[FL] Awestruck

[Lewwings]

Posted by me, Lewwings, on behalf of the co-authors. Everything below is their words.

Written by ex-teacha wolven, pro aggro rp’a richtea, top level communist zombie, dragsnort the photoman and future SA grapefruit. ([future cigarette grape]), steamy shit thrower richtea

Username: Dragnort, Grape, JackZ, Richtea, Wolven and Zombie.

Accused Staff Member: Awestruck

Involved Users: Dragnort, Grape, JackZ, Richtea, Wolven and Zombie.

Time/Date/Time Zone: 20:00 - 20:45 | 05/12/2018

Abuse of Power:

• invalid use of forum warning system
  
• invalid use of discord nerfing system
  
• removal of evidence to be supplied for report from the ‘FearlessRP Official’ discord server
  
• issuing discord punishments without rule breakage for own benefit.
  

Explanation:

To begin with, a loyal member and ex-administrator of our community had posted a thread to highlight the behaviour of another ‘member’ that has unfortunately harassed others consistently throughout his presence in the community, ToS violations and more. As long standings members of said community who have been directly impacted by the negative actions of the said ‘member’, and more over as witnesses to a hugely offensive and disgraceful action that a certain person took against a respected man in the community, we are entitled to have an opinion on the matter; to Awestruck’s surprise, without infringing any rules.

Now onto the main body of this abuse case. Below this you will see the rules that we have allegedly broken:
     Courthouse: Unban Request Rule
     2. You are only allowed to write in an unban request thread when you are:
     a) The banned person
     b) A witness or in any other crucial relation to the unban request

I would like to highlight the importance of the word “witness” that is used in the courthouse rules on the fearless.rp/forumrules page. We players involved in this abuse thread as well as ALL players on the server are witness’ to this ‘members’ actions and directly  see the effects it has on other players.

What comes first on FL? Is it the overall happiness of the large and growing community we have here on Fearless or is it the malice of one user, using hostile behaviour consistently against others? Unfortunately, based on the punishments issued today it would seem like it is the latter of the two questions. We are all witnesses, we all have the right to our own opinion as stated below:
     2b.) You are allowed to state your opinion about Fearless, even if it's negative. Please make sure your opinion is based on arguments and is not just spreading hate, because that will result in a warning/ban.

I would like to follow up with a question to sum up the forum related part of my abuse thread, and the question is simple.

Are we, or are we not witnesses to the case at question? We all know the answer to this question, but for you to answer it you will either have to lie or admit that the warnings are not valid.

Discord subject:

• invalid use of discord nerfing system
  
• issuing discord punishments without rule breakage for own benefit.
  

So, I shall include the discord rules here for you to reference to, i find it may be useful.

Spoiler :

1. Do not use voice changers.
2. English only in all channels. This is a primarily English-speaking Community.
3. Do not ask for an unban and/or unblacklist, this includes DMs sent to staff; you can appeal @ http://www.fearlessrp.net/
4. Impersonation of other users is not allowed.
5. Any discrimination or harassment against another person is not allowed. (Present or not)
6. Sharing personal information about another person without their consent is not allowed.
7. Do not mic spam in any form.
8. Advertising is not allowed in any form, unless Fearless related.
9. Do not metagame; in-character communication should not be carried out on Discord. You can use voice-radio in game.
10. Do not loiter in the Support room if you do not require administrative support.
11. Do not abuse the tag/mention function, do not tag/mention a user for the pure reason of messing around.
12. You cannot have an offensive, racist, sexist or discriminatory Discord Name, Avatar or custom activity status.
13. Double accounting is not allowed; do not create additional identities to get around a ban or nerf.
14. Memes, trolling and other 'off topic' stuff belongs in the #off-topic chat. Flaming is not allowed anywhere.
15. Do not 'advertise' your own reputation page in order to get people to rep you.
16. Do not link or otherwise display any explicit material in any of the text channels.
17. Do not edit channels without meaningful names, they should not consist of repeated characters / spam.
18. Do not edit channels with offensive names. This includes, but is not limited to, racism, verbal abuse and profanity.
19. Do not add Rhythm to your channel permissions, you must use the music channel to use it and should only post commands in #bot_commands.
20. Do not spam, over-use or abuse any bot commands or functions.

Which one of these rules have been broken to warrant the discord nerf for 24 hours? None. We kept an on-topic and mature conversation of the ridiculous behaviour in the community committed by both appalling ‘members’ and ‘staff’. I thought you, Awestruck, would understand what we are going through and that no rules are infringed after all that you've been through. The removal of Wolven’s messages regarding the current conversation in the discord. You cannot remove a message that is breaking none of the rules listed above because you don’t agree with it. You can’t use your powers to give you the upper hand in a debate and you certainly can’t use your powers to flex on other users.

