Winter's Ban

[Blake]

An entire 2 people said he shouldn't be banned at all.

 

nick's last 2 paragraphs are a great tl;dr

 

he was banned right after a thread where he and Shard were vocal about abuse, after said thread was locked in a way that already supported this point, regardless of intent.

 

There was no acknowledgment of this. It was left to letting winter spread the word.

 

We, as a community, have emphasized the importance of communication and clarity. This thread is derived from the fact it goes back in much of that progress. The team banned Winter at a time that screamed suspicious, and there was no discussion, notice, or comment about it.

 

this is something that shouldn't be happening if communication is truly a value.

 

What's done is done. What happens henceforth shouldn't be a repeat of events like this.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

An entire 2 people said he shouldn't be banned at all.

Yee this is true but it made up the bulk of what I returned to.

 

Also I feel there could have been a much better way to, ahem, communicate that you just want to make sure there's better communication.

 

(this was meant to sound more whimsical and friendly than it might come off as but I am still sleepy)

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

I hold that Winter shouldn't be banned at all, and certainly not permabanned. 

 

It is not important to me who shoulders what fraction of the blame for banning Winter, but there is blame to be had as it was the wrong thing to do. It is not acceptable for us to "move on and not have this happen again in future" when this is the wrong thing to have happened and is entirely reversible. I do blame the entire mod team, because nobody's stepping up and doing the right thing. I am disappointed in Evilfusion, Dad and Night especially.

 

If you didn't like Winter, that's fine - but it's not acceptable to line up behind a ban on grounds that could just as easily happen to you regardless of the rules and because of personal politics.     

[Blake]

You can't say "there's a better way" when there isn't. This is a big, public issue, because it became a continuation of a controversial thread from yesterday. Discussing in private why the team did something shady, intentionally or not, defeats the point of it, because that's keeping it shady.

 

PM only really works with dad and sorta Zai. Two of the three newest members of the team.

 

The problem is that anything discussed in public, be it a major event or change, is met with instant decrying, unless the team started kt. Like giga's thread about Zai doing the threads he promised to do.

 

Winter was up in arms, sure, but Giga was professional through it all. It still got called lynching. It still got decried.

 

"Zai doesn't have to do those threads, stfu!"

 

No one forced him to promise to do them. He did that of his own volition. It's not wrong to ask for it, but people got mad all the same.

 

People blindly support the team or the status quo, and quite adamantly at that. The opposite happens, as well, but the "change needs to happen" tends to be the minority, which gets met with the same venom that Winter met. There's very little, if any, venom going from me/giga/Barty/Dae here, but there's definitely some in return. It's a constant cycle.

 

Not everyone here is blindly supporting one side or the other, but it's definitely there, and it's a problem.

[notcleverusername]

An entire 2 people said he shouldn't be banned at all.

 

nick's last 2 paragraphs are a great tl;dr

 

he was banned right after a thread where he and Shard were vocal about abuse, after said thread was locked in a way that already supported this point, regardless of intent.

 

There was no acknowledgment of this. It was left to letting winter spread the word.

 

We, as a community, have emphasized the importance of communication and clarity. This thread is derived from the fact it goes back in much of that progress. The team banned Winter at a time that screamed suspicious, and there was no discussion, notice, or comment about it.

 

this is something that shouldn't be happening if communication is truly a value.

 

What's done is done. What happens henceforth shouldn't be a repeat of events like this.

I can get the communication issue

 

Every other point I can recall being made seems like a non-problem tho

"What reason was there???" is covered by Winter consistently doing Wintery things, which the modteam has also explained

"What changed???" is that things don't always have to change (this is prob the most confusing argument to me, Iunno if it's just me but most my forum experience regarding dumb peeps is that mods let them go for as long as they possibru can)

"Inconsistency" could maybe be an argument but I'm reasonably sure there's no one around who was as consistently Wintery as Winter was, and furthermore worth noting that a lot of Wintery actions from non-Winters were a direct result of Winterisms, which would still mean that if you got rid of Winter you wouldn't have to deal with as much of that anyways???

