Starting on October 12th, Administration carried out a review of the Disciplinary Team, and we realized that the way Disc-ord is presently configured is against the Site Charter and how the Disciplinary Team is meant to work.
The team does not have the authority to be fully blackboxed from the rest of staff, it's intended that staff can see discussion on Disciplinary matters (whether in chat or on O5). For instance, back in the IRC days, most Disciplinary team business was conducted in regular staff chat, which fulfilled this requirement. The team does have the ability to withhold key information from O5 if there is a specific reason. For instance, copycat trolls, harassment of staff members, and protecting private information. Such information was to be made available upon request to operational staff or above.
When we shifted staff matters to Discord, the requirement wasn't properly observed, the server was configured like other team servers at the time. This led to a change where Disc began to behave as if only Disc was permitted to see discussions and relevant materials. Likewise, because now most Disciplinary Team business occurred in the server, the decision was not always ported, even though Disciplinary is required to ensure that all final votes and reasoning must be in O5 (excepting special cases). Changes to this would require administrative consensus or a policy change brought before all of staff — neither of which happened.
Upon conclusion of the administrative review, Dexanote agreed immediately, and began discussion of the issue with the Disciplinary Team starting on October 13th, and we have developed a rollout plan. We have reorganized the server in preparation for making it available to staff at large. As part of a gradual rollout plan, at first mod+ staff may join, and after at most a week, then all opstaff+ may join.
Discussion about Disciplinary matters should occur primarily in Disc-ord or O5 and not general staff chat or other venues. Extended discussion should (per the Site Charter) take place on O5. Questions from Junior Staff or non-staff users should be relayed to a Disciplinary team member so they can be answered accurately.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask myself or Dexanote, or another member of the Disciplinary Team.
Note: Edits have been made to this statement to address minor inaccuracies present in the first version.