[jintheblue]

--

Thank you for the clarity. I'd mostly heard of the mute in passing, where I've been told of the ban multiple times, from various perspectives. Regardless I still think my point stands. If the GMs are going to hand out bans, we as a community should be able to trust that the GMs are doing their research, seeking to prevent toxic behavior by setting out explicit warnings, and in the event of any non permanent ban, take the initiative to ensure all involved know why a punishment was chosen.

I appreciate you poking your head out of retirement to clarify this point.

[GameMaster85]

In general, I'm really, really afraid of posting on the forums and general interaction to the player base. Since I'm not directly involved, I won't directly interact with any of the specific points of Slydria's post nor will I mention much of the actual original post contents. However, I really do care about the player base and the individual and community health, so I really want to mention something.

We're a small community, and even one person having a negative reaction to something, posting about it akin to a misunderstanding, and keeping it under wraps, will cause a very harsh cascade of things if it's not handled well. I've had it happened to me, and I know others had it happened, where one person's dislike due to a lack of a greater picture causes a group of people's dislikes due to a lack of greater picture, and due to a roleplaying community's requirement of being collaborative, and our small size, things like this can be horrible for us.


Slydria's point on proper communication avenues, especially attempting to avoid the "game of telephone" is a huge thing. Hell, this is a huge thing in communication in general. But in our community, due to our reliance on collaborative efforts and our small scale, this is magnified tenfold. Slydria always asking for the original person of worry to speak for themselves in most situations is huge in this case.

We really have to try to be good to each other. We need to assume the best of each other and understand that due to our environment this is just short of a requirement for us. If someone is truly intolerable, please attempt to let others make their own judgement on their own. If it's against community guidelines, please report it not for the purposes of seeking a ban, but seeking reciprocation and a better overall community environment.

[Perdition]

This is like SL2 reality television. The politics that happen OOC are honestly fascinating to me. I had no idea about any of this until this thread came up but the transparency is nice, I guess, even if this seems like it's coming out of totally left field. Even with all that was posted in the OP it feels like a lot of context is missing, and I left with more questions than answers. There are a lot of things stated that seem to have context hidden behind DMs and/or conversations that aren't present. But anyway.

As far as the notion that someone told a GM something with the stipulation of "hey I don't want this person to be banned" I honestly don't think that should carry any weight in whether they're banned or not. If they're investigated after that and found to be doing something banworthy, they should still be punished. The punishment shouldn't be less because of another player's discretion. After all, the players aren't part of the GM team that decide on the weight of punishments for infractions.

All in all this just seems like a hilarious chain of miscommunication and drama and it's amusing it erupted into something this serious that required a PSA.

[Dystopia]

Time for some transparency.

I bid you all a friendly hello, and would like to open with a link to where you can find this document in it's entirety. This will help alleviate any misconceptions about it's purpose.

Dyst was very open with me about going to post this on the forums and addressing the document as a whole here. I did not reject that idea, nor did I protest it. The disclaimer you'll see at the top of the file is intended to be absolute, despite my best interests on who would see it. That aside, let me shed some light on everything being said here.

- The document was initially sent to anyone I feel I had wronged during my time as Teel. This later extended to anyone hurt by the entire scenario, or required clarification. Some people were excluded because of their wishes not to speak with me.

- This wasn't a bashing script written to smite anyone down. It was an earnest attempt to persuade those I'd wronged and beyond that I had changed as a person, all in an effort to regain much of what I had lost with new resolve.

- As a secondary measure to ensure none of this would be misconstrued, I placed a disclaimer at the top and intended to make it as transparent as possible. Evidently I've failed at that task, and should have provided far more evidence.

Now, there are a few things I would like to touch on as I feel that things like these should be public if excerpts from the document were made public. As always, if you need anything made clear, tell me. I would be glad to provide.

Now, the first question I can see being asked is: "What does this have to do with me?"

Nothing. And everything.

Since the document contains everything you need to know regarding my opinions and feelings toward the situation at hand, I will use this time to try and urge the GMs to show what's going on behind the curtain. Transparency is key.

I'd like to share two things from the conversation I had with Dystopia before all of this happened. 




