- “And this one still sounds really questionable considering you admitted out elsewhere that you don’t proactively let people know how they could even begin to discuss a ban being reversed or how to file a grievance.”
To clarify, what I expressed elsewhere, and happily express here because it is indeed an ongoing concern for us is: we currently struggle to get players to develop awareness of the rules and expectations in a reliable way. The most visible case of this is the frequency with which Area Rules are not consulted, and thus infractions occur.
We have rules, we point to them, they are published and available. It is a problem that ‘You fox prevent errors caused by not reading the manual in the manual’. We have made some strides in improving this situation, but it is far from perfect.
Additionally, we make a point, when we discuss a ban being issued, of informing the users directly what their options of appeal are. Bans are, contrary to the impression on might get reading this discussion, exceedingly rare, and we outline them clearly.
It is important to note that Shinyzorua07 was informed that they can make an appeal here on the forum, even though the deduction at the time was that they were a user who had already been banned and made well aware of their means of contesting the ban, out of our commitment to due diligence.
- “No, it sounds like to you it just matters that it’s another bannable offense that makes it easier for you to just move on and forget having to potentially correct a mistake you made.”
This is primarily a matter of establishing expectations. Again, it is required for harm mitigation: we need people under a ban to remain off Wolfery until such time as we can establish that their ban merits a reversal. If not, then bad actors have leeway to continue harm during the, as mentioned, very long review point.
- “my principles of assuming people are innocent until they’ve been proven guilty of causing some harm, the principle of not holding people liable for offenses caused through entrapment and the principle of considering the least harm solutions to issues of authority.”
As mentioned, we do not operate under the idea that conclusive proof is required for action. Conclusive proof as a requirement would cripple our community. We operate on reaching a consensus as to the most likely action which has the greatest benefit for the community. Further, we hold at any point in time the position that we act in accordance with what the most likely state of affairs is.
I will note, also, that the claim of entrapment is baseless. That would imply that we provided incentives to act outside the rules, which I discussed above is not substantiated as a claim here.
On the least harm point, we are in agreement about the principle itself, but not about what constitutes the action of least harm. We have, previously, talked about this at length. You believe that a ban should require definitive proof, we do not. You believe that a single good actor is more positive for a community than a bad actor is negative, we do not.
- " know for a fact that I have never created more than one account EVER. And in the same case I have never been banned EVER till now. I know both of these to be true,"
You may personally know that for a fact, but we don’t. If we based our judgements on the degree of fervency with which people asserted their position, there would be no recourse to any form of safety or stability. We simply cannot just take people at their word.
- “disregarding my evidence over and over”
We are not disregarding it, we are disagreeing with your judgement of its value as evidence.
- " I reached out to the individuals I said could prove Pheonix and I were different since they were involved in rps with the two of us and all of them have said they haven’t been reached out to by mods at all."
This is a verifiable falsehood. I have spoken to several of them. Either they are lying to you, or you are lying to us.
- “Every time I bring up not being Pheonix it’s either, “It doesn’t matter if you are or aren’t Pheonix, you ban evaded.” Or “Well that’s only part of it, you also have to prove that you haven’t ban evaded.””
This is correct, it’s not one or the other, both issues are relevant, but require different information and have different implications. It is a complex issue, hence the length of this discussion.
- “didn’t even create another account to reach out and tell others that I was banned, I simply relied on the friends I thankfully had on discord to help push out the message”
This is good, and perfectly fine. It is not a problem to reach out to your friends. And from the information available, we are fairly certain you didn’t create an account to reach out to them. That does not mean you did not create an account, though. And it doesn’t mean you did.
The implication is centered around the probability that ban evasion took place is simply more likely, given the number of correlations we can observe, than the combination of circumstances which would need to happen to cause this to be by accident. Therefor, until such time as we can identify evidence which makes those coincidences more likely than ban evasion, we will act as though ban evasion is the state of affairs.
- “As usual I wish there was some way to prove that I’ve only had one account, but the only thing I can think of is my first registration email that was probably deleted once it was confirmed. Any other emails from wolfery that I got were either mails that were sent to me or forum posts that mentioned me.”
This gets at the heart of the matter as a complex issue: even if you could show us those emails, they would not prove that you did not engage in ban evasion last week. And, for what it’s worth, they would not prove that you are distinct from Pheonix. In an anonymous environment, it is trivial to separate completely two different account clusters.
