone does not equal disagreeing with them, no matter how far you place your foot forward. I get it, we can't see all the details, so prepare for us to talk about what we can see rather than what we're told to trust you guys."

A reiteration of my point that I made. I haven't seen any solid evidence- that's being redacted for the sake of others- that these players actively went out of their way to harass players. I'm sorry, but I could never see a strong projection of an opinion as harassment. I don't know what these people actually did, and I don't think anybody has except for those directly involved. The problem lies with abandoning a core set of members, Laced and Wild probably being the most dedicated players I've seen. [Read the C. S. Lewis quote] You're absolutely right, keeping the environment positive does promote traffic. The issue many people feel with these bans is how local they were to certain scenarios and how a few individual personalities felt, not how it influenced an entire server. I don't see a heavy relevance to that influence, and I'm sure neither do a lot of people. Laced, Wild, and Lily, in my experience of playing on the server, we're perfectly great players to everyone who would play at the time, and as much as I can assume with what's given, I don't believe the problems laid with them creating a disturbance to a larger pool of players than it did to a handful selection.

It's ok you agree with the measures taken, but I'm part of the large majority that does not. With recent events, some really good people have decided to not participate in server relations because of how the means justified an end. This does seem like a goal of encouraged sensitivity, and I personally disagree with it. This was a draconian punishment to a lot of people, and from the words of those banned, out of nowhere. I've seen this problem on a server I managed and actively played on, and this was an early pull at a fix. In it's totality, from the forum posts, we've lost a large total of dedicated members. I feel bad for Ckg pulling the weight of the other near double digit list of staff members that decided to also pack their bags and leave. Cull the herd, I suppose.
#33
(09-06-2019, 10:26 PM)Stiffler's Mom Wrote: "From what I see, actively going out to target someone does not equal disagreeing with them, no matter how far you place your foot forward. I get it, we can't see all the details, so prepare for us to talk about what we can see rather than what we're told to trust you guys."

A reiteration of my point that I made. I haven't seen any solid evidence- that's being redacted for the sake of others- that these players actively went out of their way to harass players. I'm sorry, but I could never see a strong projection of an opinion as harassment. I don't know what these people actually did, and I don't think anybody has except for those directly involved. The problem lies with abandoning a core set of members, Laced and Wild probably being the most dedicated players I've seen. [Read the C. S. Lewis quote] You're absolutely right, keeping the environment positive does promote traffic. The issue many people feel with these bans is how local they were to certain scenarios and how a few individual personalities felt, not how it influenced an entire server. I don't see a heavy relevance to that influence, and I'm sure neither do a lot of people. Laced, Wild, and Lily, in my experience of playing on the server, we're perfectly great players to everyone who would play at the time, and as much as I can assume with what's given, I don't believe the problems laid with them creating a disturbance to a larger pool of players than it did to a handful selection.

It's ok you agree with the measures taken, but I'm part of the large majority that does not. With recent events, some really good people have decided to not participate in server relations because of how the means justified an end. This does seem like a goal of encouraged sensitivity, and I personally disagree with it. This was a draconian punishment to a lot of people, and from the words of those banned, out of nowhere. I've seen this problem on a server I managed and actively played on, and this was an early pull at a fix. In it's totality, from the forum posts, we've lost a large total of dedicated members. I feel bad for Ckg pulling the weight of the other near double digit list of staff members that decided to also pack their bags and leave. Cull the herd, I suppose.

I wouldn't mind continuing this discussion in Discord DMs actually if you were interested, because I don't wanna clog this thread with my preach-y posts. I can't post my discord username because it has an emoji in it but i'm in Dink's Discord if you want to contact me.
[Image: d93.png]
#34
(09-06-2019, 10:23 PM)Seeker Wrote: I plan on leaving soon and making a small post just to say so but just as a small gesture:

But Nuru as FACE of the community? For her well detailed, thought out responses, accepting of responsibility, communication, and levelheadedness through all of this?

Not as a community leader or head or anything, but I personally believe, if anything, she represents what a good staff member and community member should be. I have my biases towards certain members and staff, I know a lot of us do, but I think many of us (with a select few in disagreement) can agree, that throughout all of this, she has handled this with incredible poise and kindness. I know this has been stressful, especially since TTT isn't even her side of things, but she has done a tremendous job doing what this community really lacks from the top down and back up:

Communicating.

Thanks, Nuru.

^^Couldn't have said it better myself
[Image: frieren-fall-winter.jpeg]
#35
(09-06-2019, 10:44 PM)Dildo Shwaggins Wrote:
(09-06-2019, 10:23 PM)Seeker Wrote: I plan on leaving soon and making a small post just to say so but just as a small gesture:

But Nuru as FACE of the community? For her well detailed, thought out responses, accepting of responsibility, communication, and levelheadedness through all of this?