 

For you, specifically, there's some other things I'd like to address.

In regards to it being a kneejerk action, the mods have already made a statement in response to this. Multiple times, even, I'd argue. It is absolutely true that it took this thread, and Zai waking up, for them to do it, but by the time you'd already said

 

That's literally evidence this was done in a kneejerk. No one denied there's been a stewing issue over Winter, but the issue was that this happened right after he got really vocal, alongside Shard, over feelings of power abuse.

it had already been explained multiple times in honestly what was a reasonable manner (it's brought up after latest round of Winter, issue is discussed among all mods and reviewed by Super Mods, action is delivered).

 

Similarly this

 

No, it implies you got sick of him, on a personal level, and got rid of it. Suggesting that people have never abused power just for the sake of making their lives easier is stupid, regardless of actual impact. Hell, I did that to Halu over something stupidly minor years ago, when I should have just removed the link and given him a slight warn for a mistake. We've made up, are perfectly chummy, but I damn well did do that.

I can only read as reading significantly too deeply for reasons that, even assuming they were true, is still less explanatory than straight-up Winter Was a Ban Long Time In Coming.

If you didn't like Winter, that's fine - but it's not acceptable to line up behind a ban on grounds that could just as easily happen to you regardless of the rules and because of personal politics.

Quite frankly, given that Winter had such free reign for so long in the first place, I don't think you can really argue that this would happen easily to anyone else HAHA

Maybe if you all start acting like Winter now, you'll get banned in 3 years min

Esp since other peeps aren't Winter no matter how they try to draw the Inconsistency Picture.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

You can't say "there's a better way" when there isn't. This is a big, public issue, because it became a continuation of a controversial thread from yesterday. Discussing in private why the team did something shady, intentionally or not, defeats the point of it, because that's keeping it shady.

The reason that I said there are better ways is because for a while I had no idea that was the actual issue you had (in fact several people including myself said "Okay so what is it you want from this?") and it seems that the message didn't get through until recently.

It could have been laid out much more simply, briefly, and bluntly and had a much better effect. Your showman leaked through a bit too much :P

The "communicate" thing was said, yes, but it was in the midst of a lot of other things that sort of took the spotlight away from it.

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

Quite frankly, given that Winter had such free reign for so long in the first place, I don't think you can really argue that this would happen easily to anyone else HAHA

 

Any "free reign" Winter had was within the rules. I don't care who this "would" happen to because the fact of the matter is that a permaban for political reasons in no way outlined by the rules shouldn't happen to anyone, to Winter or to you or anyone else. It *could* happen to anyone, because the mods have the power. In this case it was, in fact, abused.

[Night]

It wasn't Zai who caused the ban. What he did was get member's opinion on if the action would be okay. That is not on his own agenda or bias. That is through the opinion of others and their say. Zai basically did the opposite of acting on his own bias by getting information from other people. He didn't even pull the trigger on the ban, he didn't do anything with that. Zai isn't motivated for anything other than the better atmosphere of YCM, which a survey was conducted through the means of other members. He had nothing to do with the ultimate decision.

 

You're focusing on the wrong sheet here, using Zai as a catalyst because you don't seem to actually understand what is going on here. Stop acting on your own accord if you don't have all of the information. Shut the funk up, sit down, and go suck your thumb. Stop acting like a damn child after that. This shouldn't be about Winter's ban. That was going to be done at one point or another. It was only a matter of time. How this should change is how the mods conduct sheet like this again. Sure, Zai and Dad started this in the shittiest of ways, but Zai has taken action in the mod forum for different proposals. He isn't acting on bias. He is acting on majority rule. funking idiot.

 

I largely agree with the points, but unnecessary hostility is the entire reason we're having this discussion right now, perpetuating it isn't going to do anyone good. 

+3 warning points. 

 

 

It's not my responsibility to know the contents of the mod forum, but I understand that Zai opened the question as to whether Winter should be directly permabanned (prompted, in my opinion, by his personal politics), the mod team came to an agreement and evilfusion permabanned Winter. Both of them have made arguments here in favour of the decision that simply don't suffice.  

