[TDawg4]

Will say that I was not made to post it. I also want to emphasize that the whole team supports this post.

Also, I think that I can provide a somewhat less biased answers as I was not involved in the initial ban decision.

There is a problem if you are the only admin on the team who can provide an unbiased answer.

Staff is told at the beginning that they may have to ban their friends one day and there can't be bias. Its disappointing to hear that proper were not taken to begin with. Even with multiple former senior staff members who should have known better to guide the decision. It seems that there was heavy bias in the decision to initially ban Battons and Jack. What a shame.

Maybe perceived to be less biased would be the better answer.
Also feel free to ask the other admins, but since I am new maybe I can provide a different perspective.

I am just making my self clearly available for questions in this thread.

[dong]

Thank you, Tdawg. One question though. Are there going to be punishments for those who threw out heinous accusations that had no merit?

[Battons]

Actually, I have more I would like to say.
No admin will give me any form of evidence or explanation other than “harassment” and community banned me for 3 months.
None of you ever approached me to try and investigate whatever the issue was.
I explicitly asked one week ago when I was informed of this, to be completely and utterly excluded from any self pat on the back post about how you guys are “gonna do better” or whatever justifies your mental illnesses. You ignored that request. I have no idea what mental gymnastics you did to think it was ok to ignore someone’s request when it directly involves them.
You do not care about victims, you do not care about doing the right thing. If you did, you would’ve instantly unbanned Jack as soon as you learned you all were lied to. Despite me providing both evidence and a literal name you have REFUSED to take action on the person who started the false accusations against Jack.
All you did, was give a dopamine hit to the brain rot twitter rejects that already hated me justification for their hatred when I have and will continue to declare I’ve done nothing wrong. As far as I’m concerned this is all made up.
At least Addressing toxicity had the fucking balls to give me some evidence and proof I did something wrong even if it was stupid. Somehow, you have managed to fuck up worse than they did and that is the literal laughing stock post of the community.
Lastly, you blocked me from defending myself at every single opportunity. You never asked my side, didn’t give me any way to find evidence to disprove claims. Locked my appeal without telling me so I couldn’t answer questions in my own words, and now continue to violate personal requests for your own gain, and reopen wounds for what? Your own pleasure?
I have nothing further to add at this time.

[TDawg4]

Thank you, Tdawg. One question though. Are there going to be punishments for those who threw out heinous accusations that had no merit?

Now that this step has been taken, I imagine the team will take/have the time for the remaining outstanding issue(s) the accusations being one of those. I will say that double punishing for events (back in April) is not something I will support without new information coming forward. For cases where new information has arisen or never got handled, that will for sure be something for the team to take care of.

---

Actually, I have more I would like to say.
No admin will give me any form of evidence or explanation other than “harassment” and community banned me for 3 months.
None of you ever approached me to try and investigate whatever the issue was.
I explicitly asked one week ago when I was informed of this, to be completely and utterly excluded from any self pat on the back post about how you guys are “gonna do better” or whatever justifies your mental illnesses. You ignored that request. I have no idea what mental gymnastics you did to think it was ok to ignore someone’s request when it directly involves them.
You do not care about victims, you do not care about doing the right thing. If you did, you would’ve instantly unbanned Jack as soon as you learned you all were lied to. Despite me providing both evidence and a literal name you have REFUSED to take action on the person who started the false accusations against Jack.
All you did, was give a dopamine hit to the brain rot twitter rejects that already hated me justification for their hatred when I have and will continue to declare I’ve done nothing wrong. As far as I’m concerned this is all made up.
At least Addressing toxicity had the fucking balls to give me some evidence and proof I did something wrong even if it was stupid. Somehow, you have managed to fuck up worse than they did and that is the literal laughing stock post of the community.
Lastly, you blocked me from defending myself at every single opportunity. You never asked my side, didn’t give me any way to find evidence to disprove claims. Locked my appeal without telling me so I couldn’t answer questions in my own words, and now continue to violate personal requests for your own gain, and reopen wounds for what? Your own pleasure?
I have nothing further to add at this time.

As much as I know you hate to hear this and yeah it does suck. This post is not primarily for you or jack. It is for the community members who have been left in the dark and may not have access to all the background information or any information on why you and Jack were banned or unbanned outside of what has been posted on the forums. There is no apology in this post. Whatever apologies that need to be made should be done by individuals. Also it is an opportunity to explain how these types of topics will be handled moving forward.

[chibill]

Will say that I was not made to post it. I also want to emphasize that the whole team supports this post.

Also, I think that I can provide a somewhat less biased answers as I was not involved in the initial ban decision.

There is a problem if you are the only admin on the team who can provide an unbiased answer.

Staff is told at the beginning that they may have to ban their friends one day and there can't be bias. Its disappointing to hear that a proper investigation was not conducted to begin with. Even with multiple former senior staff members who should have known better to guide the decision. It seems that there was heavy bias in the decision to initially ban Battons and Jack. What a shame.