Not as a community leader or head or anything, but I personally believe, if anything, she represents what a good staff member and community member should be. I have my biases towards certain members and staff, I know a lot of us do, but I think many of us (with a select few in disagreement) can agree, that throughout all of this, she has handled this with incredible poise and kindness. I know this has been stressful, especially since TTT isn't even her side of things, but she has done a tremendous job doing what this community really lacks from the top down and back up:

Communicating.

Thanks, Nuru.

^^Couldn't have said it better myself

I kindly agree to disagree but thank you. ♥ We were all in this together, I'm no face of anything.
#36
(09-06-2019, 10:13 PM)Mother Nuru. Wrote:
(09-06-2019, 10:10 PM)Tedgp908 > Wrote:
(09-06-2019, 04:56 PM)Gabe Wrote:
[Image: 994a6780013b106573042d1d0e48345c.png]
You are absolutely able to report admins. The staff abuse section is for this. Nobody is above anyone here. Not even admins. If you feel that they are deserving of punishment, post here. If you’re not comfortable doing so, message dink, or an admin you trust. It will be handled. Keep in mind this doesn’t guarantee it’ll go your way, just it will be handled properly.

First of all Gabe, I would like to thank you for your time in creating this post. It answers a lot of my questions. I would like to note one thing however.


In this community the admins are seen as the top of the hierarchy to the community. This community for all intensive purposes does not have a Co-Owner or Owner. If someone was to report something to Dinkleberg, they would think he would do nothing, because he doesn't seem to have much interest in the community to begin with. Members of this community feel like he would understand the intricately of the issues they are bringing to him because he is not active to understand these issues. On the lines of reporting admins in the staff abuse section this falls under the same issue reporting directly to the owner, nobody has seen him get involved in abuse reports. Dinkleberg simply feels out of reach of this community, and has not shown initiative to the community to resolve these issues. This community doesn't have a leader, it has a group of leaders. What do you do when one of the leaders is abusing? Not much because there is nobody else to go to.

I'm going to ask him to respond to this one if that's okay.

[Image: 39wzdm.jpg]
[Image: 39wzdm.jpg]
#37
I like how you left out the part where I told nuru I knew I was in the wrong, but that I've never kept those thoughts to myself, even openly saying them when you guys approved my trusted app. Maybe you should not see us as the toxic hivemind but take a step back and look at yourselves and what your trying to force this community to be.
The local Sega & Sonic fanatic.
[Image: JCMB8GH.jpeg]
#38
(09-06-2019, 04:56 PM)Gabe Wrote:
Report on Community Toxicity

I will start by giving a fair warning that this is going to be long. I ask that you read the whole thing to fully understand everything. Just reading bits and pieces won't tell you anything and will lead to misconceptions. I will provide a brief outline summary for those that don't want to read... or "principle conclusions," if you will. Again, you must read the entire thing to fully understand something not just based on a summary. If you're just reading the summary I hope you realize that we have learned in the past through many reports and commissions established by government entities that summaries don't reveal the whole scope of things and don't matter that much. The report itself is the thing that matters.
I’ll go through this a bit at a time. I’ll skip some parts to make life easy, but this is bound to be long.
Also to be clear, I mention several times below that I have seen some evidence not presented. As an admin at the time some of these issues went down, and with others having shared directly with me, yes I have seen more. However, no admin went and showed me additional evidence on why these players were banned individually.  

