The PPC Posting Board - Latest posts

Both for personal reasons, and because of the Circle. I can't count on having enough Internet time left to play a match of Pokémon Showdown.

Best of luck to those who are participating, though!

He (and others involved) were asked to stop. As can be seen in the log, both Maxewell and Tomash asked that the conversation be halted. It was Grimalkinii who reignited the debate with his question about being prejudiced. All that takes place on the same day. Within the same hour, even. Yes, it could have been made more clear why the kick ensued, but the reasoning was understood upon clarification.

As for whether or not it was intentional, that admittedly comes down to interpretation. Maslab and Delta (and I, because I agree with their summation) believed that Grimalkinii's position could not be taken in good faith, due to the proximity of his joining the PPC with Pentagon and his leaping in/agreeing with the later's opinions and arguments. That's what the 'sealion' is referring to. It's in reference to a tactic known as 'sealioning', wherein a person asks constant questions in an attempt to wear down their opponent rather than to get information.

Regarding your final question, I did not specify either before or after at the time. I have since clarified my directions as to post their reasoning prior to the kick.

(assuming we're thinking of the same person). There are good reasons they haven't posted on the Board, which I really shouldn't go into publicly. I'm happy to explain that situation to anyone who'd like to know over email (clickable above) or Discord PMs.

In general, though, I agree that newbies ought to post to the Board when joining, and that it's rather suspicious if they don't.

- Tomash

The reasoning may have been sound, but the question I have, because the answer is not apparent from the logs that remain, is whether or not Grimalkinii was given a fair chance to understand what he was doing wrong and stop it before he was kicked. I think the only clear signal to stop was Delta's "Nah. I'm done, mx. sealion," which appears to have come after Maslab kicked him. Yes, Maslab gave an explanation, but did anyone besides Maslab understand it beforehand? It's clear from the logs that several people did not. It's not clear how much Grimalkinii did or did not understand.

I do see how his questions can be read as willfully ignorant badgering, but I can equally see a reading of plain frustration. In the absence of a transcript, I'd like some more explanation for what makes you certain it was the former and not the latter.

And, just to clarify, when you say the mods have been informed to immediately post their reasoning for any kick, does that mean before, or after the kick?

~Neshomeh

Are we doing a monotype tournament again or is it just coincidence that the three folks who've signed up already all have a monotype team?

I like your picks :)

Genres: Rock, jazz, pop, instrumental (classical), metal (covers), some dance, showtunes, Disney soundtracks (is that a genre? It should be), a handful of video game soundtracks, folk

Bands/artists: U2, the Dave Matthews Band, Sting, the Police, Genesis (and Peter Gabriel), Paul Simon (with or without Garfunkel), The Beatles, Imagine Dragons, JT Music, insaneintherain, John Williams, REM, Linkin Park, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, The Script, Yugo Kanno (wrote music for Stardust Crusaders), Zoe Mulford, Brother Sun, Train, Led Zeppelin, Pentatonix, The Piano Guys, Sara Bareilles, Walk the Moon...the list goes on.

(This one's shorter and jokier than my other one. With a different flavor of hS OOC, and a SONG!)

Huinesoron loves Kaitlyn, sure, but in a way, he's cheating. Ish.

For Plort.

Not the people in Plort, just Plort itself.

Every day, when Kaitlyn was asleep, he stepped through his favorite portal to Plort, just to spend a little time on her sweet shores. He loved to feel the wind in his hair, the grass under his feet, and the rush of power he got from being the one and only Baron Huinesoron. It did sometimes reach the same level of love he had for Kaitlyn, even a little bit dirty, but he never told anyone.

Tonight in particular, though, he wasn't dirty for Plort. He just wanted to show his love. When he entered Plort, he stood at the top of a hill, laid down on his side, and rolled down it like a derp. When he finally lost momentum, he was laughing hard in between shallow breaths. He decided to make the trek back to his castle to see if anything had happened. Twistey'd been editing the Plort Wiki; a smell coming from her equivalent's shop signified that. Nothing else. Shame that no one else loved Plort as much as he did. But then again... if everyone else was here all the time, he wouldn't have her all to himself.

He stood at the top of the tallest tower in his castle and gazed out at the horizon. Then, feeling an impuslse, he spread out his arms and began to sing.

