[Jammin]

Maybe just DMing an admin would have been enough. Admins and the Discord group talk about it; you get a slap on the wrist or no punishment instead. your strike gets removed and we call it a day. No drama.

TBH friend, i'm OK with this particular thread. It's directed at me but not in a threatening manner (like other instances). It's meant to faciliate a public discussion - and that's what transparency is about, right?

[Tedgp908]

I think you are misunderstanding Discord TOS in a situation like this. The Discord Community Guidelines are an extension of the TOS, which references using ban evasion/methods of circumventing bans as a break in TOS, however, this is only in reference to Discord related evasion (either circumventing user blocks on Discord or Discord server bans). Their TOS covers other issues regarding games, circumventing, etc. but not in reference to forum ban evading.

Finally someone else who’s actually read the TOS!

[La Flama Blanca]

If nicky said this too, why hasn't nicky been warned for "offering methods of evasion"?

I think it is quite transparent at this point that staff are above the rules

[B0T.ikillyou]

Maybe just DMing an admin would have been enough. Admins and the Discord group talk about it; you get a slap on the wrist or no punishment instead. your strike gets removed and we call it a day. No drama.

Honestly I agree with this. There are a lot that goes into discord moderation and things do get really complex when you put both the discord server rules and the Discord TOS/community guidelines together. I can see both sides of the situation but it sounds like it was a misunderstanding at the end of the day. I think that we can address this amongst the discord staff team and just remove the strike. It was a joke that people use all the time. 

I hope we can put this all behind us and work through improving on this from this point on. 

-B0T

[Battons]

I hope we can put this all behind us and work through improving on this from this point on. 

-B0T

How dare you try to calm people down im just gonna go find something else to be pissed off at!!!

[Jammin]

-snip-
I hit post before I finished my post so an addition to this:
I never wrote the Discord staff guidelines to be this strict. It followed a method I know works well of informing before warning. I understand I've been gone so things may have been changed but considering the accused Moderator in this situation has said they ignore the guidelines, that should be looked into considering this situation.  At most, it's a joke, and I highly doubt it will cause an issue that is already well known in the Gmod community. I honestly think it's a sad excuse to keep a warning on someone. There have been many discussions on how ban evading works, and I'm sure you can find this same information here on the forums or anywhere online.

Noticed there was an update to this post and wanted to address the "ignore the guidelines" post. I made this statement on Avi's "i'm back" thread here (click the arrow below for the full thread).

Aren't you the one who wrote the discord moderation guidelines that I keep ignoring?

Noting that the date was yesterday, April 1st - also known as April Fool's day, I think it can be also termed as a shitpost. The statement about me ignoring the guidelines has about the same amount of seriousness as Nicol's resignation post yesterday. The guidelines that Avi wrote - which by the way all discord staff follow - can be found here for anyone else curious as to what discord staff follow when staffing.

If someone wishes to perform an investigation, that is fine by me. I would be happy to supply any info needed to an unbiased investigator, should that be deemed necessary. But since the vast majority of my actions taken are verbal warnings, anybody can do that using the search bar.

The last time a thread like this was made against me, I was following the discord guidelines - I issued a verbal warning against someone who was discussing a subject matter better left unspoken here - lets just say it violates discord community guideline #7. I acted very quickly (as I was staffing TTT and didn't have time to fully investigate the matter) to issue a verbal warning. It wasn't clear at the time that it was "mailcious misconduct" in breaking discord TOS (and in a very serious manner at that), so I only issued a verbal warning - per the guidelines (i also note that I did not see all of the posts, I only saw two people arguing about the subject matter and one suspicious post, which i deleted. All parties were verbally warned, in hopes that the subject matter would be dropped). This thread then emerged, which degraded into potential legal action being levied at me - a threat that was made because I followed the guidelines as written. They are not "ignored" as i've been accused - but since that day I have made the decision to act on my best judgement, while using the guidelines as just that - guidelines on what actions are taken - not gospel to fixate every move I make.

At the end of the day I should not have struck Gabe - I should have just issued a verbal warning. That much everyone is in agreement on
Was it a joke? Yes, in context. Do I have that context now? Yes, I have it now. Was his post still a problem? Opinions differ. I think the concept of promoting ban evasion is not a good thing, but I saw this as being an identical issue with promoting cheats - which IS a discord TOS issue (community guideline #13 for those who actually read it). Clearly, the issue does not fall under that. I was calling an apple an orange, and preparing orange juice accordingly when I should have been making apple pie.

So how do we move forward?
1. Removing Gabe's strike. All of us are in favor of that, Gabe has already appealed it, and it is just awaiting an admin to press the check mark (I can't do it because our current implementation suggests an admin should take the action - and I follow the guidelines)
2. Lets clarify the rule on discussion of ban evasion - do we draw any line? if so what is that line?
3. I, as the discord staff in question, will ensure a verbal warning occurs (and internally document the warning, so future punishments are clear).
4. What can everyone else in the community do? Consider getting involved, become a discord helper! Mistakes like this often happen because we, who literally staff discord for no reason other than to better the community that brings us joy, are only doing this outside of our normal lives. If I see someone posting questionable, I'm not going to let it sit up there just because i'm not "available" - that would be irresponsible. If I knew there was a solid team online (outside of the two very awesome staff members I work with now!) who could handle the situation, I would be able to let someone else handle the situation, without fear of something bad happening. 2 moderators and 1 helper is a very lean discord staff team for a discord of 4100+ members. 
5. Cut us some slack. We are trying. Again, 3 staff members (+ admins, but staffing discord isn't their primary focus as admins) vs 4100 members. Another gaming community that I am part of has 3 moderators for 300 members. We can't do a Warren report investigation on every single incident that happens.

Thanks all. I hope to continue to be of service to the community in the discord staff role for the forseeable future.

[RussEfarmer]

getting warned for saying you need a vpn to evade a forum ban is like getting arrested for telling someone they need a car to get a speeding ticket

[lacer]

getting warned for saying you need a vpn to evade a forum ban is like getting arrested for telling someone they need a car to get a speeding ticket

mailing you a ticket rn you're done buddy

[Battons]

Per the request of our discord staff team I removed the strike on you. Seemed a bit too jumpy to suddenly begin issuing a warn for this and we made sure the team understands why we are removing the strike. Thank you for making this known to me Gabe.