A year ago, we harbored some suspicions internally that she might have been a sockpuppet of a banned user. This was due to the quality of her writing and how quickly she made friends within the community. This is, unfortunately, something that the Anti-Harassment Team has to be careful of. However, no further evidence surfaced, and we have had no reasons since to think that she is anything but what she has presented herself to be: An enthusiastic writer excited to contribute to the wiki.

Unfortunately, several members of our team expressed these doubts publicly, as jokes. This was not only incredibly unprofessional, but also hurtful. It contributed to an environment where Animal Hospital felt she was not welcome on the wiki. Worse, these jokes took the form of accusations that she was secretly specific banned members of the community, suggesting that she was not only not who she appeared to be, but someone abusive.

One of the members apologized personally, and the other was confronted by Discord moderation. But it still remains a black mark against our team. I have spoken to the members in question, and stressed to the team as a whole that this behavior is not acceptable. If this happens in the future, it will lead to a censure of any team member responsible, and possible removal from the team. To be clear, this behavior is unacceptable from any member of the community, but especially ourselves.

Again, my sincere apologies to Animal Hospital. While a certain level of caution is necessary, these doubts should never have been expressed publicly when there was no proof.

Deficiencies in processes by the Anti-Harassment Team led to her suffering severe reputational damage. While we learned a great deal and would amend our processes to prevent similar issues in the future, it did not happen soon enough to prevent many people from making improper assumptions about her case.

Several years ago, she was warned by the Anti-Harassment Team. This was due to poor judgement that resulted in sexual material being posted to a social media account that interacted with minors. We took the matter seriously, and she was warned not to do it again. There was no public log at the time. However, her offense was one of poor judgement and carelessness. Nothing in our investigation suggested that she had done this deliberately, or that she had ever taken any actions to abuse minors or engage in grooming.

Attention was brought up again when she was banned later for intimidation. This was unrelated to her previous behavior, but others noted the incident and began spreading rumors that the events were related. We began receiving reports about it. In an attempt to stem these rumors, we made a statement that we had already investigated the incident and it was unrelated to her ban.

While this helped some, it did not stop the rumors, and the user FLOORBOARDS began accusing Dr Asteria of pedophilia. We issued a warning, on the assumption that this was a misunderstanding of the events. FLOORBOARDS continued the same harassment against Dr Asteria and other users, leading to a year-long ban. The wording on the ban was vague, and did not mention the pedojacketing, only referencing threats of violence or encouragement of self-harm.

When FLOORBOARDS returned, they continued their harassment, leading to a situation where multiple other users felt unsafe. Before AHT finished conferring, Disciplinary banned her for other egregious behavior. This mentioned calling the official SCP discord "1488cord," but did not mention the fear of retaliation several members reported, nor the continued harassment against Dr Asteria.

To be clear, FLOORBOARDS's actions should have earned much more severe punishment, and she should not have been allowed to return without even needing to appeal. AHT has recently banned other users for false accusations and intimations of pedophilia. That they were given more severe punishment than FLOORBOARDS does not reflect that their actions were worse, but that our standards and practices have evolved.

We have always taken care to protect the identities of reporters and victims in harassment cases, and we will continue to do so. However, it has become clear that there are cases when that level of silence is not appropriate, and can cause harm. In the future, we will strive to be more transparent, where we do not believe it will expose reporters or victims to greater harm.

Again, I am truly sorry to Dr Asteria for the damage done, and I hope this message can help prevent similar rumors in the future.

Intercedent

This is in violation of the following AHT policies:

Deliberate intimidation.
Frivolous/false accusations with the explicit intention to get someone else banned from the site.
Encouraging any of the above behavior.

Evidence supporting the ban can be found here:

+ Show evidence: CONTENT WARNING

- Hide evidence

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N.B. The delay in these related bans has stemmed from the desire to accurately reflect the need for action with as many concrete screenshots and evidence as possible for transparency, as well as ensuring that the display of said evidence did not unintentionally expose the identity of reporters without their consent or exposing them to further abuse. Therefore, please note that not all evidence could be attached to these threads.

Abstaining from this decision: Yossi.

PoufyPoufson

This is in violation of the following AHT policies:

Deliberate intimidation.
Frivolous/false accusations with the explicit intention to get someone else banned from the site.
Encouraging any of the above behavior.

Evidence supporting the ban can be found here:

+ Show evidence: CONTENT WARNING

- Hide evidence

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N.B. The delay in these related bans has stemmed from the desire to accurately reflect the need for action with as many concrete screenshots and evidence as possible for transparency, as well as ensuring that the display of said evidence did not unintentionally expose the identity of reporters without their consent or exposing them to further abuse. Therefore, please note that not all evidence could be attached to these threads.

We understand this is currently causing a bit of confusion. If you see a new thread in this sub-forum without any evidence attached, it means that there was evidence which we could not make publicly available due to compromising one of the available conditions outlined above. This measure is being taken in recognition that while AHT has a blackbox, not everything we receive during the course of a case through investigation or reporting needs to stay in that black box.

Please note that just because there is publicly available evidence we are now presenting does not mean there aren't additional materials which we cannot present due to the factors outlined above.

ubergoober

Deliberate intimidation.
Frivolous/false accusations with the explicit intention to get someone else banned from the site.
Persistent long-term abusive interpersonal behavior.
Encouraging any of the above behavior.

Abstaining from this decision: Mann.

VARWith

Victims are often held to impossible standards of behavior, and during the healing process it should always be understood that behaviors can be volatile, upsetting, and hurtful as processing is not a perfect, orderly order of operations. AHT would like to stress that the ultimate need for separation is as much for Vivian's health as the site and its community.

N.B. The delay in these related bans has stemmed from the desire to accurately reflect the need for action with as many concrete screenshots and evidence as possible for transparency, as well as ensuring that the display of said evidence did not unintentionally expose the identity of reporters without their consent or exposing them to further abuse. Therefore, please note that not all evidence could be attached to these threads.

After further deliberation, AHT has agreed to remove the screenshots in order to not further make a spectacle out of Vivian's experiences.

Abstaining from this decision: Mann.

Wydness

Wydness may appeal their ban once in #site17 to an administrator other than myself. Additionally, Wydness is welcome to appeal again one year from today - on January 25, 2020.

As an update, the Anti-Harassment team has decided that so far the following changes will occur, beginning immediately:

1) Updates to internal team structure or the policy will be put on its own thread. Namely, this thread, which is a sticky.
2) The Disciplinary Team will be updated when a case is opened, and when a case is resolved. The following information will be provided: When the case occurred, how many people are involved, the nature of the case (sexual, racial, onsite, onchat, etc.), the result of the case (as an executive summary, including the indication of any parties found committing harassment and their punishments). This will be sent using the !masstell system. The Anti-Harassment Policy will be updated to reflect this.
3) The Anti-Harassment Policy will be updated to include the following caveat: frivolous/false accusations with the explicit intention to get someone else banned from the site will also be considered harassment, and will be treated accordingly.

That being said…

User TheWaffle permabanned on Thursday 19 July 2014 for PM harassment of other user or users.
Edit: After discussion/apology/explanation in chat, they are allowed to appeal the permaban in one year.
For record, chat hostmask: TheWaffle was ten.tsacmoc.ni.1dsh.E6F070E7-CRInys|tibbiM#ten.tsacmoc.ni.1dsh.E6F070E7-CRInys|tibbiM http://www.mibbit.com