"I love the mountains
I love the clear blue sky
I love my castle
I love when eagles fly
I love the whole Plort
And all its sights and sounds
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada

I love the oceans
And fighting Marizu
I love to ride fast
No one does like I do!
I love the whole Plort
And all its craziness
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada

I love the small towns
I love the baronies
I love the wheat fields
They mean so much to me
I love the whole Plort
It's such a brilliant place
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada
Boom de yada..."

Plort is just awesome. Let's see if we can get hS to record this.

-Twistey

Reasons I like this:

1. You managed to turn yourself from Anti-Nazi Huinesoron to Emo Huinesoron. Now Emo Huinesoron is my new favorite flavor of Boarder OOC, because it's funny and slightly Kylo Ren. (Yeah... the former flavor is in fact my way of coping for the Incident way back.)

2. You saw what I was going for with the strength of the powers of *ahem* the particularly nasty Stu.

3. You made the Fun Control walls literal. That's funny. And... I don't know what kind of fun they prevent now that they're literal. Is your mind in the gutter too? Likely not.

4. Continuing the earlier joke about a need for femslash. This is great.

You're still getting my revenge for your revenge, by the way.

-Twistey

Wait, nah, no it isn't, since the no self-shipping rule is a thing. Never mind.

-Twistey

I am a fan of rock and roll. AC/DC, Metallica, and a whole lot of others. I am also a fan of... vaguely confusing other tastes. I like classical music, like piano, violin, but I also like dubstep. I'm also vaguely emo.

And now, some artists!
Touching on the emo bit: I like Panic at the Disco, Twenty One Pilots, MCR, but *not* Fallout Boy.

On the more rock side of things, like I said, AC/DC, but also Queen. God, I love Queen.

On the more odd side of things, here's a few interesting artists. Passion Pit, Two Door Cinema Club, and a lot of others.
The artist 'grandson' has some hard rock and alternative influences, and has sort of a harsh vibe. You'll know it when you hear it.
(Kiss Bang, by grandson)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGAeJiOfXOw

There's a lot of other artists and stuff I'm not mentioning, but there is a lot of stuff I am into.

I have given the mods leeway when it come to issuing kicks. They may do so on their own prerogative. Otherwise, they would have to summon me for every incident. That would not be efficient, especially when dealing with a spam troll or similar.

Regarding Maslab's kick of Grimalkinii: while it is true that the initial response was a flippant one, the ultimate reasoning was sound. If I might quote from the logs:

Demanding that a minority explain why a particular thing is transphobic "from their point of view" and not accepting otherwise is an act of violence as it essentially is demanding they open themselves up unnecessarily and can provide an even larger target for abuse.

It is absolutely unreasonable for them to demand that and not accept a "I do not want to do so".

I would hope everyone here can realize that "no" is an appropriate response to any question.

Grimalkinii was badgering the mods in such a way that was aggressive and insensitive. His line of questions were interpreted as being in bad faith, with no intent other than to cause annoyance. I saw no issue with the kick when I was informed of it later. In any event, I have informed the mods to immediately post their reasoning for any kick in the future.

From what I know, yes, a bit of a red flag. From what I have understood when I first joined, and how it has been explained to me, it is not only customary, but, as the wiki states, "Just make a post introducing yourself on the PPC Posting Board and receive the warm welcome of your fellows, and boom, you've officially joined the PPC." I certainly see people as part of the PPC if they're active on the Discord, and engaging with the community in a non-problematic way. With the most recent zdimensia and Bramadin issue, after the ban on Bramadin, I was wary of newbies, as a whole. Because, I was under the impression that they might be an alternate account. Lo and behold, recently, that was right. But this general red flag also appeared for both Pentagon and Grimal. To be entirely honest: I believed both of them got fair warnings about the politics in the chat, and to keep the debating and arguing to a minimum. I was a little concerned that these two members, who joined at relatively the same time, might be trolls trying to start up drama. Neither of them introduced themselves on the board, either, which I took to mean that they were not going to stick around for long, if at all, because neither of them put anything permanent down for all to see. Those were my fears and concerns, and that's why I got red flags.

...with regards to Zdimensia's current housing, not because I'm saying your wrong but because I would like to see how you got there and confirm it myself, given the position I've taken in this matter. My email should be clickable.

Also I suspect the reason why you were the target of the email is that, as fair as I'm aware anyway, to most people you are the face of the Nameless Admin, and so, especially to people who cannot quite grasp our leadership structure (and a potentially a few who do) you are the closest thing we have to a leader. So the email was sent to you, because then you'd post it and everyone would know. That's my guess anyway.

