A perfectly crimeless discussion about a decision our board's staff has made.

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

Some of you may have grown to know a friendly, outgoing, positive, and enthusiastic member of our board named Wahrheit. Now, Wahrheit never did anything more that could possibly offend our staff members than what they had originally agreed to overlook (which wasn't an offense in the first place).

 

And yet...

 

We currently find our dear Warheit "banhammered". What's the sudden change of heart here? Why is all that's been learned from the era of Hunter's tyrannical "BAN FIRST THINK LATER" approach being forgotten? Why are the consequences of his actions created being ignored? Why would we want to revive such a time? Sincerely, I don't actually believe applying the word "banhammer" in describing Wahrheit's fate to be appropriate. Words like "banhammer" appeal to an ancient primal urge our staff had many moons ago (during said member's said era of tyranny) to ban casually. They used these types of words when they wanted to disensitize us to the genocide of well intending members. Let's turn the purging of virtuous members into a sort of joke. We don't consider "the use of the banhammer" to be a horrible, deadly mistake. Unfortunately, if things continue the way they do, we'll be seeing a sharp increase of words like "banhammer" and encouragement to joke around about bans.

 

In the time he spent here, Wahrheit used YCM in a way more legitimate to the staff's ideals than just about anyone else here. He generated numerous perfectly respectful discussions and there's no reason why his being erased from existence shouldn't serve as poor representation of our staff until some warranted means of justification or a reversal of this decision is granted.

 

Moreover, do you feel concerned by the sudden re-emergance of the unexplained ban? Do you feel threatened? If you don't, you probably should. "We have rediscovered the disregard for any sort of morality that would inhibit us from exterminating anyone we dislike" seems to be the message that the staff want to send to us in choosing to shoot Wahrheit down from behind their white flags of truce.

 

Your opinions would be appreciated.

[-Griffin]

I think it was the bit where he revealed himself to be the alt of a banned account, although I'm personally against the decision to ban him.

[Tentacruel]

Who?

[Cin]

It was discussed for a good number of days before the ban was issued. And staff were allowed to provide evidence against the original ban, but we decided to let the original perm ban stand, so his 'double' account had to be banned, as it was for ban evading.

 

Although that as it stands further discussion is on going.

[.Starrk]

Who?

[Nu.]

tl;dr, somebody?

[Mehmani]

The truth is the moderators will never stop. I can think of maybe one or two that actually have some form of reason, one or two that think rationally and clearly, but all the rest are pretty much scum. Everyone's flawed, by why let those with the most flaws become moderators? It's a warped form of suicide, a form of suicide that means that rational members start to question what the moderators are doing. I wouldn't be surprised if I was banned for this post.

 

A little while ago, I mentioned the Draco Straybyrn (I said it) case in passing when commented on a thread. I was sent a PM by a moderator and warned that if I said anything in his defence or posted any evidence against the decision to ban him all those years ago, I would be banned too. This moderator was someone I once thought of as a rational person. I asked him if he agreed with the policy, he said he didn't. There is a policy that states that anyone defending Matt outspokenly (without using weasel words, with I started using after being informed of said policy) will be banned. I've got the PMs as evidence and have taken Print Screens of them just in case.

 

So back to my anecdote. This moderator said that he didn't agree. I asked him why he didn't speak out. He said some did, but that didn't change anything. I asked why no one took direct action. He said that they were only following orders. Do you know what a wonderful old school-teacher of mine taught me, back when I was a young child? He taught me a wonderful quote. "For evil men to perform evil all that is needed is for good men to stand by." The following orders excuse has been used by everyone - Romanian Secret Police, Hutu cohorts during the Rwandan genocide and above all Nazi guards at Concentration Camps. Those who let bad things happen are as bad as those who do bad things. That's why we have Joint Enterprise, that's why the Nazi guards were convicted, that's why the Romanian Secret Police members were shot.

 

This warped morality is not something that can be turned on and off like a tap. That's why Huntar left. The scapegoating of innocent members will never stop unless the culprits are told that they are wrong. It will never stop until the culprits themselves stop. That's why Mubarak resigned, that's why Castro and Guevara destroyed the Cuban dictatorship, that's why many Arab nations are continuing the struggle for justice and peace. These people must be reasoned with, but no one dares to. I urge you to overcome that fear of punishment and spread your wings - be open about your opinions. If you think something is wrong, then by God you have a right to say it.

