[✗] [In-Game Ban] [frill] Appeal

[appeal account dont ban 39]

Minecraft IGN(s):

 

frill

 

Discord:

 

fr.ll

 

Ban Selection

 

In-Game Ban

 

Ban Reason

 

Do not solicit.

 

What circumstances led to this ban?

 

My last sincere ban appeal following the pro formae was November 19th, 2020. It was a Thursday.

My ban reason is “Player Conduct Violations”. The player conduct code was published in April 2023, so I suppose I was retroactively swept under that behavioural blanket. Other than slurs (i don't like slurs!) I suppose the only behaviour that could be tangentially roped back to my time on the server is having a bit of a nasty attitude, but I don't do that anymore. I don’t know what I did at the time, either. The staff like to keep that quiet but I’d quite like to know explicitly.

It steams my brain a bit that I haven’t been told in an exhaustive “This is what you did to be banned” way. I’m probably slightly autistic (not just because of playing Minecraft) and one of the ways it manifests is that I like things in exhaustive lists as it gets rid of any uncertainties. My Google Calendar links to my phone and I use that to regiment my day to the minute, for example. Either way, I would like some clarity on just why I’m banned because I can’t rightly tell people why when they inevitably whisper toward me and ask just what grand sin I committed to be unpersoned from the server. It would give some degree of closure, appealed or not.

Please let me know why exactly I’m banned. In about a week, when Arockstar shuffles off of his voxelled coil, there will be multiple adminships that I have never interacted with as a normal player. This creates a pretty terse and recursive relationship; this kid has never interacted with me outside of me being a banned player. That isn’t too nice.

 

Are there aspects of the ban you agree and/or disagree with?

 

The server has changed a lot since I was banned, possibly even for the better. I was banned at the height of the second lockdown, when things had begun to open up and then hurriedly shut back down again. I was, at the time, finishing a dissertation, so I did not mind the rollercoaster of having to go to lectures for a whole week before resuming online-only learning. This meant I got to hang out with my housemates a lot. They were all networking and computer security boffins, which meant that they always played video games late into the night. As I had, and still try to keep, a normal schedule of sleep, that meant the prime European hours were the best time for me to use the internet. I met these people after returning to the UK and renting a studio apartment. They were my neighbours the previous academic year, and I would spend most of the first lockdown with them as my apartment was empty and I needed to do more socialising than just watching The Sopranos and that Netflix drama about the orthodox Jewish girl that left her faith to live independently in secular New York. In that apartment, I have very fond memories of eating fried chicken while talking with bb00n and werew0lf and running around our elf village outside of Helena. One of the first players I met for beers with irl was due to this - I was bored and was bunnyhopping across roofs, and managed to peek into a window. Inside was Proddy as his princeling character, who promptly roistered the guard to chase me away. We lived in the same city at the time and got beer a few weeks later. It was at a Wetherspoons pub, which is like a gutter for human scum to spill into and splash against fruit machines. I think because it was still the height of the pandemic, it was hard for Proddy to find a barber in his area of the city so he had to head deeper into the quarter where I lived. To make money at the time, I did a lot of transcription and copy-editing as independent work. It paid modestly enough that I didn’t need to care about rent.

After my ban in November 2020, I mostly played Elder Scrolls Online with Junar and a few others. I managed to clear most of the veteran trials with a reliable guild of people before steering to focus more on the Cyrodiil / open world PvP. I mostly played a Templar for the PvP but an Argonian Warden as a PvE healer. I also played a lot of Sea of Thieves and Rainbow Six with TrendE and Celestine (idk what her username is right now), and got new glasses. I remember them getting really annoyed that I had to play a bit later in the day because I was going to the opticians to get new glasses (this was around May 2021). The glasses were a sort of modern horn rimmed type. I was going to get some Oliver Peoples ones but because my eyesight is getting progressively worse, I figured it wasn’t worth the expense. I didn’t want frames that were too boxy, so I went with more rounded ones that kept the 1950s design. By the February of this year, I had decided to grow out my facial hair. I was described prior to growing my moustache and beard as angelic in appearance.

