Bans for Tomash

-Permaban: 2 (*Desdendelle, *PoorCynic)
-1 year ban: 1 ([EvilAI]UBEROverlord)
-3-6 month ban: 3 (*Iximaz, Sergio Turbo, Seafarer)
-1-3 month ban: 11 (Jay - Awesomeness Central, Phobos, doctorlit, OrangeYoshi99, Neshomeh, Novastorme, Tomash, Mattman the Comet, The Good Mod Addict, Akrinor, Zingenmir)
-TOTAL BANS: 17 [49% of total]

-NO BAN: 13 (*Aegis, *SkarmorySilver, *Granz, Huinesoron, DrGonzo, World-Jumper, Delta Juliette, Badger421, The Triumvirate, VixenMage, Matt Cipher, Alleb, Hieronymus Graubart)

-Explicit abstain: 5 (leafeyes, eatpraylove, Scapegrace, Ekyl, ninny4370)

-TOTAL VOTES: 35 (*6 + 29)

Drawing purely from this thread:

Board Mods

-Mods: 6 (Jay - Awesomeness Central, Novastorme, The Good Mod Addict, Ekyl, ninny4370, [EvilAI]UBEROverlord)
-No Mods: 15 60% of total
-Explicit abstain: 4 (leafeyes, eatpraylove, Scapegrace, The Triumvirate)
-TOTAL VOTES: 25

Discord Muting

-Involved users muted: 6 (*Scapegrace, Neshomeh, Sergio Turbo, Zingenmir, Alleb, Hieronymus Graubart)
-Discord closed: 1 (OrangeYoshi99)

1. No mods.
   
   2. Nobody needs to be banned. But since we can't do nothing, let Tomash, Alleb, Granz and Khryssty be muted on Discord for three months. (I'm not sure whether this is an exhaustive list of main offenders.) Let everybody else who has seen this screenshot and didn't ask to take it down be muted for at least one month. This is, even if you showed some concern about taking it to the Board without blurring the face and real name, you still get one month. I'm so late because I tried to read through the log again and to decide who deserves two months, but I can't. It's difficult to follow the conversation and I probably don't get all the undertones; thus I can't really tell who contributed how much to the unhealthy atmosphere, and every decision I made would feel unjust. Now that you had time to think about it, may I just ask all of you to sort yourself into House Three-Months, House Two-Months, House One-Month and House Totally-Innocent? (This may be a mute point. Since I didn't see Des giving the Keys to anybody else, I have no idea what will happen to the Discord.)
   
   3. Abstain.
   
   HG

I vote no ban for Tomash.

I vote for my own 1-3 month muting on the Discord.

I vote for Maslab and Delta as Discord mods.

-Alleb

1. No Board mods. Between the Nameless Admin being able to change or take down posts if necessary (and deal with trolls and spambots and so on), and level-headed people in general stepping in when things get heated in the 'this is no longer a friendly debate' sense (seriously, we've had almost entirely polite political debates. In most cases, we're capable of not even needing someone to step in on the Board), I don't think mods are necessary nor do I see what they'd really add. At most, it'd be a tiny bit of extra authority for a level-headed person who's stepping in to tell people to go cool off, and since it'd also come with a bunch more extra stress for that person/those people, it doesn't seem like a great trade-off. My vote is no mods.
   
   2. I am not touching this. I do not want to touch this. This entire affair disgusts me and I do not want to spend even more time trying (and mostly failing) to sort out what I think an appropriate response would be. At most (okay, I'm touching it a little bit), I suppose I agree with Tomash (and a number of other people) that he should take a break for a bit. How long that break actually is, I'll let the rest of you decide. I support 2-3 months as the minimum, though I'm not sure anything less than that has even been suggested (I stand corrected, there's 1 month in there too. I don't support 1 month; put me down as 2-3 minimum).
   
