09-06-2024, 09:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-06-2024, 10:28 PM by Ryan722. Edited 2 times in total.
Edit Reason: fixed wording
)
Would like to chime in on this, sorry in advance if this is long.
I was not a part of the admin team for the April ban decisions, but I would like to take partial responsibility for the inaction in rectifying the situation. Reading through the rationale for the bans from the admins at the time, I wasn't completely in agreement with the decisions for the bans, or at least the lengths of them, but for more fundamental reasons than evidence that would turn out to be faulty (which had not yet come to light). I'll speak more to that in a bit. Regardless, through the lens the admins at the time viewed the situation through, I understood the perspective and agreed that the bans were justified. To give some context behind (though not to excuse) my failure to take action, I've been generally busy with travels pretty much since I was promoted to web admin, which has made it difficult most of the time to stay on top of everything, and even moreso to advocate for fundamental change to pre-existing processes. If I were a better and more available admin I would have sniffed these issues out sooner and pushed for change sooner, but I didn't do those things and I apologize for that.
Speaking to the bans themselves, to give my perspective and clear up any confusion there may be, here's how I see how it went down. The admins received evidence from multiple people of Battons and Jack both speaking to/about them in (sometimes very) inappropriate ways. Taking into account what context was available (though it would have been warranted to investigate for more context), the conclusion was made that there was a trend in this inappropriate behavior to the point that serious action was needed, which ended up being the temporarily unappealable permanent all-server bans. Over the course of the following months, more context/evidence came to light that greatly changed the perceived severity of Jack's behavior in particular, and ultimately led to his unban.
In my opinion, the core of the issue with how these bans were handled in the first place (imperfect evidence aside) is the question of protecting victim anonymity without sacrificing due process for the accused. This is not a simple issue. We do not want to violate the trust of victims who come forward to us, and similarly do not want to discourage others from coming forward in the future. That's the underlying reason for the whole song and dance of "this person has been punished for [vague reason] and we can't provide the evidence". I understand people are frustrated by it and it may sound silly, but it is done with the best of intentions, and I truly believe that is the case for all admins on the team. That said, it puts the accused in the tough position of being virtually unable to defend themselves, and it puts us in the tough position of convincing the community the ban was justified even without providing them evidence. Furthermore, it makes the appeal process exceedingly dumb (as it was with these bans). I'm personally of the opinion that we should handle this balance of expected confidentiality differently for permanently unappealable community bans, versus these relatively new "all-server" bans. I'm in support of maintaining the current approach for issues deserving of a community ban (truly deplorable shit, don't think I need to name specifics). But for less severe bans ending in temporarily unappealable all-server bans, I'm coming to the personal conclusion that anonymity might not be *as* vital.
In my ideal approach to these sorts of issues, it would look something like this: if Person A reaches out to us saying that Person B has said some things that made them uncomfortable, we either ask that they tell them to stop, or have an admin step in to do it for them. The argument has been made that this is not always easy to do for the victim due to power-imbalance, fear of being ostracized or harassed, etc. I understand this argument. But imo it's not sustainable to keep up this model of tallying offenses to the point of a ban when the offender may not even realize they've offended. If Person A is truly uncomfortable saying something themselves, an admin can relay the message for them. If subsequent issues of ostracization/harassment come up, they can be dealt with accordingly. If trends of discomfort-inducing behaviors continue after this, long-term bans can be considered. But overall I feel we should be more generous with the Discord block button, or if possible at least with telling people "hey cut that shit out". Again to be clear, this is all barring really egregious examples.
I think it's untrue that bias amongst the admins played a big part in the decisions to make the bans and uphold them as long as they were. Rather, I think it was a failure to thoroughly investigate as much as possible, as well as a flaw in the underlying approach to investigating and carrying out bans like this. I feel that improving our process for handling these sorts of situations will increase transparency, hopefully repair some of the trust towards the admin team and within the community, and in the long term ideally reduce the number of people who feel uncomfortable or harassed within the community.