Thank you and have a nice evening,
The Fearless Community.

[konsta]

oi don't include me, I didn't conset

[Awestruck]

Seasons greetings to those involved,

In this here Staff Report I will explain my reasoning for the following:
- Forum Warnings
- Discord Nerfs

May I remind the accusers that they should actually process an "unban request" instead of this here Staff Report section.

First and foremost, the Forum Warnings. I would firstly like to state that, just because an activity breaching the rules was taken place on a public platform, does not mean that every person who saw it is free to post on an Unban Request. The involved users should take advantage of common sense and understand that every person may aswell be able to post on the Unban Request, which is absurd. I also wish to clarify, users who were witness and actually supply valid and reasonable posts that add to the case would NOT be warned. Please allow me to present the posts of which the following users were warned for (Aspire has clearly already acknowledged said posts so I will post them here):
- RichTea
- Dragnort_
- JackZ
- Grape

Spoiler: RichTea

Post 1

----------
Post 2

----------
Post 3

[spoiler=Dragnort_]
Post 1

[/spoiler]

Spoiler: JackZ

Post 1

Spoiler: Grape

Post 1

Please see above that each of these users did not supply a valid and reasonable argument to the case and thus were warned for not being involved in the case. Only posting to flame on the thread. If everyone posted on the thread, the thread would become an enormous mess.

Next, we move on to the Discord nerfs that were given. A discussion took place in #General chat regarding the warnings the users were given.

However, through writing this thread, and looking back on the conversation I was about to post here, I do realise I was in the wrong. I was the person who initiated the conversation in the first place. Therefore the users I nerfed, will be un-nerfed. However, the forum warnings will still stand.

Thank you and goodnight.

[konsta]

On behalf of Richtea:

Thanks for the snappy response mr.awestruck, i appreciate retreiving my freedom of
speech back on the public discord.

I also appreciate the fact that if everyone commented on the thread it would be an
enormous mess, however if a player here is collecting that much attention merely
requesting an un-ban is that not a sign to you or any other member of the staff team
that the community simply does not like an individual to to extremely toxic and
malicious behavior.

But back to the point at hand, i don't believe common sense on these threads is a
written rule. All we have as players here are written rules, so in black and white
we have not broken a rule; once again that is the point im making. You can't just use
common sense as a ruling standard otherwise you may as well just do away with all
the rules and just tell people to use common sense when making a decision in-game or
on the forums.

If the problem lies in your rules, then surely the rules must be adapted, verbal warnings
should be given in the mean-time. Taking mine, and other active and long standing members
of the communities ability to use the forums is not a fair punishment considering we have
not officially broken one rule.
I hope you can understand my point - the outcome i am hoping for here is to simply have mine
and the other involved members forum warning level restored. In the future a formal rule can
be put in place to prevent this happening to begin with but as it stands our actions are
within the ruling of the server.

I also understand your point of this thread potentially not being classified as a staff report.
The reason I requested the thread to be posted here opposed to in the unban thread is due
to the situation your powers were used in - regarding loosing an argument and nerfing
us in what appeared to be spite. But i accept your apology for this and we shall move on.

Please take removing the forum warnings away from the involved members on the basis
of unclear ruling on what being a witness is.

Many thanks, Richtea.

[Awestruck]

Hello RichTea,

Simply not liking a member of the community does not mean I will allow people to gang up and single out a user, making them feel unwelcome. If they breach any rules or guidelines, the Administrators will deal with this. You are not to take this into your own hands.

Whilst using common sense is not a written rule, I would fail as administrator if anyone and their grandma posted on that thread without adding anything useful, only using it to dig at Aspire. This is not the point of an unban request. Common sense is and can be used as a ruling standard if it's clearly obvious. (Which in this case, it really is). Not every rule can be written, else we would have so many that no-one would be bothered to read it. Judging on the experience of each user, I decided to warn for not involved. Users should think before posting and if in doubt, ask an Administrator.

Again, each user involved added nothing useful to the case and only used it as a platform to add meaningless comments to a case. Insults and disrespectful posts included.

For the record you were not nerfed out of spite, you were nerfed after I told you to stop the conversation. As it was going too far. You continued. However, I will no longer address the Discord issue.
The Forum Warnings will stand.

[Tomo]

No abuse noted.

The forum warnings were valid. The comments made on the thread added no value to the case and were made solely to have a dig at the member in question. Just because you have seen a thread or post on the forums does not give you the right to post on a UBR related to it. That does not make you involved, especially if you're just insulting him.

The Discord nerfs were rectified by Awestruck and so no further action is necessary there.

Case closed.