Well that took awhile.

Robin has his eye on you.

 

Hopefully I don't get sued by DC Comics.

 

That depends on which Robin.

 

Argumentum ad ridiculum is never supposed to be taken seriously. It is supposed to bring attention to an idea by humor. It is actually one of my favorites since it is generally less aggressive.

More seriously, we act by what we think is best for the site. If we did not think ShadowJack should be here we would have left him banned and it would have been all too easy to do. We wouldn't wait for some more ideal time to ban him. The only time you could say that we are "looking to ban someone" is when we see personalities that seem like they are sooner are later going to break rules. But that is more about efficiency than anything else. I can only speak from when I became staff (though I know it was different before), but we are actually pretty slow to ban people.

 

I consider it one of the more aggressive types because it is used so often and is usually meant to be taken seriously. It is one of the primary tools used in political language.

And slow to unban them. I do not speak for all of the staff with my statement, but only those who are used to enforcement. You are not coming from that perspective, so your speaking of it in this way comes off as loyalty to your organization rather than an inside look.

I expected him to stay banned and I am not sure why he has been allowed to stay unbanned unless strategy is coming into play. There are those who are set against his coming back. That is not going to change because there was a vote. If their influence is strong enough, they will be able to pick out a borderline act of his and sway those who voted for his staying the first time. They will say, "You see? I was right about him. He is just like he used to be. He hasn't changed at all."

Telling me about your feelings regarding the nature of the staff will not overturn my expectation. Know that I do not judge you or the staff in their entirety. I have a sense of baffling disbelief at this having gone through and expect it to be repealed, and that is all that I have expressed.

 

Welcome back dude.

Were you in my Livestream yesterday? I don't remember.

 

I just baked a ludicrously large batch of brownies. In celebration of ShadowJak's glorious comeback, let us partake in the fruits of my midnight boredom.

 

I was not. Yesterday I played Persona 3. All day.

F*CKIN BROWNIES!!!!!!

 

Aye. I still have not been able to get into that game :\ I really want to see what everyone else likes about it...but the combat and day-time parts are sooooo booooring right now...

 

The best type of kin brownies.

 

What went on in your live stream?

Also, if you're not into it from the beginning, you probably won't be.

 

As with all communication receipt counts for just as much as (if not more than) delivery. I'll try to keep in mind how you feel on it.

The removal of a permaban was designed to be a slow process to make sure it is thorough, so for the most part time has very little to do with how we felt on the subject. Most appeals are likely to take about as long as this one, though there is no hesitation to extend the staff discussion if we aren't at a consensus.

The idea that an unconvinced staff member could make life harder for any member, recently unbanned or otherwise, is legitimate but for what it is worth I feel it is somewhat misplaced. While I would be foolish to assume that it doesn't happen at all, it is a group decision to ban members in the end. So despite a faster route to the end, we won't ban people that don't deserve it. Additionally, getting singled out could very well lead to disciplinary actions within staff due to abuse of power. If you or anyone else feels that a staff member is using power or authority against you wrongly please let someone on staff uninvolved with the incident know. It is very open and I could trigger an investigation of Misty if so called to, rank has nothing to do with it (well other than the fact that final action involves admin access. If you by some unholy act get both admins blindly angry at you despite the fact that I've never seen either one like that, well you're just hosed). If you think everyone on staff is somehow against you then there is likely some misunderstanding (did we communicate something to you badly? do you know something we don't? etc.)

I do understand cynicism here though. Fear of the unknown and fear of authority are both very common and logical at certain levels. So the concept that we are making decisions that affect you guys and that you can't see exactly how they come about is something to be weary of despite what faith any of you have in us. Though I do think that for various reasons those discussions should still be closed, site security and member privacy being the big two reasons. Though if you've got other reasons I would love to hear them. You were pretty silent when it came to staff for a while and then just seemed to randomly grow pessimistic about almost everything we do. Down to questioning if this unbanning had ulterior motives.

