[Mother]

English isn't my native language so please do keep that in mind as I add my little grain of salt to the whole thing.

As multiple people said above, I think that there is a clear lack of communication. And that at multiple levels.

Players between players: We are all... Peculiars in our own ways. And despite what people say, no matter what, IC and OOC are bleeding in each other all the time. One way to deal with that in TTrpg is "debrief" sessions at the end of a game session, that allow player to get out and manage a bit better their feeling. We clearly lack any of this kind of thing, separating players and characters can become such a big trouble over time that some people end-up confusing the two a lot. And clearly this is the main reason for most of the player to player toxicity, with the exception of anything linked to competition. This is leading to wild assumption over others and I'm pretty sure everyone, including me, here is guilty of that. Some took the thing a step above and started acting actively to diffame others still, which is yet again another problem, but coming from the same origin.

Admins toward players: I get it, you want to protect the people that complain, you want to not have your decisions contested and probably a lot of reason that made you really secretive about ban and stuff like that. I think the intention is good but the result is catastrophic. You are not protecting anyone, instead you are creating a paranoïa climate where people don't understand why and when bans and other punishement occur. You can do a bad thing, get banned a few days later, or a week later, or several months later. Since there is almost no communication around it, most people never understand what is happening and it almost always feel unfair. The only ban I saw people legit not yelling at was Hated. All the other bans where contested by some people simply because they didn't know. And the reasons being given are often short, without any call and not helping at all.

Players toward Admins: And this is maybe the most problematic one. Talking to admin isn't easy, due to the climate I talked above where you feel like the more wave you do the best chance you have to get ban for something you won't even understand. But we also have no way to express our disagreement, contest, or do anything to basically let out our frustration toward admins. Just like we lack any form of debrief sessions with players, it's even worst with admin.
So it isn't a big surprise that thing like the badmouthing of admins happens so often. People don't understand the decisions, can't really get any info on it outside of rumours, can't vent anywhere really official nor see things changed, nor even have their plea heard in fact. So yeah, what they do? They vent in private servers and stop trusting you. I'm pretty sure that anyone involved with admins on this game has ended-up doubting at least a part of the team of not being one way or another corrupt or not profesionnal. And don't get angry at me, I'm just voicing what I think could be true. (You see I'm even half-expecting to get banned just for voicing that).


So yeah. Better communication and transparency won't endanger anyone. Rather it would make things far better.

So I pointed a lot of problems, but what of the solutions?

Players between players: Create a group of people actually able and trained (as much as you can) to mediating solutions. No admin here that crush one side or another or tell both to shut-up. Just a group of friendly people that came in and make sure the discussion is polite, civilised, that both party say each what they are unhappy about and what solution can be put in place that makes both sides happy. And no question here of any kind of punishement.

Admins toward players: Clear and simple communication around investigation and bans. In fact I'm really surprised of how SL2 work, I've been admin and moderator on many places and never I saw such a high degree of secret. Instead post a simple message when an investigation is happening, calling anyone that want to testimony to come. Update the statu of such thing while you progress and finally convoke the accused (and the accusator if they want) to announce the debate in a place where everyone can see it happens. Then you tell them what has been decided and why and add an annouce that stay on regarding the decision. As much as I'm aware that's how prosecution is done in most countries and for a reason. At least I can tell that communicating better with the player base is always a positive thing regarding bans.

Players toward Admins: To be fair, that's the most difficult one. I have no clue how to help that. I believe that making the two above and reducing the overall violence of the process and the community, or toxicity, call it as you want, is going to help that. Then I would well. Suggest that a group of people was created to at least take in the complain of players toward admins. People that aren't friend with the current admins and so are clear of conflict of interest would be great. Because as far as I know the three major complains I heard of are:
- Admins are unable to manage conflict of interests and prefer some people over others.
- Admins are just not here, some admins going missing for prolonged periods of times and staying admins anyway.
- Admins are a nice group of friend that cover each other rear and will never admit if one of them is wrong.
I'm not saying that such is the truth, just some stuff you hear really often about admins. (In reality despite myself venting, I know that the chances that the admins are really actively being bad persons are... Really low). However making a group of admin for admin create the question of who watch the admin of admin. So yes, this system is clearly limited, I believe that our solution reside rather in the better communication between admins and players and player toward players.


Finaly, as this is still a talk about the recent bans here are my thoughts:

Are the bans making sense in the current context of bans and punishements are handled? Yes they do.

Is this a good thing? God no.

Let me explain. I believe from what I heard that the current people banned are for similar reason the ban of the Don happened. If anything. I feel like any of those bans, or any punition of any kind since a while solve nothing in the player base.
People are still angry, some still leave the game, some chose other solution like never trying anything serious anymore. But in the end did it stops people behaving like they behave? Well in case of permanent ban yes, in case of temporary nah.
The Don shouldn't have been banned, Croakie shouldn't be banned, none of them will change due to that. And if they do the change will come from fear rather than understanding. Rather they had problem with people and the bans never helped anything with that, rather it made them spitfull, unable to trust admins and they acted even worst after. Global behaviour will only get better if those problems get solved, if apologies are made on both side that understand what happened on the other and accept that they were in pain or anxious or stressed too and that's why sadly they hurt each others. It's probably a hot take but... Bad people are rare. People not understanding each others? People stressed? People anxious? People having trouble to express themselves? Yeah, there is a ton of them.
And we litteraly saw that, the Don ban lead to him turning paranoid and deciding he was going to reap his lore away or threat to lawsuit Dev. Was this a good outcome? Hell no. I'm sure some of you will simple say "It was him choosing to do so, the ban got nothing to do with that." and to those persons I can only answer that if they don't understand that a action trigger a reaction, I can't do much more.

The current solutions offered to our current problems are inadequate and we clearly need better way to do things. I don't know if my message will be heard or not, I don't care much either I must confess. I just hope that anyone answering this will make constructive comments and critics rather that unleashing any sort of short hater message like it often happen sadly. Yes I'm talking to you reading this message.