 

Zai didn't even do that of his own volition though, he and Eros were tasked by another mod after someone brought up that the members were asking why Winter wasn't already banned on discord/skype. They then went to discord/skype and told the members to send their opinions on the matter to me through pm, I then discussed it further with said members because my personal decision on whether to ban him or not rested solely upon the desires of the members. Of the pm's I received every single one was for the ban, which seems to be consistent with where we're at now because the vast majority still agrees that the ban was needed. I then cataloged and relayed the results to the rest of the team, and then we had a finally vote and then evil proposed himself to be the one to actually ban Winter and make the statement when the time came due to the fact that he personally had a history of actually sticking up for Winter at one point, the rest of us thought that made enough sense and so we left it to him to do it and then make said statement. 

 

(note that Zai's largest contribution here was telling members on discord to pm me)

 

And furthermore, clearly there was a system equipped with a chain of command and procedural steps all culminating into a 3 hours period of discussion and deliberation from both the staff and with the members views primarily taken into account before anyone even pressed the button to ban one person. I legitimately don't understand how this could have been handled any funking better to be honest, and before you start grasping with that transparency bullshit:

 

As for why he didn't immediately post the statement the second he banned him: 

 

I hesitate to draw attention to it promptly if only because it comes off as waving a kill trophy around or similar.

 

That's a direct quote from the mod forum and I don't understand why it wasn't posted till now, whether you think it makes sense or not doesn't matter. It's his reasoning as to why he held off for 30 minutes illogical or not, it still shows that there was no ulterior motives behind why he waited. 

 

For the love of funk please dispel this moronic notion that we're trying to "sweep sheet under the rug." Do you really think that we just expected everyone not to notice that one of the most frequent posters had just mysteriously vanished? No, obviously not, that would be funking stupid. 

 

People would have complained if we posted it immediately or after, the only difference is that there would be different complaint. 

People are complaining that we should have waited for him to keep causing hostility for another year and maybe ban him then.

People are complaining that we banned him specifically because he said we were abusing our power.

People would complain if we didn't ban him solely on the basis that if anyone screams power abuse they'd be immune.

People would have complained if we never banned him at all. 

People would have complained if we also banned the other guy. 

People are complaining that we're biased because we didn't ban the other guy. 

People complain, and people would complain in a million other creative ways. 

 

Condemning us for not anticipating every single way people will complain and not having the foresight to act accordingly is insane. 

 

And I really don't understand it. It gets to a point where honestly, I'm tired of having to justify my actions on a constant basis to a crowd that legitimately will never be entirely content so long as there is something to dramatize. At the end of the day I can only hold myself to a standard and hold everyone else on the team to a standard and hope that a track-record of no real power abuse can do something to assure people that nothing we do is out of bias, malice or for any other ulterior motive aside from legitimately doing what's best for the site to the best of our abilities. 

 

If that isn't enough though, just consider what I said prior. There was a system equipped with a chain of command and procedural steps all culminating into a 3 hours period of discussion and deliberation from both the staff and with the members views primarily taken into account before anyone even pressed the button to ban one person. And subsequently anticipating outrage so we had the guy with the least bias wait to make a statement. Name another forum staff that's doing all of that just to ban a single toxic member when even 90% of the member base agrees with the ban. I'll wait.

[notcleverusername]

Any "free reign" Winter had was within the rules. I don't care who this "would" happen to because the fact of the matter is that a permaban for political reasons in no way outlined by the rules shouldn't happen to anyone, to Winter or to you or anyone else. It *could* happen to anyone, because the mods have the power. 

I don't know if this is your first forum or w/e but yes, that's how that usually works

Anyone COULD be punished arbitrarily if mods choose to do so in basically every forum ever, but that's not even the problem here anyways

The issue here isn't that Winter was banned arbitrarily. I'm not even sure why you're arguing this, because as said, "within the rules" or not (and I'm reasonably sure, even just going by examples in this thread, that even that little is wrong), there have been plenty of reasons to ban him for a good while*. It's hardly arbitrary, and while politics definitely could have played into it, that's still not as important as (I really have to emphasize this) Winter being Winter.