[Grunt Issun]

tl;dr, somebody?

Entire thread in a couple of words

 

Awesome guy was banned for no reason

Oh wait, he's a double account of a perma ban

[Mehmani]

Entire thread in a couple of words

 

Awesome guy was banned for no reason

Oh wait, he's a double account of a perma ban

 

He's a not a double account of perma ban, he's a double account of Draco Straybyrn. That makes it an entirely different matter if you know and understand the situation regarding Draco.

[.:Raging Man:.]

The truth is the moderators will never stop. I can think of maybe one or two that actually have some form of reason, one or two that think rationally and clearly, but all the rest are pretty much scum. Everyone's flawed, by why let those with the most flaws become moderators? It's a warped form of suicide, a form of suicide that means that rational members start to question what the moderators are doing. I wouldn't be surprised if I was banned for this post.

 

A little while ago, I mentioned the Draco Straybyrn (I said it) case in passing when commented on a thread. I was sent a PM by a moderator and warned that if I said anything in his defence or posted any evidence against the decision to ban him all those years ago, I would be banned too. This moderator was someone I once thought of as a rational person. I asked him if he agreed with the policy, he said he didn't. There is a policy that states that anyone defending Matt outspokenly (without using weasel words, with I started using after being informed of said policy) will be banned. I've got the PMs as evidence and have taken Print Screens of them just in case.

 

So back to my anecdote. This moderator said that he didn't agree. I asked him why he didn't speak out. He said some did, but that didn't change anything. I asked why no one took direct action. He said that they were only following orders. Do you know what a wonderful old school-teacher of mine taught me, back when I was a young child? He taught me a wonderful quote. "For evil men to perform evil all that is needed is for good men to stand by." The following orders excuse has been used by everyone - Romanian Secret Police, Hutu cohorts during the Rwandan genocide and above all Nazi guards at Concentration Camps. Those who let bad things happen are as bad as those who do bad things. That's why we have Joint Enterprise, that's why the Nazi guards were convicted, that's why the Romanian Secret Police members were shot.

 

This warped morality is not something that can be turned on and off like a tap. That's why Huntar left. The scapegoating of innocent members will never stop unless the culprits are told that they are wrong. It will never stop until the culprits themselves stop. That's why Mubarak resigned, that's why Castro and Guevara destroyed the Cuban dictatorship, that's why many Arab nations are continuing the struggle for justice and peace. These people must be reasoned with, but no one dares to. I urge you to overcome that fear of punishment and spread your wings - be open about your opinions. If you think something is wrong, then by God you have a right to say it.

No way you get no rep for this.

But you know the guy was a double account, don't you?

[.Nu-13]

...he was a double account for Draco?

[Grunt Issun]

He's a not a double account of perma ban, he's a double account of Draco Straybyrn. That makes it an entirely different matter if you know and understand the situation regarding Draco.

Yes, but when someone had the attention span of a rat, you have to sum it up in a way that isn't actually correct, so people can make fun of them for not having the right information.

[Guest Icyblue]

It was more or less a direct order from YCMaker (albeit he should just have done the ban directly instead of making us) himself. Board Staff in this equation is irrelevant, your paragraphs of whatever else is there is fruitless. If you want him unbanned, the hammer falls to the site owner and no one else. Take it up with him personally and no one else.

 

Or if you want a simple answer? Permanent means Permanent.

[-Griffin]

...he was a double account for Draco?

 

...You were the slightest bit late to this party, no?

[MarbleZone]

The situation is debatable, yes, and it doesn't gather immediate consensus. If it did, it wouldn't have been lingering since 2008. But in no way did we "ban first and ask later", that's the witty way to say you have absolutely no information about what happened but you don't really care either.

 

The situation was discussed for weeks, after Wahrheit was allowed to post in a PM conversation with some staff members. However, we felt that wasn't the way to decide things, so we made a thread about it in the Mod Forum to discuss the issue with everybody's opinion - YCMaker's and Frunk's included - and decided according to a majority vote, arguments and evidence presented. Whether people agree with the final call or not will always be a hot topic and you'll never get everybody on the same side. But we argued this thoroughly before moving with the ban, hence why he was allowed to post since early February, when some of us knew who he was from the day after he made the account.

