In all hinestly i can hardly agree with this sanction, and i can also call it somewhat heavier than what it should have been. I can say that such a spontaneous ban with no warning or whatsoever is anything but good conducting. I strongly agree with Wildkins up there, Omicega brought some good points despite the way he unfolds them in his posts. Garret is also rightful to wonder about what did these people do in such a short period of time to become so harmful to the community as to get a permanent ban without any warning whatsoever. But beside that such also leaves people some certain impressions;
(06-30-2016, 01:01 AM)Omicega Wrote: I wonder if any of the staff involved in banning @Karst in particular took the time to think what he's been through in his recent months trying his hardest to contribute here - the man literally devoted hours and hours of his time to trying to improve the terribly, woefully flawed mining system that @LordVipex pushed out, was repeatedly and constantly ignored - and then, somehow, managed to "prove himself harmful to the community - SO harmful to the community, in fact, that it warranted an out-of-the-blue, straight up permanent ban. (???)
That being a good example what such does is giving people Impressions like this; I guess having an opinion that may be different that is yielded in the form of criticism makes you a bad member. Such is a good way to have people lose confidence. Perhaps omi is getting banned after his posts, for something similar to this reason or maybe its gonna be me too or anyone else at this point and i personally doubt that this thread or any other will have any impact whatsoever.
This is the most important of what i have to say. And to answer garrets question this seems very fishy if you look back at a specific threads and posts , ill keep it at generaly speaking too, what have those people been posting at. Could be a coincidence for all i know. But hey its quite dangerous for me to be going deeper into that rabbit hole. I just wanted to get my point across and thats it.
Of course things will stabilize again in the near future like they always do.
This has been a rollercoaster to wake up to. And not a fun one either, more like one your mother forces you onto so that she can get some pictures for the family album.
The banning of these members is honestly ridiculous and blatantly insane. Here's why:
1.) They contributed to the community. There are various ways that individuals can contribute to the community: donating, supporting other players, making models, creating factions, even the simple act of logging into the server helps the community in the smallest of ways. These players have done all these things, and more. Karst challenged a broken and unfair mining system, Impy pointed out loopholes and inconsistencies within the rules that required checking, Lyth raised The Core, for all it's 'popularity', which stands as an active faction to the game. How are we supposed to stand by and let this contribution go to waste? How long will it be before any one else within the community deemed toxic gets the banhammer? Does contributing even matter at all now that once certain people are done with you they'll toss you into the pit of no return? The banning of these people clearly shows to us that contribution is wrong, or something along those lines.
2.) They're active players. And I'm not talking seasonally. These people continuously log for their factions day after day, week after week, month after month. They post their FSRs with diligence. They post RP with finesse. Together, they help keep Discovery interesting every hour of the day with new roleplay, faction development, PvP events and so on and so forth. Look at the player list, christ sake. Tell me you aren't worried that one day you'll log on to be the only one the server. How does banning these people solve that issue? How does it fix anything? Where was the warning?
3.) Their banning is a warning. Now that these valuable people of the community are gone, where are we going? Receeding back into inactivity, just to die one day? These were people who were passionate about this mod. These were people that contributed to their mod. And what did they receive? A firm banhammer to the head. Now it's just a game of watching. Let's watch and see how many more people are deemed 'toxic to the community' before receiving a Soviet execution that would make Orwell proud. Orwellian, is that the word I'm looking for?
It is in everyone's best interest to see the team repeal these sanctions. Even if you had strong feelings against these people, you must speak up now, or else we'd all be met with a similar fate.
Banning Karst was complete BS. He's one of the most helpful people I know currently on the server, and he's just permabanned without warning? I mean hell, even I was given a million warnings before getting my hard drive blocked, and I've hardly done anything to benefit the community besides logging every now and then. So what has he done that was so evil? He's the exact opposite of toxic, so what the hell?
I feel the same about the others too, despite how much I dislike Impy and Meph, them getting instabanned without warning is just wrong. For shame.
It's sad how it has become to just permabanning members of the community for the sole reasoning of being 'toxic' provided with none-to-minimum base of evidence. Just permabans without any warnings or even talks with those members, especially those who were extremely constructive and contribution like Karst, or factions leaders leading important factions. Banning Karst is just ridiculous and hilarious bullcrap.
I don't know about Meph and Snoopy either. From what I gathered, they've been banned for sh*tposting? Seriously? I mean, if it was about posting like that, then half of the community should be banned as well. I think the so called 'protocols' demand warning them first, but instead the greens went for a straight permaban. Same goes for Impy and the others.
Not to mention, suppressing people by invising constructive threads like Luke's, which was made visible again as I checked right now. All I can see here is suppression.