I would like to point out, Tdawg was a fresh set of eyes on the info that didn't already have their own opinions on the matters, as someone who has had many heated augments over these topics due to my own standing on the matter, before the unbans occurred.  Fortunately there was no heavy bias in the decision to do the initial bans, (maybe in the length but that is highly debate-able)  and at the time a proper investigation was carried out, the same for the majority of past bans like these, which most of them never talk to the accused.  While I still vocally disagree with how that investigation took place it did take place.

[Dildo Shwaggins]

Upon reading some of the responses, including Battons, I thought of a point here, and a question for the community related to it. 

It seems like the admin team had a lot of its own turmoil leading to the unbans and this result here- hence Battons' response- the results and this post seemed to have come with a series of compromises attached. What they are doesn't need to necessarily be made public, but I have a feeling that's what happened behind the scenes. (EDIT- chibill's response does indicate this possibly being the case)

Next, I think a lot of this tumult ever since the April drama explosion has been the result of converging Dinks-adjacent spaces having disagreements that blow up in Dinks spaces. I've been on record for finding the admins' handling of occurrences in adjacent spaces being less than optimal (my views align with RyanHighman on this, he's better at writing things like that out than I am for one, but refer to his posts on that topic). 

On that point- adjacent spaces seemed to be at odds to the point where it's visible on server activity and the forum/Dinks discord explosions. But those adjacent spaces being the places on multiple sides to where the drama festered had to have started somewhere, and at least in Dinks spaces, I think it's worthy to ask the community:

Do you think how admins have handled certain things factor into driving people away from Dinks spaces? Do you think the actions of the administration have contributed to/maintained an environment that adjacent spaces are the only places that are enjoyable to be in? How can we identify possible problems before they get this bad?

This isn't to ask "I left because I don't like x person or x admin" but from a broad/big picture look at it. If we understand what factors led up to the mess and what factors still exist to keep a divide going, then things can be in a better spot for all.

[Jammin]

This highlights the need for significant change in how these things are investigated, how communication is handled between alleged victim and alleged harasser, and how appeals/defenses are handled. The fact that this happened is outrageous. I laid out some ideas in the past, but if you want my complete thoughts feel free to DM me.

If what is said is confirmed true, and the "victim" of Jacks wasn't a "victim" whatsoever, strong actions need to be taken. They can be taken privately, no need to announce it - but faking being a victim of harassment invalidates the voices of legitimate victims of harassment - and God knows there's a long history of that bullshit in this community.

On the point of not reaching out to the accused, in 99.9498382947227% of situations that's fine. If a mistake is made, an appeal can be made to correct it. That's why I categorized discord ban appeals during my time as 'Appeal of sentence (aka the facts are not in dispute)' or 'Appeal of ban (aka the mod messed up). The only reason to get their side is when the ability to appeal may be restricted - essentially a timed community ban (or permanent), which is what happened to Jack, and Battons, and others in the past. That's why it is important to make sure you give the accused a voice, to ensure the evidence isn't manipulated, out of context, etc.

Above all I'm hoping we can move on, but I really hope that Jack is given the apology he is owed by the individuals who owe them, and that Battons is left alone.

I hope these two bans will be a one-off mistake, and that the underlying issues that caused this (e.g. not getting thr other side) are swiftly corrected. It seems kinda funny, my comments made privately to the admins when Jack/Battons were first banned, and when they first appealed, are somewhat vindicated now.

Additionally, I'll just say that my respect for Jack, in terms of how he handled this situation this year, has risen immensely. If I were in the same situation, I'm not sure my response would have been handled as well as he handled it even with his response. Jack wants to move forward, and I'm all for it. Jack could be making a much bigger deal about this situation than he is right now - his maturity through this should be a positive influence for other as we move on. (Just don't look at his shitty fantasy football teams, Jesus Christ that shit is bannable)

Also thank you for allowing a discussion thread on this topic to remain open, and thank you for removing the shitposting (and hopefully warning/restricting as needed to ensure this thread remains open).

[J@CK XDDD]

This highlights the need for significant change in how these things are investigated, how communication is handled between alleged victim and alleged harasser, and how appeals/defenses are handled. The fact that this happened is outrageous. I laid out some ideas in the past, but if you want my complete thoughts feel free to DM me.

If what is said is confirmed true, and the "victim" of Jacks wasn't a "victim" whatsoever, strong actions need to be taken. They can be taken privately, no need to announce it - but faking being a victim of harassment invalidates the voices of legitimate victims of harassment - and God knows there's a long history of that bullshit in this community.

On the point of not reaching out to the accused, in 99.9498382947227% of situations that's fine. If a mistake is made, an appeal can be made to correct it. That's why I categorized discord ban appeals during my time as 'Appeal of sentence (aka the facts are not in dispute)' or 'Appeal of ban (aka the mod messed up). The only reason to get their side is when the ability to appeal may be restricted - essentially a timed community ban (or permanent), which is what happened to Jack, and Battons, and others in the past. That's why it is important to make sure you give the accused a voice, to ensure the evidence isn't manipulated, out of context, etc.

