K, time for me to weigh in on this because apparently I am the Super Big Bad Evil Person of Terribleness.
Starting at the top:
The problems are :
1. Moderators troll and insult players, and when they reply back - they mute. If they put moderators on ignore - they ban them.
2. Moderators ban and mute without warning for rules that were not explained or written anywhere and without warning that this activity is against the rules.
3. Moderators ban without reasons.
Example: 16.05 this year character Diana Kim was found banned from both The Summit and OOC channels.
Reasons of the ban were not given. Character was evading any violation of known rules in the channel.
When Graelyn was confronted to give exact violation, instead of facts, he provided only insults as reply.
1. There's a fundamental disconnect here. First, your definition of trolling apparently works along the lines of "they disagree with me", because to troll I would generally have to not be serious about things I say. Kindly note that when it comes to warning your character she is out of line or acting inappropriately in the Summit, Morwen is being completely serious. Likewise the same between you (the player) and me (the player) when in OOC.
Just because you do not think a moderator who disagrees with you or your character is a "real mod" does not mean that their warning is not serious, or is trolling. It is completely serious, and your refusal to acknowledge those warnings and act on them by continuing the behavior that got the warning issued in the first place, is what results in those mutes and bans. As for ignoring/blocking moderators, that's been a long-standing thing and is common sense. If you've got the mods blocked, you can't see their warnings when there's a problem; if they block you, they can't verify complaints from other users. Both result in the moderators
not being able to do their jobs.2. The vast majority of these rules are common sense and have been in place for a long while. In your case, you were muted/banned (initially, a long while ago) for extended series of direct personal attacks towards other users that did not cease when you were asked to by moderators. Your recent one-month ban was handed out as a result of cumulative poor behavior and an overwhelming number of mails - NOT JUST FROM YOU - flooding Graelyn's inbox, suggesting that the common thread factor was you. I will quote some of his words on the subject, as he made a copy of the email he sent to you and the other moderators available to the public on Pastebin at the same time he sent it:
I'm sitting here looking at my NINETY-SEVEN emails on Diana Kim-related complaints. That's including all DK-related moderations, complaints by DK and people speaking on behalf of DK (all against one mod, though all the mods are unanimous so far on each judgement, an amazing achievement in and of itself), and my personal favorites, lots of our most repected channel users saying that all of this drama seriously impacts the enjoyment they get from the channel.
In the same time span, we have....4 emails on any other party.
That's just unheard of.
That sort of divergence indicates something to me;
One, that on the whole, damn near every person using our channels is doing so properly and productively. Moderator actions are at an All-Time low, and that's a good thing.
Second, that we have a problem that is affecting everything we do, coming from a single source.
Just prior to that, you were given a ten-hour mute, by me, for breaking one of our common-sense rules: No violence directed at other people on camera, whether player or NPC. Period. We don't allow it.
Technically, at the time, I was supposed to ban you for a month for that, according to instructions from Graelyn to the rest of the moderators. I decided to ignore those instructions and gave you a mute rather than a ban partly because I had work to get back to - that whole incident sucked up a fucking hour of my time at my real-life job, dealing with your bitching and pissing and moaning in OOC afterward - but also because I wanted to make sure that the other moderators had an opportunity to weigh in and say whether Graelyn's original instructions were appropriate for the incident.
3. Reasons for all of your mutes and bans have been given, shortly after they have been enacted, either by mail or publicly in the channels when you've started bitching about it there. Just because you don't consider a moderator a "real mod" does not mean that the reasons were not given, or are not valid. It just means you're sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" at the top of your lungs.
- Your 10-hour mute was, as I explained when I gave it to you, for violating the "no violence on camera" rule which had been around for years; we've warned people for it before in the year or so you've been using the channel (Foley's been warned a few times for it, in fact, back when he was doing all his crazy antics).
- Your month-long ban was, as explained to you in the mail Graelyn sent (and I've partially quoted above), what I was supposed to have done instead of muting you, in response to an overwhelming amount of complaints and reports coming in suggesting that removing YOU from the equation would solve the problem.