After getting banned, I spent a lot of time working in a food bank ran by a local group but supported by the Trussell Trust. I like working in charity settings and did it a lot as a teenager, where I was mostly working in museums. The staff at the museums were mostly retired middle-class sorts that doted on me and kept me going with a steady supply of custard creams and cups of tea. I had to go to one of their funerals recently, which was sobering.

I did some stuff to help the foodbank raise funds and awareness, and managed to get a donation box (imagine the size of a refuse skip, but decorated nicely and made of cardboard) inside an Aldi. That was a pretty big accomplishment. Most of the time I was in the warehouse, though, where they prepared these things called three-day food boxes. There was the temptation to stay inside and only play videogames, which was a reverie I didn’t want to fall into. My dad had a cautionary story about a guy he went to university with (Cambridge) getting really into arcade games like Pacman and Ms Pacman, who dropped out of his degree to only play in the arcade all the time and eventually hanged himself. I think it was actually a metaphor for drugs, in retrospect, but he really only used it as a long metaphor for not playing too many video-games and having that healthy work-life balance.

I spent the summer months of that year in France. My family owns a lot of properties in the area so I was doing a lot of manual labour. I managed to get a very nasty burn on most of my back because I was stripping a cowshed of asbestos tiling in the heat and obviously had my back to the sun and my body to the lee of the roof. It was a pretty whelming summer of maintenance tasks and repairing computers. I had to fix a printer that wasn’t connected to the internet in mid August. It was a friend of my great-uncle, who was dying of some sort of sarcoma. His wife was very concerned about getting it fixed and kept offering me Kit-Kats and glasses of orange juice. Out of guilt, I took a Kit-Kat every half hour or so and left with about five in my pocket before heading back to my van. They were trying to use a telephone socket for an ethernet port, and I had to explain that whole deal in pre-internet terms. Because the guy was really into trains (he had a scale model of a Pullman locomotive in a glass cabinet, which is like an Xbox for old people) I explained it like rail gauges, which was a reasonable enough comparison that he got it.
I ended up giving the Kit-Kats to my youngest sister, who didn’t really protest the idea of free chocolate but I didn’t tell her about the sarcoma.

In the September I returned to the UK and started teaching. I originally started in a private school, as private schools and academies don’t require a teaching certificate to teach (but they definitely brought out the thumb-screws for the interview), and they gave me the funds to get any certifications as taught. This was almost like school-centred initial training, but in a very weird and hokey fashion.

The school was nice but very parochial. It was in a baronial estate that was eventually inherited by a daughter (uh-oh!), who chose to turn the estate into a school for the poor and deprived of the area. It’s about middle-market in terms of tuition, with many of the students there first-time buyers. Because it was designed to be a stately home and not a school, the corridors were tight and the crushes severe.

At this point in time, you still had to wear masks, so I would wear a mask on the train, in any passing periods, and when not directly teaching. It was pretty tiring, especially as at this point in time my health had begun to decline.

To wile away the time I played on other servers. These other fantasy roleplay servers were a bit pokey in how they ran themselves, so I eventually chose to stop playing after there was a lot of arguing about how they were allocating funds. They weren’t the most responsible at prioritising where donations went, so they did very silly things like dropping multiple-hundreds on concept art while not advertising the server anywhere. Needless to say, that place didn’t last.

By January of 2022 I started to see a doctor due to recurring fatigue. I initially thought it was related to workload, but the doctor assured me I just ate really poorly (I doubtlessly did, despite the school having private chefs etc.) and said I should just supplement iron and other essential vitamins. During this time, I mostly hanged out with Narthok and a few other players whose names I’ll withhold. We mostly talked about real life stuff as our interests were all very similar, and it was refreshing to still have some tie to the server despite being shuffled away from it.

In the February, though, my ban reason got updated. I think this was due to a change in policy meaning that they had to use a new pro forma for big bad bans like mine, but it was left blank.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/690636140063096914/960812376553312287/Screenshot_2022-04-05_08.58.15.png?ex=6549efc1&is=65377ac1&hm=009bfa2134c1f37b7d8142832d5347bec4f62a8a81fc2e7295ee2b000c9a0634&

I asked and asked as to just what I did, but I never really did find out. My tiredness and fatigue didn’t get any better, so I took extended leave from work by the April/May while waiting for a blood panel to get wrapped up. Because of Covid and mask mandates etc. I really lingered with this, which meant I was dragging myself through work.

