DrMagnus

thedeadlymoose

It is important to note that, given that it has been nearly a year since, it would be improper for staff now to re-litigate the outcome of the case. Instead, given the unclear conclusions and indications made by staff at the time, we were trying to see how we should proceed. It is also important to note that, while a thread for community discussion was opened,¹ per the Site Charter, community members are not afforded votes on staff discipline matters, and explicitly considering their thoughts in the process is a contravention of current disciplinary procedure.

The core issue is that there are a number of indecisive or unclear votes in the original disciplinary thread which could be read in a couple of different ways, yielding different results. The tally presented to staff is available here, in Wikidot sandbox form (archive). As can be seen, there are two both cases where "perma" is the clear result, "1 year" is the clear result, and some which are tied.

But the various means of counting votes make several assumptions. For instance stormbreath noted:

When you take a vote to mean more than what it is, by the numbers, you start running into problems
Like: I voted for 1 year. I did not vote against a perma.

After further discussion over the interpretation of the votes, Naepic said the following, which seven staff members noted their agreement with:

i'm going to advocate for one year here

i think disregarding ambiguous votes is stupid - as dumb as they are, they are votes and ignoring them is something i am uncomfortable with. i get the intention that just because you vote one way that it doesn't mean you are against the other votes like perma

but i think for the sake of this, and especially because there is no intention of doing a revote, i cannot conscientiously advocate for perma given the tabulation

This summarizes the main consensus that staff reached through this discussion. There was significant analysis of the votes that were cast, the varying implications of each, and while there was support for a permanent ban in many of these votes, given the lack of clarity, staff at present feel that amending the ban to be 1 year in duration is appropriate given the circumstances. This means that Magnus's ban will elapse on November 22, 2023.

• Permanent blacklist from site staff.
• Permanent ban.

A PM has been sent.

Throughout these events, Magnus showed himself to be a bully to other staff members, his friends, and the rest of the Disciplinary team. As others have said, this is behavior unbecoming of any user - let alone an admin. There is no way to look at Magnus's actions and see anything other than institutional harassment of another staff member/user.

Magnus deserves a permanent ban and total blacklist from staff as a result of his actions here. I'm not sure if I want to say this deserves AHT action, but I am in agreement with the users above that a year ban is not a sufficient response to the level and severity of reprehensible behavior on display here.

But his actions here are indefensible and baffling. The things that Cerastes was accused of were not things that he had actually done — in the sense that would lead to him getting any form of Disc action over them — and furthermore, were not things that necessitated any punishment. I've always been truly baffled at why Magnus did this, but that doesn't matter: it was an absolute abuse of power, and his repeated failure to recuse himself is more than grounds for his forced removal.

The blacklist is necessary.

I don't have strong feelings on the ban, but recognize the year length that a few have suggested is appropriate in light of Fieldstone's ban and the length of time since the incident.

Often times people's conduct looks a lot worse when context is taken away. This timeline certainly removes *some* context by its very nature, and also makes some actions appear worse because you can read them happening all at once in rapid succession rather than the weeks/months this process carried out over. But I also recognize that there are very much things which no amount of context could make better. Despicable professional conduct smells just as bad no matter how much context it is wrapped up in.

I am voting as a member of Disc to censure, and I accept the recommendation of the investigatory team to enact a "blacklist" period of one year, and a 6 month site ban.

DrMagnus took an otherwise-minor exchange with Cerastes, interpreting his actions very harshly, and inappropriately presented a disciplinary complaint. He was strongly, and repeatedly, involved in the internal Disciplinary Team discussions about this complaint, despite recognizing and stating multiple times that he should recuse himself. His presence and persistence within the team's discussion poisoned the well, marring Cerastes' credibility to a degree that some form of wrongdoing was assumed before the team had a serious opportunity to investigate specific claims. In addition to having a self-acknowledged conflict of interest due to being both a complainant and a deliberator, he referenced his IRL stresses which had the effect of manipulating other team members into being overly sympathetic towards him, vilify Cerastes, and justify the legitimacy of the case. Rather than distancing himself from staff matters entirely due to the IRL circumstances he was in, he instead spent a significant amount of time on the case, inappropriately using it as an outlet for his stress.

Consequently, as the case evolved differently than he imagined, he hardened his position, interpreting much of the opposition as personal attacks. He applied his personal friendships with Disciplinary Team members as well as his access to the discussion to influence the case, and did not admit fault during or after the incident. His actions were born from high personal stress, but were still incredibly inappropriate, severely affected the case, influenced the Disciplinary Team's perception of Cerastes and inhibited a proper study of the evidence.

With all of this in mind, it is the recommendation of the group that former administrator DrMagnus receive the following Disciplinary consequences:

• Blacklist from staff. (Staff-wide vote to readmit as staff after a minimum period of one year)
• Temporary ban of three to six months.

The specifics of this punishment and the passage thereof are the subject of this thread. This thread will be open for seven days and is open to all OS+.