[Ryan]

(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.

Thank you. That clears up quite a bit, actually.

Follow-up question 1) Was it immediately apparent on 4/21 that the context was intentionally omitted? If so, what was the reasoning for trusting the rest of the evidence brought forth by this person and still not giving the accused a chance to provide context to the matter? Was the remaining evidence really that damning to the point where it was unfathomable that there could be any explanation for it?

Follow-up question 2) Was the person that changed the context of the evidence they provided someone that was approached by the admin team, or did they come forward all on their own without any prompting? If they were approached by the admin team, how did the miscommunication stated in Tdawg's original post happen? Did they simply fail to understand the use of what they were sharing, or were they misled, not told at all?

[chibill]

Your going to get a different answer for followup #1 from everyone you ask, because we all had our own opinions. And believe me, I wanted to asked the accused, but hey when your out numbered by the "we have to protect the victims" crowd (of which one resigned after it was revealed the main victim lied to us. (Who also resigned around that same time))

As for follow up #2, actually unsure on this, since it was two admins that brought it up initally in March, then it was handled in March and re-ignited by one of those two admins in April when theu resigned. I am not sure if the that person came to us after that happened or if we went to them.

As for the referenced miscommunitcation, that is a totally different person that was asked by an admin about a message they posted in a private discord about bring it to the admin team. The misconnunication was not mentioning it was going to be used as evidence for a ban.

[Starling]

Your going to get a different answer for followup #1 from everyone you ask, because we all had our own opinions. And believe me, I wanted to asked the accused, but hey when your out numbered by the "we have to protect the victims" crowd (of which one resigned after it was revealed the main victim lied to us. (Who also resigned around that same time))

As for follow up #2, actually unsure on this, since it was two admins that brought it up initally in March, then it was handled in March and re-ignited by one of those two admins in April when theu resigned. I am not sure if the that person came to us after that happened or if we went to them.

As for the referenced miscommunitcation, that is a totally different person that was asked by an admin about a message they posted in a private discord about bring it to the admin team. The misconnunication was not mentioning it was going to be used as evidence for a ban.

I'm sorry but all that I have seen here so far are excuses for what transpired. This is precisely why the "we have to protect the victims" mentality does not work in a he said/she said/we said/they said situation. Not only have the two individuals named in this post have had their reputation torn to shreds by members in this community because the admins in question failed to investigate the situation to the full extent, but even their friends have been harassed and branded as a bad person just for associating with them. 

The scenario has happened where the "victim" in question started a full-blown witch hunt that went on months on end because they and their group did not like a specific individual/group within the community. Numerous people who associated with these members were not only harassed and had their character ripped apart and questioned by the "victim"s friend group, but by the admins within this community as well. This went as far as the admins here reaching out to the Gmod community that the group members had left Dinks for to not only harass them and have an attempt to destroy their character outside of Dinks, but as well as attempted to have them removed from said community.  

So far no one has reached out to anyone to offer any sort of apology or admit fault in a situation that could of been avoided if any of the admins had properly investigated the claims given by the "victim" in question. It took the accused numerous times of reaching out to an admin before anyone would hear their side of the situation but even then that fell on deaf ears because the admins who were friends with said "victim" refused to hear the other side of the situation. It took weeks before anyone would properly hear the side of the story of the accused, but even then nothing was immediately done due to the bias on the admin team.

As for the "I wanted to asked the accused, but hey when your out numbered by the "we have to protect the victims" crowd" is just a plain excuse. You hold the position of an admin, this community is suppose to be able to trust that you are capable of holding and defending a different view  without getting bulldozed by the louder admins on the team. So far all I have seen here is that majority of the admin team here is unable to hold their own opinion without being influenced by biased judgement.

[chibill]

Your going to get a different answer for followup #1 from everyone you ask, because we all had our own opinions. And believe me, I wanted to asked the accused, but hey when your out numbered by the "we have to protect the victims" crowd (of which one resigned after it was revealed the main victim lied to us. (Who also resigned around that same time))

As for follow up #2, actually unsure on this, since it was two admins that brought it up initally in March, then it was handled in March and re-ignited by one of those two admins in April when theu resigned. I am not sure if the that person came to us after that happened or if we went to them.

As for the referenced miscommunitcation, that is a totally different person that was asked by an admin about a message they posted in a private discord about bring it to the admin team. The misconnunication was not mentioning it was going to be used as evidence for a ban.

I'm sorry but all that I have seen here so far are excuses for what transpired. This is precisely why the "we have to protect the victims" mentality does not work in a he said/she said/we said/they said situation. Not only have the two individuals named in this post have had their reputation torn to shreds by members in this community because the admins in question failed to investigate the situation to the full extent, but even their friends have been harassed and branded as a bad person just for associating with them. 

