Notice of Administrative Ban

*quietly writes hy's name on the list* :ph43r:
 
I would say that Morwenna being banned is hardly surprising but since I don't know what for, I can't really say or think anything other than I'm jelly for information.
 
The admin team is in a predicament:

We'd love to make all the details public, so that we can wash away any doubts and not have to face the criticism we are facing in this thread. Believe me, given how limited the time I have for NS is, I really don't want to spend it dealing with this kind of pushback. I am sure all the other admins feel the same, given that we are all busy individuals.

However, there are RL-related implications and risks involved. As convenient as it would be for admins to release details about administrative bans, it would also be incredibly reckless and dangerous, both for the banned members themselves and for other members of our community. In most cases, it would also additionally lead to serious violations of those members' privacy, with all the additional risks involved.

Almost always, the second factor far outweighs the first, and we are left to announce bans the way we do. It is not ideal, but the alternative is way worse.


I would also like to say that the two bans that happened in the past few months, Anumia's and Morwenna's, are not representative of any kind of policy change compared to how the admin team has always been operating. You can look at this list and you will find many members that have received administrative bans over the years.

The circumstances for some of them are better known than for others. For example, Gerzam's ban is related to publicly porn spamming, and Henry's ban is related to publicly displayed erratic behavior.

For some others, the general gist of the circumstances is publicly known, but details are kept private. This would include members like Anumia, unibot, and Tyler.

And finally, there are others for whom what can be disclosed to the public is, by necessity, very little. Morwenna is in this category. Another such case would be blairclair - only the admins and forum members directly affected know the reasons for the ban.


One of the reasons why the admin team is kept so small and stable, and why it takes a long established record to be made an admin, is exactly to partially alleviate the issues arising from the fact that it is not possible to do administrative bans both perfectly transparently and perfectly safely.

My biased view is that the admin team has generally handled such bans appropriately, discreetly, and as transparently as possible. I say this speaking from experience in multiple other forums, where administrative bans are issued for much pettier (i.e., politically motivated) reasons without any explanation.

If other members don't feel the same, then there's not much to change in terms of policy to address their concerns. All that can be changed is the admin team itself: replace (some parts of) it with members that the community trusts more with handling the above trade-off between transparency and risk minimization. If that's the case, then people should go ahead and say so, instead of asking for a policy change in terms of what is disclosed.
 
HEM said:
Speaking specifically to this case, people in our community were absolutely affected.
Out of interest, and I don't mean to intrude, but do these people know they've been affected?
 
Erica said:
HEM said:
Speaking specifically to this case, people in our community were absolutely affected.
Out of interest, and I don't mean to intrude, but do these people know they've been affected?
To the best of our knowledge: yes.
 
Lethen said:
Notolecta said:
Hem, the problem is we are expected to trust blindly the decisions of a largely insular group of admins. This year is not the first time we've had administrative bans and almost all of them have occurred without much transparency. I personally don't trust that there is proper accountability for the admin team to the community, and that means the admin team could potentially conduct abuses of their power without question. I'm not saying that has happened, but the way admin decsions are made has nearly zero transparency and no unbiased accountability.
I would like to think that you of all people would appreciate the need for discretion when it comes to administrators and handling privacy matters considering how I've worked with you personally on this sort of thing in the past here (though I don't recall if that was ever a ban or if a ban would have been necessary).
Except the blairclair incident was rather well discussed publicly and people received both evidence and details. I'm not saying you have to reveal the name of everyone harmed or things that would ultimately just repeat the actions taken by the person being already banned, but vague "X has harmed the people of the community" is not enough because if that is acceptable than what is to stop you from banning literally anyone just because. I'm not claiming you've already done that or that it necessarily will happen; I'm just not comfortable with the fact that we as a community accept explanations that are not sufficient to allow us to know if that does happen.

r3naissanc3r said:
One of the reasons why the admin team is kept so small and stable, and why it takes a long established record to be made an admin, is exactly to partially alleviate the issues arising from the fact that it is not possible to do administrative bans both perfectly transparently and perfectly safely.

My biased view is that the admin team has generally handled such bans appropriately, discreetly, and as transparently as possible. I say this speaking from experience in multiple other forums, where administrative bans are issued for much pettier (i.e., politically motivated) reasons without any explanation.

If other members don't feel the same, then there's not much to change in terms of policy to address their concerns. All that can be changed is the admin team itself: replace (some parts of) it with members that the community trusts more with handling the above trade-off between transparency and risk minimization. If that's the case, then people should go ahead and say so, instead of asking for a policy change in terms of what is disclosed.

I don't disagree that a change in composition of the admin team would be beneficial, and I have been open about my belief that the admin team needs someone that can be an unbiased judge of the rest of the team, review and handle complaints of admin misconduct in an unbiased way, and hold them to account when missteps are taken. I don't for a second believe Mouse, HEM, or Lethen can be unbiased when dealing with each other, nor that mal would be willing to oppose in an outspoken and powerful manner(let's be honest mal isn't going to do anything that is going to make the other admins mad or anyone mad for that matter, but this might require that). The only member of the admin team that reasonably could fill this role is you, R3n, but as we all know you don't have the time to do so, and have a lot to do with managing the technical aspects of the region as is.

That being said I also think that there likely is some level of more information that can be given without damaging anyone's security or safety. Are you accusing her of doxing people? Did this happen in Europeia or involving it's citizens(HEM eventually clarified this, but it was excluded from the original statement)? What general types of information was she jeopardizing of people. The are many broad details that can be given here that would harm no one. It's not no information vs. all information here. There most certainly is a balance, but I don't think we can have confidence that it is being properly managed at this point.
 
I'm locking this thread. Should anybody wish to initiate discussions on the role of the administrative team in this region, they are welcome to do so elsewhere.
 
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