Above all I'm hoping we can move on, but I really hope that Jack is given the apology he is owed by the individuals who owe them, and that Battons is left alone.

I hope these two bans will be a one-off mistake, and that the underlying issues that caused this (e.g. not getting thr other side) are swiftly corrected. It seems kinda funny, my comments made privately to the admins when Jack/Battons were first banned, and when they first appealed, are somewhat vindicated now.

Additionally, I'll just say that my respect for Jack, in terms of how he handled this situation this year, has risen immensely. If I were in the same situation, I'm not sure my response would have been handled as well as he handled it even with his response. Jack wants to move forward, and I'm all for it. Jack could be making a much bigger deal about this situation than he is right now - his maturity through this should be a positive influence for other as we move on. (Just don't look at his shitty fantasy football teams, Jesus Christ that shit is bannable)

Also thank you for allowing a discussion thread on this topic to remain open, and thank you for removing the shitposting (and hopefully warning/restricting as needed to ensure this thread remains open).

At the end of the day, this is probably the only thing that will come out of all this which im fine with, and thanks for the kind words brother! it means alot to hear that. Also, who came in last place in fantasy last season.....get some results before you come for my team!

[RyanHighman]

In the case of Jack’s ban, we learned shortly after the ban that our primary “victim” had been lying to us (the admin team) and lying to their friends regarding Jack and close to everything that was going on with him and between them.

Then after the events of April, the team was provided more evidence from the person in question. Additionally, other evidence was gathered from a few others that Jack interacted with. This evidence was used to enact the ban. The ban was heavily based on the merits of the original issue brought but additional information that came in was contributory.

A few days after the ban, Jack reached out to one of the admins and provided his side of some interactions, leading us to find out over time that the majority of our evidence was intentionally cut to avoid context and other exculpatory messages to certain claims were not included. This revelation was the reason for the reduction of the appeal time. 

Over the time period between then and now, even more information has been found that proved the "victim" was lying to the admin team from the start, including leading some of the “victim’s” close friends into believing them as well.

Additionally for a significant piece of evidence, the person submitting the evidence had a misunderstanding as to what the evidence was to be used for. They have since clarified their position changing the team's perception of that evidence. 

I have snipped and formatted this section for brevity and focus. I have a few questions, and I would prefer if @tiefling lesbian, @chibill, or @KaptainLes (current admins that voted on these bans) would answer these, as I would like to see more responses from yall rather than Tdawg posting on behalf of the entire team. I understand that every decision was made as a team, but there should be more transparency and accountability from the individuals. There was a lot of trust lost among a lot of people. It's going to take more than an admin announcement to start earning that back.

1) If it was found so shortly after the ban took place that the majority of key evidence was falsified, does that mean that the remaining evidence was enough to justify a Permanent All-Server Ban with a 3 month appeal date?

2) Was there new evidence brought to the admin team between the decision to reduce the appeal time to 3 months and the decision to accept Jack's appeal? If not, what changed in that time for the team to come to a different conclusion (keeping the ban and reducing the appeal date vs. removing the ban entirely)?

3) What criteria was going to be used to decide on these appeals if no counter-evidence had been brought forward? They were banned from every corner of Dinks, giving them no opportunity to show growth or change. Setting appeal dates but not releasing any info to the accused was the biggest question mark in this whole thing, as it gave the appearance of uncertainty in the bans right from the get-go.

I have mentioned it in the past, but this is a clear cut example of the consequences. Evidence without context is useless. Even if you know that there was nothing relevant in the surrounding 10 messages, the people reviewing the evidence dont. Partial screenshots or screenshots that dont show surrounding messages just wont cut it for bans of this magnitude. This also goes for staff accepting evidence. If there is possible surrounding context, ask for it.

I think a lot of this tumult ever since the April drama explosion has been the result of converging Dinks-adjacent spaces having disagreements that blow up in Dinks spaces. I've been on record for finding the admins' handling of occurrences in adjacent spaces being less than optimal (my views align with RyanHighman on this, he's better at writing things like that out than I am for one, but refer to his posts on that topic). 

I think the way that I've worded this in the past is like this:

Actions outside the community should not be staffed by Dinks unless it involves harassment, grooming, or other crimes of that nature. The only other time evidence could be gathered from other servers is if it is direct evidence of rule breaking within our community.

Theoretically, if Jack's ban was valid, it would be a case where outside evidence is acceptable. On the flip side, the usage of slurs or other banned language is an example of actions that should not be taken into account or used as evidence unless there is supporting evidence to show that they were used to harass someone.

[chibill]

(Fyi at work on my lunch break, so expect grammar and spelling errors)

To answer, #1 and #2, on 4/21 it was brough up that a small portion of the evidence appeared to be missing extra context aside for the exhcange of messes in it. (That being context outside the 10 or so messages in that singular piece of evidenece) on 7/8 it was found thaf much more, if not nearly all of the evidence from that person was null and void. Leaving just the evidence of a different person that was mentioned in the original post here.