The voting is now closed. With 22 of the 26 counted votes, the community overwhelmingly votes to Permanently Ban zdimensia/Bramandin/TooPurple. The ban goes into effect immediately. Functionally, this means that they are banned from all PPC spaces, Permission is revoked, and all stories that they wrote when they had Permission become Out-of-Continuity.

In the interest of record keeping, the final tally is as follows.

Permaban - 22
Votes: Huinesoron, Phobos, Iximaz, Mikelus, Tomash, Matt Cipher, Hardric, World-Jumper, Larfen, KittyEden, PoorCynic, S.M.F., doctorlit, Scapegrace, 1visible, SkarmorySilver, Neshomeh, Delta Juliette, Thoth, The Triumvirate, Granz the Ice Cream Monarch, HerrWozzeck

Unspecified length ban - 3
Votes: Novastorme, Zingenmir, CodeCom

Abstain - 2
Abstentions: Hieronymus Graubart, Akrinor

Ban until December - 1
Votes: Bramandin

-Phobos

Currently, we have four groups of votes, though more can be added if need be. Group one has voted in favor of continuing the original ban for an unspecified amount of time. The second group has voted to continue the original ban until December, at which time Bram would be unbanned. The third group has voted for a permanent ban. The fourth group has explicitly abstained from voting.

1) Unspecified length ban - 5
Votes: The Triumvirate, Granz the Ice Cream Monarch, Novastorme, Thoth, CodeCom

2) Ban until December - 1
Votes: Bramandin

3) Permaban - 18
Votes: Huinesoron, Phobos, Iximaz, Mikelus, Tomash, Matt Cipher, Hardric, World-Jumper, Larfen, KittyEden, PoorCynic, S.M.F., doctorlit, Scapegrace, 1visible, SkarmorySilver, Neshomeh, Delta Juliette

4) Abstain - 1
Abstentions: Hieronymus Graubart


I am going to close voting on this exactly 48 hours from the time of this post. If you want to change your vote in that time, you are more than welcome to do that. If you are part of Group 1 and would like to specify a ban length, you are free to do so.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

-Phobos

(( Bramandin contacted me unsolicited with three further responses. I am passing them on because I think the last one in particular is relevant to our decision and grants an opportunity to explain banning and blocking [again] for posterity, but I won't be accepting any more. ~Neshomeh ))

To: O the marvelous things:

One, I don't appreciate your sarcasm, and my beard has had gray hairs in it for years. I would have photograpic proof that it has gray hairs now, but I shaved it off.

It would all be pointless because I believe that you're just going to stick to your own opinion and ignore everything I say. I do consider that other people are correct, and then come to the conclusion that they are wrong. I could say you have no capacity to consider I'm correct because you conclude that I'm wrong. I do compromise at lot, which I guess you can't see because I don't preface it with any sort of statement. I thought I had already covered my mistakes and accepted them, while the community continues to deny that there were any mistakes on their end. I am not unapologetic because I have made apologies. There might be something I've forgotten to apologize for, but if that's the case it's an honest oversight.

I believe that you haven't treated me fairly. In 2014, I didn't see evidence that you had given me the benefit of doubt. I believe you asked me to use a set of characters that I wasn't ready to use and ignored me when I said I didn't want to use them. I believe that right now, you're deciding not to give me another chance after in May people were willing to consider it. I don't understand where I've been given four chances. The reputation is mostly from me being validly angry and people deciding that they hadn't even made a mistake.

I haven't ignored you. I've considered what you said and decided you were wrong.

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Reply to Nesh Just a couple things:

I have been tested, and they decided not to diagnose me because "depression can increase the aspie traits" (IIRC, my IQ tests at 137, so I guess average people like you have scores like 190.) I've also tried bringing it up with a doctor, but they choose to focus on the depression. I could try again if my insurance covers it.

Most of my experience with people has been with those do who enjoy causing pain, so it's a reasonable assumption that I could be dealing with people who follow the pattern. A principal once got me to cry and then mocked me for it. The group's deciding to continue something that has been shown to cause me stress is not taking great pains to avoid exacerbating it.

I apologize for thinking that you were enjoying my pain. I'll keep that in mind for next time.

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Re: Ban evasion:

One, I didn't expect the message to go through. Two, that it did go through meant that I wasn't blocked. If you're accusing me of hacking into the Nameless Admin's account, I didn't.

The banning me for a year because you decided I didn't work on myself when I did is wrong.