After you've seen this, I'd hope something here would catch you eye;

The contradiction stating it is in both a minor and major factor. 

This is where you come in. This has led me to believe that the GM system is inherently broken, and in my eyes, a failure. This is not meant to be an attack on any of the GMs, nor is it intended to incite a witch hunt. I speak only of the system and how it has failed me and numerous others as a player. There is no transparency at all between the GM actions, and it looks like the communication between GMs has put them on wildly different pages. This is problematic for not only me, but anyone else affected by the GM system.

As has been stated by numerous people in other threads and replies, the GM system in it's current state isn't working. 

Additionally, this document was, by nature, a highly opinionated piece of writing. I feel the exact same as when I wrote it, and stand by everything I said in it. Why? Because these are my personal feelings and opinions on everything that has happened. They are not fact, and could be disproven by an audit of GM activity during this piece of drama; something I would welcome. This is why I encourage an active, open and transparent GM process as much as I can. 

That said, the GMs are not at fault. There seems to be a lack of a concrete system for handling scenarios like this, and a rulebook or solid guidelines would make this so much easier. I long to be able to trust the GM system, but in it's current state? I cannot.

The contradiction there is a simple and honest mistake. What I initially said was correct.

Sly wasn't intentionally being misleading there, and as he stated in that snippet he was about to go shopping, and in the course of relaying what we all discussed in GM channel very quickly, misspoke there. He also suggested Detema come see me, which they didn't after that response was given. I would have clarified what I could and further discussed things with them, if they had chosen to.

The entirety of the GM team discussed this ban and the other recent ban and all aspects of each case, and all of us were in agreement with what we came up with for each one. Dev is also in the GM channel where we have these discussions, and can see everything we say and weighs in on our discussions often.

You're welcome to your own opinions in entirety, and whether the clarifications I've presented affect said opinions in any way is wholly on you.
I've done my part in trying to shed light on the situation both in my intentions throughout all of it and the reasons behind what I described.

I've even admitted to a mistake I noticed in light of what you said in the first snippet I addressed, in that I hadn't directly asked you about the Detema situation that involved you.
That's a valid point and I addressed the how and why of said mistake, and for that I apologize.

If I had known that somehow my attempts to be considerate of your feelings and sensitivities regarding the situation would somehow be twisted this way, I would have been more thorough regardless of anything else. While I usually strive to be thorough, regardless of what's going on, admittedly I'm a little bit of a softie in this regard.

The narrative of a player that's being mistreated and isn't sure about reporting said mistreatment and doesn't know if they can trust anyone is one I commonly encounter (or hear about well after the fact) and it's very difficult to hear when people are mistreated/harassed and too afraid to report anything to us for fear of backlash/being ostracized.

I always empathize entirely with any players that find themselves in such predicaments, as it's not a fun place to be and feels very precarious. Been there.

This is a problem in so many situations beyond this one, and because it's so prevalent and such a big problem within the community, I assumed that that was also the case with you and yours, and acted as kindly as I could in regards to that. At least, that was my intention.

I maintain wholeheartedly that it wasn't my intention to be misleading nor manipulative in any way. If anything, not asking that important contextual question was a clerical error on my part.


In addition and to again clarify, every single piece of information I shared in my post, I also shared with the rest of the team in real time as I was doing it. I told them very clearly my intentions regarding this, and why, and what I hoped to accomplish by it.

They knew I was sitting in the OOC corner. They knew I was looking out for potential misbehavior within the OOC corner to double-check claims made by other players (that I also informed them about when those reports were brought to me), and they knew exactly what I found on Detema's behavior.

There's not a single part in any of this where the rest of the GM team were unaware of what I was doing and why I was doing it.

Hopefully, Balthie's thread tomorrow will further illuminate everything I've touched upon in each of the three threads I've commented on/made within the past few days, and reinforce everything I've said here and there and everywhere.

So to be clear, a player came to you in confidence to tell you about a bit of drama. You promised them no ban would come, specifically telling that player you would give a warning at worst. Then you conducted your own investigation and decided they were so toxic they deserved a month and a half ban. You then did not tell the player the reason for the ban. You did not tell the player who initially gave you the report, and are surprised they feel you banned Detema on their testimony alone.

