Cerastes will see no action from administration or the Disciplinary team regarding the staff chat security breach.

Any team captains who retain Cerastes on their staff teams at this time may apply whatever judgement they see fit regarding this incident, at their level.

I would like to formally apologize to Cerastes on behalf of myself and the rest of the Disciplinary Team for how we handled this and the previous thread. Cerastes was never guilty of plagiarism, and the accusation should have been properly vetted by multiple layers of team members before it was made.

- Dexanote

This member of staff has committed legitimate failures and certainly is not owed an apology.

I'm not sure that's particularly fair. Cerastes' failure to address the breach doesn't necessarily excuse all the mis-communication and confusion that have elongated and amplified this process.

I mean, I think he fucked up really badly here, but he still deserves some kind of apology for how janky his disc process has been. Can't have been pleasant, waiting through all this, and I don't feel comfortable saying "That’s what you get.", as though it's a punishment somehow suiting the offense.

Because of that, regardless of whether or not the breach is worthy of action, I feel as an administrator and a disc member that no action is the only reasonable conclusion due to this whole matter being a whirlwind of confusion and miscommunication. To do otherwise would also disregard the strong feelings of many of our op staff and moderators towards this incident, and it is under their mandate that we operate.

Beyond that, regardless of the results of this both Disc collectively and Disc’s leadership must publicly apologize to Cerastes for baselessly accusing them of plagiarism, leading a confused and largely unproductive discussion on the subject, and overall failing to properly conduct these proceedings. As one member of disc, I formally make such an apology to Cerastes now.

No Action.

… So Cerastes did know his brother refused to leave SSSC, left it as an active situation, and chose not to say anything until directly asked?

That is correct. This member of staff has committed legitimate failures and certainly is not owed an apology.

This was known from shortly after the incident was discovered, but has been improperly communicated to the lower echelons of staff at every possible opportunity, including in this thread, which was at the very least intended to resolve the communication difficulties of its predecessor. I have expressed my fury at same elsewhere in this thread.

…

I am changing my opinion for the last time, and are abstaining from any recommendations regarding Cerastes in this matter. The way information has been handled in general over the course of these threads is nothing short of a fiasco, and attempting to bring judgement on someone while facts are still being collected and understood is not the way this process should work.

no action.

no action and an apology.

i align with uranium and kirby.

very annoyed at the nature of the 001 issue and think that entire thing (unrelated to Cerastes) needs to be investigated.

I'm going to second this. I'm aware the issues with information surrounding the breach are being discussed, but the 001 being brought up as an entirely baseless disciplinary issue has been actively harmful for the collaborative aspect of the wiki and we must ensure that nothing like it ever happens again.

I am strongly recommending no action is taken.

The bottom line here, for me, is that Cerastes has been dragged through the mud and is due a massive apology. I've attempted to write my thoughts out at length, but they've been honestly better covered by others (Riemann, Gee, Stormbreath, UE, Kirby, and others) than I ever could, so I will instead point you to their posts. Frankly, I cannot envision a world in which the 001 proposal should ever have been raised to a disciplinary level - I'm not going to expand on this, as retreading this ground is unnecessary, save to say that it has been firmly established that there was no wrongdoing. The security breach is more complicated, but for me, it boils down to the fact that upper levels of staff did the exact same thing as Cerastes (only over a longer time period and with more serious consequences), that the original decision has seemingly only been overturned in the context of the 001 issue as UE mentioned, and that Cerastes has already been through enough. There is no way I see disciplinary action helping anyone here.

I am aware some conversations are ongoing, but to make clear: there need to be serious conversations held about how this ever came to be, and how we can ensure it does not happen again.

I can see this being an instance where Cerastes tells his brother to leave, believes the situation is thereby solved and goes to sleep, and quickly responds to a summons by staff about the whole thing the next day

A minor clarification: Cerastes was aware that the situation had not been resolved, i.e. his brother had not left SSSC. Additionally Cerastes was online for "one or two hours" before being contacted about the incident by staff.