 

I won't disclose any posts from the Mod Forum, but ultimately it boils down to what Icy said: permanent means permanent, assuming the original ban was justified, and that was our main gripe - very few of the current staff members were directly involved with the first chapters of Draco's story, and the legitimacy of the first ban was brought into question. However, after going through threads and PM conversations that dated back to 2008, the staff decided that the first ban was valid and, therefore, permanent did mean permanent.

 

We made a call according to our judgement (instead of swinging blindly like POLARIS suggested), which is of course subject to debate. What we ask of you is to keep the discussion civil and realize that the decision was: 1) made carefully, with proper research, direct feedback from the admin (which, in this particular site, is sadly a rarity) and clarifications from mods who were involved with Draco previously, and 2) final.

[Tentacruel]

Soooooo, what did he do?

[Ярополк Пономарёв]

...he was a double account for Draco?

 

Who is Draco?

[Mehmani]

The situation is debatable, yes, and it doesn't gather immediate consensus. If it did, it wouldn't have been lingering since 2008. But in no way did we "ban first and ask later", that's the witty way to say you have absolutely no information about what happened but you don't really care either. You did not experience Huntar's several month long reign in the General section. It was quite possibly one of the worst things I have ever experienced. It was positively Orwellian except that unlike Orwellian villains, Huntar was not clever. Atlas' "HUNTAR THE SAVAGE" stories were incredibly accurate.

 

The situation was discussed for weeks, after Wahrheit was allowed to post in a PM conversation with some staff members. However, we felt that wasn't the way to decide things, so we made a thread about it in the Mod Forum to discuss the issue with everybody's opinion - YCMaker's and Frunk's included - and decided according to a majority vote, arguments and evidence presented. Whether people agree with the final call or not will always be a hot topic and you'll never get everybody on the same side. As it the same with literally every single bill or law that has been or will be passed - there will always be dissenters. That's the reason the English, Spanish and American Civil Wars happened. But we argued this thoroughly before moving with the ban, hence why he was allowed to post since early February, when some of us knew who he was from the day after he made the account.

 

I won't disclose any posts from the Mod Forum, but ultimately it boils down to what Icy said: permanent means permanent, assuming the original ban was justified, and that was our main gripe - very few of the current staff members were directly involved with the first chapters of Draco's story, and the legitimacy of the first ban was brought into question. However, after going through threads and PM conversations that dated back to 2008, the staff decided that the first ban was valid and, therefore, permanent did mean permanent.

 

We made a call according to our judgement (instead of swinging blindly like POLARIS suggested), which is of course subject to debate. What we ask of you is to keep the discussion civil and realize that the decision was: 1) made carefully, with proper research, direct feedback from the admin (which, in this particular site, is sadly a rarity) and clarifications from mods who were involved with Draco previously, and 2) final.

 

First of all, you state that you had "clarifications from mods who were involved with Draco previously". Seeing as these are the moderators that allegedly framed him (allegedly, you can't ban me now, see?) in the first place you can hardly say that any of their evidence or testimonies are unbiased and truthful. It's like asking an enemy - of course you are going to get evidence that goes against him. It's ridiculous, and I can't believe that no one on the entire staff team didn't point out such an obvious logistical error. That should make anyone call the integrity and intelligence of the site's staff into question. Secondly, "direct feedback from the admin" - again, you are asking someone who is entirely biased. You are asking the person who carried out the ban decision in the first place. You may as well ask Rudolf Hess what he thinks of Jews, it's an utter joke. That's certainly a more blind swing that Polaris' suggestion.

 

Secondly, the majority of the moderating team (as you testified) are in favour of Draco remaining banned, so right from the start you have a problem. An educated estimate of how many moderators support Draco? I'd say maybe one or two, and they are definitely not Super Moderators. And seeing as they know that speaking out against the site's upper levels of government would result in sanctions, they wouldn't dare be outspoken about it. They would probably only mention it in passing as they knew that a loss was a foregone conclusion and having the moderating team know that they thought differently would equate to thoughtcrime, which means punishment. You've already got telescreens in our Private Message inboxes, what's to stop you from being even more Orwellian than you already are?

