We've moved, ! Update your bookmarks to https://thesouthpacific.org! These forums are being archived.

Dismiss this notice
See LegComm's announcement to make sure you're still a legislator on the new forums!

Statement from Forum Administration on the Ban of Tim and Escade
#11

(08-29-2018, 03:01 PM)Drugged Monkeys Wrote: Having not been active in the region since April, I cannot speak to the events surrounding this sudden ban.
I do however have several questions related to it regarding the evidence, and circumstances surrounding it.
- Will the evidence be shared with either banned party?
- Will the evidence be shared with the region at large?
- What, if any, warnings were issued to the banned parties prior to them being banned?
- If no warnings were issued prior to an outright ban, what historical precedent was used to come to that conclusion?

If the Administration Team would please review these above questions and provide a response, it would be greatly appreciated.

I both want to support and contest what Glen said here. Regardless of "giving anyone ammo," it's simply impossible to lay this out in any way that's going to be effective. It was a continually build up of things and hostility. For two of the more recent examples, we have the continued smearing of Glen through his friend with Unibot and the assertion that Roavin was purposefully delaying votes.

While both questioning the admin relationship with Unibot and questioning Roavin's job as fine, in of itself, it just so happened to grave dig the Glen-Unibot thread after admins reached out and asked the users to apologize/clam down, which clearly speaks to the bad faith that thread was created in.

Regarding sharing the evidence with the region at large, while I would love to, I do think it's best we don't air the complaints in the open with permission. However, I will say various high ranking and highly respected players made complaints and, I think the responses of to this thread support the decision.

Finally, the parties were warned and invited to essentially apologize and just come to some semblance of civility. I'm not going to claim to know anyone's motives, but the response the admins were given from Escade included a defense of Discord posts from more than a year ago and Tim said he would be busy all week with IRL (which, certainly is understandable), only to post frequently in the FA forum.

Regardingless of the warnings, I think its important to note that this is a historical anomaly. The only other thing I can think of is when Fudge banned LR ... 12 ... 13 ... 14 years ago? 

I also want to reiterate this is a gut-wrenching decision. Admins discussed it, decided on a course of action ... and, to be honest, I was still quite hesitant to do it. However, after us trying to reach out and smooth things over, we received another, unsolicited complaint from an long-time, well-respected and thoroughly unbiased member of the region. And that point, it was clear to me that something had to be done.
-tsunamy
[forum admin]
[-] The following 1 user Likes Tsunamy's post:
  • Rebeltopia
Reply
#12

Thanks for the response.
Again, having been away from the region during the course of these events near as I can tell, I cannot speak to the specifics of this situation.
But having been part of group admin discussion in the past, I'm aware that it is typically never a sudden response unless the accusations are extreme (i.e. sexual harassment). From the outside looking in, and with tribal knowledge of administration bans, is it not typical to issue formal warnings prior to a swift outright ban?
Based on the detail you provided, I'd disregard the "political IC act" as not relevant in this discussion, but rather as something that may be taken in the wrong context.

Another point I'd like to discuss, if the admin team would care to reply, is why Tim and Escade have been grouped together in this ban.
Why not issue separate bans for each individual? Surely their actions cannot be identical, and along the same timeline. Unless that is the case.
It appears by the language of the OP that Tim and Escade acted as a unit to disrupt the community, can this be clarified further?

I bring up these points, not to stir the pot or create further animosity, but to try and understand how such a serious event could occur. Banning two long-term members of the community is no small action, and based on the information provided to this point, I do not see how the admin team could come to this decision. Not without official warnings, or some sort of short term punishment rather than an eight month ban.

As a community, thing have never been easy in TSP. History shows that toxicity has been a part of TSP's DNA for quite some time. The lines between IC politics and OOC attacks have been blurred for years, not months.

As a long time member of this community, I'd hope the admin team is willing to provide additional information related to this situation and the points I have raised above.
Semi-Unretired
Reply
#13

DM — I'm not exactly sure who your post was in response to, but I'd like to take a slightly different tactic here.

These issues were present on the Forum and on Discord and, ultimately, cannot be pinpointed to one post, one comment or one exchange. People are varied as Unibot and Cormac in GP were pointing out that something needed to be done, in addition, again, to this thread of people who have voiced support for this action. 

Here's the long and short of it: TSP's community is built on several different platforms and no one wants to take responsibility for it. Government officials were complaining about the toxicity, and instead of doing something about it, they complained to the forum admins to do something. And, frankly, I don't know what to do in such a situation. 

My goal here isn't trying to convince you that the rules were broken. However, I agree with the other admins that Rules 1 and 8 or the forum rules were violated. I'm, frankly, not sure what this entire thread is if it wasn't intended to slandering the reputations of Glen, Kris, Roavin and Farengeto simply by conversing with Unibot. (Please note where I asked what we wanted to be achieved in that thread.)

We also have this example of attacking Kris and Glen for something that happened — literally years ago. (Moreover, it's buying into a hackneyed conspiracy theory that was pushed during a coup of the region).

We also have this thread which trolls Far and accusing Roavin of stalling.

I'll point out that these are examples from the forum, not anything posted in Discord — which is where many of the complaints came from. I'm not digging through this stuff, but if people would like to post things from there, they are free to add to this thread.

For me, it ultimately came down to this choice: Are we going to alienate a majority of the community in order to keep Escade and Tim, who are largely smarting from Roavin's motion of no confidence? Or are we going to bite the bullet and do something so this region doesn't remain a complete shit show.

All the above said, let me be clear: Everything about this was shitty and I resent having to make a call. TSP needs a better way to handle such things in the future and sending complaint messages to the admins is not it.
-tsunamy
[forum admin]
Reply




Users browsing this thread:
1 Guest(s)





Theme © iAndrew 2018 Forum software by © MyBB .