And I mean, maybe there's a discussion that could be had about whether he should have taken every possible effort to get back online ASAP and resolve the issue. But I think the conversation that's being had right now is that being online for a couple hours, thing; specifically that he had time to inform the rest of staff about the nature of a security breach and chose not to for personal reasons.

To preface, I am advocating for no action. I wholeheartedly agree with the points raised by UE and Captain Kirby, for however that decides to influence my words henceforth.

The main points I see raised by those who are advocating for removal are that a) the potential damage that could have been done by the breach and b) Cerastes being unwilling to speak up until explicitly questioned.

For point A, the line speaks for itself. There was no damage done. The situation was sorted fairly quickly, nothing was leaked, there were no malicious actors involved, and while it's probably unnecessary to clarify, this was a tech error and Cerastes was not acting with ill intent. This error has an extremely low chance of occurring where it matters, and when it does, it has very little chance to affect anything negatively.

That leads to B, which really just follows the same principle. If Cerastes (allegedly) told his brother to leave, and he did, then why was Cerastes' withholding of the information such a crucial misstep that it warrants demotion? I can understand this being an error on Cerastes' part, but frankly, the fact that many are advocating for demotion based solely on this is ridiculous. It was for a period of 12 hours, and he ended up disclosing the information anyway. I would be far less understanding towards Cerastes' case if it was for a period of days, or if Cerastes did not disclose the information when asked. But as it stands, that was not the case.

I would also like to note the alleged "pattern of behavior". There are two incidents that I have been made privy to,¹ one of which many have long considered to be a non-issue.² I am concurring with stormbreath in that this is far cry from a "pattern", and the incidents are barely even related in nature.

Finally, I'd like to touch on the initial thread. It focused on the 001 incident (which, for simplicity's sake, let's say we have all moved past), with the security breach not being mentioned in the original post, and only being briefly mentioned afterward before being a focal point of the argument. I know that I am not alone in this when I say that I was unaware of the details regarding the breach when it initially occurred, and when the thread was originally posted. It was only towards the end of the thread's life when the details were released.
And then there were people who knew less than me. I was aware that a breach had occurred, when it happened, just not the perpetrators or the aftermath, because I was there. Some staff were not. I'll go back to Captain Kirby's points about staff communication, as I feel this was largely the cause for much of the unfocused conversation taking place in the original thread.

To clarify, I am not advocating for this to change at this present time. If anything, this issue is deserving of its own discussion. And although it's somewhat off-topic, it relates heavily to Cerastes' alleged "failure to disclose information until explicitly asked". Just personally, I see the disc situation as a non-issue, because the information was eventually disclosed and here we are. I struggle to see how the security breach incident is any different.

Through all of this, I do not believe the events, as they stand, warrant a demotion. To repeat myself, I am advocating for no action.

Edit: for what it's worth, I'm advocating for an apology to Cerastes also. Retropectively, this situation has gone on for far too long with no clear answer, and to sweep it under the rug is to be disingenuous to all parties involved.

I am further unwilling to endorse any disciplinary action in the light of the failure to properly alert the Disciplinary Team for a period of three weeks, considerably longer than Cerastes's time frame.

One of the primary "issues" being discussed here is a so-called "pattern of behavior". I reject that this pattern exists. Firstly, two incidents do not themselves make a recurrent pattern: I would need to see a third for that to happen. Two does not make. Secondly, it appears that the majority consensus is that the 001 "incident" was not actually an incident and there is no fault to be found there, which leaves with a single potential incident of dubious standing. I simply fail to see a pattern, other than where it is being artificially created.

I am recommending that no action be taken.

Additionally, Cerastes is deserving of a massive apology.

In my opinion, you could very easily apply the same reasoning against those who didn't bring this issue to Disciplinary, over a far longer length of time than the original breach.

Failure to bring notice of a resolved breach to disciplinary is indeed a problem - which I'm assured is being worked on; most everybody involved outranks me or is of equal rank with more responsibilities.

It's not the same as failing to report an active security breach.

