[Jammin]

NotRand,

Thanks for taking the time to issue a well-thought out unban request in regards to Tuesday morning's schenanigans. Your honesty is well appreciated.

All of you involved in the situation received strikes for shitposting and/or slur usage - the shitposting mainly from enormous discord messages where entire threads were posted (not just linked), while the slurs were typed to side-step the auto-filter.
Two persons involved received bans - derp and NotRand. Three received strikes - NotRand, Laced, and Deadpool (a fourth person also received a strike due to slurs, but I don't believe that person was coordinating in the incident). Laced received an auto-mute from the Auttaja bot, which restricted actions post-strike, so no further action was taken on him. Deadpool ceased with shiposting after the strike.

To be clear, neither deadpool nor notrand used slurs during the incident; their strikes were for shitposting and trolling alone.
That being said, all four brought up needless drama - whether that be from linking to past slurs, bringing up various points of dinks drama of days gone by, etc. There's a reason why we restrict the discord server from these kind of discussions - actual discussions on transparancy, where there is legitimate concern of rulebreaking or wrongdoing by the dinklebergs staff team, should be brought up here on the forums. For the 85% of people who join dinks to play video games, the discord is not a welcoming environment when points of cringey drama of the past are stirred up to light. While i'm not about burying all of Dink's history, I am also not in support of bringing up all of the mud in the #general channel of discord all in one setting. Is dinkleberg drama of the past worthwhile discussing? Perhaps - but the current established practice is to not have this conversation in the #general channel. It has been suggested in the past to create a channel for discussions like this, so that those who don't want to be involved in the drama can simply mute that channel - if we get more discord staff, this may be possible in the future. I don't want the discord to become a haven for toxicity, but I don't want it to become a haven for censorship either. Ideally, the discord will strike a delicate balance that allows for the important discussions about the operations of dinklebergs to occur, while yet allowing the majority of the discord group to just hang out while playing video games.

Another note, yes we have all been on edge recently due to the illegal activity taking place on one of the gaming servers. Unfortunately, our server seems to be one of the first targetted by the culprit. But I think we all have to take a step back and realize that, while the actions taking place were annoying as hell, when compared to the illegal activity we are all on the same team - the drama llamas and the admins both want this guy to get caught - and the admins should not issue punishment on the community that is meant for the actual criminal in this case.

Back to the unban - Why did NotRand get banned? Simply put, there were 3 factors going into this:
1. He just got off of a 3-month ban for leaking staff chat, albiet this ban was not linked to the discord in any way
2. He was the only person to ignore my "final warning" message prior to being muted, then banned
3. Raiding is technically a TOS issue, so by me not permanently banning is technically generious per the current guidelines
4. There was an aspect of "guilt by association" that played a role here - as there often is when raids occur.

Aspect 3 and 4 were factors in the ban that should not have been. This was not a real raid as defined by discord TOS, just coordinated stupidity from known sources. This wasn't something that falls under a TOS situation.

All of that being said, the ban length is very excessive - I'll admit to acting in a very tired mindset (as this happened at 4 AM my time), and chose a very arbitrary time for the ban length. Essentially, I intended the ban as a way to get an explanation as to the activities that occurred, and the actions taken by Rand that night. Should I have done so? Ehh, debatable - an extended mute could have solved the issue had I done so earlier in the evening. Just as the temporary forum bans were meant as a "timeout" period to stop the activity that was devolving the conversation into chaos, keeping the mute on for a few hours, then deciding on an extended length would probably have been a better way to handle the situation.

After consultation with the discord staff team, we agree that a REDUCTION is the best course of action here. The staff were inclined to a 2-3 week total reduction - I think given all of the circumstances involved in the ban, the community's feedback, and Rand's own recommended punishment of a week or two, I feel that a 2-week ban in the discord is the best course of action here.

Your ban will be lifted now with a mute applied - this will be lifted 2 weeks from the initial mute applied, on Tuesday, July 6th. If your mute is not released by that date, please contact me so it can be released.
Edit: Unable to apply the mute as originally stated due to discord limitations
Edit2: mute applied