- Your current (indefinite) ban, according to Graelyn, was because the FIRST THING YOU DID after not even having been back from your previous ban for a week, was to fire off a complaint about two people, one of whom was insulting an NPC character, not you. You were continuing a pattern that we had identified - and, in fact, drawn attention to - before your previous ban. It was mentioned in the mail he sent, in the first paragraph quoted above, in fact. Rather than try to continue what was rightly determined to be a pointless effort, he cut his losses (few as they were) and just banned you. If you want a short and sweet answer for the reason, it is this;
you were (and are still, in many respects) wasting a wholly inappropriate amount of the moderation volunteers' time.
Aelisha makes some good points.
Kat also makes some good points in his first post. More or less what I've said already.
Desiderya nails it on the head and gives you some pretty good advice.
Again, Kat makes more good points. If you want to come back, you're going to have to show Graelyn that you're not going to immediately become a drain on our time and energy.
Veik also makes a pretty good point, and being someone whose character often trolls or is antagonistic towards other characters, he'd know what he's talking about.
Andreus: Your decision to do as requested (it wasn't me making the request, let's clear that up first) was appreciated. So thanks for that.
That said, the expectation on Diana's part that people shouldn't be allowed to make any sort of reference to her character is both unreasonable and unrealistic. Sorry, but the notion that someone can't be mentioned just because they're not there or can't respond is ridiculous, and can not, should not, and will not be enforced. If your character makes an impression, people are going to talk about them. Whether you're there or not, whether you (or your character) like it or not.
That's what happens in real life.
Tib also nails it on the head.
orange: In this particular case, there are an excessively large number of forum posts that could just as easily provide the exact same "first impression" as some people venting about another person would. People make their beds and should have to lie in them.
Lithium, you were banned for causing the management a headache (a reason). While you may not have broken a rule, the reason is fairly clear. Diane Kim created entirely too much drama within the player-run channels.
Well, haha, I wasn't causing any troubles since last ban, avoiding any "headache", still, banned 
You were causing trouble, in exactly the manner I described above. You were continuing a pattern of behavior that suggested that your ban had had no effect whatsoever and that you intended to continue along the same exact path that had gotten you banned before. Graelyn decided not to waste his time with further futile attempts to get you to adjust that path.
It is irresponsible modding to ban people just because you "can't be bothered". Being a volunteer doesn't excuse it IMO. Especially in a game where you are basically denying the player access to the primary public RP outlet. Temporary mutes when a situation is super tense, disruptive, and toxic, sure, but bans I really, really don't understand.
What would you do if someone was talking about you (presumably in a negative light) in a semi-public forum in which you were banned? Sit on your hands and just accept that any potential first impressions with others you might engage are already tainted by what another individual (who is essentially your enemy) says?
If it's IC, who gives a crap?
A lot of places have "three strike" rules. Fuck up three times and you're out. We gave plenty more strikes than that over the course of a year - there comes a point where the amount of effort being put in is no longer worth it, and when it's members of the community who are sending us mails or contacting us on skype/steam/etc. to complain about it, a judgement call is going to be made in one direction or another. In this case it was decided that Diana was not worth the trouble of continued attempts on our part to communicate if we were going to be ignored just because we disagreed with her.
As for the "if it's IC..." I would agree. The people who do give a crap need to back off and remember they're talking about a character in that instance, not the player.
Andy's next post is spot-on, except for a few details that I have bolded and am going to clarify.
You know what, I'm going to go ahead and write this out anyway. You're pretty much free to read every word of it or completely ignore it, but take in mind I'm writing this pretty much exclusively for your benefit. The only thing I get out of this is finally getting this off my chest. I'm going to try and write this out in as level-headed a manner as possible, but if it gets Catacomb'd, oh well - at least I made an effort.
So there's a lot of stuff in here that you probably already know, but I feel the need to illustrate my thought processes, so if any of this is old news to you, forgive me.