While I'm not happy with the lack of communication (like everyone else), there's a big difference between "not telling everyone there was a horse in the hospital after you got it out" and "not telling anyone there's a horse in the hospital while it is there and you are watching it and then wandering away to do some other stuff."

I think that the sequence of events that led us to this point is far, far more concerning than anything Cerastes has done. Disc has stepped away from the 001 thing - I wholeheartedly agree with this move, but I'm still baffled that it ever got to the point of being worth bringing up disciplinary action.

As a consequence, it is incredibly difficult for me to judge the security breach without context: that it happened immediately after an entirely separate disciplinary action that changed direction halfway through before fizzling out. It becomes even more distressing to remember that there are staff members involved in these proceedings who did the same thing that Cerastes is being charged with¹over a longer period of time. The fact of the matter is that we are being asked right now to judge Cerastes, and only Cerastes, for Disciplinary action over something that staff far higher on the chain also did.

People make mistakes. We're human, and ideally we learn from them. I'm of the mind that the people who determined that the security breach was not a big deal made a mistake, and I am not inclined to rake anyone over the coals for it.

But systemic lack of communication is not a one-off mistake. Two sets of standards for Disciplinary action for the same event is not a one-off mistake. It isn't normal, it isn't functional. It is symptomatic of far larger structural issues that cannot be solved without a transparent and good faith effort to seriously address the issues that led us to this point.

I am recommending no action on Cerastes.

That's all fine so far, but the objectionable part is that Cerastes refused to clarify matters with the rest of staff until directly confronted, self-admittedly because he was scared of the possible repercussions. The issue at hand is that no effort was made to reach out to another member of staff with an explanation.

Cerastes' reaction (or lack thereof) to the breach would be actionable on its own, and I would be recommending full demotion if that were the only factor at play. Less so with the 001 incident, since it indicates that Cerastes has done something personally disagreeable but sets a precedent that I don't… you know how this goes. Read Kirby's post.

That said, like… this whole thing is a mess. I'm relatively new to staff in general, but everything that's happening right now doesn't feel normal or functional. I can't see a decision on this that doesn't leave some kind of underlying grudge and resentment among staff towards their fellows. As such I recommend taking no action and leaving Cerastes' staff abilities up to his captains (since they may be hesitant to trust him with confidential info again). It's not as though this case is particularly pressing and, if anything, it's revealed that we need to cultivate some greater intra-staff communication. The breach and Cerastes' involvement should have been brought up when it happened.

And Cerastes knew a lot longer than 24 minutes. They directly confessed to knowing their brother was in the channel before anyone else on staff realized it, hours before any investigation started. And they additionally confessed to not owning to it on purpose. The reason the investigation started so late is exclusively owing to Ceraste's dishonesty.

I am baffled as to why the relevant logs and screenshots were not posted with the thread¹. I am unsure if I can post them myself, and the people I need to ask are asleep.

The fact of the matter is that the majority of the time occurred while he slept. There was also only a 24 minute gap between the investigation being known to Cerastes via a ping to staff and the direct conversation request with Taylor, which Cerastes quickly complied to. Even if some conversation occurred earlier that morning, of which I could not find in the logs, without being pinged about it, Cerastes would not have been aware of such a conversation taking place.

Correction: I did find the first ever mention, which occurred at 7:17 AM. However, the brief discussion that ensued never involved any pings to any of the suspected parties and given the time, Cerastes was likely still asleep. It is also worth noting that Cerastes did not comment in the chat for any reason before being pinged by Taylor at 3:14 PM.

A choice to remain silent in such a situation is itself a statement. "I know nothing."

Based on info provided, I was led to believe that the situation was one where he knew his brother was on SSSC for most if not the entirety of his brother's lurking on SSSC. Is this not the case- did he tell his brother to leave more-or-less the moment he found out, and his brother left shortly thereafter?

