Announcement: Regarding Recent Moderation Decisions

[Zabuza825]

Apologies if this is a bit all over the place and my lack of understanding of the situation. I arrived in the United Kingdom on 11 September this year to take a MA Creative Writing program at a university in London. The school side of things is settling down, but I am currently job searching and the adjusting to postgrad life combined with that has taken up all my time.

I honestly was at a point where I had assumed that Lom would not be banned at all. I am quite surprised not by Lom's behavior, but that this is happening now. My personal way of dealing with him since returning has been to simply refrain from taking part in any non-RP related discussions at all. I can personally attest that the "party that r*pes women" comment was, for me, the reason I essentially left this place for more than a year before returning.

That having been said, based upon what I have read in each post made here, I agree somewhat with Rom regarding the way this has been handled. Miscommunication or no, this does not look good and warrants a good look at the process.

That said, I am not quite as conspiratorial, I trust the statements that Ikar has made admitting to the Directorate making mistakes in handling the situation. Having said that, I do believe that some more evidence regarding this would likely put the more skeptical to mind. Maybe chat logs backing up the claim that, to quote, "Blac asked us to apply our ban decision made some time back and it was agreed by a majority" (particularly the beginning half of that sentence).

I would say more but honestly, I have lot of stuff to deal with in real life as well, so I'll leave it with one last comment.

I do just want to remind everyone that while this is a terrible situation in regards to how this has been handled and it can be easy to throw around accusations, we should try to remain civil in any discussions regarding this.

[Arkiania]

I've mostly tried to avoid this and ignore for the most part primarily because at the time this happened was during a tough time IRL but recent things about this has completely set off a concern. I mean in the past few weeks the community has been in a state of utter inactivity, especially after this happening, and we have yet to recieve any further clarifications, or statements as said that would happen. I understand people have lives, but If you have such a life that gets in the way of expected operations of running something such as this, wouldn't be reasonable to step down and let somebody else take the mantle? This forum can not grow, and can not thrive without activity at the top.

On to my concerns is specifically the language in regards to the reasons as to why he was banned. Most of these concerns are rather vague, and considering the politics of today, the reasons for his bans given can absolutely not be vague as they are serious accusations. They need evidence, we need chat logs and proof or something. If this whole situation is to ever be fixed, the evidence need to be provided otherwise, all things considered and what has happened thus far, you need to backtrack and remove Lom's ban completely. We can not have moderation that is not uniform and unfairly applied, not again, not ever. The whole community is pretty much of a mind that is was not handled correctly, why have their concerns not been addressed so far? I want nothing more than this community to stay together, its split way too many times and we have survived this far without doing so.

[Severyane]

So, I'm home sick and I can finally type this all out. Just what I wanted to do while recovering (sarcasm), but I did make a promise that I haven't been able to keep because of the busyness of my work life and the fact that I've moved four times this month. So, on to the business at hand: Lom's Ban.

Lom has been my friend for quite some time. He has views that some of us see as controversial, and while that is okay it is definitely not okay to berate, demean or disparage others. He has quite a history of doing just that. I have stood up for him as an admin on this forum several times. Oertha has done so before as well. On the old forum, Flo defended him as well. You can only defend and excuse someone for so long before you have no reason or justification to do so anymore. We have a storied history with Lom and giving him some very verbal warning over comments made on the forum and in discord. Some of them are inflammatory and some of them are slanderous. For example here is a comment in discord made by him. Guys and Gals, you just don't say things like that about people.

On December 13th, 2017 Lom was official given his first warning for sparking an inflammatory conversation in chat. While I am not familiar with the exact details of said conversation, so far as I am aware he respected the decision. This conversation was between Nents, Brum and himself so they may be more familiar with the details of it.

On June 7th, 2018 Lom was given his second and final official warning. This was for an exchange between Flo and himself. Lom made a comment that he intended as a joke, however, Flo took offense to the comment and confronted Lom about it. Lom, seeing Flo's comment as what I can only imagine something he viewed as a soft spot, begins to get defensive about the comment itself, begin to bait and troll Flo, and among other things refers to Flo as a "liberal snowflake." I am working to find this in the chat log and obtain a screenshot, but as I remember the situation it devolved into a clear violation of our community rules.

There have been several comments of inflammatory and derogatory nature since, in-between, and before these warnings and all of those incidences received verbal warnings from either Lines, Oertha, Blac, or myself. Some of these were considered homophobic and some were anti-semetic in nature. There were other issues that date back to pre-2016 that we "wiped off of his slate" as he promised to behave himself.