I was not here when Bram arrived. However, based upon what I've seen of Bram's behavior in this thread and prior ones, I can in good conscience vote to continue the ban. Bram is, in my judgement, not ready to participate in this community, and as others have stated, unwilling to take responsibility for his or her actions.

Bram, I will put this as kindly as I can: although we try our best, the onus is not on us to understand your meaning implicitly. The onus is upon you to ensure that your meaning can be easily understood. If you are not capable of making yourself easily understood through the medium of text, then you need to practice until you are capable of it. Because you cannot participate in most online communities until you do.

It's not easy participating on online community. It's hard to admit fault, it's hard to get used to the norms of any community, and it's often painful to screw up. I've been there, I've done that, I know. But you have to learn to handle it better.

It's a bit outdated, and not always accurate (be aware of context in the community you're in!), but it's still worth reading some incarnation of one of the USENET guides to netiquette, such as the one viewable

I was not here when Bram arrived. However, based upon what I've seen of Bram's behavior in this thread and prior ones, I can in good conscience vote to continue the ban. Bram is, in my judgement, not ready to participate in this community, and as others have stated, unwilling to take responsibility for his or her actions.

Bram, I will put this as kindly as I can: although we try our best, the onus is not on us to understand your meaning implicitly. The onus is upon you to ensure that your meaning can be easily understood. If you are not capable of making yourself easily understood through the medium of text, then you need to practice until you are capable of it. Because you cannot participate in most online communities until you do.

It's not easy participating on online community. It's hard to admit fault, it's hard to get used to the norms of any community, and it's often painful to screw up. I've been there, I've done that, I know. But you have to learn to handle it better.

It's a bit outdated, and not always accurate (be aware of context in the community you're in!), but it's still worth reading some incarnation of one of the USENET guides to netiquette, such as the one viewable

I was not here when Bram arrived. However, based upon what I've seen of Bram's behavior in this thread and prior ones, I can in good conscience vote to continue the ban. Bram is, in my judgement, not ready to participate in this community, and as others have stated, unwilling to take responsibility for his or her actions.

Bram, I will put this as kindly as I can: although we try our best, the onus is not on us to understand your meaning implicitly. The onus is upon you to ensure that your meaning can be easily understood. If you are not capable of making yourself easily understood through the medium of text, then you need to practice until you are capable of it. Because you cannot participate in most online communities until you do.

It's not easy participating on online community. It's hard to admit fault, it's hard to get used to the norms of any community, and it's often painful to screw up. I've been there, I've done that, I know. But you have to learn to handle it better.

It's a bit outdated, and not always accurate (be aware of context in the community you're in!), but it's still worth reading some incarnation of one of the USENET guides to netiquette, such as the one viewable

Bram, you need to understand that the community owes you nothing. You can talk about forgiving us or not, but honestly, I haven't lost any sleep over it, and I don't think others will either. You seem unwilling to accept your role in what happens, and for as long as that is the case, you definitely should remain separate from this community.

I was expecting this to be an ambiguous, nuanced situation, where the question was whether what Bramandin had done/claimed to have done was sufficient. That's why I said outright that I wasn't going to be voting.

Instead, Bramandin has continued with the line of 'I have done nothing wrong and need to change nothing, but I will graciously consider forgiving you and gracing you with my presence.' See:

I had forgiven you for your mistakes, but you did nothing to reinforce it, so I'm retracting my forgiveness until you've earned it.

As for functioning in an online community, I've interacted with a couple of different ones. They don't flip out at non-sequiters, but rather understand that the connection makes sense to me.

I vote for the ban to continue.

I don’t want to hurt anybody, but I can’t promote Bram’s return; I’m too afraid that it might hurt many of us. Also, it’s obvious that Bram cannot fit in without lots of mentoring, and I don’t see who could do that. I know I can’t.

That’s an official abstain.

HG

Bram is arguing that she has matured and is ready to rejoin the PPC. This is the basis her appeal exists on. And within the very thread she raises this argument, she also says this:

'Despite you finding joy in adding to that stress, we survived it.

I had forgiven you for your mistakes, but you did nothing to reinforce it, so I'm retracting my forgiveness until you've earned it.'

Bram has not matured and is not ready to rejoin the PPC, and the very issues that led to her being banned certainly seem to remain in full force, as they have every single other time she's tried rejoining. I really don't know why she wants to join us so much, anyway, if we've wronged her and she still hasn't forgiven us.
But, anyhow, no. I vote against Bram returning. It's a bad idea for this community and for Bram, who clearly isn't having the most fun, on her side, either. And if this is an issue of mental health, heaps of people have already said that we are clearly not capable of sufficiently providing for Bram, nor is it really our responsibility. Healthier for everyone, I'd say, the block.

