Overly sarcastic and/or passive aggressive behavior
Borderline hostile and aggressive statements
Borderline offensive jokes
Purposefully inflammatory actions
I am strongly opposed to censuring a staff member for these actions as listed without evidence, especially when two of them include the word "borderline". "Overly sarcastic and/or passive aggressive behavior", "Borderline hostile and aggressive statements" — I could apply this to HarryBlank. I could apply this to JackalRelated. I could apply this to ROUNDERHOUSE. It could be applied to me. If this is the level of hostility necessary to start a censure discussion then there is a trivially easy way to utterly gridlock staff — though I'm going to guess this point is largely a rider to the more serious concerns.
I should think my own interest in this not being the case going forward is obvious.
It has also come to disciplinary's attention that gee has failed to uphold his responsibilities as captain of the Discord Team.
I'll defer to Ari's description of the situation here since she knows far better. Active as a Moderator, not active as an Admin. I can even agree with the outcome — removal from Admin/Captaincy for the time being. However, she also states that the lack of involvement at the Admin level has more or less made Pris the only Admin active in attempting to work through promotions, recruitment, or work through more difficult issues and that the larger issues have ultimately been falling on the shoulders of a single Admin.
I can agree with a demotion from admin/captain, but not as a disciplinary action. This sort of inactivity demotion should be strictly a non-disciplinary team-internal enforcement mechanism instead of something farmed out to all of staff. If being inactive as an admin is enough justification for removal, and Pris is the only Admin active, then we also need to open disc/censure threads for Katie and Yossi because they need to be removed from captainship as well based on the information presented here.
Just to be clear, I'm not actually advocating for the censure of every Discord admin except Prism, but highlighting that I believe treating a lack of activity as a disciplinary measure is unwise. I'd much prefer that the matter of activity be handled as an internal discord team process and that Gee, if deserving of demotion/captaincy removal, undergoes it as part of the moderator/admin activity audit that I believe is part of the upcoming Discord team overhaul, instead of as an explicitly disciplinary action.
Overall, I don't think the above two reasons hold water, and I'm a little surprised they were raised at all, even as riders, because they weaken the case for censure.
Others have raised their concerns about the procedural issues of AHT requesting a Disc action for offsite matters — for what it's worth, I think there's a difference between "AHT recommends that this individual be punished" as opposed to "AHT suggests that staff as a whole considers whether this individual has done enough wrong that staff as a whole wants to disavow them". There's a difference between "this group with limited transparency has decided that you should be removed from the site" vs "your peers should discuss if they collectively no longer believe you should be a peer."
One thing that feels weird to me is that AHT issued a warning instead of transferring to Staffwide/Disc immediately. Feels like being tried twice for the same crime. I know, I know, this isn't America and Gee isn't American but still. It felt like the punishment was settled, and then it was reopened. "This is not an AHT matter, so it should be a Disc matter" just feels like it makes more sense than "This is an AHT matter and we have handled it, but it is also a Disc matter and we have not handled it."
I also think that context matters here. Gee's statements were made during a series of tragic miscommunications between staff/the userbase and the AHT team, which AHT has blessedly taken announcements to rectify. After the statements were made, the unjustly accused user was AHT banned for:
Egregious offsite incident of a sexual nature.
Unwelcome sexual attention, including sending users sexual images, pressuring sexual discussion or interaction, or repeated unwanted flirting.
Repeated inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others.
I get the procedural steps were completely thrown out the window, but the optics just seem… weird? Yes, vigilantism is problematic — but to the degree of an AHT warning, not an AHT ban — by AHT's current ruling. Though I have to admit I'm biased since my own Disc thread/warning was for asking in staffchat why Bright hadn't been AHT banned yet before they were. To me what we are actually debating is "what punishment should someone who accused/offhandedly called someone who was later AHT banned for an egregious offsite sexual incident a pedophile receive". I think the crux of the issue here is really the use of the word "pedophile" as opposed to something more generic like "predator". Because like Riemann says, yes, it's tasteless, but if that were the only issue it'd be folded into the "decorum" point and it'd be one example to support 4 points of increasing severity. The AHT log fundamentally is the site saying, in more formal terms and tacitly, "this user did something very bad". I know I shouldn't argue a counterfactual. We live in the world where Gee said "you are an actual pedophile" instead of saying "you are a creep" or "you deserve to be AHT banned", which would be significantly weaker, less inflammatory fighting words.
