This is a statement regarding the recognition of a significant error I committed during the incident that occurred in November 2020, and an explanation and statement regarding discussion of censure of admins relevant to that incident (Myself and DrMann). the non-Disc thread for Cerastes is found here, Disciplinary thread regarding the incident with another user glitching into staff-discord here. My official statement on these events are found here.
First off, the error I need to specifically bring up and recognize is found in the second Disc thread, the second link above. In it, I wrote;
This thread is open to OS and above. As this is a Disciplinary thread, Disc team will have the final say, and is expected to approach as evenly and fairly as possible.
The way this is phrased suggests that Disciplinary team would have the sole power to determine a disciplinary outcome. This is just not correct: Disciplinary team has the power to deliver appropriate disciplinary action as per the outline provided by the Charter and/or Disciplinary policy. It does not have the ability to arbitrarily determine whether or not to deliver action.
This may not seem like a particularly important point to bring up, but it’s a significant failure of communication. My intent was to communicate to a subgroup of readers that Disc team wasn’t being influenced by other actors - in that 3-5 day stretch I had seen a lot of varied accusations that various parties were using Disc as a mask for assorted nefarious reasons, and in the moment it seemed like a prudent thing to attend to. It really wasn’t something that needed to be stated and so here I'm clarifying.
The second thing I wanted to talk about is the discussion of censure of myself and DrMann for how we handled the incident.
Mann had proposed the suggestion for a willful censure of ourselves in January, as a show of recognition of how poorly the Nov 2020 Incident was handled. An important point is that staff members do not have the ability to call for or enact censure on themselves, but this is a matter which (per the Charter) should be decided by Administrators and/or the Disciplinary Team. Now that’s a whole other discussion, which aismallard will be heading up as the new Vice Captain of Disciplinary, with the support of other Admins.
But as it is, that hadn't happened, and never formally occurred as of yet. Discussion regarding this action has been had a handful of times in Disc-ord and Admin Chat, but not in a formal manner as per our policy.
This will be followed up and discussion initiated by evening EST on this upcoming Sunday (the 24) at the latest.