   Actually, one more thing: there was a proposal a while back to mute some of the users who'd been involved in the anti-July...'discussion' (and I'm using that word loosely). That is, to mute them on the Discord for, I believe, 1-3 months, or maybe 1-2. I support that idea (at 1-2 months) for the people who were most involved--not for everyone, but for the people who were really spearheading it. Guys, you need to learn to take a step back and think for a bit when emotions are running high, especially your own. You need to learn to take a break and cool off. Even if that means actually saying 'I am not clear-headed right now and I'm going to take a break and come back in a few hours/tomorrow. Please don't make any important decisions without me. Please take a step back yourselves if you feel your anger is clouding your judgement as well.' If muting you will make you think about it and make the idea stick in your memory, I am all for it.
   
   This also applies when you don't yet have a strong opinion of your own. Take a step back if you need to, read up on what's going on, get more information. Don't judge blindly based on one bit of information that you have no context for. Again, you can explicitly state that that's what you're doing: 'I don't have enough information about this yet, and I'm going to step away from this discussion until I know more.' Either that or call for more information for everyone. It doesn't hurt to learn more, and it doesn't hurt to reserve judgement until you do. Try it.
   
   You are all adults or young adults (yes, I'm including the teenagers in this). If you don't have this skill yet, you need to try to build it. This is a community of real people, even if many of us will never meet; and you need those skills both for here in the PPC (and in any other online community you will ever join) as well as in the real world, for your jobs and your lives and your friends and your families and potentially your SOs. Learn how to take a step back and cool off in tense situations. I promise you, you need this skill. We all need this skill. I strongly suggest you work on it, and that goes for everyone here who doesn't already have it, whether you were involved in this discussion or not. It's a very useful skill to have, and developing it is one way to guard against things like what happened last week.
   
   Votes summed up: Break or ban for Tomash for 2-3 months minimum. Mute the users who were most involved in the July...'discussion' for at least 1-2 months on the Discord server. Everyone, work on learning how to take a step back to cool off when emotions are running high. Also consider waiting for more information before judging a complex situation in the future.
   
   3. The Discord. Hrm. Well, I agree with a few of the things that have been mentioned, and they range from serious to minor.
   
   A. Yes please do a 'best of the Discord' post (as proposed here). Or maybe make it a blog on the wiki that gets linked to from the Board whenever a new post goes up. It could also be linked to from the wiki page called "PPC Lounge," and if it's a post, the information should be archived and linked to there or else transferred onto the page. I think it's a great way to bridge the gap between Boarders and Discorders (both for Boarders who never go there and for Discorders who've been away for a while and want to know what they've missed). It's also a great way to share some fun things, and maybe even snippets of especially good RPs from time to time? This might actually work better as a collaborative Board post (one person starts it every, say, month, and other Discorders slowly or quickly add things to it. Please remember that if you want to share something that's a quote or an RP piece rather than just a general 'this is something that generally happens', you need to get the permission of everyone involved. In fact, do that anyway. Another idea for things to add to this: bits of some of the punversations. Again, with the permission of everyone involved). This could also be done in the format of putting the information from the Board post into a wiki blog post, which is then linked to on the "PPC Lounge" page. People could even take turns making the blog post, so that the responsibility doesn't all fall on one person.
   
   B. I think hS has some good points in his 'About the Discord:' post below. I'm just going to comment on the ones I either agree with completely or would modify slightly.
   
   Case in point: I'd modify the positive discussion a little, since I know how much easier it can be to express your opinion of a new mission in chat form: do that in the Discord if you like, but then post it on the Board. While it's very nice if the author happens to have a friend who hangs out in the Discord and will pass it on, it's really not the same as seeing the words yourself. So rephrase it, copy and paste what you yourself said, get a volunteer to compile a review from what several people have said/agreed with--and post it on the Board.
   