Let's start at the root of it - Diana Kim, the in-universe character in EVE Online. Diana Kim is not a nice person by any possible stretch of the imagination. She's rude, arrogant, disrepsectful, abrasive, antisocial, violent, spiteful, deceptive, mean-spirited, racist, bigoted, emotionally manipulative, short-sighted, close-minded, mentally unstable, wilfully ignorant, chronically hypocritical and completely irrational - she's essentially a walking collection of personality flaws. Now, this in and of itself is not a bad thing - in fact, observing her from an outside perspective is very compelling given that she's a woman helplessly ensnared by Provist propaganda, clutching desperately to the illusions she has of how the world should be as she slowly watches them become more and more removed from the actual reality of the situation. That's good roleplay material right there.
Where the problem starts is when Diana Kim interacts with other capsuleers. An extremely abrasive, strongly opinionated character like Diana Kim doesn't react well to being told she's wrong and reacts even worse to being shown she's wrong. When people call Diana Kim out on the outrageous things she says, she tends to react with either flat denial or insults - accusations of treason if the relevant character is Caldari, "dirty jaijii" etc. if they aren't. Even at her most polite she isn't willing to consider other people's points of views. This leads to an increasingly limited amount of interaction people who don't agree with her can actually engage in without her either insulting or ignoring them. This eventually leads them to either insult her or ignore her, which in turn further limits the people she can meaningfully interact with.
There is, again, nothing wrong with this in and of itself.
So we get to a point where, eventually, Diana Kim's behaviour becomes so abrasive and insufferable that, in-character, people are no longer willing to tolerate it. Remember that in-universe The Summit is an actual communications channel run by actual capsuleers, and they have feelings and limited patience just like real human beings do. In at least one instance, eventually one the moderators, in-character, got so tired of being called names by Kim that they lodged a ban.1 Now, again, there's nothing specifically wrong with this.
The problem comes when you, Lithium Flower, the player, become unable to separate Diana Kim's behaviour and ego from your own.
I have noticed, in certain ways, that you act a lot like your in-game avatar. I'm not going to guilt-trip you for this because I do the same. Andreus Ixiris is almost an extension and exaggeration of my own personality to the extent where if this were a slightly less serious setting he'd probably have at least some awareness of it. I have in the past had - and, as a matter of fact still do have - trouble distancing myself from the challenges to Andreus' ego. Emotional investment in your character is not neccessarily a bad thing - in fact, I think some amount of emotional investment in your character is neccessary. However, at this point, your investment in your character is leading to behaviour that is damaging your ability to interact with the roleplay community (i.e. it's getting you banned from The Summit and OOC). Either you have to step back from your character and not take attacks against them so personally, or you need to tone down your character's behaviour and make them more reasonable.
Honestly at this point I think you may have gone as far as you can go with Diana Kim's current line of behaviour. It might be time to have her reconsider her life.2
1- Morwen was the recipient of this abusive behavior.
However, Diana was never banned for calling Morwen a whore in local for four hours, to my knowledge. If she was banned for it, it wasn't by me.
2- I disagree. It's not so much her life that needs reconsidering, it's the behavior and way she interacts with others. Separate issues.
Samira's response to Orange is pretty much how I'm seeing things. As Tib points out in his post, the only time we're going to ban alts of a single player is when it is clearly the player, OOC, that is the issue. The one and only exception to this is if we have to mute/ban someone in OOC for something not justifying a perma but still meriting instant moderator response and they use their alts to get around it. (As an example of the kind of behavior that would merit this sort of response - calling someone else a fag in the channel. It isn't tolerated there, just like it isn't tolerated on Backstage.)
Tib's next post again states the same thing other people said and that I stated above, regarding the current ban situation.
Andreus' post is a little on the harsh side, but I would not call it an inaccurate assessment. Not so sure about the suggestion at the end.
Desiderya's post, "statistics" aside, is pretty accurate.
Kala is correct in his assessment regarding problems and their sources.
Passing on Vince's post...
Diana's next post. Hoboy.
Maybe I wasn't succinct enough in my last post.
The core of the problem lies in the fact that Diana Kim is a horrible person who treats almost everyone with contemptuous disrespect.
And this is obvious lie about the character.