Outline

  • Was unanimous Admin decision, not one single Admin was the mastermind behind it. Yes, this did have Dinkleberg's approval and he has been watching the whole thing behind the scenes 
    and agreed it has started to become an issue and raised his own concerns on occasion.
    2 active and 2 inactive, with 2 not involved. To my understanding 
  • Bans were never intended to be permanent. This was a placeholder until users appealed and admitted their wrong doings/acknowledged they had some things to work on and then would be reduced on a case by case basis. This was done with the aim to send the message that after many failed attempts to curve toxicity/harassment post after post and announcement after announcement that something actually needed to be done and we aren’t going to tolerate it anymore from here on out. There are more threads, internal discussions, and announcements out there regarding this but you should get the point. Toxicity/Harassment has been an issue for a very long time and a lot of think that there has been very little done about it in the past
    Historically community bans are not light, temporary, or to be considered so. I did a lot of talking in the downtime and understand the admins’ intention, but with how community bans are viewed I can understand some portion of the outcry. 
  • So essentially, these posts and announcements just weren’t working and a yet another simple post addressing that matter wouldn’t of changed anything nor would a simple warning have benefited us, as a community, in the long run if we truly aimed to reduce the amount of community-wide toxicity/harassment present. This was supposed to be an eye opener. To send a message. Yes, it did come out the wrong way. 
    Above 
  • Some of you were staff as well and should’ve known better. We know a lot of these people were well-liked, they were our friends too, and it was hard for some of us. However, we cannot give special or preferential treatment to these people just because they are well-liked, everyone must be treated equally. 
    Staff are not above, and I still argue that steps should have been taken before this. Granted when evidence rains it pours, but demotions or other steps could have been taken. More on that later tho. 
  • To put this in better perspective, if any random guest/group of guests were doing this kind of unfitting behavior and multiple people were afraid to post and interact because they are not a part of this group, wouldn’t we instantly punish them?
    They usually get a ban wherever they did it, but the point is there. 
  • We also felt since you guys have had warnings in general before(some individually, some as whole, and some as a community). Just before the ban, behaviors and conduct was brought up yet again. It felt unneeded to keep repeating ourselves time after time again. But I can honestly see where talking about it individually would have benefited everyone more but would not have solved the problem in the long run and would’ve been another temporary band-aid fix.
    I will disagree here however, because an individual handing for some would have been more appropriate. Again, later. 
  • Majority of evidence is NOT from a private discord, it is actually the minority of evidence, think of it more as secondary/supplemental evidence. 
  • As said before, we CANNOT post every piece of evidence due to some of these users requesting that we do not go public with their evidence. Some of them we can explain in words without showing the pictures, but others we cannot even explain due to the sensitivity of the matter. It was a very large diverse group of people that have submitted evidence to us and have requested not to go public with it and keep it sealed, it was not the same two-three people over and over again with some sort of crusade to get rid of you guys, it was a very diverse group of people.
    While I can’t tell people what they should or shouldn’t do in regards to privacy like this, I still believe that evidence used should be shown. At the least, when/if an unban was made. We have established that our word is not our evidence before. Some members have chosen to depart without an unban attempt which may be a shame, but that’s up to them. Those that request an unban should have ONLY evidence shown used. It’s not pretty, but it needs to be done or we open the door to “trust us, the admins know best” policies. 
  • If I had to describe this whole situation I would describe it through the words of the great Sun Tzu, "Disorder came from orderfear came from courageweakness came from strength." What this means in my perspective is that Chaos and backlash came from the decision made by the upper staff. There was a bit of disorder in terms of communication between and from the upper staff, the order figure. There was order inside of disorder, most of the community initially coming to oppose this decision and express their opinions. Fear came out of the courage of the Upper Staff to act on this issue and what it would mean for the future. Weakness came from the strength of the community to speak out, as expected when making this hard decision. But in the end, all will hopefully understand why this event took place and we will turn that weakness into strength, in the long run, accepting the short term backlash and perceived weakness in the Upper Staff. I do expect people not to get it still.
    Going to try and not touch these. 
Why It Happened

Let’s just reiterate one thing here. This decision was made unanimously by the Upper Staff in principle and was not one Admin was the mastermind behind it all, which seems to be popular opinion. Did we rush it? A little. Could’ve we planned it out better? Yes. Did this need to happen eventually? Yes, it was inevitable. Let’s dive in here and explain in the most rational way I can. Again, this was a decision made jointly between Queef, Gabe, Nuru, Fish, and in consultation with Dinkleberg, who was also growing concerned with these several issues for some time.
confirms the above, and since I do want to be honest in this post...
I still believe queef should not have had input to this extent. Anything between us aside, it is fairly obvious which admins should be considered active in the community. In fact, at the time of discussion he didn’t even have the needed 10 hours. Still I disagree with the 10 hour rule being the bar, because activity in the community is so much more than playing the game mode. The community itself has very little to do with gameplay, and more so the interaction of its members. This should be far more important to the admins. Is that hard to categorize? Sure. I get it. But I know that a large chunk of my time as admin was technically inactive by that rule, but I was hardly challenged about it. It seems the same with nuru. If I didn’t click gametracker, the list of admins would think to be active would be a lot different. Because some admins/staff are so active on the community side, people mistake them for being active in game too. I’d wager there’s still some that didn’t realize about half of my being an admin didn’t qualify as active. I’m not here to have it out tho, I’m simple saying that community activity should be a much larger factor both ways. 
It was on the table so I made my stance. Take it or leave it. 
And if you want to go by rules, yeah technically nuru shouldn’t have either. But I wouldn’t waste my breath with that argument. 


As far as previous warnings and punishments, there have been general warnings given out regarding toxicity as a whole. Those that were staff should also know better than to act that way as well. The truth is a simple warning could not have avoided this, absolutely not, it was time we put our foot down to fix this plague of toxicity and harassment that has run rampant for far too long without serious consequence or serious punishment. Again, a simple warning or another pointless thread talking about toxicity and harassment would have solved nothing in the long run and would've been another "bandaid fix." Contrary to popular belief, not everyone was banned for the same reason and we will go through every case individually down below here in a bit. This may have not been communicated that well, and we apologize for that.
Fair

One of the many concerns regarding this crackdown was that these punishments were too harsh, but taking a look beneath the surface actually shows that this is not as harsh as you think. As said in the original post, “These members may appeal this decision and each will be decided on a case by case basis.” Decided, meaning a chance to reduce. As many have seen, Tdawg has appealed, and his ban has been amended. Everyone else this far has not exerted their right to appeal for reduce but instead decide not to admit any fault at all and have essentially claimed that they have done nothing wrong. We get this came out the wrong way, but continuing some of the same behavior for certain individuals and proving the overall point of the ban in part is not the way to go either.
This is part of the divided responses. I talked with many people and got out that this was meant as a much lighter attempt than the previous community bans seem to be. 