Detema received a single mute prior to the ban. After their recent ban they were given no explanation for why they were banned. It is clear Detema assumed the reason for the ban was the same as the reason for the mute, a singular use of vulgarity.

"Unbeknownst to them, I'd already received reports from other players about Detema and others harassing Seven in another incident entirely, that I then went and confirmed with multiple witnesses."

You received reports, you conducted an investigation, and at no point did you see fit to sit down with Detema, and address the issue. This was not done to keep order. This was not done with the interest of the community.

To be clear:

1. A player came to me in confidence for the sake of a another player.
   
2. I urged them to have said player talk to me.
   
3. That player talked to me in confidence as well, and asked that I not take any actions at the time they presented the initial report to me.
   
4. I agreed, with the stipulation that if what they came to me with happened again, they would report it to me and I would then give a warning to the two parties that might err. But to my knowledge, have not.
   
5. In the course of that conversation, I didn't ask about one player out of three mentioned in relation to incidents involving the reporting player, and that was my mistake.
   
6. I received other reports regarding that one player that I hadn't asked about, investigated into the situation and spoke with multiple players that witnessed this incident and based on the logs given to me, decided that even though the player that came to me in confidence hadn't mentioned this incident in particular, it's still not something that belongs on the game, and was something we took into consideration as we discussed the ban. This made it a reason, but not the reason for said ban.
   
7. I then conducted an investigation into the OOC corner because it became the topic of great displeasure in the community and the GM team wanted to be certain whether it were truly problematic or not and wanted to better discern whether it should be abolished, or some sort of compromise be given instead.
   
8. Simultaneous to that investigation, I conducted one on the third player mentioned in the reports, knowing that they commonly frequented the OOC corner. I knew this because we'd received other complaints about their behavior there. There were multiple complaints. One of these complaints was the one that the player was muted and told off for.
   
9. In the course of my investigation, of which I was largely stationary as a listening ear while tabbed out, I caught evidence of the player not only breaking some rules, but going against the warning/mute they'd recently been given, and directly attacking at least two other players.
   
10. The largest contributor to their ban was the multiple cases of harassment that we handled from them. The reason for the length of the ban was the repeated offenses and the unrepentant behavior displayed by the player despite every attempt to correct them both past and present, as said behavior hadn't changed and didn't seem it was going to. The 1.5 month ban was an aim to discourage that, in hopes that if they came back afterward they'd behave better.
    
11. Ban messages don't appear on the fancy chat, so they missed it when it was listed clearly in-game. This wasn't done intentionally as we have no control over this fact. Instead, when they came to a GM they were told verbatim what the ban message read, as indicated in that screencap there that I gave to Seven when I told them I was going to make this thread.
    
12. I didn't tell the player that initially came to me with the report because the ban dealt had largely, if entirely, nothing to do with them and was purely due to the other player's choice in how they behaved in-game and the evidence of such.
    
13. Harassment cases, no, I didn't sit down with Detema and discuss them because that defeats the purpose entirely of anonymity in reporting and the aims to protect harassees from harassers. Every other instance of their misbehavior, they were made well aware of by other GMs on the team.
    
    
    
    

I can see in the course of me writing this response, there have been more posts to respond to, so I'll get to those shortly.

---

In general, I'm really, really afraid of posting on the forums and general interaction to the player base. Since I'm not directly involved, I won't directly interact with any of the specific points of Slydria's post nor will I mention much of the actual original post contents. However, I really do care about the player base and the individual and community health, so I really want to mention something.

We're a small community, and even one person having a negative reaction to something, posting about it akin to a misunderstanding, and keeping it under wraps, will cause a very harsh cascade of things if it's not handled well. I've had it happened to me, and I know others had it happened, where one person's dislike due to a lack of a greater picture causes a group of people's dislikes due to a lack of greater picture, and due to a roleplaying community's requirement of being collaborative, and our small size, things like this can be horrible for us.


Slydria's point on proper communication avenues, especially attempting to avoid the "game of telephone" is a huge thing. Hell, this is a huge thing in communication in general. But in our community, due to our reliance on collaborative efforts and our small scale, this is magnified tenfold. Slydria always asking for the original person of worry to speak for themselves in most situations is huge in this case.