Diana Kim is rather respectful and polite character, but harsh and ruthless to her enemies. To make easier her RP, for her (and for couple others) I have charts with characters, towards whom she is harsh. For Diana personally, there are two lists: first list, for those who were continuously trolling and insulting her without reason. She tends to avoid these peoples, don't pay attention to their words, and only against them she is allowed sometimes to make first insults, since they were doing it multiple times earlier. Luckily - this list is incredibly short and getting into it rather hard.
Second list is rather large - it is obvious enemies (all members of FDU/TDF) and characters, who has shown hostile behaviour - insults of her out of nothing, minor trolling, insults of Tibus Heth (not constant, though, just single), those, who she just considers enemies and prefers to shoot at than talk with. It is rather easy to get into this list, and easy to get out 
To this peoples Diana simply doesn't pay proper respect and maintains very cold and harsh stance. She is allowed to insult them only when they insult her. She might show respect to them, but they should work rather hard for this 
For all other peoples, she is polite and respectful, and you can easily see it for yourself, if you peek into "Intergalactic Summit" and just hear how she speaks with others. Of course, just hear, don't try to talk with her. You should know why.
I'm going to burst your bubble here: When you advocate the destruction of an entire people, and scream about killing them on the IGS (as Kala provides an example of a few posts later), that counts as provocation for ANYONE who belongs to that people. Diana fired the first shot as far as our characters are concerned. It might not have been personally directed at specific individuals, but it is the reason those people are responding to her harshly, so you DO NOT get to say that people are attacking Diana without provocation. Diana's IGS posts are the provocation. Her words attacking the Federation and its people are the provocation. Her actions in space are the provocation.
Take responsibility for what you do and say.Andreus also says much of that in his next post.
And again, since you bring it up again, just because you don't like a reason doesn't mean it isn't one. I don't think Graelyn's reason is a great one but I cannot fault him for making it. It's no different than those two lists you have for the character. After enough crap, you throw someone onto the first list. Well, after enough crap, he gave up trying.
What Ava said, all of it. Morwen tried being nice to Diana for a while, especially when Heth disappeared and she (Diana) started visibly breaking down. Fuck, she
offered to cook something and bring it to her, and that is not an offer she makes to just anyone. She's proud of her cooking but doesn't usually make the effort to make something and then bring it to someone. But Diana's behavior (and posting) regressed and she stopped trying. I (and Morwen) tried warning you multiple times when you're pushing the line, but you've ignored it out of hand or just attacked back.
And I, too, argued against your current ban. I'll quote portions of the mail I sent to Graelyn and the mailing list, with some minor toning down of language:
Re: Re: DK
From: Morwen Lagann
Sent: 2014.05.16 22:02
To: summitmods,
I'm going to have to take the unexpected stance and say I don't think jumping immediately to a ban was necessary in this case.
Yes, Diana has shown him/herself to be [someone who is incredibly frustrating to deal with and get across to].
He/she isn't alone in this. Pretty much anyone who we have to warn more than once or twice about shit falls into this category - the people who get it don't need more than that, and the people who do need more than that, by and large become a chronic issue.
Yes, Diana has demonstrated a tendency to resort to [what comes across as] the childish "if one moderator/parent says no, maybe the others will say yes" tactic by pretending any moderator that disagrees with him/her "isn't a real moderator" and then emailing every mod except those moderators.
Diana isn't the only one who does this sort of thing (except the "real moderator" [thing, only DK does that]) - a number of other people won't mail the entire moderation staff with issues and will only mail one or two of us at a time if they have an issue. I can understand and tolerate this to some extent when it's just an issue of "these people aren't around much so I'm not going to bother" (like, for example, Silas or Jek), but when people start doing it because they think it will get them what they want, that's when there's a problem. Surely I'm not the only person who has received complaints from people because they think I'm more likely to do something about their particular complaint than someone else on the team?
And yes, Diana has a tendency to report [non-issues].
(I would be extremely surprised to hear that Diana is the only person who has done this over the last couple of years, especially because I know I've responded to similar complaints and forwarded my responses and thoughts to the mailing list.)
But back to the main point here - did anyone aside from Ava, Esna or I (the mods who were ingame [at the time]) actually see the logs from last night?
