[WaifuApple]

I'd like to stress that a lot of the critique here comes from a position of not understanding the situation, and no, not every situation should be solved by 'talking it out', nor does that usually go well. That just leads to added frustration on the part of any victim who has been beset by harassment or behaviour that should not be occuring. They report their concerns, and what comes next? They're made to sit down with the person who's been causing them issue. I'll be honest in saying it's somewhat ignorant to imagine that this will go over well. Most times it will not, and most times someone will come out of this upset. Breaking a rule should not be a matter of 'well, now you get to sit at a table and talk through your feelings', because the rules are the rules, for what they are. They shouldn't have been broken, and punishment should be expected if they are. Not negotiation.

The reason the ban waves of recent happened is because the community pushed for it. Because the community saw that unnamed people were being let off for harassment and the victims of it left to suffer with a 'okay, so maybe next time something will be done', and I'm here to tell you that, just like Dev discovered, this kind of leniency is tone deaf when it comes to people dealing with things they shouldn't have to deal with. With things that should be covered in the rules. With things that they'll have been told 'we'll handle this' and find it never really happened.

People wanted the justice that recently came upon the servers, and it's because they now know the names of who it was that there's some degree of backlash. This was a good idea to people until names followed. Now it's not, a day after the whole thing, because I suspect people just haven't processed that big names got big bans. I get it - it's hard to see that, and there will be many who were friends with X or Y who now don't know what to think.

But that's no reason to believe that this was wrong. The initial announcement mentioned that people would simply be told their actions were bad and that they wouldn't be tolerated in future. The mercy was there. The community made itself known and to blame the admins from here on out (or even the community itself, since it's reasonable to expect that dealing with the worst of this community for a good while without ever seeing solace is a slap on the face for those who were harassed) would be disingenuous.