Announcement: Regarding Recent Moderation Decisions

[Directorate]

Hello everyone,

Recently one of our members, going by Lom had been removed from this server. Some of you have come to us asking for details pertaining to this decision. While our general policy is to keep our decision-making within our discussions, we decided that this circumstance warrants an explanation.

Lomarre has had a long and sorted history with many of us on the team. His rhetoric and insults have gone beyond simple disagreement with the Moderation Team into a far more personal level. From racist tirades about deportation, to the past incident with his anti-Semitic utilization of goyim, to his repeated attempts to post the n-word past the swear ban set up by the bot, he has thoroughly worn down his goodwill within the team. Those that would try to provide any sort of cover for his behavior could no longer do so, especially as he fails to apologize and grow from these incidents. Some of our members have outright blocked him on Discord to avoid seeing his posts.

This last part represents a problem. We can not do our jobs if we have to block someone to avoid their comments, and we do not feel it is acceptable to simply let members do as they wish. Therefore, we decided to apply our previous decision to ban Lomarre. After further discussion, we have decided that this will last for a month and will end on October 26, 2019.

We will try to answer your questions to the best of our ability. Thank you very much for your understanding.

[Nentsia]

So a long list of vague complaints that for as far as I know, have already been dealt with. Its still unclear why now all of a sudden. And no explanation as to why the Mods flouted their own banning proceedures. That doesn't seem arbitrary at all.

Also ''While our general policy is to keep our decision-making within our discussions'' seems a bit strange for I know that at least 2 Mods were not aware of any bans being implemented, let alone discussions about it.

[Alvino Castillon]

So a long list of vague complaints that for as far as I know, have already been dealt with. Its still unclear why now all of a sudden. And no explanation as to why the Mods flouted their own banning proceedures. That doesn't seem arbitrary at all.

The complaints mentioned are only a few of the issues that have been raised since the inception of our current policies. While they were dealt with, that does not mean that they are not to be considered in future complaints and rules violations. Instead, they are considered when reviewing further complaints and violations against an individual. The more complaints brought forth and the more of those complaints deemed actionable, the more we consider escalating the applied penalty. In this case, our review found that the N-word issue was actionable enough for a longer-term ban, although not a permanent one.

Also ''While our general policy is to keep our decision-making within our discussions'' seems a bit strange for I know that at least 2 Mods were not aware of any bans being implemented, let alone discussions about it.

I'm not certain as to which moderators you're referring to. At the time of the N-word issue, we all did come to a consensus on our response. However, we could not come to a consensus on the length of the ban, which is why it was not responded to immediately. This was a failure on our part and we apologize for the sudden action which seemed as if it was out of nowhere. As such, we'll be reviewing how we conduct moderation efforts (which we haven't had to do due to the lack of overall incidents) so that these complaints and decisions can be handled expediently.

However, we still felt that with the history provided it was still necessary for action to be taken and stand by that ban. We understand that it seems sudden, but we truly do not feel that this could not remain unanswered for.

[Nentsia]

Sorry, this seems like total bollocks to me and I wonder if these claims can be backed up by evidence. The N-word incident was dealt with, and if you claim that all that time there have been deliberations on how long the ban should be, then I wish to see evidence of these deliberations, since 2 Mods were just as surprised as I was when asked them about it. In fact, they assured me they tried but couldn't undo the ban.

Secondly, the proceedure was rather sinister. When Brum got a ban, there was a public statement, a reason for the ban, and it lasted a week. In this case, no reason was given for at least 2 days, the initial ban was to last until 2021 ( ! ), and it wasn't until unrest started to spread before the Directorate felt the need to come up with some statement that leaves a lot to be answered and casually leaves out the fact that the ban wasn't a month but 2 years.

As it stands now, for all I can see some members of the Directorate single-handedly threw out a member on the basis of a re-evaluation of past offences and tried to do so behind everyone's backs. And now we're handed some sort of explanation that doesn't add up. So pardon me for asking some concrete evidence here.

What did the Directorate discuss, and when, and why, and who was involved in it?

[Alvino Castillon]

First off, we did not hand out any decision regarding the N-word incident, nor was it fully "dealt with." At that time, we came to a unanimous decision to apply a ban, but never decided on the length of said ban. After that, we all became busy with other matters in our lives and to be frank, forgot about the situation.

Secondly, I spoke with the two moderators in question, Blacaria and Flo. Blac informed me that there was a misunderstanding. When Blac spoke to you, he told me he was extremely exhausted and hadn't realized what was being said. The fact is, Blacaria brought up the ban yesterday, reminding us that we didn't move forward on this. As we had agreed on performing the ban and a majority of us (those that are active enough anyways) approved of it again, he went forward and placed a ban, setting it for two years until we came to an agreement on the time length of the ban.

