[Completed]Banning of a Player, Unjust or Just?

[Qaz_The_Great 1189]

Hello. I am Qaz, I am a decently new player to the server, however I have been roleplaying for about ten years on Garry’s Mod and other forums. When I first joined this community I was excited to experience a new realm of Roleplay in a High Fantasy Universe and also meet new people (which I have!). However as I continue to play there seems to be a decent sum of disagreements within the community, both In-Character and Out of Character. Disagreement is often a good catalyst for change and making better of the server, however when taken to an extreme and taken personally such disagreements can dilute and sully the roleplay experience that ALL players have!

 

The Point

A Nation Leader, involved deeply in an ongoing war, someone who has been playing LOTC for an extremely long time, and someone who offers to all players, new and old, a rich and developed scene to interact with and be apart of, this Nation Leader has been slated for a permanent ban tomorrow 15NOV19 on terms that I, a very invested and interested player, cannot fully understand; this is further made more convoluted and, might I saw, unjust from the private messages I have received, and the to-be banned party has received.

 

This Nation Leader has been accused recently of break an extremely important rule, which has yet to be cited in all accusations against him, however it was in relation to a comment regarding an individual, Varg Vikernes, a well known Black Metal member, he is also reformed Neo-Nazi, denouncing and denying the ideology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes). To see the post in which referenced the man, please see ITEM 1 below. To continue when the player was issued his ban notice he was told that, and quote, “Racist or racial content isn’t appropriate; Varg Vikernes is a known white supremacist, so this is all fairly on the nose.” See ITEM 2 below for the full citation. I here can then state that the comment had NO racial intents and is BY THE FORUM RULES (https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/177662-forum-rules/) not against any rules or regulations. No where in the “Forum Rules” document does it state that mention of past racists, radical peoples, or individuals are illegal. And any comment mentioning Middle Eastern currencies is also void because it is actual a commonly traded good in the Middle East (I and my best friends have been there.) In any circumstance ignorance and assumptions is wrong, and this situation is a great example of that. I hope that all who read this can agree with me that an error was made and the best way to fix such an error is to admit one had messed up and unban the player involved.

 

Retort to Common Response

One will bring up a point in which this player already has warning points, ten to be exact, and such a response is an easy one; however there are two factors which make such a response null. The first is that this issue, if laid to rest and shown to be incorrect would remove the warning point! The second reason is that the past accumulation of points nearly all of which were gained nearly two plus years ago. There are those who don’t like others, yes, but to permanently ban someone and refuse to make a detailed look into it, that shows ALL PLAYERS, new and old, that the Administration, Moderation, and Community Leadership do not care.

 

 

 

ITEM 1:

ITEM 2:

To Avoid Accusation of Rule Breaking

I will not be stating names as to not call out, and to avoid accusations of breaking Debates Section Rules, Number Three (3- Avoid intentionally provoking arguments, starting “flamewars”; and posting clearly inflammatory, degrading, or abusive content.) which can be found here (https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/170106-debates-subsection-rules/)

In regards to anyone stating I am posting for a banned player, I can verify, and the banned party can also verify, I am doing this on my own free will because I see it an unjust ban and do not want such unjust things to happen in a community I have grown so quickly to love!

 

[Aquaquean 80]

I almost never get genuinely angry about things that happen on the server, but for once I suppose I am.

 

Making bad decisions is okay - I don’t fault you for that. Not correcting them however, is unacceptable. Please do the right thing! Not just for his sake, but for the sake of the community he has, and will continue to should his ban be lifted, put so much effort into supporting as well. There is still time yet.

 

And thank you Qaz. This is a really well written post, I truly hope it can make a difference.

[TrendE 1324]

Once again, I ask the question of who exactly this ban is in the best interest of?

 

Bans should always be used to protect communities/players from others once they’ve explicitly broken rules – though I am unsure of who this ban really protects. 

 

All that the LOTC Administration is doing here is making it very clear that those who play for extended periods of time and continually work to improve LOTC through supporting its newly joining players will not have their situations and contributions taken into account when they prove to be too much to handle. 

 

Stay tuned for Saturday. We won’t forget this, and we’ll hold feet to the fire for as long as it takes to fix this goofy ****.

 

EDIT: Also, I know who the people who’ve celebrated Narthok’s ban are. I meant what I said on his farewell post. 

 

[EndCallCaesar 484]

Qaz is the man.

[monkeypoacher 6993]

oren here and calling yourself “descended from varg vikernes” as a gag isn’t a reason to admin ban a player

 

max forum warn bans have always been a joke. I still have a forum warn from like 2016 because I posted the filthy frank “you just got roasted” soundbyte. I’d love to see what narthok’s backlog of forum infractions actually was

 

1 hour ago, TrendE said:

Stay tuned for Saturday. We won’t forget this,

 

ok trende

[Draiden 319]

Banning Narthok would be a bad decision. He’s the reason why a lot of people play the server past the first day, myself included. Upset.

[osumanduas 1436]

I’ll intentioned memes are against server policy; third rule down. There is also a passage in our roleplay-guidelines by Harold that stipulates on that a bit more, the post needed to be pointed. It was reported and it in bad taste; yet the moderator who approved the post prior to that also shouldn’t have. Was the ban bad? Yeah definitely. Was the ban justified? According to the policy we’re supposed to follow it was yeah. The solution is then twofold. What stand out in my mind here is the policy that warps the process:

1. The repercussions for reaching ten points on the forums are way too steep. People shouldn’t receive service-wide admin bans for crossing that threshold; punishment should fit the crime folks.
2. APPEAL YOUR OLD DAMN WARNING POINTS. Can’t really stress it enough; on the server we’re unfortunately in the situation where we as individual players are responsible for keeping up with and petitioning to be rid of expired points. That's the way it is; it’s not that hard, it’s just a matter of filling out an application. It’s not ideal.