Many people have suggested that these users were banned for “giving their opinion,” that is categorically false. The reason on that front was how they CONVEYED their opinion and attacking other people’s opinions when they did not agree with it, most of the time in unison whether it be via reputation or replies. 
In part yes, some to be debated. 

Some may argue “people have a right to express an opinion” and “freedom in speech” but speech is not necessarily free and has its limits. We do agree free speech is fundamental to us and allows us to discover the truth, to benefit from a diverse group of opinions to make rational decisions, and to enjoy having a good community. However, free speech has to be fair and not be used in a way that is detrimental to our community. In the 1969 Supreme Court case, Brandenburg vs Ohio, dealt with our first amendment right and dealt with a response to the advocacy of illegal conduct. For context, the defendant had given racist remarks and anti-semitic speech at a KKK rally. The Court ruled that a state could not criminalize “advocacy of the use of force or law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such an action.” In basic terms, you do have a right to freedom of speech but you are also going to be held to what you say to others and face the consequences when
Bold is true, we must face our words. Rest I’ll pass over

Now you may be asking how the heck this relates to this ban? The answer is simple, the majority of these people were banding together making comments that were likely to advocate and incite (or) produce a lawless action against our MOTD, specifically rule 6. Mob mentality. Going against people that didn't agree in an uncivil way, attacking others for their dissenting opinions, and making others across the community fear giving their opinion on certain important threads because they feared receiving intense and unneccesary backlash from these individuals or they just not want to have to deal with the likely consequences of giving a dissenting opinion. Both of which are ridiculous and should not happen. We are supposed to be problem solvers, not creators, and figure things out in a civil way, not turning it into an all out war. Wars like this have its consequences and create a domino effect. Once a few people fall victim to fearing to comment on important threads due to this group of people specifically, others will eventually fall and continue to do so. Again, a simple warning wouldn't of fixed this issue in the long run, not at all. 
Community does have a problem with with some not feeling comfortable contributing, and some so comfortable with getting away many things. There should work towards addressing this across the board, as this ban debate is a drop in that pond. 

Every "War" has its consequences and you will lose some battles, but that does not mean you will lose the "war." We always knew there would be backlash. We thought it was better to deal with the short term consequences of an unpopular decision that will be beneficial in the long run. To put this whole thing in a better perspective and I truly hate to use an example like this.: On August 6, 1945, then President Harry S. Truman had the strength to make the the heavily divided decision to drop the first Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima knowing there would be backlash but be successful in the long run in a sense. He said, "It is an awful responsibility that has come to us." The other alternatives Truman practically had was launch a bloody invasion on Japan that a study concluded would've cost around 1.7 million american fatalities and about five to seven million Japanese casualties or drop the bombs in a different place. Truman's overall goal was not to destroy Japanese culture or people, but had a goal was to destroy Japan's ability to make war. So why am I bringing this up? Because much had Truman, we had an awful responsibility that came to us with this situation, but we had to make the choice to save the community from much further harm knowing it would have severe consequences but would benefit us in the long run and would've been a much better alternative to make the courageous decision to make a decision like we did here. 
I don’t like this section for several reasons. 

I guess where I was trying to go with this, in short, is that we had an awful responsibility brought before us and had to make the hard decision knowing it would also cost us a lot of casualties with people not involved and have a lasting impact on the community both ways, but strength would ultimately prevail. The other thing I'm trying to connect here is the debate over dropping the atomic bomb in ethical and legal justification terms will never be resolved in a sense of who was right and who was wrong, much like I anticipate this debate to never end. Some people will always say it was "unethical" to ban these people without "warning" and if it was even justified. I do still stand by the decision made here and it was inevitable, and so do the rest of the Admins.

That’s what this part of the bans was essentially... minus the history lesson, I get a bit carried away. Again, each individual’s case will be explained below.


Judge, Jury, and Executioner. Why the Bans had to be Issued.