Now for the big cookie, the ban. Lomarre was officially given a ban from the discord and the forums for an incident in which he was trying to break the chat filter. I cannot give you a screenshot of the actual event because the comment itself was hard deleted from the chat. However, the comment itself did contain the N-word. That is utterly unacceptable, even if the comment was a jest. We do NOT tolerate racist or bigoted language on this forum, you are all mature enough to understand that is not okay.

The handling of the situation was admittedly ghastly, but unlike you all seem to believe there was no conspiracy to ban Lom. While we did take some time to deliberate on the length of the ban (mostly because fuck guys, we're busy), despite having set ban lengths in our community rules, we did decide to ban him for one month. Why didn't we follow our established guidelines on bans? Because honestly, we really didn't expect someone to use racist language in this community. The decision to ban him was unanimous, and Blac issued the ban. Blac did reignite the conversation after a few days, but the intent to punish the behavior did NOT come out of the blue.

As to Ikar's list of situations in which we warned Lom verbally or officially here are some screenshots of the comments, just so we can clear up the fact that we are not lying, or making anything up.

The Hollywood Comment
The Gun Ban Comment
The Black Lives Matter Comment
The Libtards Comment

I can attempt to provide further proof if you would all like. I know this isn't a huge long explanation, but please ask questions and I will attempt to answer them in a semi-timely manner, work and home life permitting.

As for our admin team, Blac and Flo have both resigned. So for the remaining admins, it is Lines, Ikar, Oertha and myself.

To Rom: I'll make sure to post the pictures of our chat log when I get the chance and I'm not leaking mucus out of my nose or coughing up a storm.

[Rommy]

Firstly I appreciate your comments and time you take. I don't get angry at people who have real life shit to take care of, it is always the most important thing.

Secondly, the vast majority of your post was on why Lom was banned, no one is really arguing he shouldn't have been banned. The entire situation surrounding the process of implementing it is the issue. Thats where I among many others want more info on. What EXACTLY happened, because it doesn't feel like we are getting the full story. Call it a conspiracy all you want, but I truly feel still Blac brought up the ban to bring Flo back. We have Nents showing chat excerpts clearing showing that Blac purposely misled him on the initial day of the ban, and Flo returning out of the blue the same exact day only to depart not when it seems that the ban was changed to a month but rather when some of the community began questioning the entire situation. They both resigned, presumably over Lom, so be honest with us. Blac brought up an old ass ban that was never implemented weeks after the community as a whole moved on (Noting from what I understand Lom was attempting to break the chat filter with other people namely Nents and Hadash) just to cause the community to splintered yet again.

If we have a moderation team so intent on enforcing our rules why did they wait? Yeah I know real life and shit happens, but still did the moderation team not realize that just bringing an old ban /seemingly/ out of the blue would not help the community? I'm sorry to say it but y'all have poisoned my time here. It seems that the moderation team has taken Lom personally (whether that is right or not is another interpretation), personally to a point to ignore the standards this community has. Okay so we just implemented rules and punishments with the expectation that someone would never break them? Okay that means, issue this ban under the rules it was broken under and then talk to the community about adjusting them. Justice should never be retrospective. Just as there should be a right to a speedy trial, I'm pretty sure we should have a right to a speedy implementation of punishment. Imho the moderation team forfeited its right to ban Lom by waiting so long. There WAS nothing in the community guidelines that said y'all can just implement new ban lengths.

I think there was miscommunication, ulterior motives, and unfortunately close mindedness FROM EVERYONE. At the time maybe Lom did deserve a ban but was the intent to be malicious from what I understand no, but then again we never got chat logs for the incident which prompted his ban.

For the incidents y'all cited I think two of them really didn't break the rules as the rules stand now. If someone takes offense, okay but honestly it seems like that most of this shit is aimed at Lom for having differing albeit sometimes overbearing political views. I'm pretty sure that Lom accounts for like 5% of the total usage of the word snowflake on the discord server unless shit gets removed by admins instead of left up for record keeping purposes.

I want to know everything, every chat, every private message y'all have had over this ban. I want the total clear and concise truth and I will not stop until I am satisfied that I have examined every avenue.

