[Frozen]

If this was a harassment case, then surely there's nothing wrong with elaborating for the offending parties the non-harassment points of the ban, right? It's definitely hard to contest anything if you genuinely believe you didn't deserve the ban when aforementioned "blanket ban" hits everyone with the same charges. Did all four people harass someone? Did they all enact the other charges individually? If not and each person has their own unique charge to deal with for the ban, why not specify who did what? If they did all do so and so, it's not so much of a harassment issue anymore which comes with the anonymity that is desired by the reporting party.

If the answer to specifying who did what for the bans themselves the fact the GMs have no obligation to do this, maybe that's the change that people would like to see? I'm not asking to know the reason for the ban personally. I'm asking that the person getting banned can know for certain. This in conjunction with the initial suggestions me and Dezark put out may or may not provide a solution to our underlying problems but I feel like we ought to try at least. If it leads to worse situations in the end, then it's fine to be proven wrong anyway.

[WaifuApple]

One of the ideas I've heard thrown about is ban appeals taking place privately, through modmail. The GMs themselves can be anonymous in dealing with it if the message modmail sends the first time is to be believed - that they can reply through it, and people don't have to publicly out their attempts to get themselves unbanned, and can instead go through processes that should never be a public spectacle on the wall to begin with, as they are with the appeals literally being open season. I stress this isn't even my idea. Just a good one I believe is very worth considering as a possibility.

Naturally, that doesn't mean GMs are gonna start presenting things they still say they won't, but perhaps this will be a more comfortable place for accused people to post details they think will dispute on their end, if they have an inkling of where the problem is made out to be.

(Edit 3.0: thanks for the neus gold kind stranger)

[Snake]

Kind of agreeing with Drez on that line of his. This is just a massive deja vu by now, and it will hustle some feathers here and there, especially when it concerns people who we hold in high expectations or may or not be friends with.

But can we be blamed for being curious? It could be any one of us next time, being decked for a supposedly unfair accusation, unable to rightfully appeal because the staff refuses to elaborate, be it privately or not.

Got to say, it's hard to look at 3/4ths of the banned people, and nod agreeably that they deserved what they got, because now that's their fame among the community. Metagamers, Harrassers and what-gives. While the other people involved in this same situation can keep their anonymity intact and continue being nasty behind the stage in that Hearth server. The stories I heard of what are 'gentlemanly discussed' in their voice chat is horrifying.

By the words of my friend Lolzytripd the Log Master: "Private Discord servers are a mistake."

That's all from me involving the topic.

EDIT (2.0): I also like Appo.
EDIT (3.0) Edit Boogaloo: YES, BOSS.

[Shadbase]

As for your points, I wholeheartedly agree, in most of those cases we do give people clear, full explanations of why they were banned. 

Unfortunately the last several cases where there's been an uproar in response to a ban, they've been harassment-related bans. Thus our policy is what it is, and we stick to it.

Then there has been a miscommunication in the line breaks for the last few bans that we gotta take care of too!! All parties involved very clearly felt that the explanation was not pointed enough towards what needed to be corrected - and three of the four all have also all claimed to have not done anything of their notice, which wasn't pointed out at the time of the ban. If it's been done by this point, then hell yeah!! But that kinda stuff should happen at least shortly after to minimize the entire fallout - and the situation we gots now is very clearly what happens when it doesn't.

I'm glad that y'all do make the attempt, but even when it's a harassment case - you don't have to point out who's involved, and you can generalize what's happened, if that makes any sense? Like...

So if User A is basically constantly taunting User B about a specific subject that's very sore to them, and neither of them know each other well - only through the roles of a nation.
Then you'd want to approach it sort-of like: "Mocking other users about very specific parts of themselves, their characters, or their roleplay is considered a form of harassment, even if it wasn't actually intended to be. You have to be sure that you're not play-bullying someone you aren't sure of your friendship with, and not do so if they're not someone you actually consider close. In the future, it's suggested that you check in with these people if you didn't mean it. Regardless, consider this [a warning/reason for your temporary ban]."

Gotta note I've never been a moderator of a huge server game like SL2. Maybe mini Minecraft or Discords before. But as a user, I really want to be told exactly what I'm doing wrong. My first thought isn't going to be "oh shit I know who I did that to lemme go shitcan 'em", it's gonna be like "shit I did that? Wow, I was on some sort of crack cocaine that day". That could just be my entirely shit memory, though.
There's just a LOT of ways that one can negate the potential effect of just outright saying a name. It just feels like that when you're banned for harassment, the procedure is overextending protection at the expense of being able to tell people what they actually need to correct, which isn't going to be beneficial for anybody.
User A getting banned after potential months of evidence collecting, and then having very little to go off of for anywhere from several hours to a few days isn't going to make them think about their actions, because they've been doing a lot in that amount of time. Real-life stuff, other RP stuff, anything - you really can't just tell someone "you know what you did" when they ask for any clarification, because it just makes them paranoid as all hell that anything they can or would do is now under a microscope. And it's really not a pleasant feeling to have - coming from someone who's been put there in a lot of different places.

quick edit go [vine boom]:

[Dezark]

I've mainly just been reading over & watching what all been said at least since I've woken up, and now that I've had time I do wanna give some notice on agreeing with inputs following things.
(i'm bad at doing the quoting stuff so I apologize in advance on not having it fancy like that)

This is mainly me in agreement with what Fern said particular on this mind you. How our community is it very hard to keep things fully civil for the soul reason of how people respond, yes I can understand how in this context in the ban, it came across as it has to multiple parties and where the responses follow is honestly for the best in the end in my opinion.