   As for making decisions in the Discord...yeah. If it's a big, important decision, if it's even something like a big PPC canon question (that would, say, change the canon or add something major to it) that could use more than 1-2 answers from people who know what they're talking about, I'd say put it on the Board. If it's a very emotional decision that isn't a personal, non-PPC related question (say, if you have a grievance or you're thinking of leaving or something and it's something you want to discuss publicly rather than talking only to the people or person involved in private or in private with someone willing to mediate there as well), bring it to the Board. Let it move slower, let it simmer, let people have time to weigh in and most importantly to think about it before they weigh in. Obviously some matters won't fall under this, and if you're only comfortable talking it through via DMs or group DMS as opposed to publicly in the Discord or publicly on the Board, keep it there. But if it's a big PPC-related decision, or something that you want a lot of hopefully well-thought out opinions on--bring it to the Board. I agree with hS that it won't solve everything--but it should certainly help in a lot of cases. And it also ensures that a, you get a mix of oldbies and newbies responding instead of just whoever happens to be on at the time, b, people who don't feel qualified to answer can leave it for someone else, and c, people who don't initially know how to answer get a chance to think it through and come up with something if they can.
   
   C. I vote against closing the Discord entirely, whether short-term or long-term. I don't think that's necessary and I don't think it'll solve anything.
   
   Discord votes summed up: A 'best of the Discord' post or blog post every month or so would be amazing. I support bringing most big decisions to the Board, especially if they're PPC community-related or PPC canon-related. And I do not support closing the Discord entirely, whether short-term or long-term.
   
   ~Zingenmir

Votes carried over from the previous thread are *asterisked.

-Permaban: 2 (*Desdendelle, *PoorCynic)
-1 year ban: 1 ([EvilAI]UBEROverlord)
-3-6 month ban: 3 (*Iximaz, Sergio Turbo, Seafarer)
-1-3 month ban: 11 (Jay - Awesomeness Central, Phobos, doctorlit, OrangeYoshi99, Neshomeh, VixenMage, Novastorme, Tomash, Mattman the Comet, The Good Mod Addict, Akrinor)
-TOTAL BANS: 17 [50% of total]

-NO BAN: 12 (*Aegis, *SkarmorySilver, *Granz, *Hieronymus Graubart, Huinesoron, DrGonzo, World-Jumper, Delta Juliette, Badger421, The Triumvirate, VixenMage, Matt Cipher)

-Explicit abstain: 5 (leafeyes, eatpraylove, Scapegrace, Ekyl, ninny4370)

-TOTAL VOTES: 34 (*7 + 27)

Drawing purely from this thread:

-Mods: 6 (Jay - Awesomeness Central, Novastorme, The Good Mod Addict, Ekyl, ninny4370, [EvilAI]UBEROverlord)
-No Mods: 13 52% of total
-Explicit abstain: 4 (leafeyes, eatpraylove, Scapegrace, The Triumvirate)
-Implicit abstain: 2 (Phobos, doctorlit)
-TOTAL VOTES: 25

hS

1) I vote no mods.
2) I vote for a ban of 1 month at most for Tomash
3)I support the notion of keeping the Discord.

I'm going with no mods on Discord (that was the very original idea that was circulating while setting up the server) and no bans.

Votes carried over from the previous thread are *asterisked.

-Permaban: 2 (*Desdendelle, *PoorCynic)
-3-6 month ban: 3 (*Iximaz, Sergio Turbo, Seafarer)
-Long-term ban (unspecified): 1 (*[EvilAI]UBEROverlord)
-1-3 month ban: 10 (Jay - Awesomeness Central, Phobos, doctorlit, OrangeYoshi99, Neshomeh, VixenMage, Novastorme, Tomash, Mattman the Comet, The Good Mod Addict)
-TOTAL BANS: 16 [48% of total]

-NO BAN: 12 (*Akrinor, *Alleb, *Aegis, *SkarmorySilver, *Granz, *Hieronymus Graubart, Huinesoron, DrGonzo, World-Jumper, Delta Juliette, Badger421, The Triumvirate)

-Explicit abstain: 5 (leafeyes, eatpraylove, Scapegrace, Ekyl, ninny4370)