Additionally, as has been concurred by many others, I maintain that the 001 case is not discipline-worthy, and as such, has no bearing on this conversation even in the context of an alleged pattern of behavior.

re: The 001 issue:

1. Cerastes could've done more to ensure that their involvement with another series was appropriately respectful and in the spirit of a collaborative website. This is not strictly a rule issue but that we must have staff members who uphold what makes the SCP Foundation fundamentally work as a collaborative project. Taking an actively being worked upon project of an author and relegating its to-be-completed finale as a footnote for one's own work is inappropriate and against the fundamental, necessary mutual respect of authors that makes the SCP Foundation function.
2. Cerastes did in fact listen when the author was involved, did make amends, and the draft which included the passages in question was removed prior to posting. This is good, and shows a few things here. One, that the collaborative/communication aspect of the site is working- even if there are high emotions and personal investment involved, it is working. People are cooperating. Cerastes showed cooperation and collaborative faith here, and that should be held in equal measure. Two, that ultimately the consequences that were concerned by the author didn't actually occur on the site because Cerastes was willing to compromise their vision to mesh with the visions of others.
3. In this case- Cerastes made a misstep, but then went on to resolve this misstep before it made it to the site. Based on this alone, I would recommend no action or maximum a short-to-medium censure based on the full knowledge that there will be no subsequent positive interpretation possible if this happens a second time.

re: The breach of SSSC:

1. Cerastes absolutely failed in informing leadership as soon as they were aware that there was a significant issue with the security of a private staff-only space. In doing so, they put at risk other staff members and exposed them to potentially malicious actors. By doing this, they also undermine the belief that Cerastes is even capable as a staff member to communicate when issues arise- that is to say, Cerastes cannot be trusted to be a communicative actor in an organization almost wholly reliant on the belief that issues will be dealt with together, decided upon together, in the collaborative spirit the site is built upon.
2. Admins and Captains aware of the breach subsequently also failed to communicate to the Disciplinary team when this breach occurred and their knowledge that it was mishandled by a staff member. While their reasoning may have very likely been reasonable at the time, they performed the same mistakes Cerastes did, and subsequently Disciplinary staff were ill-equipped to bring up the initial concern with Cerastes to the entirety of the staff body. Admins and Captains should collaborate with staff to consider the planned positions they intend to take to rectify this error in the future, such that it is understood subsequent failures of communication must have consequences to responsible parties. (I'm aware discussions to do as such are ongoing.)
3. However, Cerastes did eventually come clean with their involvement in the breach, apologized, and there was no malice involved. Cerastes has had no formal training in security (very few staff do); this makes their particular judgement to be quite poor but not straight up unacceptable incompetency. Finally, as in the 001 issue, the subsequent consequences were not serious. No one has been harmed in the wake of this breach. Cerastes is fully aware of what they did wrong, and I highly doubt that they will repeat this mistake given that I believe they genuinely have never wished to harm staff as a body, consider staff to be their companions, and are understandably horrified with themselves that they have put their own community at risk through this.
4. In short, Cerastes made a serious and severe misstep, that they fully acknowledge, that had the potential but not the result of grave institutional consequences. In a complete vacuum with no further considerations for any procedural mishap or other concerns, I would advocate for a removal with explicit assumption of impermanence (that is, they are welcome back after a bit of time to work on themselves/their communication style and grow) or a medium-to-long-term censure (3-12 months) (NOTE: I understand the situation is NOT in a vacuum; I'm merely using the vacuum as a way to display my reasoning process.). If disc wants to consider the ameliorating factor that is the staff institution's mishandling of communication (I believe this an entirely reasonable course of action), a medium-to-short term censure (<3/4 months) might be appropriate.

Based of the both of these separate evaluations, the overlap is for a censure of approximately medium term(2-4 months) (The Range of Most Severe to Least Severe is Full Removal up to No Action. Most Severe is a Full Removal on the basis of failure to report in of itself a severe breach of staff security and violation of implicit staff trust. Least Severe is no action on the basis of ultimately another author's intent was not harmed by the time of posting) . If we want to consider the failure of staff as an institution in investigating this as an ameliorating factor(I believe this is an entirely reasonable course of action), then a short-to-medium (<3/4 month) censure, possibly no action is not unreasonable (with presumption that there is no further positive interpretation possible on any subsequent communication mistakes).

