Addressing Misinformation Regarding a Recent Ban

This I think illustrates where the misunderstanding occurred, and in looking back at the conversations I had with the writer and Kit when they first brought this to me, I can understand how it could be.

The way it was presented to me, as happens quite frequently, is that a player experienced something negative and was venting about it to another player.
Said listening player has faith in the GMs enough to urge the first player to seek one out to assist in handling said negative thing.

Often, the listening player will seek us out for the sake of another to help ease their mind or talk to us in their stead as a general means to be helpful.

It's a nice thought and very kind, but ultimately the people directly involved should always come to us so that we get their side without playing a game of telephone while trying to weed out what's what in a situation.

So when Kit brought it to me and gave a vague summary of 'harassment', I asked that they urge the affected player in question to speak with me directly so that I could ask clarifying questions and better understand the situation as best they could explain it from their point of view, and potentially help the situation.

Kit wasn't in the wrong here, and as best I can determine from my digging into this, it seems to be a case of 'no good deed goes unpunished'.

Here I believe is where my part in the misunderstanding came about.

Kit told me that Seven was distressed and uneasy about the entire situation and wasn't certain about reporting it, so I tried to be as reassuring as possible and asked that he convey that to the best of my ability, I'd handle the situation discreetly and would like to hear them out on what happened.

It's not really Kit's fault that I then put on kiddie gloves to handle the distressed player, that's entirely on me and how I chose to handle the situation at the time.

What I mean by this, is that when anyone comes to me and seems particularly distressed or nervous, I sometimes default to a more passive listener state.
I'll ask clarifying questions, but I don't want to make too many assumptions or put words in their mouth, so I let them talk/vent and they can tell me what's what and we'll go from there.

It's true that during our conversation, only Illumi and Aegis were mentioned. It's also true that Seven asked me not to do anything about it this time.
I agreed, but said that if it persisted, I would be taking action, as it's against the rules and not something I can ignore. Especially if it crosses into the game.

This is why I didn't speak with Aegis and Illumi regarding this situation, nor hand them warnings.

Because Seven* was so distressed, I didn't want to potentially scare them away from reporting by demanding information or asking too much and potentially overwhelming them.

So I didn't ask about Detema's actions at the time and assumed they would mention that situation if I gave them the opportunity and the safe space to. They did not.

In hindsight, not asking was a mistake, and I should have asked every question I had of Seven at the time with the confidence that they could handle my questioning, but I erred on the side of caution and consideration, and here we are.

Unbeknownst to them, I'd already received reports from other players about Detema and others harassing Seven in another incident entirely, that I then went and confirmed with multiple witnesses.

The logs I saw of that incident, while not brought to me my Seven personally, were damning enough to be something that should not be on the game.

But this incident alone isn't why that ban was delivered.

After that talk with Seven, I took it upon myself to investigate the OOC corner for a time. Two days, roughly. I stood around in it and watched what was going on.

In part, this is because of complaints from other players about Detema's behavior there specifically, but largely it was more of a check of sorts to see if the OOC corner were as problematic as people had been complaining about.

At the time, the GM team was looking into what to do about the OOC corner and whether it should be abolished outright, or moved somewhere else, or some other compromise.

This was before that poll thread I made, as much deliberation was done on it amongst ourselves before we came to that solution to present.

During the first day, I saw a few questionable things but nothing of note that was too damning. I figured I'd watch it for a week and see what happened, to see if people's claims were valid.

As it turns out, I didn't have to wait that long at all.

The second day I looked at the logs of what had happened while I was tabbed out, and saw a host of infractions, specifically from Detema. I was honestly fairly surprised that there was so much bad behavior all at once in such a relatively small window of time, including but not limited to at least two very blatant attacks against other players that not a single person there reported.

This comes as no surprise, but is unfortunate all the same.

If I hadn't been watching, it wouldn't have been reported at all or known to us.

It only gets worse when nobody reports these things, because it makes people think it's acceptable to do and perpetuates the problem.

Thankfully the addition of server-side logging will enable us to run these checks more frequently, and catch more things that run afoul of the rules and lore.

This is a fairly harsh accusation made against someone that seemed to just want to help and had faith in my ability to handle a situation.

As far as I'm aware and as best I could determine, they don't have any personal vendetta against Detema, and only spoke up because they witnessed and heard things from multiple parties that they felt were wrong and needed to be looked at, both in-game and off-game, with concerns that the off-game things would cross over into the game and become more of a problem if left unchecked.

As they often do.

Another really harsh accusation, far worse and more damaging than the former.

If the former claims made were borne of a misunderstanding, here's where it was hammered in pretty hard, and starts to look less like an assumption made in ignorance and more of a direct attack to absolve oneself of guilt.

Which, to be fair, it's not your fault Detema was banned, and feeling guilty over it is nonsensical when you can't control other people's behavior.

But dragging two other people through the mud just to say that you're completely squeaky clean doesn't really help anything.

Whether this were truly a malicious attempt or not, I can't say with absolute certainty.

I can see where assumptions could theoretically be made and false conclusions drawn, but at no point in any of that document was there any indication of anything but absolute conviction that these claims were true enough to write up all this, bold the important and most eye-catching bits that damn myself and another player, and pass it around like confetti.

This is where I doubt the intentions behind it.

But without solid proof that it was malicious intent and not just a very misguided mindset that led to this being drafted, all I can do is clarify what happened and why, and hope for the best.

In addition, I've not interacted with Detema enough to know or care what they're like nor form much of an opinion on them from personal experience.

What I do know is things other GMs have had the pleasure of dealing with in the distant past and the not so distant past, and what players have brought to our attention regarding their behavior since I became a GM, and what I personally witnessed while investigating the OOC corner.

I'll finish this by saying that unbased claims like this don't just damage the reputation of others and lead to ostracization, harassment, or toxicity, but also damage what could and should be a more open discourse between the community as a whole, as it breeds an awful amount of mistrust.

We may always have some measure of division, but please don't poison things further if ever you can help it, intentionally or not.

If you aren't certain of something, or there's any shadow of a doubt, all you need do is ask for clarification and we'll provide as much information as we can.

Thank you for reading.