The only real issue--and don't get me wrong, it is a real issue--is that the modteam poorly explained their actions and reasoning, which they have taken steps to ameliorate in this thread, culminating with that last post above me that I can't see without opening a new tab because "Show New Replies" is borken.

 

*For the record, yes, even if it is not explicitly outlined within the rules, being constantly petty, hostile, stupid, and/or unreasonable are in fact reasons to take action against a member. Keeping to the letter of the law is enough to not get you banned immediately, but ignoring the spirit of it--spirit usually meaning "Don't be a dickhead"--will get you banned eventually. :V

There's no real way to convince you of this since all I can offer for "hard evidence" are personal anecdotes, so you are free to not believe me and/or insist that rules>everything. But you'll be wrong.

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

For the love of funk please dispel this moronic notion that we're trying to "sweep sheet under the rug." Do you really think that we just expected everyone not to notice that one of the most frequent posters had just mysteriously vanished? No, obviously not, that would be funking stupid. 

 

I assure you I have no such notions. Of course we all know that the ban happened, but the reasoning isn't there and the ban shortly followed a heated argument between Winter and staff members including you in which your toxicity at the very least mirrored Winter's. 

 

At the end of the day I can only hold myself to a standard and hold everyone else on the team to a standard and hope that a track-record of no real power abuse can do something to assure people that nothing we do is out of bias, malice or for any other ulterior motive aside from legitimately doing what's best for the site to the best of our abilities. 

 

If that isn't enough though, just consider what I said prior. There was a system equipped with a chain of command and procedural steps all culminating into a 3 hours period of discussion and deliberation from both the staff and with the members views primarily taken into account before anyone even pressed the button to ban one person. And subsequently anticipating outrage so we had the guy with the least bias wait to make a statement. Name another forum staff that's doing all of that just to ban a single toxic member when even 90% of the member base agrees with the ban. I'll wait.

 

Then please, hold yourself to that standard. Unpopularity isn't a good reason to permaban someone. 

[Blake]

LOn phone so time for the tl;dr

 

i get called out for being condescending, but Night does this every major thread, which is super condescending, and gets no complaints. Totally just one side.

 

not that I mind Night doing it, just the irony.

 

What I do kind is the fact that it always boils down to "shut up, we are not wrong, because we are better than others".

 

So what? If you keep making the same mistakes, the same issues keep happening, and transparency is utterly disregarded, what good are you doing?

 

I can't attest for others, but as I've said, if this was actually covered instead of being turned into a Winter Tells Everyone bomb, it would have been less of a concern. If you guys didn't do it after one of his LEAST offensive threads, which happened to be offensive to the team, it would be less concerning.

 

The evidence the team provided implied t was different from what you just showed, so maybe if you had stepped in instead of waiting for your "I'm Night funk off" post of the thread, things would have ended better. Transparency, huh?

 

and sweep under the rug was to blind supporters not the team so idk why you'd purposely change context

[evilfusion]

There's a massive combination of factors in what makes Winter banworthy.

 

Is it purely because he's aggressive and starts petty arguments? No, it's not. If it was, half the member base would be banned.

 

We've spoken to him innumerable times in the past YEAR to rein that behavior and attitude in. We've told certain mods who struggled to deal with him to stop doling out punishments because it was too easy for Winter to cry foul due to (quite probable) bias in judgment. We've cut him slack tons of times. Sometimes that backfired, resulting in him being slapped with unfair penalties due to it piling up before someone acted. 9 times out of 10, when Winter complained to me about it, I AGREED with him, and revoked those penalties.

 

But he hasn't CHANGED his approach. At all. He cries that he's being victimized ALL THE TIME. Every time we give him a slap on the wrist, he declares that it's because the mods have it in for him. And you know? At this point, it's not that we are seething with rage about Winter, but it's no stretch of the imagination that yes, we're probably pretty fed up with him and his refusal to just keep his head down and act civilly.