Laced Xanax: Where to begin here… Essentially, your ban was a part of this “hivemind” that we did not want to continue existing in our community that was detering players from wanting to participate in community activities outside of the server itself, such as commenting on apps, voicing opinions, etc. Instead, these people were afraid to speak their mind out of fear of receiving heavy backlash from a certain group or not wanting to deal with the backlash. Essentially, going out of your way to put people down for their opinion, even if you might think you aren’t. Apps are mainly supposed to be to give input and for maybe small debate at most, not an all out war. Admins are the ones who debate the apps mostly while heavily factoring in community input a lot. Once again, no one was banned for expressing their opinion, it was how it was conveyed and uncivil in most cases as well as “attacking” others for their opinions. The way you have responded to certain people that have been pushed out of this “group” shows as well. There was also your ban for using a certain bind and one or two other minor things. We know you were a big proponent of combating toxicity in our community, and we appreciate that. But the issue is that in your fight against toxicity, you yourself were becoming toxic and you started realizing that too and should be noted. One of the many fascinating things Confucius has said is, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.” Again, these bans are not intended to be permanent. They are placeholders until the user appeals, can acknowledge some of their wrongs, and try to right those wrongs.The other thing worth mentioning is that after this ban took place, some of the behavior you have exhibited has proven the overall point of this ban and reaffirmed the need for it. You obviously had a reasonable right to be upset over it, but some of the things were just too far and has shown that you and a few others were handling the whole thing poorly. Obviously there are still going to be some things for some people that they have requested it not to be shown for privacy.
Because he has decided to leave all of this behind, I will only briefly touch on this here. I believe a demotion should been in order long before this community ban. There were truthfully many things said that should have been acted on. Some he even acknowledged himself. Perhaps he would have continued, and in that case yes this would have been appropriate. Unfortunate, but it happened. 
As a second note, since I am individually aware of some of what was/may have been used as evidence for this, I am also aware that some was instigated on the opposite side and only shown one sided. It’s a dead argument at this point, but it would be wrong to drag him through the mud as if he went out of his way so start some of the issues. Yes he should have acted differently in many cases, but I thought it should be said. 

Lily: The most blatant way to put this is that you were the epicenter of this “hivemind” and it all revolved around you somehow, either directly or indirectly. Some of it was direct and some of it was equally indirect. Again, there are some things we cannot show publicly still but directly relate you to most of the ongoings that were happening. Further evidence that we do have the shows you being the epicenter of these things sadly is what we cannot show, and we apologize for this. However it’s enough to warrant your ban. I do get that people will say "you guys are lying, you don't have any evidence and are trying to spin it." I get your point, I do, but there will just have to be a level of trust here. Given by the three separate responses at the top regarding the privacy of evidence, I think it should be reasonable to believe that we can't show some.
Lily has made an unban request. ALL evidence to be used should be presented there. It’s one thing to not present it on the front end, we don’t do it for any individual ban, but to hold evidence and still claim it is wrong. I disagree with how some things initially went down, and how some are continuing, but I will be strongly against hiding evidence used against someone. We’ve had situations before that made it to the forums. One such was a demote and ban discussed publicly when an unban was made. The amount of evidence that had to be shown, including somethat were obviously between individuals or caught by certain staff, was substantial. What we didn’t show wasn’t needed, there was enough we could show to accomplish the goal. If there hadn’t been, we would have had to show more, or accept that would couldn’t follow through. In cases where staff demotes were handled via pm, we showed them evidence that we were allowed to. If they wanted to disagree and make an appeal on the forums, it would have been their right. 

WILD: Wild, your punishment was more revolved about your mentality and us feeling it was just not fitting to be staff on our server any longer. As a Moderator, you’d always act like you were the one in charge and still the Co-Owner. Similarly, on occasion, you would throw around that you used to be Co-Owner when someone did not agree with you. At one point you had also approached a ph staff via dms trying to tell them off for what they were saying in general chat during the whole thing between dong/link/etc was happening. You also tried to act intimidating here towards this staff member. This is one example of trying to make people feel inferior to you. So this, in short, explains the demotion aspect. I’ve seen it some im clear here, but again if challenged... Also yes, this was one piece of evidence that we could not show nor are we going to show at the moment. This person knows who they are and if they would like to speak out on it, it is up to them. As far as the ban goes, what wild said has said in other discord shown in the original posts has always been very concerning to us. The things wild said were really concerning, to the point where  we couldn’t trust him or his motives We felt that he was trying to grow his influence which played a big factor in the mob mentality incidents. The way he put others down while trying to put his supporters and friends on a lime light in a sly manner was something we did not want happening here. As stated in the Brandenburg case, advocacy directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such an action, we felt this was going to lead to a scenario like that, started seeing signs and trends, and had to act upon it. 
Honestly, I’ve seen enough here too. Taken apart and looking at some pieces, I can agree. I was more on the fence about this, but sorry bud. 

I’m just going to copy and paste this line from the original post as well I guess since it was there. “It is not okay to lie about your history and actions, belittle others, falsify situations, pathetically brag and be toxic just to feed your own ego.” Again, bans were NEVER meant to be permanent, was merely a placeholder. It was meant to get the message across and for these individuals to acknowledge their mistakes, show us how they will improve upon it, then either be reduced or unbanned. After the Ban: not to mention that some of the behaviors you have chose to exert after the ban, which again we know was poorly planned and executed, that sort of proved the whole point of our crackdown, it should not be hard to figure out.


