- Pronouns
- They/she
All:
As most people reading this likely already know, the Council of Hawks announced yesterday it was blacklisting Plagentine and Festavo. The Council shared the evidence its decision was based on with the Admin Team yesterday evening. Having reviewed that evidence, we are issuing indefinite bans to both individuals, effective immediately.
The conduct in question did not occur on our forum, but we have long had a policy of preemptively banning individuals based on off-forum activity. One indicator we look to in such situations is whether the conduct would be a Terms of Service violation if it had occurred here. In this case, there is no question that it would. However, our inquiry does not end there.
Some off-forum actions that would be Terms of Service violations if taken here clearly do not warrant a ban. For example, somebody who goes to Las Vegas and gambles is not going to be banned even though gambling on the forum is prohibited. Instead, we look to whether the conduct indicates that the individual in question represents a credible threat to our community. In this case, the answer is most definitely “yes.” If the logs showed offensive language alone, we might pause and think about how to balance our commitment to free speech with the heinous nature of the conduct. But in this instance, we need not consider that balance. The logs demonstrate intent to deceive individuals and infiltrate their community in pursuit of some perverse pleasure. Such conduct, when inevitably discovered, has the potential to cause great harm to the impacted individuals, as we have seen here when we have discovered people are not who they claim to be.
In view of this conduct, we have no doubt that indefinitely banning Plagentine and Festavo from Europeia is the appropriate response.
As a final note, HEM recused himself from this decision. As President, his focus was on the in-character response and keeping that separate from the Administrative decision. He also wished to avoid any appearance of retaliation against a recent political opponent. While the remainder of the Admin Team have no doubt HEM would have participated impartially, we commend his decision to put integrity above personal involvement.
Signed,
The Admin Team1
1Note that while Administrator r3naissanc3r and Adviser NES agreed that a ban was appropriate, they have not yet had an opportunity to review this statement.
As most people reading this likely already know, the Council of Hawks announced yesterday it was blacklisting Plagentine and Festavo. The Council shared the evidence its decision was based on with the Admin Team yesterday evening. Having reviewed that evidence, we are issuing indefinite bans to both individuals, effective immediately.
The conduct in question did not occur on our forum, but we have long had a policy of preemptively banning individuals based on off-forum activity. One indicator we look to in such situations is whether the conduct would be a Terms of Service violation if it had occurred here. In this case, there is no question that it would. However, our inquiry does not end there.
Some off-forum actions that would be Terms of Service violations if taken here clearly do not warrant a ban. For example, somebody who goes to Las Vegas and gambles is not going to be banned even though gambling on the forum is prohibited. Instead, we look to whether the conduct indicates that the individual in question represents a credible threat to our community. In this case, the answer is most definitely “yes.” If the logs showed offensive language alone, we might pause and think about how to balance our commitment to free speech with the heinous nature of the conduct. But in this instance, we need not consider that balance. The logs demonstrate intent to deceive individuals and infiltrate their community in pursuit of some perverse pleasure. Such conduct, when inevitably discovered, has the potential to cause great harm to the impacted individuals, as we have seen here when we have discovered people are not who they claim to be.
In view of this conduct, we have no doubt that indefinitely banning Plagentine and Festavo from Europeia is the appropriate response.
As a final note, HEM recused himself from this decision. As President, his focus was on the in-character response and keeping that separate from the Administrative decision. He also wished to avoid any appearance of retaliation against a recent political opponent. While the remainder of the Admin Team have no doubt HEM would have participated impartially, we commend his decision to put integrity above personal involvement.
Signed,
The Admin Team1
1Note that while Administrator r3naissanc3r and Adviser NES agreed that a ban was appropriate, they have not yet had an opportunity to review this statement.