 

Is it because he speaks out about the mod team? NO! Of course not! I actually LIKE when members bring up concerns about the mod team. I don't ENJOY it, but I like the perspective it gives me. When I try to debate with people, I want to understand their viewpoint, even if I don't agree with them. What I want in return is for them to understand my viewpoint as well, and come to a mutual understanding, even if we continue to disagree.

 

But Winter is an EXTREMELY toxic presence. We throw the word around a bit, yes, but for simplicity's sake, toxic means "consistently makes the site unpleasant for others, due to attitude, behavior, or similar". It's not about making it unpleasant for me, personally, it's about making it unpleasant for OTHERS. And there have been many concerns placed about Winter's attitude and how it is very upsetting how often it's given a free pass because if we do anything about it, he'll cry foul.

 

No one else is bad for the site and user base to THIS extent. There is an argument to ban Shard, but honestly, I don't think it's warranted at this time. I've only seen one recent incident of Shard being venomous. I am willing to give them, and others, a fair chance to improve their behavior. To me, a permaban is to be used only when other options have been exhausted in getting the member to improve their behavior and attitude.

 

Other factors - the cry for mods to actually be proactive in moderating the site. We've been lax. We've been restructuring, we've been updating the rules and trying to enforce rule-breaking. Baby steps. We're not perfect, nor will we ever claim to be.

 

It has nothing to do with political views or claims of censorship. Those are stupid justifications that I would never permit to be used when deciding whether or not to ban someone.

 

I don't know the motives for the other mods. I didn't ask them each in turn to definitively cite their motives. My motive for getting rid of Winter is that we have put up with his attitude for FAR longer than reasonable, considering how persistent it is. When it comes to our approach to actually enforcing the rules, Winter is, and has always been, someone that NEEDS to be addressed promptly, because of how bad the behavior is.

 

This much drama on a regular basis is not healthy, either for members, moderators, or the atmosphere of the site as a whole.

 

I'm well aware not everyone agrees with the decision to ban him. We knew that when going into this. We knew people would complain and want to blame someone and question their motives and integrity, because Winter is high-profile and very vocal, so his supporters will be the same. But many members DO agree. The entire mod team, all three Supers included, agree.

 

I decided that I should be the one to ban Winter, with the support of the other mods and Supers, because I'm the one who has always been the most indecisive about whether or not to ban him. I'm the one who always wants to take things slow, and make sure the action is justified. I believe it IS justified at this point in time. Not for any singular offense standing out above all others, but due to the culmination of everything that came before it, and the lack of improvement.

 

You are free to disagree. You can provide me with rationale about why you feel it's not justified. I'll listen.

 

But that doesn't mean I'll change the decision.

[LordCowCowCowCowCowCowCowCow]

Okay so, Black, correct me if I'm wrong here but...

I think the idea is "The mods made a mistake in how they handled it, if something similar pops up, please be more open about it from the get go." Yes?

evil has explained why he thought it would be best not to. His reasoning is totally fair and makes sense at the time. Hindsight shows that it seems not to be the best choice.

 

So if the mods say that, yes, if there arises another issue where a controversial member is being considered to be banned, they will be more open about why they did it and make sure it's clear that it's not a singular event, would the majority here (barring the "unban Winter" group) be satisfied?

 

Because I feel this could have been resolved a lot sooner if this is the main issue.

[Night]

I assure you I have no such notions. Of course we all know that the ban happened, but the reasoning isn't there and the ban shortly followed a heated argument between Winter and staff members including you in which your toxicity at the very least mirrored Winter's. 

 

 

Then please, hold yourself to that standard. Unpopularity isn't a good reason to permaban someone. 

 

We've already stated that the thread isn't the reason for his ban. 

 

To merely crop it up to "banning due to unpopularity" is horrendously unfair to all sides of the discussion.

 

LOn phone so time for the tl;dr

 

i get called out for being condescending, but Night does this every major thread, which is super condescending, and gets no complaints. Totally just one side.

 

not that I mind Night doing it, just the irony.

 

What I do kind is the fact that it always boils down to "shut up, we are not wrong, because we are better than others".

 

So what? If you keep making the same mistakes, the same issues keep happening, and transparency is utterly disregarded, what good are you doing?