Please note I do not currently have a personal opinion at this time; I'm attempting to deduce what I understand to be the bounds of what I would consider reasonable action based on what I am aware of. I welcome(and encourage) questioning/criticism that adjusts the bounds of reasonable action.

(Disclaimer: I don't know if the statement of short or long term censure associated with length is universal to staff as a whole, but I did want to make clear what *I* meant when I used 'short' and 'medium' and 'long-term'. Most specifically, I believe a short censure is less than 2 months, a medium term is 3-5 months (or any length of time that would cause them to likely miss eg. promotions and other major staffwide voting actions), and a long censure is 6-12 months (or any length of time that would cause them to be considered inactive staff upon returning)).

(Another note: I don't really know if taking the overlap is an appropriate action, just noting what the overlap is. It is entirely reasonable to consider the incidents compounding instead, or to simply take the more severe incident as the basis for disc action.)

I have lost all faith in Cerastes's ability to uphold our standards of honesty.

Frankly, they should have been demoted after they lied about their knowledge of the breach. I privately argued, stridently, and quite aggressively, against demotion at the time- I have come to realize that that was a grevious mistake, for which I unreservedly apologize.

My hand is forced into voting for demotion. No matter how this thread resolves, I will be removing them from my team. Licensing involves too much sensitive material for someone with such disappointing failings.

Quoting Dexanote:

I have been informed that nobody noticed that the user had joined, hung around, and left until after the user had left. Without trying to sound overly dramatic, this is basically an unreported security breach, where the private discussions of a number of staff members were in full access of a total stranger for several hours without their knowledge or consent.

I don't think we should be conflating our outrage at a leak which we were part of the problem on, with the punishment due Cerastes for their error. What do I mean by part of the problem? Someone sat with access to our chats and nobody noticed and nobody questioned it, myself included. That is collectively our fault as a whole, not Cerastes' burden. We have to be active participants in our security if we then want to cite it as a reason to get fired up. Obviously it's not collectively our fault if a technical error allowed a stranger access but the reason this was allowed to carry on for so long is.

Specific recommendations are not the purview of this thread but the fact they are needed at all is relevant and telling.

Let's be done with this. Censure Cerastes or take no action.

I've been struggling to put my exact thoughts into words over the past few days, but this post most accurately captures what I've been thinking on the matter, more specifically regarding the lack of communication between staff.

Also to repeat from that post, I am not disc staff.

A lot of the reasons I've seen regarding demotion from staff mentioned upthread concerns the breach of trust between Cerastes and staff as a whole. This was caused by not disclosing the details of a security breach on their own, and instead volunteering information after being asked about it at a later time.

This constitutes a breach in trust because we assume that if something like this would happen, staff would inform the people involved and it would have been taken care of without having to explicitly pursue information.

I bring up this point because one of the fears regarding a breach has to do with privacy and security. A breach affects all people in staff chat. This is important because, while Cerastes did not inform any other staff as to the breach for 12 hours, a large percentage of staff was not informed of the breach for weeks. This means that, many, many affected persons were not told that people have had access to staff conversations that had taken place. People may have wanted to change passwords or usernames or ids based on this information, but it was not passed along.

I make a point of this because we are saying Cerastes should be demoted for breaking the trust of staff. However, I posit (and I believe others agree, as indicated in UE's post), that the staff members who were aware of the breach and did not bring it to the attention of staff in general have also lost the trust of some of the staff.

If this trust is something that is so important that losing it is grounds for demotion, then it feels like we are using a double standard. Upthread, it is cited that staff are meant to be held to a higher standard, and by virtue of that, should our moderators, admins, etc be held to a higher standard than our operational and junior staff?

Right now, it appears that a significant percentage of staff do not trust the actions of disc and adcap based on the way they handled the communication around this problem, as well as the conclusions that are being reached regarding Cerastes. The thing with trust is that, it's a two way street. If we are supposed to trust adcap/disc to make the right decision when we are not looking, then it follows that they need to demonstrate that same trust in the rest of staff, which currently does not appear to be present, both as indicated by the current barriers to communication between different groups of staff, as well as the insistence that Cerastes must be censured for this transgression.

