[TDawg4]

Dear Dinkleberg's,

I want to begin on behalf of the whole admin team by asking again that whoever has knowledge of anyone who provided evidence or anything directly about the evidence (let it be by investigating yourself or being a resigned admin) to please avoid harassing any of them, and do not attempt to shame them in any way. This is not an accusation, just a reminder.

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. This started (for the majority of the admin team) before he applied for Trusted in March of this year when the admin team did take an action of telling him to leave said person alone. 

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. In our goal to “Protect the victims” we did not confront Jack or ask him about anything relating to our investigation. This was a mistake. Toward the end of this section we will talk more about how we will handle analogous situations going forward. 

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. 

Moving forward. I think anyone who is being honest can think up a situation where there is not a need or a benefit to reaching out to someone accused before a ban (if you can't I can provide you one). It happens all the time on just the TTT Server. On top of that if there is significant evidence coming from enough different quality sources that could be convincing. HOWEVER, This was a case where the evidence presented was not at high enough quality or severity for the team to handle this ban the way we did. The team moving forward will be looking for screenshots that include the surrounding context, not cut to the exact line where the message stops. There have been concerns as to "photoshopped" evidence. Yes, the team can't say that it is impossible to truly fake evidence and if we get to that point this is something that may have to be handled after a ban goes through. 

The goal then will be that even if we do decide to ban before "hearing out the other side" that will be the immediate next step. Hopefully, the Admin team as a whole will be poised to handle that as needed and continue to investigate after the ban resulting in a much quicker resolution (either affirming or reversing the ban).


For Battons' ban there is much less to say on the ban itself. The unfounded allegations made against Battons' that ended up being the flashpoint for this hopefully now ending saga are not the reason he was banned. However, through the investigation and controversy surrounding those allegations other unrelated information arose. The admin team felt like it would be unjust to ignore this information despite the circumstances, and so decided and still holds that the initial ban was justifiable. Battons' ban reason was harassment. The admin team held and still holds that Battons took action(s) that had the intention to demean and intimidate community member(s). Battons was unbanned because of his response to the ban as well as the severity of the original issue. 

There is a lot that needs to be said on harassment. Harassment is pretty broad, and probably is one of the least favorite words of the Dinkleberg community for a variety of reasons. I want to take the opportunity to explain what the admin team means when we say harassment in these types of areas where it is a bit more gray. Harassment on server or directly related to server stuff is pretty easy. A person is saying things or communicating to another person in a way that is violating a verbally enforced boundary or one that is enforced by server rules or perhaps even common sense. Harassment is 10 points on the TTT server, but does include a clause for a permaban for a repeated offense or an extreme offense. Harassment on the server is easy. You can just ban the person and they are no longer on the server. When we start to look between community members things outside the server become much more hazy. 

Should server rules for boundaries apply everywhere? Do we have a set behavior code that is general for all members of our community? If there is not an explicit boundary broken is it harassment? All these questions (except maybe the first) have to be answered on something of a continuum. Yes. If we find out you are convicted of some shit you likely won't be able to stick around, but If we find out that someone is using slurs in dms or even in an adjacent discord that is not something that should be coming up as a punishable issue. But interactions between community members is harder. We have some responsibility there as the community is a shared space. And personal issues do and will come into the shared space no matter what. If someone is being harassed outside of dinks, they will want to avoid coming into the shared space if that person is there. 

The goal then is to figure out what requests are reasonable for community members to make. The community should hopefully agree that if a community is messaging another past a block including even doxing them and threatening to show up at their house, then we should get rid of the harasser and allow the other community member to remain. (this is pure hypothetical) However, if two community members get into an argument and one eventually calls the other a slur in dms but ends engaging after a boundary is set or they are blocked, then we probably are not going to ban or possibly even punish that person off of just this event. (this is also a hypo) (staff standards are also different). 
So how these situations should be handled will be somewhere between these two extremes. 

Another issue is venue. If the harassment is coming just from some problem guest on TTT then yeah just ban from TTT. However, when it comes to interaction between community members especially involved members there is concern between the various media that Dinklebergs has. Personal issues in dms or on other servers could arise in any venue and only restricting a player from the discord could leave the door open for harassment to occur on server making a victim of harassment hesitant to play on server or in vice versa type or join calls in discord. 

This post's (I know it's long) primary goal is to provide closure to the community. You all have been left mostly in the dark. Hopefully this post sets the record a little bit more straight, but demonstrates why these issues are difficult and provide something of a rubric for moving forward. 

Going to leave this thread open and I will do my best to respond to posts. You know the drill stay on topic for the responses (this is a serious thread, be at the least, mostly serious). Thank you.