 

I can't attest for others, but as I've said, if this was actually covered instead of being turned into a Winter Tells Everyone bomb, it would have been less of a concern. If you guys didn't do it after one of his LEAST offensive threads, which happened to be offensive to the team, it would be less concerning.

 

The evidence the team provided implied t was different from what you just showed, so maybe if you had stepped in instead of waiting for your "I'm Night funk off" post of the thread, things would have ended better. Transparency, huh?

 

and sweep under the rug was to blind supporters not the team so idk why you'd purposely change context

 

I just stepped in because I only logged on 2 hours ago during which I took the time to read all of the previous discussion and make the post, I don't understand why or how that annoys you but maybe you should stop assuming and claiming to be for "fixing the problem"yet only further inciting sheet with your rhetoric. 

 

There were points made, I responded to them in one post because that's literally everything I need to say on the matter, would you rather I didn't? 

 

People were claiming that we were abusing our power, all I did was defend the team by stating the factual process in how we conducted this. If that to you is indicative of me saying "shut up, we're not wrong" then you are simply hearing what you want to hear. 

[Resident Fascist]

Winter asked me to ask why the ban system implemented a week ago wasn't used, he supposedly only had 3 WP for spam

[Sunshine Jesse]

So the tldr is that he was really annoying and stubborn for multiple years straight and showing no signs of changing that?

 

I can't disagree with that, I guess.

[evilfusion]

Winter asked me to ask why the ban system implemented a week ago wasn't used, he supposedly only had 3 WP for spam

 

This is actually a very valid point.

 

My answer is "I legitimately have no reason to believe that he will improve his attitude and behavior even after returning from a temporary ban".

 

Because he's shown no sign of improving in the past, I don't see the value of doing this dance with him any further.

[Blake]

We've already stated that the thread isn't the reason for his ban. 

 

To merely crop it up to "banning due to unpopularity" is horrendously unfair to all sides of the discussion.

 

 

I just stepped in because I only logged on 2 hours ago during which I took the time to read all of the previous discussion and make the post, I don't understand why or how that annoys you but maybe you should stop assuming and claiming to be for "fixing the problem"yet only further inciting sheet with your rhetoric. 

 

There were points made, I responded to them in one post because that's literally everything I need to say on the matter, would you rather I didn't? 

 

People were claiming that we were abusing our power, all I did was defend the team by stating the factual process in how we conducted this. If that to you is indicative of me saying "shut up, we're not wrong" then you are simply hearing what you want to hear. 

 

You didn't simply do that.

 

"look at other forums" is outright telling people to shut up. That's not what I want to hear, it's a handwave that comes down every time, which contributes to the "any complaint is lynching or shitstirring" mentality. I had already made a tl;dr calmly, but you still felt the need to make the night post. When one person was still incensed and no one else.

 

I didn't assume anything, either. I regard to evidence and experience,  nothing more.

[Resident Fascist]

So basically you just admit the mod team targetted winter because you see him as a problem. Okay

[~ P O L A R I S ~]

What would an "improved Winter" look like? Not challenging people and their beliefs? Because that actually is important for the health of a discussion forum, especially in Debates.

[Resident Fascist]

Right, and my response to that would be 1) me contesting the 3 wp because I was afraid they were abusive behavior, and let go after evil told me they were spam 2) Dad telling me I was off his shitlist 3) trying to make amends to people like Jesse, even though I have work to do, I do think it's gotten better 4) Not posting in debates that much, outside of this topic, I don't think I've gotten into anything actually heated. 5) Trying to move back into TCG 5) privately dealing with my warnings instead of how I used to deal with ones I had problems with 6) not doing the status stuff anymore.....I HAVE been trying, and I thought I was making progress

From winters discord BTW I can provide screen caps if truly nexessary

[Night]

"look at other forums" is outright telling people to shut up. That's not what I want to hear, it's a handwave that comes down every time, which contributes to the "any complaint is lynching or shitstirring" mentality.

 

I wasn't trying to shut people up with the comparison, I was trying to add another perspective to the conversation. 