We really have to try to be good to each other. We need to assume the best of each other and understand that due to our environment this is just short of a requirement for us. If someone is truly intolerable, please attempt to let others make their own judgement on their own. If it's against community guidelines, please report it not for the purposes of seeking a ban, but seeking reciprocation and a better overall community environment.

I'm not Slydria but I appreciate the sentiment all the same.

This is like SL2 reality television. The politics that happen OOC are honestly fascinating to me. I had no idea about any of this until this thread came up but the transparency is nice, I guess, even if this seems like it's coming out of totally left field. Even with all that was posted in the OP it feels like a lot of context is missing, and I left with more questions than answers. There are a lot of things stated that seem to have context hidden behind DMs and/or conversations that aren't present. But anyway.

As far as the notion that someone told a GM something with the stipulation of "hey I don't want this person to be banned" I honestly don't think that should carry any weight in whether they're banned or not. If they're investigated after that and found to be doing something banworthy, they should still be punished. The punishment shouldn't be less because of another player's discretion. After all, the players aren't part of the GM team that decide on the weight of punishments for infractions.

All in all this just seems like a hilarious chain of miscommunication and drama and it's amusing it erupted into something this serious that required a PSA.

To note, this is in regard to specifically harassment cases, and that's the only way this would ever come to pass.

The logic to this one I will echo from another post I made recently in case you haven't read it. Harassment cases are delicate and particular, and in many cases are relatively personal incidents with few witnesses, and as such in the aim to protect the reporter in these cases from further harassment due to us revealing that they reported someone, we'll typically take measures to try to prevent that.

In this case, the request wasn't 'I don't want them banned', it was 'I want no action taken on this that I've presented as of right this second, because the situation is very raw'.

For this case, I honored that plea, with the understanding that if the problem persisted, they would report it and then we'd act on it.

If I had instead gone immediately to the two that were reported, and betrayed the confidence of the reporter, then the base assumption is that in doing that, I've solidified that they're going to receive backlash for it.

We've seen this happen multiple times, each time anyone is accidentally revealed to be the whistleblower on any particular subject. People are often afraid to speak up because of this.

[GameMaster85]

Oops, I though the OP was Slydria.

I'm really bad at the forum thing, I am sorry.

[Jupiter_Storm]

All the drama and fallout aside from this thread which has been a very entertaining read, I would like to applaud all the Staff here for stepping forward and putting a lot of stuff out in the open. Regardless of SevenHaven's wishes initially (and I'm very sorry you lost a friend over this)... I would also like to agree that a GM further investigating somebody's behavior as a result of a report they receive is pretty spot-on actually - regardless of whether Dyst was asked to or not - and it seems like this person actually dug their own grave without your report - it just hadn't been properly noticed up to this point.

I have often been a big advocate of 'burn the GM flags' for my sins, but seeing this actually puts me a bit more on the fence. I think we should look past some aspects of this that were "mishandled" (and Dyst put her hands up about that anyway which is very honest and again great to see) and consider them to be growing pains for this new era of better community engagement. I'm also very excited about Balthie's intentions to put up a thread with a bit of insight into how things work.

We've also seen evidence that all the GMs were communicating with other about this and were all aware of the situation. And finally to re-state the fact, it's great to see stuff like this out in the open. It's another positive step in addition to the public app boards.

For what it's worth. Good job.

[WaifuApple]

The transparency is very appreciated, indeed - but I still think the dropping of names is unprofessional. It could easily have led to a case of counter-harassment on those players, and I do not think that would be right. I know it left one of them feeling uncomfortable about it, and as stated on my post last I said, there was reason, for all it was worth, for the way they acted. Maybe it's not entirely justified, but... nor is putting a stain on someone else's name with little in the way of context, as a public figure - a GM, for the sake of protecting yourself / someone else.

I do, personally believe, some amount of apology for that... would be nice, really? I understand that there are reasons for this post and everything, but I do think for something meant to help, that particular action caused a bit of a storm.