Having points set to expire after a year would be a good start; solving both those issues would probably fix things in the long run and its pretty basic stuff to do. I think what's also necessary is for staff to be as clear, consistent, and decisive as they can be; one of the other major problems being that ultimate decision for this case was dragged through the mud. 

 

Appreciate the post.

 

 

 

[Ajax 335]

I see it as pretty unjust. He’s my friend, even if our nations are at war.

[Qaz_The_Great 1189]

1 minute ago, WACKO said:

I’ll intentioned memes are against server policy; third rule down. There is also a passage in our roleplay-guidelines by Harold that stipulates on that a bit more. The post needed to be pointed. It was reported and it in bad taste; yet the moderator who approved the post prior to that also shouldn’t have. Was the ban bad? Yeah definitely. Was the ban justified? According to the policy we’re supposed to follow it was yeah. The solution is twofold; what stand out in my mind here is the policy that warps the process:

1. The repercussions for reaching ten points on the forums are way too steep. People shouldn’t receive service-wide admin bans for crossing that threshold; punishment should fit the crime folks.
2. APPEAL YOUR OLD DAMN WARNING POINTS. Can’t really stress it enough; on the server we’re unfortunately in the situation where we as individual players are responsible for keeping up with and petitioning to be rid of expired points. That's the way it is; it’s not that hard, it’s just a matter of filling out an application. It’s not ideal.

Having points set to expire after a year would be a good start; solving both those issues would probably fix things in the long run and its pretty basic stuff to do. Appreciate the post too.

 

 

 

For the first part, it wasn’t a meme. For the second part, where are these roleplay-guidelines by Harold? I cannot see them in the posted server rules.

On to your suggestions, I agree entirely, such a ban is wrong and all-around will NEGATIVELY affect the server. I implore you, and I implore the rest of the Mod team to revolk this decision and fix the issue at hand. Thank you for responding, and thank everyone for being supportive of this. I’ve seen too many RP servers burn because of infighting and because of rules lawyering. We, as a Community, should rise above such things and fix our issues rather than allow them to fester. 

[osumanduas 1436]

They’re under the spoiler for sub-forum rules pm, I’ll link u:

As for whether or not it was a meme I mean vargposting is kind of self-evident. Again though the steep punishment for reaching ten points is very punitive. It shouldn’t be a service-wide ban in my opinion it should just be a forum ban. If those old points had just been appealed he probably wouldn’t have even been on content mod; since we basically just use it to keep folks at around 7-9 points from getting themselves banned outright.

 

[Qaz_The_Great 1189]

1 minute ago, WACKO said:

They’re under the spoiler for sub-forum rules pm, I’ll link u:

As for whether or not it was a meme, I mean vargposting is kind of self-evident. That said, again the steep punishment for reaching ten points is very punitive. If those old points had been appealed he probably wouldn’t have even been on content mod; we basically just use it now to keep folks at around 7-9 points from getting themselves banned outright.

 

Aye, only one I see is memeing is discouraged, that is true and I wasn’t privvy to the concept of ‘Varg Posting’ my mistake. However the accusation of racism doesn’t really hold up, even reviewing these rules.

[osumanduas 1436]

22 minutes ago, Qaz_The_Great said:

Aye, only one I see is memeing is discouraged, that is true and I wasn’t privvy to the concept of ‘Varg Posting’ my mistake. However the accusation of racism doesn’t really hold up, even reviewing these rules.

 

Thats essentially why the warning is worded the way it is; I address it twofold ‘rasict or racial content.’ In either case it wouldn’t have been appropriate (breaking one rule or another) either being a breech sub-forum guidelines, or genuinely racist. In this case it was the former which most of us agree on; a name drop, an inappropriate joke worthy of one or two points but not a massive platform-wide ban. I hope that clarifies it a bit.

[Trinn 2092]

I cannot believe that the moderators lack the empathy or simple brain cells to disregard old warning points spanning a year+ when reviewing for an admin/max forum warn ban. 

[Qaz_The_Great 1189]

Just now, WACKO said:

 

Thats essentially why I worded the warning in the way I did; addressing it twofold as ‘rasict or racial content.’ In either case it wouldn’t have been appropriate (breaking one rule or another) either being a breech sub-forum guidelines, or genuinely racist. In this case it was the former which most of us agree on; a name drop, an inappropriate joke worthy of one or two points but not a massive platform-wide ban.

 

I hope that clarifies the language of the warning itself. 

It clarifies intent, yes, however it doesn’t clarify why the staff had embraced a completely negative reaction to it, making it go from a zero situation straight to a one hundred situation. I’m glad you responded and you did bring up some things I wasn’t knowledgeable of. It is also notable that the comment wasn’t racist in any matter, as I have elaborated upon in the main post, however one of the Moderators does also continue to state the comment was racial which is simply incorrect. It’s enough the player has been banned, he shouldn’t be made out as a racist either; such a thing is extremely slanderous to the accused.

[UnBaed 8910]

hey, you’re right!!! white supremacy never hurt anybody!!!! right, narthok?? right??