One that I feel is justified, we went through great lengths and measures in order to ban a single member that everyone deemed to be a hazard for the site anyway. If that's an abuse of power then other forums are probably ran by legitimate tyrants. 

[Mutant Monster RAEG-HAPYP]

I originally wasn't going to get involved in this, but, there is something I want to get off my mind.

 

I'm not going to argue that Winter didn't do anything wrong. He did get carried away a number of times. I personally do not have any ill will towards him, even if I don't necessarily agree with all of his views and how he presented them. However, I do have to wonder one thing that is related to both Winter and YCM as a whole.

 

As some of you might remember, I went AWOL for quite sometime. One of the big reasons is that regardless of Winter's presence, I found this site to be incredibly hostile as a whole. There was and still is always some form of drama or people at each other's throats, and, it didn't always involve Winter. I felt that this site had an air of hostility all the time, and I still feel that way sometimes. It's not really surprising why so few new members actually become regulars. Who wants to be on a site that's generally unpleasant?

 

So, that leaves me wondering if the general atmosphere of the site had any sort of contribution to Winter's aggression, indirectly or directly, which would seemingly lead to what has happened now. Maybe it didn't. Maybe it did to some extent. Or maybe, Winter being banned for good won't bring about a major change to the cesspool of drama and hostility known as YCM.

 

Even if that has nothing to do with all this, if you honestly believe that Winter being permanently banned is going to make all the toxicity go away, you need a reality check. This site constantly finds ways to be hostile and unpleasant, Winter or no Winter. I do think it has gotten somewhat better since the time I left, but, if this site does not take a hard look at itself, we will likely be repeating this in the future.

[Blake]

Telling someone things like that never works. It's like telling someone they don't have the right to be hungry because third world people are hungrier.

 

I don't truly believe you abused power. I've established what it looks like, and how it validates the concerns of such from just yesterday. How this could have been avoided, better timed, or just more transparent in general.

 

evilfusion's statement does not help and I am outta here I am not touching that can of worms

[(GigaDrillBreaker)]

I feel the best way to move forward with this, disputes of the ban itself aside, is to make use of the opportunity it presents.

 

It has been stated by several people here, and is generally accepted, that Winter was a unique case, both in his behavior and the effect he had on the community. That said, it is naive to think that such will not happen at some point in the future. This gives the staff a chance to set a precedent on how things like this are handled.

 

Rather than being banned for any specific incident, he was banned for just generally being awful for the site. It has been a long-standing problem, and the mod team came to the conclusion (with input from members) that he was not going to improve, and should thus be removed from the community. No real point in arguing the validity of this decision, as it is clear the staff has no intent to shift their position. As far as I am aware (feel free to correct me if I am wrong) this is pretty much unheard of.

 

Keeping all this in mind, and in respect to the recent revisions of the site rules and staff restructuring, I believe that standards should be put in place for this sort of moderator action. I spent most of the day thinking on this, and there are a few key points that need to be kept in mind if/when members become similarly problematic.

