[Ryan]

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.