Now that's out of the way, I want to get to the meat on the matter. I'm going to warn you here, it's going to read a bit like a chew out, and it's going to be negative about parts of the PPC and one Boarder in particular, but I can't make my point without it being that way and it's a point that needs to be made.

Part of me can see where they are coming from with their email, or at least the first line of it. The overwhelming negativity in this matter, so many people willing to jump on the bandwagon with what was (and maybe is) circumstantial evidence that Mythcreant is Zdimensia. Only one person willingly to step back and look at it and go "You know what, what if they are telling the truth?" Not to big myself up, but to point out how that would look to an outsider. To an outsider, I can see how it could look like the PPC is a "bunch of close-minded narcissists that can't listen to reason when you're wrong and you punish truth." Nobody cared about the person they were dogpiling on, no one cared that, in all the countries we come from, whenever anyone is accused of anything that could be construed as going against the rules of that society they are always judged as being innocent until proven guilty, whereas here I was having to prove how they cold be innocent. Nobody seemed to care about the Constitution that they were trying to hold aloft as they dogpiled onto Mythcreant, I mean in their eyes after all it was *only* a user who'd been banned before, they're not equal to a person when it comes to respecting them in the eyes of the Constitution, right? Right?

And yet, when you are in the community you can do so many things, get so many warnings and always be let off. I can think of Boarders who have hurt or harassed or upset others a multitude of times, and yet they never get more than a warning, never get told to leave the PPC for a time to cool off, or get kicked from the Discord for inappropriate comments. Yet newbies (and I'm not just talking about Mythcreant here) would get permabanned for even half of it.

You want my opinion? It's not just Discord that needs to be reviewed, but whether some Boarders need to take (in)voluntary time outs as well.

Novastorme
Who is well aware that he may have to take some time away from the PPC once this is all said and done.

I know of at least one other user on the PPC Discord who is not on the Board, do you have a red flag going up for them? Do you see them as 'not part of the PPC community as a whole'? Do you treat them differently because of that?

No, I don't think you do. I don't think anyone does. So why hold this for some and not others?

Because, at the time of your post, if I had seen it instantly and replied to it, then I would have replied defending my point of view, that at that point I had almost no doubt in my mind that Mythcreant and Bram were separate people. hS's evidence has introduced some of that doubt, but that response came almost 30 minutes after this one. So I shall respond to this first.

I am aware of what Bram did, what they put you through. I remember, because I was there. I remember because I had tried to help Bram at first when they were still allowed to post missions, and I remember because I saw a bit of myself in them. Not a lot but enough for me to want to try and help them as much as I could. I saw how any trust I had put into them was misplaced, and I saw the events that unfolded. But that's not the point of this matter, and I don't want you to have to go through any of that again, so I'm sorry for the fact that you feel like you have had to bring it up again.

However, while you are so firm in their belief that they are Bram, I at the time of your response was just as firm that they were not. That meant, that yes, while I was happy to admit that Mythcreant knew Bram, I felt that it did not mean you should tar them with the same brush. Now to quote you "They came here to cause trouble." No, they didn't and I'll tell you why. Pentagon, they came here to cause trouble. Toroll comes here to cause trouble. but Mythcreant? No, they didn't, they came here to get the lay of the land so to speak. They came to see what was being said about Bram, after having heard Bram's side of it, they wanted the PPC's. Ultimately I have no doubt they would of agreed with more of what Bram said than we did, but I believe they would of actually been a mediator between Brams new alias and the PPC eventually. Did they come here to be part of the community? I'm not sure on that one, in some ways, yes they did and they were integrating fairly well, in others no, because their ultimate goal was contrary to the community's.

"We don't want them around because they are Bramandin" Who's this we and where is your definite 100% proof this is Bram? That's all I'm asking for here. Unless there is something that you knew at the time you posted this that you did not want to share with the Board or me, there was no proof that this was Bram, and so I felt like it was my duty to stand up for Mythcreant, to stand up when no one else would and say "Is this really just and fair? That we can ban someone because we suspect they are someone else with no definite proof?" My argument was never trying to prove Mythcreant was innocent of everything, I was always trying to prove that they were not guilty of being Bramandin, by putting enough pressure on the fact that, at that time, all we had was circumstantial evidence to prove they were Bramandin, and that we should, as a community, model ourselves on being just and fair and ask that before we ban someone for some wrongdoing prove that they are without a reasonable doubt guilty of this wrongdoing not that they are without a doubt innocent. If we want to prove that we are better than people like Bram, and Grimalkinii and Toroll say we are, then we have to act like it.