The three posts above this, I am essentially in agreement with. I can't really elaborate more on the things that Wulverine posted, but for thoroughness's sake, I feel obliged to list my concerns with the recent staff decision approximately in order of concern.
The way that the sanction was handled. Nevermind the fact that the whole thing was entirely in violation of all previous ruling and precedent (1.0, as Garrett explained, and the statement coinciding with the release of the new ruleset stating that everyone in the community possessed a clean slate from there on out), the posting of it in the announcements section rather than in the sanctions section seems extremely sanctimonious. It's almost as if the admin team expected that people would find this decision to be shaky at best and decided to try and make it into a bigger issue than it really was -- something "more important than the rules and mundane affairs" -- to try and justify the suddenness, the procedural irregularity, and the heavy-handedness. Unfortunately, all it's done is made me (and some others who can voice their own opinions if they agree with me) even more concerned.
The people who were banned. Karst and Impy have been incredibly productive members of the community their entire time here. Karst in particular has always been friendly, helpful, upbeat (hell, anyone who's been with him on Teamspeak for more than five minutes has heard him dancing in his chair and whistling about how awesome ALG is just because he's so goddamn happy to be here), insightful, and knowledgeable members of the community, and I personally find his banning so soon after spearheading an effort to fix the mining system (which, by the way, is still terribly broken) which everyone and anyone who was remotely knowledgeable about how mining actually worked or ever participated in mining for profit agreed was entirely needed, and in the process calling into question the competencies of the people currently assigned to that position, to be rather eyebrow-raising at best.
Impy as well has actively sought out exploits and loopholes, not to take advantage of them, but to make the team aware of them so as to prevent anyone else from ruining the fun of others by using them. Impy tries to stop problems before they even start. He has never been banned from either the gameserver or the forums for even a day, is a courteous pirate who avoids causing issues for people ingame, and is generally kind of a stand-up guy, even if he does sometimes have a stand-offish attitude.
Mephistoles, while not someone I personally get along with, has never gone out of his way to ruin anyone else's fun nor to actively cause issues for people. He does his thing and lets others do theirs, and his laconic style of posting on the forums is, by his own admission, more for comedic value than for any other reason. Snoopy, going by what comments admins posted in that thread, was essentially banned for being a bitter vet, and not even a particular harmful or obnoxious one. I have yet to see a single post by him that I think is rather troublesome. I can't really speak for Swifty or Lythrilux, so I won't, but I will say that I can kind of understand banning Lyth solely because of how often he's gotten in trouble recently, for his pompous attitude, and his refusal to consider his own wrong-doing; but that still does not warrant the gross procedural violations here.
The lack of concern for the factions affected. Simply saying "come to us if you need help dealing with your most important member being out of the picture without an hour's warning" is unequivocally not sufficient in a situation like this. I admit I don't know how the team could have better handled this particular aspect of the whole decision, but I am terrified for the future of ALG, BHG, and JM in response to this (though I think there's enough cool heads in Core to think up some solution, and I wish them all the best in this regard).
Saying "one solution creates another problem" isn't necessarily a good argument to avoid doing things that need to be done like banning toxic community members, because sometimes you just have to rip off the band-aid, but even if all the folks who were excised from public participation here (and you're kidding yourself if you think nobody plays or even leads factions despite being banned) did deserve their bans, was it really, on balance, the best thing for the community? Would Karst not ever touching anything Discovery-related again really be beneficial for the community? Because when you permaban someone, you're saying "there is nothing you could do to contribute to the community further than you might have in the past, and you are so detrimental that we refuse to attempt to further guide you to behave more constructively". Was that really what you wanted to say to all of the people involved?
In short, I think the staff seriously needs to re-examine this decision, to put it mildly.
Half of the old admin team trolled harder, and were arguably more "toxic" (if that's how we're terming this attitude now) than anyone on this list. Dusty Lens, Zelot, Virus, and Reverend Del all come to mind. All of them were jerks in their own rights, and they certainly hurt people's feelings.
And they made Disco a much better place than any of the carebear admins in this iteration of the team.
Edit: Content removed. Didn't know. RIP.
User was banned for: Unacceptable behavior
Time left: (Permanent)
As almost everyone else has said the way this was done was wrong. I also agree that it was overkill to at least two people on the list.
The most troubling part about this however is that if RULE 1.0 is going to be used without adhering to the protocols the admins set. What is going to keep the community safe from another power hungry admin like Karlotta in the future?
(not taking a part in any dramas, this will be my only post)
I'm quite surprised at few things out there. First of all Shoopy and Swifty were not even playing this game for awhile now. I am surprised where did admins found a reason to bad people that are not even active.
I know there are very different opinions on Lyth and Impy (both did not deserve perma on my honest opinion), but claiming that Karst is more harmful than helpful is just ridiculous.