If the response to the issues brought up about staff communication should not be dealt with at an individual level, but rather a systematic level, then I believe Cerastes' case should be dealt with also systematically by implementing more clear procedures and avenues of communication for people to go through when a breach like this happens. This way we are demonstrating to all parties involved that the trust still remains from the top down. Additionally we can build trust in each other by attempting to take long lasting changes rather than claiming the loss of trust in an individual.

I am not disc staff, but I would advocate for no action to be taken at an individual level. Rather these problems should be addressed at a systematic level.

There is no mention that writing about the Great Seal or any other aspect of that canon is closed. There is no mention of "I plan to write a 001 about The Great Seal, so don't write one about that." This canon is already collaborative, not a single person series.

On the topic of the actual proposal Cerastes drafted, although the name was going to be "The Great Seal", the Great Seal itself was only a minor aspect of an overall Sarkicism related proposal. As weizhong previously stated:

this proposal has almost nothing to do with the Great Seal. The story here is a Sarkic history lesson masquerading as an 001, which, given the plot of the current alchemy department works, seems to be nowhere near where Magnus seems to be going with his own finale. I think half of the problem here is the wording from one of the reviewers stating that this proposal is "stealing [Magnus's] 001," which seems far more alarming than the textual reality of what was presented in the article."

If Weryllium had written this proposal and conducted himself the same way as Cerastes here, would this even be non-disc worthy? Would we be so quick to outright delete his proposal on the basis that he stole someone else's opportunity to write it? What does being a staff member change about this situation? Do we need to create a guide detailing the proper procedures for staff members to ask for permission to write a certain article and get their article approved before posting from the canon creator? If that was an expectation, I have never heard of it and seriously doubt most of staff have ever done so to the degree that we are asking of Cerastes here. Or is the issue that we are trying link a situation where Cerastes made a previous mistake and it was believed that he did not receive the correct punishment for it and then act like the proposal has anything to do with that previous mistake?

This is all ignoring the fact that Cerastes did attempt to reach out when he didn't have to, and when gotten back to, decided to remove the entire Great Seal reference when he didn't have to. And what happened to the idea that any one or all of the 001 proposals can be the true one or the false one? Why can't Magnus still write his own proposal which contradicts what Cerastes says about The Great Seal? This is of course all a moot point because Cerastes' posted article did not include The Great Seal anyways. The idea that an idea was "sniped" here is dishonest. Magnus never lost any opportunity here. Even if it was posted before The Great Seal was removed, Magnus still would not have lost an opportunity to write what he wanted to write. Where is the bad faith here?

I am currently recommending no action.

At the very least, he could've told his brother "You're not supposed to be there. GTFO now," and then only tell staff if his brother didn't comply, i.e. bare minimum of what we would expect any member of Staff to do in a similar situation

Minor point: he did tell his brother to leave.

the site has always been corroberative, so it's not unusual to build upon other works. This is, after all, how we can build impressive canons

If we want to state that we should make this into policy that no one can be expected to write an ongoing series for the site because the precedent is that it is entirely acceptable for other people to intervene, write the next chapter without the author's involvement even if they're actively working on it, or otherwise straight up hijack an ongoing project. The only reason why this collaborative environment can continue to exist is to presume people will be collaborating in good faith and that we enforce good faith collaboration behaviors. Staff need to be capable of collaborating with other authors in a way that shows how collaboration can work and clearly Cerastes wasn't doing that here. I don't think it should be excused that "well, we're a collaboration site, so of course it's fine for a staff member to be dickish when it comes to collaborating, this is exactly the standard we want to set to the community as to how collaboration works here".

As someone who has run a canon for the past two years, I hope we do not reach the point where an individual can take disciplinary action against anyone for writing something related to our works we don’t like. Even if it is considered rude not to ask, are we expecting authors to always acclimate to the canon contributor’s wishes? What if no major contributors to the canon are around? What designates someone has a canon curator?