OM NOM NOM NOM YAY NOM NOM NOM

 

Nuclear crisis averted.

 

Those links will have to wait for another bleak day.

 

It's too early for me to react any differently.

 

Ew, you're back. D:

haha much love <3

 

Thank you.

The reason why it bothers me is in how you described it. Because your response was not serious, you are making the thing you responded to seem less serious by extension. Subverting something I say by trying to make it sound less serious is not something I appreciate.

You misunderstand. I meant that the majority of the staff members, and certainly some of the oldest and most influential ones, are very slow to accept an unbanning. The process is not relevant. The process could have taken a month for all I cared, and I still would have been surprised that he got unbanned. The staff are slow to unban within their own heads regardless of the process.

The prosecution and the adjudicator are represented by the same organization, which is a disaster for a fair trial. Such a court can result in fair rulings, but it is not more fair simply because more than one person is in on it. If you try to argue that it is more of a jury, then the same argument applies: it is not a jury of peers, and all of the jury members are members of the same organization. So each ban's fairness is up in the air for anyone to define. Sometimes the ruling body may be fair, but it will tend towards self-interest because everyone in the jury shares the risks of letting a member stay. If the staff felt that a member would be trouble for them to deal with, they would make a biased decision as a whole because they would collectively feel that the member was a problem... Even if only for them.

You are leaving influence and seniority out of this. Calculate the amount of influence each staff member has on the decisions of the rest of the group and get back to me. If you cannot, then we are not speaking on equal terms and my own perceptions will be denied in favor of "everyone having their own mind", so this will go nowhere.

You do not understand it because you have already eliminated the possibility that I am using direct observation and am right to expect what I do. I do not fear these things. I expect them based on my observations of specific people. Based on what I know of a few members, I can guess how they will react and act in a conversation about, say, an unbanning. From there I can get a somewhat solid idea of what is happening. The more members I can predict, and the more influential, the clearer the image.

Until you acknowledge the possibility that my expectation is deserved, you will not understand. It is not cynicism to have expectations for an individual's actions and then calculate from there.

I grow more... Discontent, you could say, with staff when I see them censoring things and dismissing questions and challenges. The staff have become increasingly more hostile and volatile, and when I say staff, I mean those doing the enforcement and the senior members who get the most say in said enforcement.

Both the compromise promise and the unban are so contrary to the general enforcement I have seen that I can see only a strategic move in both. The attitudes of the staff remain the same to my knowledge, and if they still feel the same way, then why are things going so... Well? I know that I am right about said attitudes and that they have not changed as of this unban. The logic that makes sense, then, is that those who were so staunchly against his return before are thinking that they can wait, because they expect him to stumble into a permaban soon on his own. Hence, they will be watching closely to point out and say they were right.

Your only defense of this has been to discredit my knowledge of the staff by implying that I am simply distrustful and to speak of the checks and balances. You have failed to give me contrary knowledge of the members of staff. I suppose you are not allowed to speak of the actual practices of individual staff.

Though you bring up an important point I expressed to DPWolf a while back.

If I challenge a decision made by the staff, I am told that I do not have the full story and that my action is foolish. If I ask for the full story, I am told that it is against policy to reveal the full story.

If you did not catch it, that is a circular argument. The end message is, "You have no place to challenge staff decisions if you are not staff."

Did you realize that before?

Oh, and additionally, though I know you are responding right now: the thing about my expectations is that they are not all negative or all positive. I assert that my expectations are deserved, and that in this case, the expectation is negative. That is not to say that my expectations will always be negative.

 

Makaze, stop your shit. I'm in no mood to see your long posts everywhere.​

 

They are not everywhere. I was challenged, and I reserve the right to respond to challenges.

Perhaps you should leave the thread, or speak to Mixt? I am not alone.

 

Perhaps you should not be a ****** and just stop? I am not alone, surely.​