[Fern]

I'm not particularly involved with any of this so my stance will be neutral, specially since despite all the fire being thrown around I think there's fair arguments from both sides. I'm going to begin with providing a personal example- something that's happened before and has happened to me. This is adding onto what Balor/Drezdin said in his post, actually! Providing a little bit of context.
 
I was the one that "slandered" him. In part because I thought at the time that he was genuinely an asshole due to several reasons (mainly that honestly it was very difficult for me to interpret the way he was trying to come across through internet). I later learned that miscommunication was the biggest problem and that he's such a great guy, now he's one of those friends I'd trust with my life. I'd have never thought back then that things would've end up in a heartwarming manner like that! However, even if that's nice and all, I won't go into too much detail about that specific part of the story, it's mostly for just providing context.
 
What I want to go into detail over is how I started getting mistreated, harassed and people collectively wanting to lynch mob me because people found out that I was the one that mentioned Drezdin to the GMs. I would like to mention in case someone doesn't already know, but he didn't mean for things to turn out that way at the time. It was those people's own decision to start hating on me and beginning to do things such as completely ignore me while roleplaying with them or developing some kind of IC resentment towards most of my characters, amongst other things that genuinely made me want to consider just not mentioning who the player was in my character's OOC notes.
 
If any of you remember my character Ghost/Sapphire (yes that's her real name) from mainland, she originally didn't have anything saying that it was me playing her in her notes because of that exact reason. I'd see people taking guesses in LOOC like "oh is this fern" or "this seems like a fern character" and I wouldn't respond, even if I knew deep in my heart that it was obvious because I didn't have it in me to go out of my way to go full incognito. I think having to go super incognito in this game is frankly silly and shouldn't be a thing, not to mention that it's too much effort for temporary pay-off.
 
It was getting very stressing to be on SL2. I didn't really want to go roleplay because a lot of the people that were hating on me would just be near me and make me very uncomfortable if not demotivated and like I regret ever speaking my mind. That same thing that happened to me has happened to many other people throughout the history of SL2, where they report someone and then that someone's friends find out, then they start beating down on the reporter.
 
So, in this regard, I don't fault the GMs for trying their best to keep the reporters anonymous and protected.
 
If you reported somebody popular for stalking you, harassing you, DOXXing you, triggering your PTSDs and what not, would you like them to know it was you and for all of their friends to do those exact same things to you? I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want it to happen to me! I've had it happen twice in my SL2 time, even if not all those exact examples. Now, I'm not naming any of the names that did all that to me. It's all in the past anyway, but I feel is something relevant I want to bring up.
 
The main, main reason they're doing this is because they don't want those exact things to happen to the people reporting issues. They don't want people to feel like they can't report people being bad to them, which was a very common issue in the past. People always felt like if they reported somebody, then it'd get revealed they did it and they thought GMs wouldn't do anything to solve the problem with the person, and that circumstances would have been essentially worse than before.
 
With all that in mind, I don't fault their decision and their current way of operating. It might not be perfect, but I would personally prefer to remain anonymous when reporting something I think is bad.
 
 
MOVING ON TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN, THOUGH.
 
It's true that if you don't know what mistakes you made, or where you made them, that it's difficult to improve and reflect on that. That is the flaw with trying to keep the anonymous fully protected, that you essentially have to avoid giving people a completely clear-cut reasoning on why they got removed from the game. It's a sacrifice to be made, even if I don't think it's entirely just for the accused, since sometimes they genuinely don't know what they did wrong and that there could've been some kind of misunderstanding (like my case with Drezdin).
 
That said, I don't think anyone can trust this community to be civil and respectful towards the reporters, when their friends get reported/banned/what have you. I assure you that if people found out who submitted the reporters in this particular case? Others would begin a lynch mob and hunt them down, regardless of whether the accused would want it or not. Because that's the nature of the beast, unfortunately.
 
If there was a way to satisfy both parties in the cases of misunderstandings or banned individuals that can genuinely improve themselves, keeping the anonymous protected while also telling the accused the most important details, that would be ideal. Trying to find out what that method would be much more preferred than throwing fire. Which, not everyone is! And even if you are I don't blame you because I'd be pissed too, but this is something everybody can work on as a community effort.