This was where issues arose. No one coordinated on a ban message, nor was it clear at that time that Blac could not send one as he had blocked Lom some time back. As a result, no materials were prepared to explain the circumstances properly. This wasn't made clear to us until later on the next day, when Flo brought it up. Speaking of which...

Flo meanwhile had left the server some time back due to Lom's behavior and was no longer on hand for any further discussion. He wasn't part of the decision to ban him nor did he do so. He honestly had no idea that the ban was in place until after Blac had applied it. When he came back and realized that certain announcements and messages had not been sent, he brought it to our attention and immediately we started to work on that, especially given concerns that were raised. To be frank, I had no idea that people had believed someone went rogue until about an hour ago when I started putting pieces together and realizing how badly things had been screwed up by everyone.

Side Note: Flo told me "I definitely did not say i tried to totally undo the ban. he stretched that one." As a reminder, Flo was not on the server at this time so he really did not go rogue.

As for why the two years wasn't mentioned, I was the one who drafted the original statement. Literally everyone told me to mention that the two years was a placeholder but I opted not to as I hadn't understood the gravity of the situation and didn't realize it would be considered a cover up when in fact it was a terrible failure of communication. I figured someone would at most ask about it and we would explain it was a placeholder. I wanted to keep the statement as clear and concise as possible and didn't understand that it was a critical detail.

What's clear is Flo did not "go rogue" nor did Blac. Blac asked us to apply our ban decision made some time back and it was agreed by a majority. We then failed to explain to folks what was going on due to a combination of general incompetence and being extremely busy/exhausted with life. The fact was that rather than it being something sinister, it was sheer incompetence on the part of the Moderation Team as we were not completely prepared for this.

As for the logs, if you mean the audit logs of bans and what not, this shows Blac did perform the ban.

As it stands now, for all I can see some members of the Directorate single-handedly threw out a member on the basis of a re-evaluation of past offences and tried to do so behind everyone's backs. And now we're handed some sort of explanation that doesn't add up. So pardon me for asking some concrete evidence here.

The decision for a ban was unanimous at the time and it stands as unanimous now. When the statement said the goodwill ran out, we meant it. His previous incident had him facing a one day ban, with the N-word matter being considered serious enough for a one month ban rather than a permanent one.


As for that rogue shit? Are you actually serious? I just spent two hours piecing together what happened only to realize, no one really cares THAT much to start a vast conspiracy against a member who has repeatedly been nothing but obnoxious, racist, sexist, and just plain fucking terrible. The truth is he's honestly a terrible person whose file includes but is not limited to:

-The Hollywood comment
-The sexist gun ban (“emotional women”) comment
-The libtards comment
-Literally any commentary about Islam
-The HIV/AIDS insult (to Hadash and myself)
-The goyim insult (to myself)
-The snowflake insult (to Flo)
-“Party that r*pes women” comment
-The N-word Incident

And those were the comments we came to decisions on, AFTER we "wiped the slate clean."

So no. This isn't a vast conspiracy. He's just generally terrible and the fact folks are accusing Flo of "going rogue" to dunk on a forum is not only rude and inconsiderate, it's stupid.

[Nentsia]

The Mods I referred to are Blac and Sep. Flo, I assume in good faith, was not a Mod during his absence. So that leaves you and Lynis as the only ones left to ''discuss'' and implement this ban with some sort of non-existent majority. Right now, Im going to enjoy my free time so I will respond in depth tomorrow.

Its also strange to me that Blac is the one who apparently implemented the ban, and pretended in a private chat to know about absolutely nothing.

---

Also, for clarity: I did not bring up Flo, and nowhere in the forums has anyone said or accused Flo of going ''rogue''. The only place where the word ''rogue'' was used to my knowledge, was in a private conversation between me and Flo where I told him that the timing, choice of gif, and referrences to Darth Vader ''made it look like'' he went ''rogue'', quoting myself here.

But its good to know that private messages get leaked to the Mod team and then magically are being twisted and echoed here in public statements.

[Rommy]

I'm not going to claim to be the most active person around here, nor the smartest, or a lot of other things. If what you said is true about this all being a miscommunication error then I'm sorry but we need to probably do a major overhaul as community as to how these bans are decided on by the moderation team, and then acted upon. I'm going to try my best to be coherent here but I spent the better part of my day in an engine exhaust rebuilding it so bear with me please.

To start with, when Lom first told me that he was banned and that there was no reason given on his message. Even if the length of the ban was yet to be determined that could have been posted there in lieu of the reason (with knowing the reason should have been included in the first place anyways). If Blac was exhausted thats fair, it could have waited like a day or so, like the weeks that the moderation team waited on it already.