But none of these questions apply to what actually happened here. We know that this was not "writing something related to our works we don't like". This was not a situation where no major contributors to the canon were found or that there was a canon curator. This was a single person's series that was being sniped by a staff member, who we hold to higher standards. Don't be a dick is a rule. These presumptions of consequence and subsequent applications to entirely different situations is inaccurate, and asking how it relates to different circumstances is inaccurate.

We know precisely what happened here and this has almost nothing to do with canon curation. It's one dude's series. Speculating otherwise is IMO missing the issue entirely or misrepresenting what happened.

Frankly, this was difficult for me to do a choice because of how confusing all of this was (the nature of this issue and the fact that it's the first I need to intervene as an OS hadn't helped, TBH). Because at this moment, I have equal reasons to trust one side and equal reasons to trust the another side. However, it's clear that I cannot act like there was nothing.

So, I would go for a censure.

EDIT: According to Nagiros in one of her posts:

According to available logs, the timeline went that his brother informed him that he had joined SSSC (because of the mentioned glitch), and Cerastes told him to leave immediately, but his brother refused.

Check carefully the part that I've bolded. If Cerastes told his brother to leave and that he refused, he's not him who is at fault, it's his brother for being a complete idiot. As such, I've changed my mind and recommand no action. And, as Taylor says in page 3, a general and massive apology.

Too much edits… too much edits, goddamn.

As far as I can tell, the 001 issue is, and should be, a non-issue. Maybe a little dickish, yes, but nothing that should or needs to be addressed. No actual plagarism took place, nor could it have, and the site has always been corroberative, so it's not unusual to build upon other works. This is, after all, how we can build impressive canons; many writers contributing and buiding off of one another. Cerastes just had the bad luck where his foresight of where things were going was 100% true on someone's pet project, and he never gave them a heads-up that he wanted or was going to write it, so to speak.

His handling of the breach is, in my opinion, jaw-dropping. The only way I can think of it being any worse was if he told his brother how to log onto SSSC using the method his brother used. At the very least, he could've told his brother "You're not supposed to be there. GTFO now," and then only tell staff if his brother didn't comply, i.e. bare minimum of what we would expect any member of Staff to do in a similar situation. The only reason I can fathom why a failure to stop or report the breach would be acceptible or excusable is out of fear of retalitory physical or emotional abuse by his brother or other family members.

In my opinion, his actions during the breach warrants a non-permanent demotion. Had he simply been aware of a security vulnerability, and coincidentally said vulnerability was abused by a 3rd party, that would be one thing. I could see him not knowing that he should report it, assuming that it was a known issue. But he wasn't; he was in a position to not only report the breach, but potentially stop it on his own. Instead, he doesn't say anything, doesn't report it, and only admits to knowing about it after the fact, and only when pressed at least twelve hours after he knew his brother got onto SSSC. That kind of decision-making indicates that he is either not yet ready for staff responsibilities, or is not staff material.

-EDIT-

Based on other information that has recently come to light, I am switching my opinion to No Action or Censure. I can see this being an instance where Cerastes tells his brother to leave, believes the situation is thereby solved and goes to sleep, and quickly responds to a summons by staff about the whole thing the next day, keeping his mouth shut before then only because of a thought process sinilar to "oh, crap, the situation wasn't handled right and it's all my fault!". While he should have promptly told staff of his brother's glitching into SSSC, it doesn't appear that he was being willfully ignorant about what had happened (which was the driving stance of my prior opinion).

-EDIT II-
I am changing my opinion for the last time, and are abstaining from any recommendations regarding Cerastes in this matter. The way information has been handled in general over the course of these threads is nothing short of a fiasco, and attempting to bring judgement on someone while facts are still being collected and understood is not the way this process should work.

Even given the fact that Dexanote was not aware of the breach in the first case, this is essentially how I feel. Whether or not the 001 or the breach thread came first, the pattern of behavior here is meant to be corroborating the behavior displayed in the breach incident.