Tdawg: In all honesty, your ban was the least justified and has been amended accordingly via the appeal. I genuinely do not know how to begin here. Just a message in general to people is to not begin a match of your personal opinion is right, there is wrong and not acknowledge it. You don't have to like everyone's opinion, but you have to respect people and respect their reasons for holding that opinion. People should be treated the way you would like to be treated. The only thing that was considered "wrongdoing" would've been those messages in part, and we've been over that. I genuinely do not know what else to say here.
I feel tdawg should further appeal his loss of rank. I have not seen enough to justify that. Perhaps he felt otherwise since he didn’t seem to challenge his result, I wouldn’t know. 

Rits: Your ban took place for multiple infractions, after returning from a previous community ban. You have been banned for harassment, kicked for racism, warned multiple times for racism, and still continued to break rules. Just because the person you are talking to in this way is okay with it, doesn’t mean it’s okay for you to break the rules. Upon warnings, you still went out of your way in the public main discord to ping and target Proper as well, after being told to ignore it. She was punished. You were also kicked for keeping it going, and doing it back. At this point it was suggested that your community ban come back. Too many incidents have occurred where you were punished or heavily warned. This warranted your ban. This is a compiled a list of all evidence we can show.
There were things that even I was a part of in warning or punishing. Coming off a community ban, going back to it is a lateral move. 

Link: Your ban took place due to your inability to make your own decisions and follow someone who was becoming highly toxic, and copying them. When Rits would be punished, or someone else that you were close with, you would in turn mock the person that punished said friend publicly, or would pm the person responsible and try to correct them or make them believe they were wrong. (Example of this is chats with Nuru, when you would run to her and tell her she was wrong for kicking/banning rits, and then when explained why, you would form your own opinion finally instead of trying to take hers) This happened several times. Among this, other things you have done have added onto why you were banned. You repeatedly crossed lines with jokes. What would be simple jokes to others, you would cross lines and take it too far. An example of this is the warning you received over Kuono. It was merely a slap on the wrist, and instead of expressing you were upset and leaving it at that, you took it to public discord and mocked for receiving said warning, and then refused to drop the topic until it was made clear that you were going to far and upsetting people, when it was visible before this fact. This was after Kuono and you both had been told to avoid one another, and she did so, and blocked you, and left all discords you were in. So you went out of your way to take jabs at someone. For all these reasons above, and repeatedly doing so when told it was wrong, you were added into these bans. 
Im a bit unsure here, but he hasn’t challenged it so far. He also wasn’t staff so a demotion wouldn’t have been an appropriate step. In the dark on this one mostly, I’ve only heard things.

Battons: Your ban was apart of what we called a “mob mentality” and attacking people publicly and privately for disagreeing with you/others that are a part of this. Again, this has nothing to do with expressing an opinion, it was how it was conveyed and executed to attack another person. This is something that cannot happen. Like I said before, this makes people afraid to comment on applications and that is something that is absolutely not okay. It will also deter others from wanting to comment on an application out of fear of backlash and not wanting to be a part of the community for that reason, and that’s now okay again. As said before, a simple warning wouldn’t have any benefit, in the long run, to fix this issue once and for all. We needed to set an example and show that we are not going to tolerate this anymore. Also to reiterate: bans were never meant to be permanent. They were intended to be permanent as a placeholder, users would appeal, and would be reduced on a case by case basis.
I’ve seen some things, but I feel there is more that I didn’t perhaps. Parts of this one probably could be challenged, and I understand not wanting to make an unban if feeling it’s unjustified, but at this point it’s the next step. Since I’m in the dark I feel, I haven’t more to add.  

Not Done Yet. More Explanation Based on Your Comments! 
(may be some repeats in here in case people are skipping over sections.)
We’re reading what you’re all saying. We are not ignoring the community but the community doesn’t have full context of the things that have been pointed out to and shown to us for the past two months. For some time now we’ve been having this ongoing problem of toxicity of a majority (above and below the surface) crushing those of the minority that are too scared to speak up.
addressed

For this, we don’t think that the punishments were too harsh and never had the intention of remaining permanent indefinitely. We in the upper staff team have not forum banned anyone so that those banned can make their case whether they feel they have done any wrong or not and could be reduced on a case by case basis.
addressed 

Onto the next topic of people claiming that they’re being banned for their opinions- this isn’t true. That’s just another perspective to take a narrative on. We don’t believe we’re strictly restricted to Dinkleberg’s Discord if it is harming another player in the form of one negative standpoint to one hiveminding biased viewpoint. It’s very damaging and unwelcome to single anyone out like this when it comes into the forums, server, or discord. Some examples are hiveminding on recent staff applications to attack people that don’t agree with their viewpoint via replies or by a show of forum reputation.
to some degree yes, but addressed 

For example, something we all know of is freedom of speech. Not everyone knows though that that right has limitations. We’re trying to reduce the amount of toxicity happening working off such a model. That kind of expression is what’s causing this mob mentality.
again, there should be steps to address this across the board. I am hopeful that those steps are being made. 