The scenario has happened where the "victim" in question started a full-blown witch hunt that went on months on end because they and their group did not like a specific individual/group within the community. Numerous people who associated with these members were not only harassed and had their character ripped apart and questioned by the "victim"s friend group, but by the admins within this community as well. This went as far as the admins here reaching out to the Gmod community that the group members had left Dinks for to not only harass them and have an attempt to destroy their character outside of Dinks, but as well as attempted to have them removed from said community.  

So far no one has reached out to anyone to offer any sort of apology or admit fault in a situation that could of been avoided if any of the admins had properly investigated the claims given by the "victim" in question. It took the accused numerous times of reaching out to an admin before anyone would hear their side of the situation but even then that fell on deaf ears because the admins who were friends with said "victim" refused to hear the other side of the situation. It took weeks before anyone would properly hear the side of the story of the accused, but even then nothing was immediately done due to the bias on the admin team.

As for the "I wanted to asked the accused, but hey when your out numbered by the "we have to protect the victims" crowd" is just a plain excuse. You hold the position of an admin, this community is suppose to be able to trust that you are capable of holding and defending a different view  without getting bulldozed by the louder admins on the team. So far all I have seen here is that majority of the admin team here is unable to hold their own opinion without being influenced by biased judgement.

As far as I am aware the myraid reached out to us, not the other way around.

Additionally, no one has brought forward any claims of harassment, and if they do now that you have made this claim I expect evidence.

[poop MANIAC(fecal frenzy!!!!!!!!]

This is a very critical error and disgusting breach of trust caused by a lack of due diligence by a volunteer body of staffers. To all involved; your hands were not forced, you elected yourselves into your positions, and you have clearly demonstrated an inability to perform if a mistake of this magnitude was allowed to happen to preserve the sanctity of your cliques(protect the victim- if ever there was a more flimsy excuse). Every day this gentleman was banned is a gross and avoidable violation and frankly, the only decent thing for the responsible parties to do is resign. The official statement is a request for patience and the benefit of the doubt, both of which were clearly not afforded to the victims of this "saga," though I would hardly call a prolonged episode of abuse something so flippantly dismissive.  

In fact, benefit of the doubt is something that seems in rather short supply for much of the non-staff community at large. If a normal player can't simply apologize or make excuses and be free from all consequences, then it is a terrible double-standard that any staff involved in this debacle can. We can talk about "moving forward" all we want but at the end of the day either everyone has to play ball or nobody does. This is not simply something that can be handwaved as an "oopsie-daisy!." This level of abuse cannot be tolerated, and yes it is abuse. Ignorance does not excuse toxic behavior.

[Battons]

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.

I don’t know much else about the other stuff you wrote but I’ll gladly answer question 1 for you Ryan.
Person 1 who “reported” Jack didn’t actually report Jack, they simply were asked for a conversation and provided it explicitly stating “DO NOT USE AS EVIDENCE” but we know for a fact it was used anyways.
Person 2 who actually reported Jack falsified nearly every detail about the situation which was described to the admins, and I don’t know what they’ve seen, it’s probably real conversations I doubt anyone would fake it, but the context of the conversations was completely fabricated. We know this because that’s how Jack was able to get a shortened ban length. This person still remains unpunished for their actions and various other predatory behaviors behind the scenes.

[Ryan]

If what you are saying is true about person 1, then this would go from being a mistake to the equivalent of malicious prosecution. I’m not asking for it to be shared publicly, but you have proof of this, yes?

[Icey]

How about we post the admin conversations had during this time? No more of the he-said she-said and let people see the decision making process.

[The Dutch Problem]

The claim double punishment isn't what you guys want to do for no reason wich in on itself is fair enough, however the problem I am seeing here as an outside viewer is the simple fact that these people, members of the community at one point, have casually fucking lied to get a person banned, get their reputation dragged through the Mariana Trench and caused potentially significantly mental anguish, yet these people still seem to be deserving of A: The Victim's Banner of Anonymity and B: The Unknown Punishment wich is insane to me. Since we're being left out the loop what that punishment was it can just as easely appear that the punishment was "Now you rapscallion, don't you do that again!" whilst I think people would agree with me if I say this should be a Community Ban.

EDITED A PART OUT I GOT WOEFULLY WRONG, THANKS TO ALL OF Y'ALL FOR TELLIN ME!

[Ryan]

Responding to Dutch: It seems person 1 was asked for a specific convo, and supplied that convo while also asking it not be used as evidence for a ban.I don’t hold them to any fault.

Edit: This was not completely the case. There was not an explicit request to not use the convo as evidence for a ban when it was being supplied.