-TOTAL VOTES: 33 (*10 + 23)

And drawing purely from this thread:

-Mods: 5 (Jay - Awesomeness Central, Novastorme, The Good Mod Addict, Ekyl, ninny4370)
-No Mods: 12 52% of total
-Explicit abstain: 4 (leafeyes, eatpraylove, Scapegrace, The Triumvirate)
-Implicit abstain: 2 (Phobos, doctorlit)
-TOTAL VOTES: 23

There is currently an absolute majority against mods, though this can easily change. There is not an absolute majority in favour of banning Tomash, though again, if one of the previous thread's no ban votes flips, there would be.

There has been some discussion previously on whether explicitly abstaining votes count in favour of the status quo (which would be 'no ban, no mods'), or should just be discounted altogether (and therefore exist basically to say 'yup, I read this thread'). Whenever you announce the decision, you should probably decide which interpretation you favour - it's the difference between Tomash having 48% or 57% in favour of banning him right now.

hS

1) I am for mod, we need some form of power here, to maintain order 2) I'm gonna abstain, I want to keep my head attached.

I will let my ban vote stand.

On moderators, I have to say no. The source of the current issue was that many of us (including me) acted on incomplete information. That's not something that having mods would have prevented, and I agree with many people here that we've done a good job of keeping this place civil without any.

As I don't visit the Discord, I have no opinion on its functioning.

1. Yes to mods. We've tried anarchy, it hasn't worked.
   2. Abstain. Conflict of interest since I'm one of the ones whose heads have been called for.
   3. I think the Discord is fine, we just have to be far more diligent in there.

I only have a vote for bans, which is that no bans be made.

Mods: I don't think we need mods on the Board.The Nameless Admin, so far, has been more than enough in my humble opinion.

Bans:
- A medium term "global" ban for Tomash (3-6 months). One year bans are usually reserved for those who don't come to their senses and apologize, while Tomash did - but, at the same time, apologizing should not be a "get-out-of-jail" card when very serious offenses are made. It is not a matter of revenge, or punishment for punishment's sake, but a matter of consequences, as I mentioned in my other post.

- A short-medium Discord ban for the ones involved in the witch-hunting (1-3 months), coupled with a shorter Board ban as well (2 weeks - 1 month), with the same reasoning as above.

About the Discord, I'm afraid I have no ideas. I've never been a big user of large chatrooms, after all.

1. Mods would be good, I think. I know I can't be trusted to do the right thing in telling people something isn't okay, let alone actually dangerous to someone's health in some way. I don't have any suggestions on who should be a mod, though.
   
   2. Bans. I feel a bit uncomfortable voting on this one, but I think a 3-month ban for Tomash might be needed. Considering the lack of consensus, though, I doubt that will happen.
   
   3. The Discord. I don't think anything needs to be changed, but I do like the idea of having all of us become more educated on the subject of cyberbullying. If we can find good online resources about how to recognize it and break the mob mentality, that would be great going forward. Assuming such resources are found, it may be a good idea to link them in the Wiki next to the space about the Discord, and post them in the notice channel for good measure.
   
   Unfortunately, I don't know good resources for information on that. I'm just throwing ideas around. I am not in favor of getting rid of the Discord, either temporarily or permanently, but I also think that changing nothing isn't going to be helpful to anyone.

I vote for a 1-3 month ban for Tomash, as priorly mentioned in my ban revision thread.

I also vote no mods, for obvious reasons.

I would like to second Tomash's idea for a "Best of" page on the wiki. In the meantime, my CAHQ deck "Cards Against Boarders" should suffice.

No mods. I happen to think that our anarchic culture mostly works. In general, we do a good job of being friendly, calling each other on our bad behavior, and being remorseful and honestly trying to improve when we screw up. If you look around all the threads that spawned from this whole mess, you'll find piles of our community working as it should.