A prime example is the original thread Addressing Toxicity. This is on a mass scale of mob mentality; we’re mostly seeing people trying to state that this wasn’t a unanimous vote and that it was rigged and pushed by Queef. I’d like everyone to know that every upper staff, both active and inactive voted and came to this mutual understanding. This isn’t just a community backlash on a whole because there are two sides to this situation. Really inactive staff like Drew and EveryJuan were not around when this took place.
Again, “really inactive” and who gets to input on what seems to be subjective. I’d like to see the addressed as a separate issue, but this isn’t the place. 

Upper staff had either noticed or were made aware of a couple different groups forming. Nothing necessarily wrong with that as groups of friends grow and change constantly especially in such a large community as this one with many sub-communities as well. However, no matter how two of these particular mini groups started, if not more, they became toxic and harassing in nature. Common things that they would do is go after other groups or individuals that did not agree with their mentality. These groups would go into such things such various threads on the forums, on server, individual’s dms, and follow them through Discords depending on what thing was done that they disagreed with. I can understand and respect standing up for your friend but going farther than that to the point of harassment should not be tolerated here or in any community. Multiple individuals who fell victim of just having different ideals and perspectives from these individuals went silent and would not comment on things either in fear of being targeted once or again. Several of these individuals would contact trusted upper staff to relay their concerns either to be known in the threads of concern, quite a few, not even that. Some even left the community to either find or build new communities away from these issues constantly occurring.
I’ve seen this. Still should be shown if challenged 

A constant notice of the announcement was lack of evidence that subjected to some of the individuals to said crime that they committed. They were not all banned for the same thing or that is what the discussion before the bans took place were believed to have meant. We are here to make it CLEAR that not everyone is banned for the same thing. We have explained why each person is banned which is what we should have done to begin with. We cannot and will not make some of the evidence that we have made public due to the sensitive nature that said evidence contains. This is not to say that the bulk of the community would not be able to handle or understand the situation that becomes clear with the evidence but that with every community, there are people who will go after those that they harassed or that reported them. That could happen from the harasser specifically or members of the groups that were previously mentioned could go after them. In a perfect world, we would release said information, but in said world, this would have never happened in the first place.
Addressed

We wanted to be clear that no one is above the rules when it comes to such rules as harassment, being extremely toxic and/or going out of their way not to just disagree with but attack individuals with a differing opinion. We also saw that it was clear that we need to make things more clear by the community seeing the aftermath that has been caused because of it. We are only human and many times we are looking from the outside in. This is not to dismiss everything that each individual was a part of either together or separately, but clarification is key. Completely inactive upper staff did not vote on this particular issue. Debatable. Again, most people are blaming Queef solely for this, and it was not him alone. It was all of our decisions. We knew that when posting the thread and doing the bans that there would be backlash. We accepted that as friends of the community members being banned would obviously object to said bans. We understood that not all the evidence would be made available due to their sensitive nature.
A

We understand some of this evidence is months old, but when it comes to many of these things like “hive minding” or “toxicity” or “harassment” sometimes those are things that happen slowly over time and then build. This is the case with several of these people, they were guilty of repeatedly doing one of the above. It took a few months for each of us to gather evidence. While we received many complaints, nothing could be done at the time, and alone, each of us had evidence, but not enough to place a ban or punishment. When we as admins got together and began to share our evidence, we realized just how much we had, and how bad the issues with each were. That is what ultimately led to the final decision of the community bans. Again these weren’t meant to be forever bans, just place holders for each person, for them to realize their actions, and make up for them. This was also to be a message to the community in general that we were no longer going to tolerate this, and that people should not be afraid to talk. We want everyone to feel welcome here, and feel like they have a voice. Several of these people have prevented that for many users, new and old. We never meant for the harm to come that did, but this is what we can do to explain our thought processes, and show you, the community, what brought us to these decisions and bans.



Some Direct Comments Responded to by Admins

[Image: 994a6780013b106573042d1d0e48345c.png]
You are absolutely able to report admins. The staff abuse section is for this. Nobody is above anyone here. Not even admins. If you feel that they are deserving of punishment, post here. If you’re not comfortable doing so, message dink, or an admin you trust. It will be handled. Keep in mind this doesn’t guarantee it’ll go your way, just it will be handled properly.
Honestly it would be massively difficult for a member to report an admin on a scale that matters individual cases yes, but more abstract concepts such as challenging if an admin should still be allowed to remain by inactivity... impossible for anyone not an admin. 

[Image: 72ffbf2941f48963de0d4735813f577d.png]
Our intention wasn’t ever to keep anyone permanently banned, but for them to see their wrong doings, admit to it, and then when we see sincerity and the want to change, unban fully, or reduce, based on the severity of each case. As for evidence, some of it is weeks or months old, because things like this take a while to gather enough on to be able to do anything about. This is due to the acts themselves being sneaky. Yes, several of you were previously punished/talked to for some things either community wide, individually, or as a group. But a community ban comes when you’ve either reached enough punishments, or the acts are severe enough to warrant one. In this case, some were the first, some were the second, some where more than seconds.