While yes, I can (and probably will) say that Cerastes was being unconsiderate of Magnus's wishes, it is not against the rules to be unconsiderate to other people. And yes, I can say that Cerastes was at best being obfuscatory about the breach incident in the first place. However; these two actions do not equate to each other. It is also of my opinion that if the breach case was severe enough to have warranted an O5 thread and further action, it would've been done either on or closer to said incident. And yes, Dexanote was out during that time and rightfully didn't know about the incident. That did not prevent other staffers from bringing it up or making it more widely known or making it an active discussion. I frankly find it sort of appalling that this thread was made after a complaint about an - for all purposes - unrelated incident with varying types of behaviors. Again, I stress this enough, I rest no fault with Dexanote for being out or being busy during the time.

That being said, even with all the facts presented to me before and now: if the incident was as severe as I am hearing it presented, it would've been a major discussion already. The fact that a large majority of staff was even unaware of said incident goes directly against the previous statement. Additionally, I will use that point as my stepping board to say that because of the lack of attention, this case is reliant on the interactions between Magnus and Cerastes. And it is with this I cannot see the link between being obfuscatory and deciding to write something from a free canon (else GreenWolf would have had a monopoly on many things in our community). Of course, I am not absolving Cerastes of all fault in this situation.

I believe is that at best, I would take no further action than that has been done (besides readjustment on keeping in touch with staff). At worst, Cerastes should be censured for no longer than a month - or frankly even a week.

That is what I make of this issue.

My take: if the breach wasn't enough to ensure a censure or demotion the first go around, it shouldn't be enough to do so this time.

I am going to say this clearly, since I've explained it clearly elsewhere:

Nobody else initiated this. I have, as head of Disciplinary.

I was unaware of the breach, at all, as I was in the midst of multiple medical excursions and invasive tests, and hadn't kept abreast of SCP stuff for that week or two because of it.

Additionally, it was never brought up until recently, passingly during discussion about the 001 thing.

I promptly began investigation, because a stranger showing up unannounced and then leaving unannounced is extremely concerning to me.

No other member initiated this. I did. Head of Disciplinary.

Please do not pretend that the 001 is the reason I am pushing this. It's simply how I found out.

What exactly are the standards that are being applied here? How do we establish the metric of flexibility? Is it even worth the trouble of applying them over an issue that, given how much we've already put Cerastes's nose to the carpet and given the measures we implemented to prevent recurrence and given we've seen no indication of a pattern of behavior, will likely never be repeated?

Disclaimer: I am not disc.

I am posting this here because the other thread is locked, because while people seem to largely agree that the 001 case is not the main grounds for demotion, I want to bring explicit attention to the idea that formed the backbone of that accusation because I believe the implication that there was anything actionable regarding what Cerastes did with that draft is very important to address in context of how other approach writing for the site.

To relate back to the overall disciplinary nature of the thread, I believe any reference to this activity as a continuing pattern of miscommunication is unfounded, because, I thoroughly believe that this is the type of activity we encourage on the site. The breach is the only point worth discussing here, and by virtue of how the breach was only brought up after the 001 (as described in UraniumEmpire's post), it makes me question the importance of the breach. However, the important part of this is not so much the relation to the breach but rather the precedent that is set by considering the 001 situation problematic in the first place.

The breach is now being discussed in the context of disciplinary not because it was considered worthy of an overturn, but because of the 001.

My take: if the breach wasn't enough to ensure a censure or demotion the first go around, it shouldn't be enough to do so this time.

The breach was not actually referred to the disciplinary team previously; there was no first go around. Shortly before the first thread was the first I heard of it.

I'm really confused and disheartened by the whole process behind it and a lot of people seem upset, some for good reasons, some for not-so-good reasons.

The breach was obviously an error and I'm not quite certain how I feel about it beyond "a preventable mistake."

The 001 incident is a lot murkier and I'm not totally clear on how it's actionable in any way, but I'm willing to chalk this up to a personal lack of understanding.

I'm concerned that there's a lot of FUD surrounding this incident, regardless of how culpable the staffer in question actually is, and I think the opacity of the process has made me uncomfortable with the removal of someone of staff over it.

I oppose removal from staff. I don't feel like I understand the context of either incident well enough to vote between censure and no action.