At the end of April I started to play Final Fantasy as I needed to wile away time when not working. I couldn't do a job as physical as I used to, so I went back to doing writing work. Most of my clients were satisfied to see me again, and most didn’t question why I had suddenly dipped back into the field as I had very tight turnaround times. People don’t question stuff if they don’t really need to.

I spent June to September couch-surfing and bouncing between hospital appointments, with Arockstar approaching me about helping to write the safety policy in return for an unban. I was a bit reticent to take him up on the offer, but I figured any written policy was better for the playerbase than none at all; this is something I regret quite a bit, as a stringent system is far more protective than a floppy series of guidelines that were far more reactive and far less proactive - bad things can still happen if you don't stop the environment that creates them.

In late August I met with Esterlen. My immune system was still pretty shit so I had a lot of patchy skin and blisters that I inexplicable wore. He described my moustache, which I had trimmed, as very Renaissance. We got a beer at a Wetherspoons called the Montagu Pyke, it used to be a music hall and then a cinema before being bought by the chain and refurbished. While waiting for Maly to arrive a drunk gentleman barrelled out of the door and sprawled at my feet. I peered at him through my round-lens sunglasses and he loudly slurred an accusation of homophobia at the bouncer, who suffice to say bounced him for being far too drunk to be in the building as opposed to holding a prejudicial opinion on his sexuality. The man’s trousers were around his knees and he had clearly urinated them. He was soon walked away, with Maly meeting me with a hard handshake that almost made me slip in the puddle the drunk had left. We had a pint next to a really big sign that warned of pickpockets.

About two weeks later I got my cat. She liked to sleep in knitwear at first and was about the size of two apples. I spent most of this month writing the safety policy on one monitor and playing Final Fantasy on the other. I was clearing legacy content to get to the current update at the time so most of the queue-time was used to add comments and amendments to the ‘unofficial’ safety policy that I was working on with Arockstar.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/690636140063096914/1021814880887648286/unknown.png?ex=654a60c4&is=6537ebc4&hm=bc1ccf786480ee04e059c2aed81d12a67a75856b168aacfab321f238ef80452e&

I spent most of October then helping staff Crusalis. I had a really pleasing manner when working with the players and Gaztons saw that as something useful for conflict mediation; weirdly, working in education had meant that I could soothe out arguments instead of causing them to swell or fester. My health dipped toward the end of the month so I had to leave doing that, spending most of the time afterwards in bed. In November, my last ban appeal happened, and I didn't get a reply. Players started asking why I was banned on the forums and even started saying "free frill" as a little chant.

By mid November, though, I started to help Narthok establish his own server. I didn't have much development experience, but I self-taught quickly to make sure that I could help with any problems that arose. This meant a lot of people that assumed I was a big bad guy (former players of the previous server) suddenly had to rely on me. I did a good job, by all accounts, but they weren't comfy with that. I spent most of November and December running the server, even spending the first 32 hours of the server's life wide-awake to keep it running. One of my favourite things was testing custom worldguard flags by teleporting Slorbin into a 200x200 maze. By mid January, Narthok and I met in real life and decided over a drink to close the server. The people that were playing there weren't nice at all. We also went to go bet on horses at a night race, and the only other people there were American tourists.

By February I was back at work, I had maybe half to a full hour per day as free time. I played Deep Rock Galactic a bit, but mostly just watched old movies. I think in one of the half terms where I had a light workload, I posted "vivisecting a safety policy" where I explained what was wrong with the safety policy I helped write. Safety is a big deal!

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/217753-vivisecting-a-safety-policy/?do=findComment&comment=1945476

I was working and lodging in a spare room, so had to stream any videogames that I wanted to play (if I even played any). Other than playing on a few microservers, I mainly focused on work. I played a halfling jester that had a big red nose and big white teeth, and would get up to various japes and tricks that were very delightful. I think it was described by dpm as one of his favourite characters as it wasn't just trolling, but actually very informed and culturally-rooted jesting. I liked characters like Falstaff and other classically comic characters, so tried to root it in tradition as opposed to anachronistic memeing. One of my favourite moments was the halfling being picked up and carried away by an imp.