[Image: 90ad4cf9efe5d50a73ee594f614b8769.png]
Many of the people that were banned, have received multiple warnings over time for multiple things and for toxicity previously. Some should've known better too. It shouldn't have to be restated every time it happens. Do you warn people in the server 12 times before a ban? No of course not. It’s the same principle here. They had a few warnings, got punished a few times, now it’s up to the big punishment and stepping up efforts besides just ineffective warnings and ineffective posts/announcements regarding this topic. Again, please read the entire thread before commenting on something like this to understand it fully.

[Image: 6ac64d5dcb353788c50333727536ac94.png]
When we originally posted the thread, we grouped it all together as mob mentality and toxicity, and that is our fault for not being more thorough. By this we in no way meant that everyone was doing it together, but that they were almost all guilty of one, the other, or both. As for the evidence, we are going to show as much as possible. But there is a lot. It’s why it has taken us so long to do this.
I’ll discuss here since it was brought up. I am dissatisfied with it taking 12 days for this kind of gathering and response. I understand the stress placed on the admins and their time schedules, but it speaks to the disorganized manner in which this ban was originally placed. I hope the time was spent gathering and sorting a lot more than what was shown here and is available when/if they players make an unban. 

If there are more questions you as a community have, after this, please ask them and we will do our best to address them in a timely manner. We only ask that instead of witch-hunting like before, you talk to us calmly and maturely. 

Conclusions

  • Just going to say this again in case people just skip down to the bottom. Read. The. Entire. Thing. First. To. Fully. Understand.
  •  I think it is time we all lay down our arms and become whole again... or partly. To the people Banned: Appeal if you desire to come back. They were never meant to be permanent.  
  • This is supposed to be a community, not a High School. Some of our players may be in high school, but this is a Garry's Mod Community, not a place for toxicity, harassment, or petty drama. -Uh chief I hate to break it to you... We need people to stop screwing around on the forums when it comes to brigading and derailing important threads, mass-downvoting, and excessive necroing/shitposting. It needs to stop. These are just some of the things.
    These are the steps I’m hoping to see
  • No one is better than anyone else. You certainly don't have to like everyone. You don't have to like everyone's opinion, but you have to respect people and respect their reasons for holding that opinion. People should be treated the way you would like to be treated. 
  • I might have more stuff to add to this after initial post. Also btw ik there are probably some obvious typos in here, will slowly get them out


Much shorter this time

Matt_St3 / Strongrule / Spartan001295
Forum Admin - Resigned TTT Admin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[00:04] matt_st3 (Strongrule) [traitor] has damaged Taliban Tom [detective] for 4.9999999349555e+14 HP with an unknown weapon
#39
Well, I in the forums I haven't been the most vocal, mostly because I have been busy like many other people and the day this all went down was one of my first days in my dorm. 
Moving on, I have had some time not being involved in any of this. I mean the stuff I did was a month before this went down, and I hadn't really been active anywhere inbetween those times. So I think I have had some time to look at this ummm with more calmness????? I'm a psych major and thats something we are working on is how to not fall into flaws of intuition. So, right now I can really understand how this happened, and people nitpicking how things are phrased probably should stop. The idea for the ban was to draw a line the problem was that the line needed be drawn way sooner and many people had already crossed it. These people were then confused because they were getting in trouble for a line that was either previously nonexistent or to them it was at the maximum hazy and inconsistent. 
My issue is that I don't even think I was one of these people. I wont go into my conversation that resulted in what  I believe to be a misspoken but it was still said.  It is not okay to literally tell people their opinions are wrong because they disagree. If you look at this it's insane. I think I get the point, that you can go too far but really? Better phrasing would have been appreciated. 
On the second thing that was "evidence" that I got in trouble for. My comment in a private discord that was made about a faux post on a staff app was completely a joke. Maybe a bad joke, but what wasn't seen was that I was in a call and I was trying to make the worst possible reply to said staff app. It was more of an example of what toxicity would look like than anything else. I also can see how this would be misinterpreted.
Which leads my to my final thing. No one asked me. No one warned me. I didn't even think any community-wide toxicity notices were directed in my general direction.  I've always tried to not be toxic in-game. I mean to go through my forums post. I have never even really been a shitposter. In the end, I have been unbanned which is very much appreciated, and this may sound selfish but I was also demoted. I realize that I was a Dtmod and never earned staff like many other people who have worked hard, but my rank meant I could go on the server whenever and help people. It was something that, while I may have made jokes about being inactive, I always had a reason to come back. Something that tied me to the server and the community as a whole. 
This is not a goodbye post or whatever, but you probably won't see me around as much. 
Thanks for reading; sorry for rambling; oh and sorry for the fragments and punctuation errors; I didn't proofread. 


Oh my god this is hard to read good luck fk me
It is not okay to literally tell people their opinions are wrong because they disagree.


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)

About Us
    This is Dinkleberg's GMod, a gaming community based in Garry's Mod. We have a Trouble in Terrorist Town, Prop Hunt, Murder, and Deathrun Server. Come check them out sometime.