Even saying that the rest of this was poor miscommunication among other things, that right there I think was a major misstep. I hope you (as in the moderation team) all do not look at me like I am trying to point fingers or anything here, I am simply trying to see where we can all get improvements in all directions. The moderation team as a whole has dealt with bans before, quickly, professionally, concisely. This unfortunately was not one of those times and so it needs further examination so we can improve as a community.

The fact that the very first step taken here had no communication even to Lom, with a clear avenue in the ban notification, and then further steps after that still had no information to either Lom, people who specifically inquired such as me and Nents, and even the community as a whole shows that we need to include a detailed public process for this. Among that I think is the discussions that the moderation team takes to come to these decisions to be made public in some form other than a simple announcement.

Moving on from miscommunication I think I made my point clear as I could without getting stuck into thought loops; I attempted to speak to Blac, no response was given. When I messaged Sep about all this he provided that he was there for the discussions, he stated Lom was banned till 2020, did not know of the reason behind the ban, and stated he was in some sort of minority opinion (My apologies to Sep for detailing our messages but I believe it was prudent to the conversations here). Miscommunication to the community is one thing, but seemingly differing information among the people who decided to enforce a ban for a infraction months old now and to most thought to be dealt with is frankly appalling. This isn't a democracy, we don't elect you guys, however some degree of transparency both to the community and between yourselves should be automatic almost instinctual I would think. You mentioned the ban was unanimous, even if it was, it does not feel that way right now at least to me.

Ikar you mentioned in a previous post how no matter if an infraction was dealt with, and therefore the person honored their punishment as detailed by the Community Etiquette that it could still be used towards deciding on future punishments. I could not find anything in the Community Etiquette, including in its section on Admin Enforcement & Complaints, that allows this kind of Double Jeopardy. We have a tiered punishment system, but it does not seem like it was followed in this case, and I think that should be explained. If it is commonly accepted by the Admins/Mods that they can consider previous infractions and punishments towards the new ones then it should be outlined in the rules.

Finally I just want to talk about looks, this looks bad. Even if it was just miscommunication and etc. the fact it looks like you just decided to get off your butts about some long ago ban for Lom, and then no word about it not even a simple announcement message in discord saying "Hey we had to ban Lom, pending some final admin paperwork a final announcement is pending" probably would have helped. But no, just as Lom is banned, Flo who left from seemingly partly because of Lom returns? How this looks is something that I thought we all had the morals and ethics to avoid. Ikar you mentioned that in your own words Lom is " obnoxious, racist, sexist, and just plain fucking terrible", then why is he still here if the Moderation team has all these comments and incidents, and a developed personality document on him? Perma ban him then, its quite obvious that is what some members of the moderation team want.

I'll be frank, I think some members of the moderation team are using his old ban that was waiting on the shelves to ban him for a period of a time so that he wouldn't come back. I also think that Flo's return to the discord and Lom's ban are connected, maybe not maliciously but I think Flo did return because Lom was banned and to some members of the community thats a win, Flo > Lom is what some would say. We aren't a really active community, it's cause we are small and all of us have varying life commitments (I sold my soul to the US Gov for example). Not being active is not a crime, among other things, but looking like you were basically the Watchman and coming down from the high heavens to enforce some months old ban is not the right look for this community. I think the ban only came down from the original 2 years because it snowballed out of nowhere.

I think we need to have a publicly detailed process that the moderation team goes through when banning someone, a kind of statues of limitation for these bans because honestly someone should not be banned after waiting for months about it and even forgetting about it. It removes a kind of due process I think. We should also probably outlined the enforcement part of the guidelines more.

Call me some rude conspiracist or whatever, but the fact I of all people think this is a bunch of horse sh*t should be cause for concern. Lom says shitty things, we all do, he more than others. That does not excuse this terrible application of the rules of our community. Even if everyone was attempting to act morally right, it does not excuse the crapfest that it has become and I expect the Admin/Mod team to come up with remedies for the future. I also think that the ban for Lom should follow the listed hierarchy of infractions which I am pretty sure is two weeks (if we should even continue to apply a ban that was honestly mishandled to start with).

Stop beating around the bush. Be straight with us or don't even try.

That's the end of my ted talk. Thanks for reading.

[Soyabarian Empire]

I don't understand what is going on, please where did it take place? in private or on public

[Soyabarian Empire]

I'll just leave this song here for the moderation team

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47E2tfK5QAg

[Severyane]

I'll make a post sometime this week. I've been swamped with work and haven't really been able to do much but sleep and eat when I get home. Sorry for the delay everyone.