• The member in question needs to be fully aware of what is going on. Obviously, discussion of problematic members will (and should) happen behind the closed doors of the mod forum, so as to prevent lynch mobs and witch hunts. That said, if a member is deemed problematic to the point where their absolute removal from the community is being seriously considered, they should know. From what I understand, Winter was pretty much just blindsided by this all, and I think the vast majority of those opposing staff in this thread are primarily set off by the sheer confusion that ensued in the process. From what I could gather, he was aware of the opinion-sourcing the mod team did, but only because people actually told him. If things went the way it seems they were supposed to, he would have had no real warning before realizing "Huh. I can't access this community. Guess I got banned?". This presents some pretty real issues, whether the decision to ban him had been reach or (hypothetically) not. We pretty much know what happens if he gets banned because that just happened. Obviously, there would have been some issue in any case, but the hush hush surveying of the community definitely ruffled more feathers than if it had not happened, at least as I can imagine. This becomes even more of a mess if it wasn't decided for him to be banned. When would he have been told? How would he have been told? "Oh, by the way, we asked everyone if you should be banned, but you managed to scrape by this time"? Would he have had to been told by members of the community? That kind of spread of information is literally why this mess existed in the first place.
• The surveying of the community on the matter belongs on the forum. I don't know about everyone else, but I consider myself to be pretty funking active. I was browsing the forum just about all day yesterday, as well as watching the discord. I had no idea what was going on until I saw how it leaked into the mtg skype group. It very well may have been in the discord, I don't write off the possibility that I simply missed it, but if it is that easy to miss, can it really be considered a proper sampling of public opinion? Don't get me wrong, I am almost absolutely certain that the vast majority would still advocate for his ban, even in spite/respect of context. Ignoring the fact that the obvious majority opinion makes said sampling redundant at best, and pandering at worst, the (presumably) small sample size is not an accurate representation of community opinion as a whole. The correlation between the two is coincidental. Focus groups are a fantastic tool, but not one that permanent decisions should be made off of, let alone such decisions that have culminated for literally years. In the future, when gathering public opinion on whether a community member should be removed for the sake of the site as a whole, said sourcing belongs on the site. People can easily remain anonymous by having a locked thread put up in news, or a post in one of the PR threads (with a corresponding link in the status bar/discord) to direct those who want their opinions heard to all PM a designated moderator. This goes hand-in-hand with my previous point. If the process is publicly known, the member in question will be more than aware of their predicament (though a courtesy PM or discord/skype message should also be present).
• Proper time should be taken making said decision. This point may seem a bit silly, considering just how long Winter has been causing issues, but it is more valid than it may immediately appear. From what I can tell based upon what was said in this thread, and by Zai in the skype chat, the actual discussion and process of gathering opinions before evilfusion pulled the trigger took less than a day. As a matter of fact, Zai said himself in this thread that he wanted to spend more time deliberating, before evilfusion kinda just funking did it. Despite the sentiment that evilfusion doing this himself rather than it being a unified execution would make it somehow less biased, it instead seems to give an impression more closely resembling an executive decision. I'm not saying the mod team is in evilfusion's choke hold, nothing of the sort, and I have no significant doubt that the decision was unanimous, but by isolating himself (and the execution) from the rest of the team, evilfusion significantly reduced the professionalism in how Winter's ban was handled. This was a big decision, and one with permanent consequences. For any member of the mod team to go forward with it before the rest is completely satisfied with the discussion reduces the effectiveness of a multi-faceted staff. Though the forum itself is not a democracy, nor should it be, the inner workings of the mod team should be something resembling such. Once again, this compounds with my previous points, as allowing more time (at least 72 hours, as I see it) gives the entire community an opportunity to weigh in, rather than a pseudo-random sample who happen to be present whereverthehell when the call went out.
• At least some sort of structure should exist for how members are evaluated for punishment in matters like this. I will be honest, I had difficulty wording that bullet point, but I think I got my point across. If a member is being a general thorn in YCM's side, they should be made aware of it before anything gets out of hand. In this respect, I think the team did just fine. Winter was well aware that people rarely appreciated his presence. I think this process could use a bit more structure, however. The member in question should be clearly and formally informed that their behavior is under review from the mod team, and that after a set amount of time (90 days immediately comes to mind) they would receive another evaluation to measure if they have improved. Depending on what is found in the reassessment, action may or may not be taken against them. This makes the member, as stated before, aware of the circumstance they are in, as well as the potential consequences for their actions and behavior. This contrasts what happened here, where a member was incredibly unpleasant for an extended period, with the decision to finally end it seeming to come from nowhere/prompted by suspect circumstances to an uninformed onlooker, or even the punished member themselves. This can then be worked directly into the current rules regarding punishment. Standardization, where possible, serves to both keep the staff honest when need be, as well as reduce suspicion when they are just doing their jobs right.

 

There might be more, but really those 4 points are the big deal. I believe that if this situation was handled the way I have outlined, the backlash would have been drastically reduced, because either winter wouldn't be banned, or the decision would be more apparently just. I might pop back in here if I think of more, but this is more or less my final thought on the matter, at least to be posted publicly.