[Autumn]

I'm not sure these types of personal attacks are productive and looking up all of my account details just to make this reply is concerning behavior, sarcastic tag or not.

You do know I can see you have 6 posts (all accounted for in this thread) and made your account last month right from the posts you make, as can everyone else, right?
Regardless, I'd love to hear your opinion on the following question Drezdin asked however, since you seem very apt to help the GMs in whatever way you can. It could be enlightening, since you seem to have this immense grasp on these issues at their core.

This person has expressed more that I agree with in these 6 posts than anyone else has ever said about the entirety of this issue, Shadbase please keep in mind that there are a number of new players in SL2 as well, pointing out that this person has only posted in this thread is unhelpful to the conversation, rude and dismissive.

I do have a lot of thoughts on this entire issue I would to express at a later point when I am not so busy, I thought it might be necessary to chime in and say that Plunger brings up extremely valid points, most of them I agree with. So much so that I haven't felt the need to say anything just yet.

[Toffee]

One thing that I and others found disconcerting is how blanketed and distant the GM response was. There were few details provided for the actual bans - and they just presented a "this is what the ban reason means" without distinguishing why each player was lumped in with this vague and disconnected response. Then, to just say - "we hope you'll reflect and come back better."

Just what is that meant to mean, then? It's disappointing. You can't expect people to nod their heads and accept something if they hardly know what's going on, to begin with. As someone who has friends on both "sides" of this situation, it's not something I eagerly bring up. But it sets a concerning precedent for the future and I feel the need to give my thoughts because of that.

[Mikazuki112]

Love that this is my first forum post. It doesn't look good how this was handled like it or not by the gm team. Not only that its only adding to the stigma korvara has for being very "Drama filled." Understand that, that's driven so many people away from even trying it in the first place because of the toxicity thats front and center. I know that how this was handled has reached "mainland only folks" and it only furthers the bad taste in their mouth. If you are going to ban people be fucking transparent about how and why and don't pull out some blanket explanation from a wikipedia article you dont have to please everyone but you can do the bare minimum that is that much.

[Frozen]

If you've been banned and want more information, you should DM the GM team before you make your appeal.

What do you do when attempts to communicate with the GM team fall flat in this? If an attempt was made to message the team without much in terms of answers?

[Shadbase]

It'd be nice to have the GM liking all the posts to also step in and calm down the situation too, instead of relying on a normal player, but I guess they're probably too stressed out to despite that.

But that's not to say that there aren't things against the players too. The problem is when you automatically assume the worst of people you don't even know. Like I've said before, and will say again no matter how passionate I'll have to get:
If you're caught ERPing on game.
If you're caught trying to doxx someone.
If you're caught bug abusing.
If you're caught harassing someone.
If you're caught doing literally ANYTHING against the rules.

You deserve a full explanation explaining why. Not some copy pasted from the last ban blanket message, and not a forum post meant to be a vague Tumblr-esque callout post that doesn't actually explain anything about why you were banned, just stoking the irons in the fire for the community to continue to spread rumors.

[WaifuApple]

There's a lot of frustration with the GMs here.

I get that, I've posted my thoughts on it much already, and tried to have civil debate back and forth with other opinions. We CAN have this conversation without quipping at people, we can voice our concerns, worries, and thoughts without resorting to the forum equivalent of violence.

Regardless of stance, can we please try to maintain that peace? No matter what our opinions are, valid criticism can be washed away the more ammunition you give the other side to question good faith. Keep it civil.

[Imotepchief]

Over the last few months I have been privy to much, matters that could have been handled better, calmer and it has been an interesting read for both 'sides' of this particular topic and with such media consumed, though I don't think my opinion on this holds too much weight, I would feel remiss if I didn't express it, at least a little.

It is never really my desire to involve myself in matters of politics or leadership things these days, as such always comes with its elements of undue stress and aggrevation from people who don't agree with decisions, a fact that holds true to staff near constantly, though as someone who has been an administrator to various communities, who's had to explain himself, commit bans and deal with both problem individuals and those unjustly accused, I will say that no matter the decision a staff member makes, there will be backlash.

Being too lenient or two heavy handed is certainly easy to do and will lead to bitter reaction, but it is wise to keep in mind that GM's are not out to get you, they must take what information is available to them and make decisions that they know are going to cause irritation, but do so ultimately to attempt to improve the gameplay experience for the community.

I do believe that more specific notes as to the reason for said bans would have likely done much to alleviate this current topic, but to state that you can't communicate with staff because they haven't responded to a dm within a short span of time is just disingenuous, as is attempting to patsy and deny all wrong doing. It does sometimes happen that innocent people are swept up in such situations, but proper attempts at communication and not simply angry rebuttle, is always more condusive to getting a positive resolution to any given situation.

At the end of the day, systems and courses of doing things can always improve, but people are fallible, mistakes can be made, even unrealized, but the us verses them mentality serves no good purpose and approaching such situations with intent to improve, rather than simply defend, will always bring about better outcomes, in my opinion.

Thank you for reading if you took the time.

[Dystopia]

It'd be nice to have the GM liking all the posts to also step in and calm down the situation too, instead of relying on a normal player, but I guess they're probably too stressed out to despite that.

But that's not to say that there aren't things against the players too. The problem is when you automatically assume the worst of people you don't even know. Like I've said before, and will say again no matter how passionate I'll have to get:
If you're caught ERPing on game.
If you're caught trying to doxx someone.
If you're caught bug abusing.
If you're caught harassing someone.
If you're caught doing literally ANYTHING against the rules.

You deserve a full explanation explaining why. Not some copy pasted from the last ban blanket message, and not a forum post meant to be a vague Tumblr-esque callout post that doesn't actually explain anything about why you were banned, just stoking the irons in the fire for the community to continue to spread rumors.

I didn't step in prior because there wasn't any harm in letting a discussion continue its' logical course so long as nobody got inflammatory or particularly destructive. 

I believe it's been stated in numerous posts from the staff what our policies are and why, and the rationale behind such.
It was also stated in very clear and well-articulated terms by another poster in this very thread.

Which I appreciated, thus I liked their posts and didn't feel the need to echo what had already been said, as there was nothing I could add to or correct about it. 


As for your points, I wholeheartedly agree, in most of those cases we do give people clear, full explanations of why they were banned. 

Unfortunately the last several cases where there's been an uproar in response to a ban, they've been harassment-related bans. Thus our policy is what it is, and we stick to it.

[Shadbase]

Regardless of stance, can we please try to maintain that peace? No matter what our opinions are, valid criticism can be washed away the more ammunition you give the other side to question good faith. Keep it civil.

And admittedly I am apologetic for heatedness. I mean, I did say I get like that before (teehee). But I said it way earlier and it appeared to go over a lot of people's heads.
Bootlicking either side is not helpful to anybody. Liking extremely petty posts on either side is not helpful. Especially if you're related to the situation.

At most, I've just removed myself from the situation and anybody involved. This topic is still extremely important regardless of 'side', so I'm not gonna get it locked-

[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.