Novastorme

P.S This is my opinion, all of it. And like anyone else, I reserve the right to change my opinion, especially with the information that hS has brought to light. But at the moment, all I can go off of is what I see, and so I wanted this post to be what I was going off of what I saw, what I felt and what I knew when Ix posted their response, nothing else.

My main problem in this matter was when Maslab kicked Grimalkinii because it was 'bad for his blood pressure'. Obviously I don't know the entire decision making process, but was that kick discussed, and was going to happen anyway, just with a really bad reasoning behind it when it was done, or was it an act done just by Maslab? Because if it's the former I'd understand, but if it was the latter than I would say that that does not constitute (in my books) 'fairly enforcing the rules'. I haven't had a problem with Maslab at any other point, but that one is just making me question whether I personally would be happy to be in a server with him as a mod without constraint. I'm sorry if that sounds a little harsh, but it's true.

Novastorme

Not that it's a serious threat, unless she's deliberately suggesting her own stories will give people a bad impression of us and tarnish our brand?

(We will, of course, make a note on the wiki that any "PPC" works by Zdimensia under any alias are not remotely condoned by the PPC.)

~Neshomeh

First of all, I support this survey, especially since complaints like the ones you mentioned came up. That's not good, and we really should address that type of behavior.

Now, here's some things I think that anyone on the Discord should be (and generally is) doing:
- If people are breaking the Constitution (or, in the more common case, the Discord-specific adenda like rot13-ing NSFW stuff), others should ask them to please stop, edit their massage, or whatever else is needed to fix this.
- If people are leaning on you as described above, you should generally do what's being asked (assuming that the people doing the leaning have a point, since this isn't always the case).
- As a specialization, if discussion is getting to the point where people want it dropped, taken to PMs, or moved to the Board, the participants should go along with that.

The community in general should recognize that moderating a real-time chat will involve making judgment calls. This doesn't mean there can't be appeals or discussions (see, for example, this thread), just that we shouldn't go after moderators for moderating unless it's clearly becoming abuse of power.

The moderators' jobs, from my perspective, include the following:
- The moderators should keep the chat safe (and having handled that, fun) for all* (using Nesh's footnote) participants.
  - As a subpoint, if someone's having a safety or harassment concern, I'd say it's fine for the moderators to bring it up/tell someone to knock their behavior off instead of the victim.
- The moderators should take action to enforce the rules if the usual community-based mechanisms aren't working (and it's preferred if the moderators just lean on people like everyone else instead of putting their mod hats if possible).
  - It's unclear what form this enforcement should take. Kicks are an option (with the expectation that you can come right back, because it's just a very stern "knock it off".)
- If there seem to be trolls or people acting in bad faith on the Discord, moderators should remove them.
- Moderators should be transparent about what they're doing and remain consistent and fair (up to the fact that they're human and all).

I'd also put in a vote for adding another mod, especially someone who isn't on Pacific time.

- Tomash

This was received at 3am on March 25th, which I believe corresponds to 10pm on the 24th Board time, or approximately half an hour after Delta Juliette reinstituted the IP block:

Bram was right... you are a bunch of close-minded narcissists that can't listen to reason when you're wrong and you punish truth.

She's already published some PPC stories. When she gets out of the facility I'm going to help her get the rest up.

I have taken precisely two actions (prior to this post) in relation to this incident:

1/ Unblocking the IP address on emailed request from 'Mythcreant'.

2/ Posting under the Nameless Admin moniker to clarify why the block was lifted, and why I believe Delta reimplemented it.

I do not know why this email was directed to me in particular.

I have been told multiple accounts of 'Mythcreant''s claims with regards to her link to Zdimensia; as these do not appear to come from the Discord public chats, I will not repeat them here, but the people who have them may wish to provide them.

-- in fact, a small amount of Googling has turned up the fact that three days ago, Zdimensia was living in an apartment, and not, in fact, in a facility. I do not wish to share the details here, to protect her privacy, but if someone (Novastorme?) wishes for proof that the emailled story is untrue, let me know and I will detail by email how I found it.

hS