That doesn't mean we're perfect. The entire witch-hunt in the Discord is a prime example of that. While that was going on, many of us stopped acting the way we should and either turned into an angry mob or stood there and didn't call anyone out on what they were doing. We need to examine how and why that happened, and make serious efforts to not do things like that again. Hopefully we can learn appropriate lessons from what went down that will make the PPC an even better place to hang out on the Internet.

Now, on my ban. I'm going to do something that I don't remember happening before, and vote for my own ban. I'm in favor of my being banned for 1-3 months, either from the Discord or from participation in the PPC generally. There have to be consequences for what I did. It doesn't feel right for me to get away with just a resignation after what I did, even if it was a mistake. The vote seems to be (at the time of writing) split exactly evenly between banning me or not, so it looks like i might be going harder on myself than the community is.

Now, on the Discord, this isn't a proposal for massive changes. However, I'm now (especially since July's post got me reading some of the old discussions about the IRC and drama there) slightly concerned about the possibility of a cultural split between PPCers who visit the chat often and PPCers who don't. I figure one small thing that can be done to try and make sure we don't get this is for, every once in a while, people to "best of" the chat and summarize the longer-lasting jokes/trends onto the Board and/or Wiki. (We already have a wiki page for chat quotes from back in the IRC days, might be worth revitalizing).

To give an example of what I'm on about, Maslab has a reputation in chat for puns. That reputation was long-standing and widespread enough that we ended up adding Maslab's avatar (a picture of a fox) as a custom emoticon on the Discord. So, if you're in chat and you make a pretty good (or pretty bad, but what's the difference?) pun, you're likely to get your message reacted to with a :Maslab: . Now some of y'all who don't really visit chat know a bit more about what we've been up to in there other than starting mobs and drama.

1) No mods. In addition to the issues others have raised, I feel mods are ill-suited to our community. They depend, I think, on a certain level of detachment from all parties involved in a dispute. That lack of bias seems rather more difficult to attain in a close knit community like ours. Perhaps they could be made to work, but would they work so much better than what we have now as to justify the change? I don't think so. Then again, I've never really been part of a community that uses them, so perhaps this is simply my inexperience talking.

2) No bans. As I mentioned in my previous post, if disciplinary action must be taken, I don't think bans are the right tool.

3) I can't think of anything we can do to improve the Discord, so I'll abstain from that vote.

Because I'm antsy and maths calms me down.

-Permaban: 2
-6 month ban: 4
-Long-term ban (unspecified): 1
-1-3 month ban: 6
-TOTAL BANS: 13

-NO BAN: 13

-Explicit abstain: 3

-TOTAL VOTES: 29

And drawing purely from this thread:

-Mods: 1
-No Mods: 7

hS

1) No mods. What we need is a culture change, and those don't happen top-down. Additionally, there's no way to ensure that mods don't engage in this behavior also.

2) No bans. If Tomash wants to take a leave of absence, I support his decision, but if the person harmed by this doesn't think he should be banned, I think it's a bad idea - partly because of the "symbolic" nature of it. We'd be doing this to make it feel like someone had been punished, which is not a substitute for fixing the problem. Tomash made a mistake- the first time he's done something like this - and moved quickly to repair the damage once he realized it was a mistake.

3) The Discord. Keep it. Have an honest, serious conversation with the people involved in this about what went wrong, why, and how they can move as individuals to stop it happening again. Again, what we need is a culture change. And, preferably, also, not one mod to step in, but for everyone involved to say "Wait, we're rushing this out of emotion. Let's take a step back and let people's heads cool."

No mods, no bans.

There is clearly no consensus on bans, I cannot support any such action.

I do, however, propose that we find resources on recognizing abusive behaviors (especially on the internet, but also abuse and bullying theory in general) and have some requirement that oldbies / pgs / discorders / etc study them. That's been a common thread in the last several messes, I think that increasing our literacy on the matter is a necessary thing.

1. No mods. If we have a problem with people failing to take personal responsibility, explicitly giving all the responsibility to someone else will not fix it.
   