All three of them were going at each other, and while I [am not typically the one] defending Diana, her complaint really is only spurious at worst: Aya and Ava were both being pretty aggressive, pretty much in the same way(s) I have been in the past when dealing with Diana's bullshit. Not necessarily aggressive enough to really warrant a complaint being made, but enough that it wouldn't have been entirely unreasonable to ask people to rein themselves in a little.
So yeah, tl;dr, I disagree with the decision to apply a ban here. I wouldn't have sent the mail I sent to the list last night if I had felt a ban was appropriate or necessary - I would have just said "banhammer plx" and left it at that.
-M
Passing on Kala's post.
Katrina again nails it - if you
really didn't care as you claim you wouldn't spend so much time and effort throwing what comes off as a temper tantrum. As Kat closes his post,
this whole thread is you caring.
I'd emptyquote Samira's post with a +1 but this is already getting long enough.
Your next response - again, as I said above, your IGS posting is often the first shot, and people respond to you based on that. Pretty much most of the older folks who use the Summit for starters - you only started using the channels last year around the time of the Caldari Prime event - we had nothing to go on
but your IGS posting, and I guarantee you would not have been met with such the responses you have been, had you not been regularly posting such aggressive and hostile vitriol on the IGS.
I would disagree that you tried to fix things. If every time you ask us you just say we're wrong or lying when we give you an answer you don't like, you're not trying. You're just shaking a Magic 8-Ball repeatedly, asking the same question over and over, hoping to get the one side of the bobble that you want so you can call that your answer.
As for why Mika was banned, that's because the mods were told to ban all of your alts by Graelyn. He's senile and missed one.
Samira is right in the first part of her next post, and it's a repetition of something people have told you over and over, not just in this thread: if you want to have a hostile and aggressive character, that's great, but if you can't deal with or accept the consequences of that character's interactions with others you really should reconsider that decision.
Odelya: When one does not treat others with respect or politeness, those two things are often the first to go out the window when it comes to others interacting with that person. In this case, that is what happened. Graelyn could've been far ruder than he was and would have been quite justified in doing so.
Lyn,
The problem becomes when a mod has tried to respond and then told that the aggrieved party does not consider them a mod and will not listen to them and demands to speak to a mod, what then?
The problem becomes when someone starts talking about situation, where they weren't there, didn't managed to ask or even read what happened and talk about situation that happened about 2 months ago, like it was the current problem. While it was related to one of situations, it isn't the current one. I could provide with reason why I did this, of course if you will show your desire to know it, and not just post misinformation.
Thus I ask you to stop doing it and do not mislead readers further by feeding them with outdated information. Thanks in advance.
If you're going to start accusing people of lying, back your accusations up with proof. And if you are going to falsely accuse people of lying, you're going to be called a liar, yourself. (By the way, you're lying, in this post. Steff
was there, pretty much every time I had to go through that scenario with you. And frequently said things to you in the process.) Every time you caused shit and had to be dealt with (whether it was by me or someone else) and didn't like the response, you whined in OOC asking for a mod. Generally, this was responded to by other people in the channel telling you that there were mods online or to mail Graelyn. You didn't care. If I, or any of the other moderators who actually had to take action responded, we were instantly dismissed with "I want to talk to a real mod, you aren't a real mod". Well, guess what, cupcake: just because you say we're not real mods doesn't mean it's true. So we had our responses ignored, and you instead shat up the channel repeatedly. It took a lot of restraint, not just on my part, but on the part of every other moderator, not to just mute you when you did that. In fact, apparently Katrina ALSO
stood up for you as I did when Graelyn banned you this time.
And in case it hasn't become apparent to you yet, we do not consider individual incidents as wholly separate when they share a common factor - namely the person causing the incident. If someone causes the same kinds of problems over and over again,
we are not going to treat repeated incidents as if it is the first time it's happened, every time.
People don't stay amateurs all their life. People learn by doing their job.
Unlike many peoples who replied here, I don't tell things like "you are horrible".