 

Thirdly, as we already know that the Administrators and most of the Super Moderators are in favour of Draco remaining exiled forever, they would obviously do their best to make such a decision a foregone conclusion. It's like debating against Muammar Gadaffi whilst his private army are in the room, you would never dare say anything for fear of being killed on the spot. The staff are corrupt as it is (the Draco case is probably the best example of this), so I wouldn't put it passed them to drop hints about potential punishments or make subtle threats. Practically anyone with a dash of scepticism in their blood would think the same also.

 

tl;dr The case is impossible to be debated on by the staff as from the start it is already heavily biased. Everyone with the most power is against Draco being free and as YCM is about as democratic as O'Brien left testicle those with power will always get what they want. The case is filled with heavily biased evidence and is therefore invalid.

[byak]

I'm personally against the decision to ban him.

[Jacoby746]

Someone needs to clear this up for me. What did Draco do to get banned in the first place? And if 90% of the mods agree on him being banned, then there had to be some evidence against him, regardless of personal feelings towards him.

[CinnamonStar]

"What does Wahrheit's ban mean?"

It means that he was banned permanently and is going to stay that way. The only reason why it took so long to come to a decision (and here I'm going to agree 100%) is because the team is unorganized as hell right now. Or else we would've been able to reach an agreement earlier (whatever that agreement may be).

 

...he was a double account for Draco?

 

...you're trolling or you're slow?0_o

 

I urge you to overcome that fear of punishment and spread your wings - be open about your opinions. If you think something is wrong, then by God you have a right to say it.

 

Sounds great, leader but I semi-tried that one or two times and it ended up people twisting my words around, and I'm not as good as explaining things as MarbleZone or Falling Pizza are anyway, so back to the old posting style.

 

As for the big drama surrounding his first ban, I don't know if we're allowed to quote from the mods forum but that issue was addressed too.

 

EDIT: And crap, my posts always end up at the top of the next site and I'm not even counting.>_>

[MarbleZone]

First of all, you state that you had "clarifications from mods who were involved with Draco previously". Seeing as these are the moderators that allegedly framed him (allegedly, you can't ban me now, see?) in the first place you can hardly say that any of their evidence or testimonies are unbiased and truthful. We worked with what we had - PM excerpts, chat logs and links to threads created when the first incidents took place. There was also a heavy debate back then in the mod forum, with people for and against his ban, and reading all of it, we were convinced that the evidence presented (said PMs and chat logs) were enough to constitute a permanent ban. And on that note, the person that provided those links this time around (the "clarifications" I mentioned) was a heavy supporter of Draco in the previous discussions; the other "person that dealt with Draco" and gave input now was YCMaker itself; more on this later. It's like asking an enemy - of course you are going to get evidence that goes against him. It's ridiculous, and I can't believe that no one on the entire staff team didn't point out such an obvious logistical error. That should make anyone call the integrity and intelligence of the site's staff into question. It's a foregone conclusion that we didn't have access to the entire logs and countless IM conversations between Draco and everybody he spoke with back then. But that doesn't mean we're blind and took what we were fed; objectively, we are in a position where we have to make a decision now that goes all the way back to 2008, and we're pretty much alone in that call. We dug up the info we could (and trust me, the current team is hard to gather to discuss anything :/), and had to decide according to what we had. The other option was to intentionally ignore that he was back, which is obviously wrong. Secondly, "direct feedback from the admin" - again, you are asking someone who is entirely biased. You are asking the person who carried out the ban decision in the first place. You may as well ask Rudolf Hess what he thinks of Jews, it's an utter joke. That's certainly a more blind swing that Polaris' suggestion.Considering this was dealt with personally by YCMaker before, that this is ultimately his site and that we are effectively several notches under him the command chain, thoroughly ignoring the administrator's decision because it might be "biased" is not an option. We can question it, and believe me, we did, because the post itself was very weak, but we can't overrule the admin and, surprise, he never got back to us after his one-liner when asked to elaborate.