Note that none of this represents the views of the admin team as a whole, this is my opinion on the matter. Happy to discuss in this thread or in DMs.
I was not a part of the admin team for the April ban decisions, but I would like to take partial responsibility for the inaction in rectifying the situation. Reading through the rationale for the bans from the admins at the time, I wasn't completely in agreement with the decisions for the bans, or at least the lengths of them, but for more fundamental reasons than evidence that would turn out to be faulty (which had not yet come to light). I'll speak more to that in a bit. Regardless, through the lens the admins at the time viewed the situation through, I understood the perspective and agreed that the bans were justified. To give some context behind (though not to excuse) my failure to take action, I've been generally busy with travels pretty much since I was promoted to web admin, which has made it difficult most of the time to stay on top of everything, and even moreso to advocate for fundamental change to pre-existing processes. If I were a better and more available admin I would have sniffed these issues out sooner and pushed for change sooner, but I didn't do those things and I apologize for that.
Speaking to the bans themselves, to give my perspective and clear up any confusion there may be, here's how I see how it went down. The admins received evidence from multiple people of Battons and Jack both speaking to/about them in (sometimes very) inappropriate ways. Taking into account what context was available (though it would have been warranted to investigate for more context), the conclusion was made that there was a trend in this inappropriate behavior to the point that serious action was needed, which ended up being the temporarily unappealable permanent all-server bans. Over the course of the following months, more context/evidence came to light that greatly changed the perceived severity of Jack's behavior in particular, and ultimately led to his unban.
In my opinion, the core of the issue with how these bans were handled in the first place (imperfect evidence aside) is the question of protecting victim anonymity without sacrificing due process for the accused. This is not a simple issue. We do not want to violate the trust of victims who come forward to us, and similarly do not want to discourage others from coming forward in the future. That's the underlying reason for the whole song and dance of "this person has been punished for [vague reason] and we can't provide the evidence". I understand people are frustrated by it and it may sound silly, but it is done with the best of intentions, and I truly believe that is the case for all admins on the team. That said, it puts the accused in the tough position of being virtually unable to defend themselves, and it puts us in the tough position of convincing the community the ban was justified even without providing them evidence. Furthermore, it makes the appeal process exceedingly dumb (as it was with these bans). I'm personally of the opinion that we should handle this balance of expected confidentiality differently for permanently unappealable community bans, versus these relatively new "all-server" bans. I'm in support of maintaining the current approach for issues deserving of a community ban (truly deplorable shit, don't think I need to name specifics). But for less severe bans ending in temporarily unappealable all-server bans, I'm coming to the personal conclusion that anonymity might not be *as* vital.
In my ideal approach to these sorts of issues, it would look something like this: if Person A reaches out to us saying that Person B has said some things that made them uncomfortable, we either ask that they tell them to stop, or have an admin step in to do it for them. The argument has been made that this is not always easy to do for the victim due to power-imbalance, fear of being ostracized or harassed, etc. I understand this argument. But imo it's not sustainable to keep up this model of tallying offenses to the point of a ban when the offender may not even realize they've offended. If Person A is truly uncomfortable saying something themselves, an admin can relay the message for them. If subsequent issues of ostracization/harassment come up, they can be dealt with accordingly. If trends of discomfort-inducing behaviors continue after this, long-term bans can be considered. But overall I feel we should be more generous with the Discord block button, or if possible at least with telling people "hey cut that shit out". Again to be clear, this is all barring really egregious examples.
I think it's untrue that bias amongst the admins played a big part in the decisions to make the bans and uphold them as long as they were. Rather, I think it was a failure to thoroughly investigate as much as possible, as well as a flaw in the underlying approach to investigating and carrying out bans like this. I feel that improving our process for handling these sorts of situations will increase transparency, hopefully repair some of the trust towards the admin team and within the community, and in the long term ideally reduce the number of people who feel uncomfortable or harassed within the community.
Note that none of this represents the views of the admin team as a whole, this is my opinion on the matter. Happy to discuss in this thread or in DMs.