[Severyane]

At this point, I feel like the only answer you will all be satisfied with it "Blac and Flo were biased against Lom, and because of that they implemented a ban just because they felt like it." That's not what happened, I don't know how many times I have to say it. There's no statute of limitations here: if it takes a day, a week, or a month to deliberate on a ban then we can and will take that long, it's about getting a majority to agree to a solution. We don't just go gung ho and pull the trigger immediately. Rom, you're a good dude man, but what would happen to you if you just dropped the N-word at work because you know it's not allowed to be said? You know what would happen. What would happen in ANY other community if you did that?

You keep saying that "no one is really arguing he shouldn't have been banned" but all you guys have done is argue against the fact that we should keep the month-long ban in place. As I mentioned there's a ZERO TOLERANCE policy when it comes to language like that, like it or not. The Guidelines on Punishment can be adjusted if needed by the administration team. There's a saying in the legal world that goes "Let the Punishment Fit the Crime." That's exactly what we, as the admin team, discussed. We doled out a punishment that fit the infraction. We had every right to permanently ban him, every right. Instead, we chose to give him yet ANOTHER chance to prove to us that he can and will behave. He's more than welcome to return to this community once his ban is up.

If we want to get all legalese on this case we can, and I would point you to Rule 3B:

3B) Harassment is any behavior that disturbs or upsets, is characteristically repetitive, and often intended to be disturbing or threatening. Willful and deliberate harassment of any person will not be tolerated in our community, by any person, or against any person. Harassment of members and nonmembers outside the forum is still subject to you being banned from the community, including the forum, discord, chatbox, and anywhere else where the Eternity name is displayed. If you are found inequivocably guilty of harassment either on these boards or off-site, you will be permanently and irrevocably banned with no appeal.

That right there gives us the power to ban persons for harassment, and we very clearly could have permanently banned him. Uses of language that disturb, or upset an individual are subject to this rule.

[Nentsia]

If we are gonna dive into technicalities, may I then add that technically speaking, the N-word was never used in the first place. An alternative word was used by Lom and the bot did not recognize it as the N-word. So by our own moderators, which the bot is, it wasnt a violation.

And in any case, whatever word Lom did use that looked similar to the N-word, it was used in a hypothetical or experimental manner, and certainly not aimed an anyone. I don't see any ''harassment'' in that.

[Severyane]

If we are gonna dive into technicalities, may I then add that technically speaking, the N-word was never used in the first place. An alternative word was used by Lom and the bot did not recognize it as the N-word. So by our own moderators, which the bot is, it wasnt a violation.

And in any case, whatever word Lom did use that looked similar to the N-word, it was used in a hypothetical or experimental manner,  and certainly not aimed an anyone. I don't see any ''harassment'' in that.

It does not matter in what context it was used, he knew what he was doing in trying to circumvent the bot. Just because the bot does not recognize the way it was spelled does not mean it is okay to say. Also, you, unfortunately, do not get to decide what does or does not offend or disturb another individual.

[Rommy]

I'm writing this on the principle of what we should stand for. Yeah what would happen if I dropped the N-word, no notification there was an investigation and a then the punishment was doled out to me without any proper notification on that incident too MONTHS later with no forewarning? Just because there is a right to, does not mean y'all should.

And no, I don't need some answer saying yeah Flo and Blac totally did it. I do not think they did it just cause, I think they did it for various reasons I've doled out. I want plain as day clear cut text showcasing the thought process because without all that I am left here thinking yeah it was maybe not a conspiracy but a series of events at least maybe not premeditated but it was with the purpose to bring Flo back instead of Lom. The rule you cited one: lacks clear harassment on the incident that was used specifically to cite the ban, and two requires inequivocably guilt which in this case can easily be argued was not met. My argument is that the ban was so mishandled that yeah it should be thrown out. One member of the team flat out lied to one person and refused to answer the other, and so I am sorry if it seems if I'm going all conspiracy theory here but I'm on the outside looking in.

I'm also fighting for my friend to get fair treatment and to get him answers too. We all deserve answers.

[Severyane]

I'm writing this on the principle of what we should stand for. Yeah what would happen if I dropped the N-word, no notification there was an investigation and a then the punishment was doled out to me without any proper notification on that incident too MONTHS later with no forewarning? Just because there is a right to, does not mean y'all should.