That summer I focused on curriculum rewrites and painting warhammer miniatures. I had about 1750 points of Grey Knights and wanted them to be roughly tabletop quality by September, as I began work full time by then.

September to now, I have been working full time with great feedback from my line manager. I am making a real difference with peoples’ lives. I talk to ScreamingDingo/Joel mostly about that aspect of my life as he’s probably the most sensible person left on the server and gives me lots of opportunities to reflect on my practise. I don’t think I ever had a genuine conversation with him before being banned, which is slightly depressing. I think interactions get tinged with a grey malignance by that aspect, meaning talking about anything becomes difficult. There are staff-members that refuse to talk to me about unrelated stuff as recently as this week as my continued online existence is forbidden by some edict that I don’t even know the fullest details of. I’d appreciate it if you could please let me know why I am banned.


I’d like to stop being so negative and go enjoy the server for once!

 

What motivates you to return to LOTC?

 

I've had this conversation a few times with Telanir. I'm saying Telanir in particular because he is the only staff-member who actually gives me the dignity of talking to me. During my long ban tenure, I've had some very long and mature conversations about the state of the server and where it's been headed. I suppose Telanir saw me as somebody outside looking in, which gave a perspective that was entirely different from his own. He actually asked me, when I was complaining about being manipulated into writing the safety policy, what I got out of being unbanned. He was curious about what motivated me to linger, and I replied with principle. I am a lot older and have grey hairs now, so I just replied with the idea of not wanting to be banned from things. I have maybe an hour of free time in a working day, if I'm delegating away my responsibilities and really, really don't want to cook dinner (haha). I can't fritter away time playing Minecraft like I could during a global health crisis. Logistically, I just wanted to be able to play video-games with my unbanned friends.

I tried to play Diablo 4 with Mickaelhz, and he was intimidated into kicking me from our shared discord because Itdontmatta directly said he would be punished if he continued to associate with me. My interest in the server wanes very quickly, but people are very hot and fast to try to drag me into whatever petty conflicts or dramas are unfolding on the blocky stage. I don't mind this as it's something good to read while in traffic or waiting for a train, but I don't have genuine investment in the setting anymore. The people I knew are long gone, and the culture is foreign and distant to me. My characters might exist as a nominal thing in a spreadsheet but their worlds and lived experiences are so far removed from the 'now' that there is no impetus to revisit what I once had. I do want to continue hanging out with all of my friends though, and being unbanned would be a benefit for them - there is no lurking spectre of an admin using my continued existence as a cudgel to beat them with, especially when I’m now so detached from the space.

That is not to say I wouldn't play. There are times when I wouldn't mind bunnyhopping around a map or pretending to be a gnome or whatever brief whimsy overtakes you when you have a unique and creative idea, but I am so invested in a rewarding (and satisfying!) life that I can't dedicate as much energy as I once could. I want the indulgence of my friends being able to say "yeah frill is cool :-)" without the unspoken part of a ban lurking in the weeds.

I have begged to have an opportunity to show genuine contrition for whatever cruelties I might have done, but these have been shrugged off. Telanir has been the only person receptive to the idea of me ever returning to the server, but that is mostly due to Telanir being the only staff-member (other than GMRO, but let's talk Admins here!!) to treat me as a human being. We have had this discursive chats where we discuss the merits and demerits of bringing me back to the server, and it’s always concluded with some amorphous “we’ll see”.

The difference between Telanir and the other staff is that he has always been very receptive with talking openly with anyone, which meant that we had a pretty firm relationship pre and post ban. He was disappointed when I was banned, but it didn't really sour our relationship at all. We got on the same as ever, chatting about bureaucratic what-nots and how to better the server. I liked feeling like I could still better things.

Anyway, as I won't have as much free time in the coming November I decided to post this year's ban appeal early. Consider it or not, you can’t say I’m not trying. Happy Hallowe'en and so-on.

Questions, concerns, threats or simpering hate-comments can be sent to fr.ll on discord. I’ll reply with a smile and a wave but I can’t guarantee meeting like-for-like if you’re just going to meet me with some meanie comments.

Until next year,
Frill.

 

Attach other relevant information.

 

asd

[itdontmatta 7192]

Denied. Please appeal to [email protected] as your ban is not a moderation ban.