   2. 3-month ban for Tomash (which I don't think needs to be IP-enforced, for the record). I like you, I forgive you, but take a break.
   
   2.5. 3-month Discord silence for everyone involved with going after July. If we can't make everyone take a break from it, I suppose this will do instead.
   
   3. Guys, just make sure you've each learned your lessons here. Think things through. When emotions run high, step back. Don't be enablers. Don't be an echo chamber or a mob. No mods or rules can help with those things.
   
   ~Neshomeh

1) No mods, don't think it will help.
2) I say we ban Tomash for maybe two, three months? Not a long time, but just for a while.
3) In some of the previous threads, someone suggested closing the discord for a while. (I think it was Neshomeh?) I think this might work.
Also, Maslab and Delta Juliette are my choice for new discord mods.

I've gone through and tried to find the most recent votes by everyone who hasn't (yet) posted in this thread. Here's what I've got:

17th

Desdendelle - bans for everyone involved in the Discord discussion.
ninny4370 - no bans.
Sergio Turbo - abstain at this time.
[EvilAI]UBEROverlord - long-term ban for Tomash, some form of 'discipline' for Alleb and Granz, no bans for others.
Akrinor - no bans.
Alleb - no bans.
Aegis - no bans.

18th

PoorCynic - permaban for Tomash, year ban for Alleb, Granz, and Khrssty, 4 month ban for Aegis and Ekyl, no other bans.
SkarmorySilver - no bans.
Granz - no bans.
The Triumvirate - 6 month ban for Tomash, 2-3 month ban for Alleb, Granz, and Khrssty, 4 month ban for Ekyl, no other bans.
Iximaz - 6 month ban for Tomash, no other bans.
Seafarer - 6 month ban for Tomash, no bans for anyone else.
Badger421 - no bans.
Mattman the Comet - 1-6 month ban for Tomash, no other bans.
Neshomeh - 3 month ban for Tomash, no other bans.

19th

Hieronymus Graubart - no bans.

There's pretty clearly no support at this point for banning anyone other than Tomash. That could obviously change (anything's possible), but only four people have even suggested it.

The tallies for Tomash, including in this thread, are:

-Permaban: 2
-6 month ban: 4
-Long-term ban (unspecified): 1
-1-3 month ban: 2
-TOTAL BANS: 9

-No ban: 11

-Explicit abstain: 3

-TOTAL VOTES: 23

There may be some errors; feel free to recalculate when it needs updating.

hS

1) As I think I've made clear, I am completely pro mods. I wish we could all be trusted to use our judgement and get things done, but we quite obviously can't do that. We need mods to officially propose votes, to officially announce verdicts, and to just be proactive about things that cause a lot of dithering otherwise.

2) I vote to ban no one but Tomash, and only to ban him for a month, or not even that.

3) I don't think we should change the Discord. The community feeling of the PPC is a lot stronger because of it. Yes, it causes problems, but no more than the Board does. Things get quite heated here too.

1. I am still debating internally about this one. hS makes some very good points about mods, but I can't help but think they would help immensely. For now, put me down for NO MODS
   
   2. NO BANS.
   
   3. Still thinking, no current ideas.

1. I vote for no mods, of any sort.
   
   2. No bans. I've been on too many boards and involved in too many communities that have had overzealous, almost draconian mods using banhammers like sniper rifles in a Deathmatch game. I don't want to see this community go the same way.
   
   3.I don't know Discord well enough to suggest changes, so I'll leave that to those in the know.

1. I vote no mods, per this post. I will also note here that the Discord, which has moderators, was the centre of both the GlarnBoudin incident and the doxxing one. Moderators are not the solution; the community taking responsibility is the solution.
   
   2. I vote no bans, per this post.
   
   3. I'm still thinking about this one.
   
   hS

I think it would be better to say not just bans in your second point but also any other reprimands that are being handed out as well.

Also in addition to the third point, Discord mods (although that seems to have been all but decided)