I love this community with my heart, but counting the reactions I've seen from multiple places; and just reading over how everyone felt, what responses in logic and the general agreement on things here and there; I don't fault either side on this.

My only fault is to what Fern made mention of more so, that the community as a whole has a tendency to take up arms over these matters and personally go after others, be they someone who gave the report, was asked for details or is even accused due to past interactions. I've reminded certain folk more than once about their responses and the harassment that follows because of a number of reasons, be it something that followed OOCly, because they were disagreed with or otherwise; and I've had my own cases of being the prime example of this as well, I have a good number of people I've either blocked temporarily, or permanently because of this matter.

As I said before to the affected parties, I get that it stinks and the difference in what you feel vs what others feel, and to those that've contacted me with mostly positive remarks on it, I'm glad I could help give some happiness to it even if it wasn't a lot, as said no matter what you do, your still a friend and you have many willing to stick by, chat and be by your side in helping with things.

To any mentioned parties that feel disappointed on there not being full support, or feeling otherwise due to personal things? I'm sorry it felt like that.

Last mentioned thing, but just adding on to previous reminder, please do keep things civil when interacting with each other, I get having disagreements and such; and I understand that there times where people would poke holes or otherwise in your stuff, but they are just as welcome to their beliefs and opinions as you are. We're all here to work together to better as a community and help each other so we don't have people headbutt each other, I know this community can do great things and I'd like to see that be shown true.

[1starbob]

(First post on forums so if I do something wrong/don't do something as effectively in this post I apologize, I just kind of want to put my two cents in... even though those two cents are all over the place) 

I'm incredibly biased for the Hearth as I'm someone who joined The Hearth on day one of my SL2 adventure, and the people there have been nothing but good and helpful to me for these past couple of months. It's likely that if I hadn't joined The Hearth I would have not come to enjoy SL2 as much as I currently do. So it kind of confuses me to see Mewni mention it in this whole situation and try to claim that we do the same things that they supposedly did but worse. The Hearth and SL2 at this point only really shares members. From what I've seen and have been told it use to  be a thing in G6 but it's mainly defunct as an in-game thing and is now mostly just a hang-out spot for friends. Like Lachi said, SL2 is still brought up commonly, as most of us play it. So yes, we vent about current events going on in SL2, like current storylines, or drama that goes on. We even talked about the four people getting banned wondering what the hell had happened. This is all normal for a group of friends to do, Mewni's group does this as well as they say this in their response "venting is the most harm that came out of this." The Hearth is in the same boat, venting is about as much harm as we do over here and half the time we are stopping ourselves from doing so unless it gets to a boiling point. Venting is healthy, venting is how we stop ourselves from saying something stupid later. So being able to do this in a safe environment with buddies is great. 

Mewni trying to deflect everything they did onto The Hearth really shows why the GMs made the decision they made. So personally I don't see anything wrong with what the GMs did. Especially since they seemed to act within how they usually do. Blade didn't get communicated with prior to his ban for harassment, so why should special treatment be given to the Donna and her people? 

Despite saying this I hope to see the four people who got banned continue to play and hope they don't decide to quit because of all of this. I personally really enjoy the Yakuza and like the almost "Rival gang" feel I've been feeling in Meiaquar lately! A Don vs Donna situation sounds like it could be really fun- if everyone oocly could get along. 

- And sorry that this is all over the place I just felt like putting my two cents out there as one of the people involved with the Discord Group.

Edit- Frozen is right- I can't actually say whether or not Mewni and the others deserved what they got, since none of us have the information we'd need to determine that. So I'll take that back, However I do hold still that the GMs were just acting how they usually would act and they really didn't do anything wrong within the guidelines they have. Should these guidelines change? Maybe, maybe not. I don't actually have an issue with the guidelines whether they do change or not so that's not the horse in this race that I'm gonna bet on.

[Frozen]

If Blade didn't get communicated with prior to his ban, maybe he should have. I don't think there's so much argument over whether the ban was deserved or not, but moreso how the ban itself was handled. It's not a good habit to justify our game's due process as how it is because "these guys probably deserve it".

Of course, whether they deserve the ban or not is a different discussion altogether. I think a lot of folks need to get kicked in the pants and go touch some grass if only for no other reason than to remind ourselves people don't normally act out on each other like this. Hell, I know I could have used a break after hopping out of the Duke role. It's a really interesting change in perspective once you realize you don't have any obligations anymore.