And no, I don't need some answer saying yeah Flo and Blac totally did it. I do not think they did it just cause, I think they did it for various reasons I've doled out.  I want plain as day clear cut text showcasing the thought process because without all that I am left here thinking yeah it was maybe not a conspiracy but a series of events at least maybe not premeditated but it was with the purpose to bring Flo back instead of Lom.  The rule you cited one: lacks clear harassment on the incident that was used specifically to cite the ban, and two requires inequivocably guilt which in this case can easily be argued was not met. My argument is that the ban was so mishandled that yeah it should be thrown out. One member of the team flat out lied to one person and refused to answer the other, and so I am sorry if it seems if I'm going all conspiracy theory here but I'm on the outside looking in.

I'm also fighting for my friend to get fair treatment and to get him answers too. We all deserve answers.

It just seems to me that what you are arguing for will inherently hurt the community even more. What happens when the next issue arises and the admin team is told by the person who got punished "you revoked Lom's ban so you should revoke mine"? Just because there is apparent mishandling by one member of the admin team does not mean we need to revoke our punishment. Why are we the bad guys here for punishing someone with a very long laundry list of infractions? Why do we need to air out chat logs? Why do we need to be investigated and demonized for temporarily banning someone for using unacceptable language? It just seems like all that everyone wants is for us to not punish people for this stuff. You can keep saying that "he may have deserved to get banned" but until you stop calling for us to go back on our decision, you aren't painting a pretty picture. It's a zero-tolerance rule dude.

On top of it all, the admin you have a problem with has resigned and I've said it to you before and I'll say it once more: Flo came back to tell us that if Lom came back from the ban then he was leaving for good, he did not try to influence our decision on the ban in any way. He came back to ask us if he was coming back from it, we said yes, and then he left again.

[Seperallis]

Thank you, Zab.


Well, I was writing while Hahk was too, apparently. Oh well, I’ll just scrap most of what I wrote and add my side of it all, and fill in some holes.

"I want to see everything!"




No, seriously. Think a bit: you used to be a mod, you know the kinds of stuff people come to us with which we discuss under oath of privacy and secrecy, and other sensitive topics, and you know we’re not going to fling open the cellar like that.


"Why was Lom banned?"

Rule violations.

No, really.

I have nothing new to say on this subject, and it has been spelled out pretty clearly: Lom has a long and "sordid" history of inflammatory action, the latest of which was a long list of unactionable aggravation over the last year, topped with an unapologetic defense of the n-word incident; where Nents immediately recognized a line had been crossed, Lom used the flawless legal defence of “it’s a joke, bro,” which we all know absolves anyone of accountability.

That is the official line.

I don't agree with many points in the official line as stated by Ikarius and Hahk, and while I’ve voiced my dissent to a couple people privately, this is the first time anyone in the admin team will even know, unequivocally, that I flat out don’t agree with certain statements and decisions, but these are matters of opinion.

Regardless, as Hahk mentioned, the decision to uphold a ban was not challenged either in the original instance or the final actual banning three weeks ago. However it's somewhat vague whether to count the result as unanimous, or whether both Hahk's and my own comments count as abstentions...I’m fairly certain Hahk’s was a yes, and I clearly never said no. Regardless, no one voiced dissent to the action.

The rub is we've been down this road before. I made it clear back in the Great Bitchslap of 2017 (which gave me my own admin action) that I would stop falling on my sword to defend Lom’s behaviors; since then I’ve practically abstained unless other admins were involved in the incident, mainly concerning myself with ensuring any infractions were met with a proper and rational response. Hahk, it must be said, took much longer, lasting until 26 August of 2019 with the N-word incident.

This is all something I'll come back to later, when I give my account of events.

Christ, it's already been three weeks...


"If we’re going to dive into technicalities..."

Yes, let’s dive into technicalities, because technically the word of admins are law when it comes to rule enforcement (6D). I also know that, technically, if we really want to follow the letter, that 6E states that problems with the staff (such as feeling you’re being lied to about forum bans, perhaps) should follow the recommended order of escalation for interpersonal issues as shown in 6C.

I’m noticing a distinct lack of messages in my PMs, and a lot of messages trying to play Sherlock with half-truths; rather disappointing, but it does transition nicely into:


"I only said something to X, so why did Y mention it?"

Believe it or not, you're not the only person discussing things, drawing conclusions, and mentioning those conclusions. I know, it was unbelievable to me as well when I first learned it!