[SevenHaven]

All the drama and fallout aside from this thread which has been a very entertaining read, I would like to applaud all the Staff here for stepping forward and putting a lot of stuff out in the open. Regardless of SevenHaven's wishes initially (and I'm very sorry you lost a friend over this)... I would also like to agree that a GM further investigating somebody's behavior as a result of a report they receive is pretty spot-on actually - regardless of whether Dyst was asked to or not - and it seems like this person actually dug their own grave without your report - it just hadn't been properly noticed up to this point.

I have often been a big advocate of 'burn the GM flags' for my sins, but seeing this actually puts me a bit more on the fence. I think we should look past some aspects of this that were "mishandled" (and Dyst put her hands up about that anyway which is very honest and again great to see) and consider them to be growing pains for this new era of better community engagement. I'm also very excited about Balthie's intentions to put up a thread with a bit of insight into how things work.

We've also seen evidence that all the GMs were communicating with other about this and were all aware of the situation. And finally to re-state the fact, it's great to see stuff like this out in the open. It's another positive step in addition to the public app boards.

For what it's worth. Good job.

I agree. There is indeed significant evidence the GMs were communicating, and I'm happy that a lot of this was brought to light. But the fact that it took this much for a simple act of transparency is why I encourage it to be a more streamlined, open process. 

Hopefully Balthie's post does it justice. I hope for the best.

[jintheblue]

--

Between pronouns, hearsay, and anonymous users, I have no better understanding the chain of events.

I am not arguing weather or not Detema should have been banned, nor for how long. You are a moderator, that is your duty. That said handling problem players by dropping a ban with a notice, without warning, nor follow up will not inspire them change, breaking your word with members of the community will only inspire distrust, and posting a thread begging for player trust, to clear your name, during a time where a significant portion of the community has misgivings about the staff team, not only makes you, and your team look bad, but further disenfranchises members of the community.

Whether or not I agree with your decision on this case, your handling of it has only hurt every party involved, and left you with fire upon fire to put out. In the future if you intend to ban a user, especially an established member of the community have a chat with them. If you're hearing reports someone is being rude in public, don't waste a week idling, talk to them. It doesn't matter if they've been warned before. You'll save people from being harassed just for you to have a rubber stamp. These things set the tone for the community, they paint you in a reasonable light, and keep bans from feeling like a sniper's bullet from a thousand yards away.

[Dystopia]

The transparency is very appreciated, indeed - but I still think the dropping of names is unprofessional. It could easily have led to a case of counter-harassment on those players, and I do not think that would be right. I know it left one of them feeling uncomfortable about it, and as stated on my post last I said, there was reason, for all it was worth, for the way they acted. Maybe it's not entirely justified, but... nor is putting a stain on someone else's name with little in the way of context, as a public figure - a GM, for the sake of protecting yourself / someone else.

I do, personally believe, some amount of apology for that... would be nice, really? I understand that there are reasons for this post and everything, but I do think for something meant to help, that particular action caused a bit of a storm.

Right, sorry I didn't touch on that one in my previous posts, missed that one.

The reason for this is that through the manifesto that was circulating, names were dropped.

I could, theoretically, have blanked out the names in my snippets for the sake of two people mentioned, but the reason I didn't is twofold:

For one, I and the rest of the team had/have no way of knowing how many people have or haven't seen this document. I have no idea when it was made or when it began its' circulation, but with the small size of the community it's entirely possible to have reached many more eyes than you'd imagine.

Because of this uncertainty, and the fact that they were already named in this, I felt there was little I could do to spare them of something that someone else had already done.


Secondly, because it was already publicly stated so, any reference I made to it needed to be precise and to the point. If I'm to address anything like this effectively, I should at least differentiate what's true and what's false, correct?

If you note, my only reference in name to the names dropped was to point out that there is some measure of truth to the information in the manifesto, and that while not all of it is- I can't ignore the true parts presented in the structure of the story.

Those elements, in the sequence of events initially presented, are true.

It's the interpretation and the assumption, and then the drafting of this misinformation that are sorely misguided.


That being said, I do think it's highly unfortunate that this situation bore a manifesto that namedropped them, and wasn't addressed privately to prevent that.