I'm sorry; I just can't really argue from reason alone anymore. It feels weird that this censure proposal says, outright, "We acknowledge the fact that the two users knew each other when the other user was a minor; however, upon investigation, there is no evidence of any romantic/sexual relationship while the partner was a minor." It needs to be said for transparency reasons but I think it's so, so uncomfortable that it needs to be said. The whole situation is weird and awkward and personally I hate that we still have to litigate it even through proxy. Which is part of the reason why I'm fine with the status quo of the AHT warn. Because the people who signed up to deal with sensitive situations already settled on a punishment for multiple parties involved. I just joined staff because I wanted to make better charts and then I got into far too many unnecessary fights. Am I even allowed to say this? Like am I allowed to express that I find the situation weird and awkward? It's just my opinion and I'm really trying to avoid saying anything that hasn't already been stated by the AHT logs but holy shit a situation like that is above my pay grade.
Staff can't dig, staff can't investigate, staff as a body don't have any sort of subpoena power over private communications (nor should it, frankly). AHT only has what people volunteer. Again, I really shouldn't argue for counterfactuals but like in this situation lots of people failed on many levels (proper reporting at least) and it feels weird to punish the guy who, from the outside, looks like he picked a fight extremely overzealously but precipitated the events that led to the actual ban. Again I can't say for sure that's what happened but from the outside it looks like that. If the evidence of misconduct existed then people weren't submitting it until Gee did the equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater that was filled with vape smoke. And I for one don't want to be party to the perception of punishing a guy for calling out misconduct of a sexual nature of a user that AHT later punished for an egregious offsite incident of a sexual nature. Call me a coward for acting on perception instead of fact — that's why I'm not on disc or AHT nor do I intend to be.
Disregarding the activity and abrasiveness charges, which I think are on shaky grounds, it feels like this censure proposal is asking staff to morally balance whether it's ok to call someone a pedophile in a one-line remark when they're actually just "doing things that will get them AHT banned shortly". (I mean that's a successful Elon Musk defense for calling someone a "pedo guy" when actually intending to call them creepy. lol.) I don't want to have to make that decision. I don't think anyone really does which is why everyone is dancing around it and invoking aht/disc procedural issues and the holes in the other two reasons to sink this censure without needing to discuss the uncomfortable part. I get that being on AHT is hard but frankly I really feel like I'd be satisfied just accepting the extant AHT punishment of a warning for one extremely rude tweet. And I mean like, back during age "unraising" there were equally unsubstantiated allegations of implied pedophilia being thrown around for being okay with minors on the site as opposed to dating someone you knew as a minor. Those allegations were much more oblique and polite but if those are ok and this isn't then IMO that would make this would be a punishment for decorum (not substance) which I disagree with as I state way at the beginning. And crucially in that whole discussion there was no AHT ban in play. This censure is directly adjacent to an AHT situation that had actual recorded consequences. Being asked to consider a punishment in the context of AHT having found some reports credible just — why do we have to do this moral calculus.
Honestly, I've had a few seconds to cool down, and I realize my reaction might seem extreme. But I didn't sign up to litigate the exact circumstances under which I'd punish someone for calling a future-AHT-banned-user a pedophile without evidence for the pedophilia, which is, in my view, the most actionable point of this censure proposal. I realize my reaction is disproportionate and clearly biased towards "Gee acted rashly and rudely but not definitively wrongly". In part, that's because I have the hindsight of the AHT ban. The instant AHT decided that a ban was valid Gee became someone saying an inflammatory and false statement to someone who said an inflammatory statement that might've had a valid sentiment behind it, or a valid sentiment in roughly the same extremely uncomfortable territory (given, of course, the necessary secrecy of the AHT blackbox).
oh yeah as a disclosure i consider gee an internet friend which i believe i also stated when arguing against him as sole discord captain for the inevitable discord rework.
so yeah i guess in summary — inactivity and abrasiveness feel like nothingburgers, and the other thing is why we have AHT in the first place, which has already ruled on the matter, and it's extremely uncomfortable and I don't want to discuss it any more than we have to.
Anyways, the 04 mirror has been largely useless in the 4 posts at time of my writing. The first is too willing to pass judgement without evidence, investigation, and inquiry, underscoring that maybe the general userbase isn't aware enough regarding general staff actions to have informed enough opinions to contribute to disciplinary decisions; the second is underinformed and poorly worded pertaining to the nature of staff and disc issues, given that at some point in the past we allegedly started recording all complaints about staffers in nondisc/disc threads — two incidents over two years apart is not equivalent to "two years worth of disciplinary inquiries about you", which I should note is actually a better description of Rounderhouse's non-disc record; the third is largely echoing points made on this thread including the one that we don't need an 04 mirror; the fourth is by a now-deleted likely-sockpuppet account accusing this whole thing of being a hit job on Gee. If the thread heats up further (and it's already pretty spicy) I would ask that we consider locking it, but hopefully it'll stay at the current relatively sedate state. But let's not do it again.
no action. either that or demote all discord admins except Prismal, which won't happen.