We can't say whether they deserve the ban or not though because we as the peanut gallery lack much of the context, though I've also always been an "innocent until proven guilty" kind of guy. If there's proof of guilt, there's not really much to see in that circumstance save for Croakie's case (which I will add, kudos to her for owning up to the harassment charge and I only wish the best with her not being in the video game for a week). That's always been my point of contention anyway. I won't be so bothered if WE don't get to see any more. I just want the people who were hit with the ban to be able to say "I know why they banned me". EVEN if it's followed by "but I don't agree with it".

I have to admit that I feel the same kind of paranoia that Cereza had mentioned earlier. I have asked before if GMs might see me in the same light/investigation and I've been told at least by one GM that they don't think there's anything I've done wrong. While I appreciate the feedback, there's still the idea that it could happen out of the blue because I didn't think I've done any wrong either. What if there's a discussion one day about me in the GM channel and it eventually COMES to a unanimous decision about me? I don't want to have to keep asking GMs the same question every so often to make sure I'm in the clear.

I will refer again to the suggestions that were posted in here several pages ago... Things like transparency and good faith is something I'd like to see from BOTH halves of the coin. I've spoken to you guys before and I know there are some folks who can be civil. It's very easy for even those folks to fall into the group mentality of disdain. We really don't need to be throwing tomatoes at each other and start figuring what kind of solutions we can use. Of course, input from the GMs as well for what I'm saying is very handy as well.

[Asellia]

I think a warning system would be good, and I don't think it's anything to complain about. I don't usually post here, nevermind about like... stuff like this, but genuinely, it's a bit worrying. As someone with severe anxiety disorders, and self confidence issues, there's a whole lot of 'Have **I** done anything wrong?' in my brain right now, and it's scary because it can just apparently happen, with no warning, nor explanation. Which I can imagine would only cause further 'Will it just happen again? I don't know what I did in the first place' in some cases. That's sort of an extremely frightening prospect.

As far as 'retaliation towards those who reported something' goes, shouldn't the people retaliating also be punished? I can't help but feel as if this lack of transparency can easily be countered by simply better enforcing rules against those who'd intend to break them.

[dangerouselizabeth]

Hey, so, to the admins:

I'm a new player as of like 2 days ago. I've played hardcore RP games for years, so some of this is very old to me, some of it is pretty new, and I have no connections to literally anyone on any side here, nor any real knowledge of the "social meta" or any membership in any Discord servers or anything.

But it's clear from every post from all involved parties that all the people involved know exactly what's going on and your harassment evidence policy is only serving to make you less effective, here. Look, you don't have to show logs with the metainfo of the time and date and what machine it was posted on to actually discuss the ban. I'll be honest: the way that this happened makes it look like you took sides in a personal issue, and the vagueness comes across as either incompetence or an attempt to hide from criticism.

The air of "ahh~ you know, we can't convince everyone. it's just a shame if people think we were overstepping, but there's nothing we can do" is a toxic, cowardly mindset. There's some truth to the fact that some people will carry their personal biases to the end, but your posts look like you took responsibility into your own hands by allegedly investigating something for months, firing off a sloppy, copy-pasted ban wave targeted against specific players in an IC group, *specifically* noting in your response that they apparently took IC action against other factions (?) that other people might not have agreed with (?), and then...

You explain the original, vague, copy-pasted message and re-emphasize your hand-wringing about how you had all the time in the world and you were super on the ball but nothing better could be done.

I'm gonna be real: you flubbed it. Like, you're not protecting anyone by dancing around naming names here, you're just doing very poor theater of it to protect some idea of integrity or a moral high ground for "not making things personal". It's obvious even to your community, as innocent as so many of them seem to be in regards to competitive or violent RP environments.

You should take this as a fuck-up and learn from it, because even if your verdict was correct (I have no way to know if it was), you fucked up on the execution and you're still fucking up on the execution. The moment you copy-pasted the same message to 4 different people, you *created this response*.

EDIT: And by the way, moderators selectively liking posts around the issue *absolutely* inflates the exact perspective that I'm describing

[1starbob]

I think a warning system would be good, and I don't think it's anything to complain about. I don't usually post here, nevermind about like... stuff like this, but genuinely, it's a bit worrying. As someone with severe anxiety disorders, and self confidence issues, there's a whole lot of 'Have **I** done anything wrong?' in my brain right now, and it's scary because it can just apparently happen, with no warning, nor explanation. Which I can imagine would only cause further 'Will it just happen again? I don't know what I did in the first place' in some cases. That's sort of an extremely frightening prospect.

As far as 'retaliation towards those who reported something' goes, shouldn't the people retaliating also be punished? I can't help but feel as if this lack of transparency can easily be countered by simply better enforcing rules against those who'd intend to break them.

I think the idea of it is to avoid retaliation at all, rather then have it happen and then punishing someone for it. Which I can understand. Avoiding the entire retaliation situation by keeping the reporter anonymous seems better. As some people aren't going to want to report stuff if they know they are gonna get yelled at for it. I know I would personally never report anything if I felt that way.