I point exactly what was wrong, and my demands to moderators are rather definite and clear:
- to provide warning/information about rules before banning for them
(like Ava was saying, to tone down a notch, which wasn't done in neither of two previous bans)
- to explain which behavior is strictly forbidden (will be banned), and which is not encouraged, that I still can do, but will be modded for short term for this
- for the modding provide exact date, time and violation, and if it won't be obvious:
- tell what exactly it violated and why i should avoid it
I don't think it is really that hard, and on these terms a constructive dialogue can be made.
And in your turn I ask you to help me actually. Instead I get just insults as reply. Where was warning for previous two bans, really? I have asked this question before, you didn't answer, and you again are saying that I was warned. I am asking second time, just tell when if you don't wish to copypaste text, I still have myself all the logs, and if such warning was, I will apologize, of course... of course, if it was. You warned me about other things. And I am asking about stated incidents.
And why would you bring Morwen, Ava, Tiberious to this? To them as moderators I had complaints more than two months ago, so I don't know how you got sick from it, unless someone else was telling you about it. Then why do you come to me with it? Their cases aside, for the situation around the last ban, I have a case only to Katrina Oniseki as a moderator for not professional behavior.
And I will explain how and why.
There was a combined complaint to moderators on two characters in one, first complaint - just funny for RP reasons, while second one was against quite disruptive behavior and direct insults.
Moderator Katrina Oniseki replied to this complaint with reject in rude form to act, claiming that Diana Kim "was still banned". After that, Diana Kim indeed was banned, however, both complaint and what was said to her, was filled before the ban, and even Graelyn himself before that was saying that Diana Kim was unbanned after previous ban.
Going point by point here, again:
- Personally speaking, whenever I have had to take action against you, you have always been given a reason, whether that reason came afterward (in the case of the 10-hour mute) or if it preceded the action and was ignored by you.
- As stated before, you were, technically, given a warning when Graelyn sent out that long mail the first time you were banned. Your ban was because of the thing I had to mute you for (the fact that there was an extremely rare alignment of literally the entire moderation team on the issue only served to strengthen that) - I was supposed to have banned you outright, then and there, but chose not to to make
absolutely sure with the rest of the moderators that that was the decision we were going to make. I still had to do something because it was unacceptable for that fight to continue in the Summit, so I muted the people responsible. That you didn't like my explanation in OOC is your problem and not mine - it was still the reason and you weren't going to get it reversed by arguing about it.
- If we warn you for it, don't do it and you'll generally be fine. It is as simple as that. Unless it is particularly egregious or the person in question is causing trouble with frequency, first-time offenses for individual policies or rules typically will not get you a mute or ban. (tl;dr is what Veik said - the top of the MOTD says "BE TACTFUL." Try that.)
- We aren't going to moderate days later unless we need that much time to make a decision with the entire team. Or if someone is away and cant' respond in a timely fashion. It's not unheard of but it does happen. People who get moderated harshly in response to serious trouble-making are informed by someone, usually by the person putting in the ban.
So, at this point I think I'm caught up.
To sum it up:
- You are currently banned (against the personal wishes of at least two or three moderators, two of which went to the trouble of mailing their dissatisfaction with Graelyn's decision to him and the other moderators), because you pushed us to the point that Graelyn decided continued interaction with you was simply not worth the stress it was causing. This I am sorry for, because as I said in my pasted mail above, I do not think it was the right decision.
- You have been warned and given reasons when you have been muted or banned in the past. That you sometimes don't like them, or don't like the moderator who's given them, doesn't matter.
- You have been given an apology from Kat for a misunderstanding regarding a mail conversation you had a couple weeks ago.
- You have been given numerous explanations for why people treat your character the way they do, as well as explanations for why that treatment sometimes carries over to you, the player.
- You have been given ample suggestions on how to fix the ongoing problem you are having with your character and the community.
What you do with all of that is up to you.
Personally I'd rather have you around and RPing. If you want help, ask, but you're going to have to stop dismissing everything we say out of hand just because you don't like it or the person saying it. Unless you make some effort on your part that can't happen, because in the end,
we have to convince Graelyn now that you've annoyed him enough that he doesn't want to talk to you about it.
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Topic: Problems in summit moderation (Read 31278 times)