When discussing matters of potential rule violations, it is an admin's duty to go forth and collect facts and testimony, and if something needs addressed in any reply or official capacity, then it will be. There is no rule saying that anything has to be discussed and nothing saying everything must be kept quiet, but generally we have this strange view that not discussing these kinds of things with other admins in order to get their input, and instead taking secretive and unilateral action to ban someone, feels rather scummy and dictatorial.

I know, we're terrible at wielding absolute power in undemocratic fashion. We fail Lord Emperor Lines quite regularly in this. It's a problem, and I assure you I'm working on it.

As for my own name suddenly popping up in conversations with attributed falsehoods? There is only one person from whom I received any questions, and to whom I gave any answers.



So let's not make accusations with evidence gained through games of Telephone.

If you want my honest opinion, and I think Rommy hit the nail on the head, this entire problem of admin mistrust has arisen because of a lack of communication in far too many ways to list, which fueled a huge mess of assumptions, and when proper communication was finally established so many questions and so many bad coincidences had happened that it wasn't to be believed.


"Okay, but the rules say admins must do this, and they didn’t."

When Brum was banned in May, admins skipped step 2 in the Hierarchy of Actions in issuing a ban; never had a true formal warning been given, as it was ruled that the fifty instances of various admins trying to explain to him how his constant state of being actions were bad constituted a fair bit more effort than the one required. This meant skipping to step 3, as it was also determined that a one day removal may not even register with him if he didn’t log in, that it wouldn’t give enough time away to answer his inevitable questions or enough time to let anything sink in that anything he ever did was ever wrong at all.

This was done back when the steps made more sense, before I changed them to silly lengths because I thought, well surely, we would never need to go beyond, say, a step 3? As I understand it, the 1-month step was an error of the issuer, no one realizing that I had made the change to something less intuitive than the original. Even I had forgotten the change, until I went reviewing them on the 30th. Compare:



That said, the Hierarchy was always intended as a guideline, not a rule, which would make for a conflict between rules as intended, and rules as written, if admins weren’t the final authority on rule interpretation. This entire mess, however, is why I champion sticking with the plan as written, regardless.

As for the two year ban, there was no plan for it. It was late when Blac implemented the ban, and I was headed to bed. Blac told us the ban was in place, but apparently it didn’t click with anyone that it was for two years, until I brought it up after Lom asked me about it and showed me the ban length. The length was apparently supposed to be a placeholder, as the mobile theme did not allow Blac to edit the ban length.


"What happened with Flo's departures?"

Flo left the discord some time on or before 6 Sept, and this was directly related to Lom being on the board. I'll let him speak for himself:



The end result is that Flo came back for a short time when he was told that Lom was gone, but with all the other fuck-ups around this and the timing of his return, it gave the impression that the sole reason for the ban was to draw Flo back. Flo pretty much immediately understood how bad it looked, and specifically stated that the ban shouldn’t be permanent. When I began my inquiry on the ban length and the duration was brought down from the Two-McGoddamn-Years to one month, Flo made it expressly clear that, if the ban was temporary, then, “I can't stay here. please please do not let that influence the decision, but I gotta do what I gotta do.”

Sure enough, he did what he gotta do, and left.



“whether he is a detriment to the community is a matter of opinion, but he is most definitely a detriment to me, and I have to take care of me.”

After Flo left the second time, Lines removed his staff permissions.


"Why did Blac resign? Why is Blac gone?"

Blac implemented the ban; I don’t remember what Ikarius was doing, but I was headed to bed at the time, and regardless didn’t have admin permissions enabled on the Discord to ban anyone since June. When I went back on the 27th and did my inquiry on why the ban was 2 years, Blac admitted that his personal bias had prevented an impartial response...or any response at all, for that matter, prompting Ikarius to write the response. After the ban was moved down to a month, he stated multiple times that he was willing to accept losing his adminship for it, and falling on his sword.

Eventually, Lines came online to fulfill his request and remove him from the admin team.

A couple days later Nents decided smear his leaky asshole across the discord about this event again, playing like he’d cracked a great caper with his half-truths and incomplete facts. Blac, tired of it all, left the board after the two had a notably uncivil discussion.

You would think some people might be able to relate to having someone out to literally destroy you over a misunderstanding given some past circumstances, but I suppose some things get forgotten.


That's all for now.

Anyway, I had more, I think but it’s almost midnight, I deprived myself of enough sleep this week already, and I just don’t remember what these other things might be. I’ll work on the timeline of events and my official dissent tomorrow. Or Friday. Or maybe later, it doesn’t matter, the ban’s not coming down for another week.