 

Secondly, the majority of the moderating team (as you testified) are in favour of Draco remaining banned, so right from the start you have a problem. An educated estimate of how many moderators support Draco? I'd say maybe one or two, and they are definitely not Super Moderators. Remember that the current team knew next to nothing about Draco or the first incidents, so we had no reason to be biased to begin with. I testified that we voted in favour of his ban, not that we had a preconceived idea of keeping him away. And seeing as they know that speaking out against the site's upper levels of government would result in sanctions, they wouldn't dare be outspoken about it. Something you'd have to see for yourself, but your conjecture is completely off, we have no problems in directly "speaking against the site's upper levels" and have done so on numerous occasions concerning several topics, because the admins are almost completely dissociated from the forum and the active Supers didn't deal with any of this before: Zalpyr and DJ were two prominent figures back then, but Zalpyr is barely active and DJ is long gone. The ban's legitimacy was brought into question several times, it was never assumed to be deserved until we looked further into it.They would probably only mention it in passing as they knew that a loss was a foregone conclusion and having the moderating team know that they thought differently would equate to thoughtcrime, which means punishment. You've already got telescreens in our Private Message inboxes, what's to stop you from being even more Orwellian than you already are? I've addressed this in PM, I'm pretty sure nobody's keeping tabs on PMs, and if somebody is for whatever reason, I haven't been informed and have no power to do so myself - and, by extension, no regular mod does (that I know of).

 

Thirdly, as we already know that the Administrators and most of the Super Moderators are in favour of Draco remaining exiled forever, they would obviously do their best to make such a decision a foregone conclusion. It's like debating against Muammar Gadaffi whilst his private army are in the room, you would never dare say anything for fear of being killed on the spot. The staff are corrupt as it is (the Draco case is probably the best example of this), so I wouldn't put it passed them to drop hints about potential punishments or make subtle threats. Practically anyone with a dash of scepticism in their blood would think the same also.

 

tl;dr The case is impossible to be debated on by the staff as from the start it is already heavily biased. Everyone with the most power is against Draco being free and as YCM is about as democratic as O'Brien left testicle those with power will always get what they want. The case is filled with heavily biased evidence and is therefore invalid. In summary, we made the call with the information we had access to, and the input of staff that dealt with Draco before was minimal. If the call was an easy one, with 100% clear evidence and tons of info regarding the whole story, this would have been long buried and it wouldn't have persisted for 3 years; the current staff having to decide practically by itself on situations that stem from so far back is a complicated process (especially since some mods only log in once a month), and it's obviously easy to point flaws at. Perhaps if a different team had to deal with this they would have chosen, under the same circumstances, to overrule his permanent ban, but we stand by our decision - it wasn't made to be the easy way out or taken by the same people who opposed Draco fiercely in the past, it was a team of "new guys" who did what research they could and made a final call knowing it wouldn't sit well with a fair number of people. Ultimately, with what we read and debated, we decided against overruling the permanent ban. If we considered the evidence invalid, we would have no leverage to decide anything, therefore Draco and any double account would be banned on sight as well as per orders; the only situation where Draco being readmitted would be valid was if we, the new team, found conclusive proof of his innocence that would give us authority to revoke an admin-issued perma.

 

Now, with all this discussion going on, all that's left is pretty much give you guys access to the Mod Forum so you can see the whole process yourselves. I've divulged a lot more than I normally would, and I know it's still insufficient for some of you (as has been the case with all the previous Draco bans), but I don't feel comfortable discussing this into more detail because the mod forum is restricted for a reason.

I feel like I'm stepping on a lot of toes by even replying to all of this, but Draco's a prominent part of YCM history and it's your right to question the incidents and talk about it freely (within reason). However, it's a topic that'll have to quiet down eventually, we can't keep pressing this button forever, since there will always be outspoken dissenters and we can't have the entire community revolve around the perma-ban of one member whose legitimacy isn't clear to some.

[Masochistic Joker]

I'm not fearing staff much really. This is what, a forum full of young teenagers and a medium sized group of older teenagers? Think of staff as your high school classmates. I for one will be gone if the offers I gave YCMaker is denied though this site will always need some extra protection. As for the Draco situation. The older members have only referred to him as one person and one accounter excluding warheit so I'm guessing he threatened to hack the site, someone, etc. Usually perma bans wouldn't be given for trolling, flaming, and spamming.

[J-Max]

So Warheit = Draco? FFS.... There I was scratching my head for ages regarding it lol.

[DARKPLANT RISING]

I wouldn't ban double accounts when it's not for reps, and it's because you got banned but felt like coming back and you decided to follow rules.