See you lot the next time Bram decides she's ready to return and we all need to vote on it again.

If the vote results in a continued ban, I don't plan to ask for another vote unless I have a good reason to believe that the result is likely to be different, and, in any case, don't plan to raise the issue for a long time (that is, at least a year from now in the best case).

My reason for this is that I don't want to put the community through a bunch of ultimately pointless re-votes about Bram, since that's counterproductive and at least a bit harmful for everyone involved in this issue.

I'm going to suggest that other people follow these guidelines about re-votes (or at least the first bit about a likely change in result), but, obviously, I'm not the PPC dictator and people should use their own judgment about if (or when) to bring up this stuff again if we continue the block.

- Tomash

I feel like this isn't a matter of mental health. For me, at least, that hasn't ever been part of the equation. The problem is... Honestly? I'm not going to claim to be in any way some kind of authority on the matter, but if I had to say what I think in one sentence, it's that I don't think that Bramandin has a history of improving. It seems that at any point, from writing to working with the community, Bramandin has a history of either not responding to criticism, saying they will work to improve themself but not providing evidence of it, or even spending the time dedicated to that on other things instead, as might be seen in Phobos' post, or stating that the issue is not with them, but with us, and I would point to their first response to Neshomeh for this. None of this is would seem, and I place emphasis upon the word seem, to point to a devoted effort to come to a better place that would lead to a better community experience for all sides. Because of that, I am voting that Bramandin's block be continued.

I would also like to note an email I got from Bram on June 7, just one week into her ban (enacted May 31), asking to use one of my agents in their permission request.

I have often said that I feel that Bram purposefully tries to get around the rules and around punishment; and it seems to me the "I will ban myself for a short time to work on me" was just another example. I believe it was meant to placate us so that we would allow Bram to have her way. Bram didn't get to work on herself, she got to work on her next permission request while she sat out for the minimum amount of time.

-Phobos

I'm sorry Bram, but I just don't think you are compatable with this community. I know that you have mental health issues, and I fully respect that fact. You need to find a group of people who you can connect with and share passions with. But it has been proven time and again that we are not equipped to help you. When you are confused, we have problems clarifying to where you can understand. This causes conflict and hurt, for you, and for us. Hurt that I just don't feel is worth it. I truly hope you find a community better at working with you, and can make you happy. But I'm afraid that's not here.

in the Discord

Here's the logs, which include the evidence:

I don't know how to phrase this terribly well - thinking is confusing - but I definitely know that I do not want Bram back in here yet.

Last time this came up, I was the one to start the thread, because Bram contacted me and - after a few conversations - asked me to. And I was absolutely, positively terrified the entire time. A big part of it was that I love it here and would have been positively crushed if I had been asked to leave or unofficially shunned for that, but that was most certainly not all of it.

I will not say that Bram was taking advantage of how nice I can be, or how strongly I feel about helping people. I will freely admit to being something of a people-pleaser, but I very highly doubt that that was Bram's intention, and how would e know that it actually physically pains me, to one degree or another, to say the words "I can't help you"?

I gave Bram a chance to reasonably explain eimself to me without having to wade through everything everyone else had to say about eim, and then proceeded to ask other people for their versions of the story, because I believe in getting all sides of a story before passing any kind of judgement. (That belief goes a little ways out the window when I am contacted very late at night by a drunk person, though.)

What's really bothering me, I suppose, is exactly what Scape said: Bram has openly admitted to being manipulative. Now, I will be the first to admit that this is a touch hypocritical coming from me, because I am also a manipulative person-whose-parents-were-never-married. However, the distinction I'm making (and please do correct me if I'm wrong here) is that I know very, very well when to stop messing with people and get serious. I know when it's not okay to be the Chessmistress. And never, never, do I attempt to be manipulative when it's not a game. And I'm not entirely sure the same can be said about Bram - I'm actually fairly certain it can't be, or at least not without a modifier or two.

For the time being, I rest my case.

--Calliope

At the time of Bramandin's ban, multiple people accepted Tomash's proposal that Bramandin be banned until 'receipt of a request that indicates some (not necessarily massive, but more than tiny, unless that's all that's needed) improvement in Bramandin's ability to interact with the PPC'. To further quote Tomash: 'I'm proposing this modification because, when you have a cast on, you can't take it off just because you feel like your bone isn't broken anymore.'

I feel that this requirement should be borne in mind when considering whether to unblock Bramandin.

that I should link Bram's wiki user page, which contains a lot of her versions of the events of the past few years.

- Tomash