I have been asked to post this ban appeal request on behalf of Transcending and Beyond Transcending.
I should preface that, at this point in time, I have only given the ban appeal a cursory analysis, primarily for the purpose of establishing a prima facie case (i.e.: ensuring the reasons made are worth considering as an appeal), and to check for profane language. At this point in time, I do not support nor reject any action to be taken on this appeal, and I have left the phrasing of the appeal in situ to ensure no information is added or redacted.
Due to Xenforo image limitations, I will be splitting this into two posts. Furthermore, In the interest of not creating an intrusively large post, I have reduced the size of the images provided considerably, and I would
strongly recommend anyone attempting to evaluate this appeal to open the images directly to view them properly.
Before continuing, remember that we have been banned for over 10 months already, so if you feel like we aren't innocent but should be punished with a ban duration of less than 10 months, I think we can be unbanned.
First, a minor history on what we us. In October of 2022 we were banned for Vote Manipulation. This was a 3 month ban and ended on January of this year. Then on early March of this year, we were permanently banned for primarily intentionally triggering people in arguments by creating dishonest arguments. Some time after we were banned, we appealed. When this happened, Xearsay tried to defend us, but after some discussion, Ant started deleting his new posts in the RVR and tried to finalize our ban completely. Due to this, Xearsay started a private PM with the relevant mods to defend us. He succeeded, and our original reasons of the ban, that is, intentionally triggering people, was debunked. When this happened, Ant created a private PM that included everyone in the original PM where Xearsay changed the reasons except Xearsay himself. This included Deagonx, the person who originally reported us. So here, some evidence was supposedly presented resulting in the ban remaining but the reasons changing to stonewalling along with a previous history of a 3 month ban. Neither us ourselves nor Xearsay was able to defend us, because ultimately, we didn't even know what evidence was used. The evidence was presented privately for whatever reason. When Xearsay pointed the unfairness in this, Deagonx responded by saying his feelings were noted-
Here's proof that our reasons were changed-
This shows two things-
1: Neither us, nor the person who was defending us, Xearsay, was able to see the evidence for our ban.
2: The one time we did recieve proper defense, it was a success and the reasons of our ban were changed.
I am sure you would agree that we should be able to defend ourselves, or at least other people be given a chance to defend us. Our ban was handled entirely without any form of defense being provided to us whatsoever, while the accuser was given all the chance to speak whatever he wanted to. When we were originally banned, we weren't shown the evidence because of a fear that we would harass the people who leaked the screenshots (that led to our original ban) offsite. But this was proven untrue in the same PM discussion with Xearsay that I mentioned before, but even if it wasn't, the evidence for stonewalling would have no relation to them whatsoever. The stonewalling evidence would be something onsite that would be available to everyone, not some offsite private discussion to be leaked, like how it was originally. So there's basically no reason to not show us or Xearsay the evidence. It's not just that we weren't given a chance to address the evidence, but we quite literally couldn't, we had no idea what evidence was used. If possible, I would appreciate it if we could be unbanned exclusively for defending. In this time period, we wouldn't make a post anywhere other than the RVR, and even in the RVR, we would only make posts for defending ourselves. If we do make posts elsewhere, you can ban us and conduct the discussion without us. I can assure you that I wouldn't type anywhere else, and while I am confident Transcending wouldn't either, we should ultimately be treated as separate humans. So if he posts somewhere else, you can ban him but please don't ban me.
With that said, in the PM that was originally created by Xearsay, Deagon did provide one of the evidence used for our ban. As it's unknown what occurred in the PM created by Ant, it's ultimately possible it was the only evidence provided by Deagon. If this is the case, we would like to address it. These three screenshots show what Deagon said against us-
To address it-
What ThatBusyDude did and what we did are fundamentally different. Let's take a look at an example of me using Hitchen's Razor-
So in DC, there's a structure called the Source Wall and a character named Lucifer Morningstar flew beyond it. Transcending was arguing The Source Wall exists in all dimensional levels of the DC Multiverse (and so that Lucifer only flew beyond a lower level of it), while Deagon was arguing The Source Wall only exists at the end of the Multiverse. When Transcending showed evidence of the Source Wall existing in all dimensional levels of the Multiverse, Deagon tried to argue this version of the Source Wall is incompatible with the Lucifer storyline. I was essentially requesting evidence to support the claim that it is incompatible with the Lucifer storyline. If we are unable to ask for evidence in such cases, it allows anyone to dismiss evidence presented against their argument by simply stating that it is "incompatible" with the storyline, without providing any evidence to support this claim of incompatibility. There are of course, times where asking for proof is dumb, as with the analogy Deagon provided, but it's a false analogy, as there are cases where using Hitchen's Razor is a valid move as well, and our case was, in our opinion at least, part of those times.
Moreover, Deagon is contradicting himself. In the three screenshots, Deagon is saying we asked him to prove something that cannot logically be proven and is "common sense", but when I used Hitchen's Razor against him, he said he could have proved it but didn't find it something worth putting his effort into-
So by his own admission, his analogy cannot work. He could have proved, but he didn't want to spend time proving, so he chose not to. That's the end of it.
You may confirm it for yourself here-
https://vsbattles.com/threads/lucifer-dream-and-michael-downgrade.143657/post-5172837
Firstly, I will reiterate that me and Transcending are completely different humans beings living in entirely different continents. My violations shouldn't be applied to him and vice versa. With that said, I did indeed make a bad argument (an argument that he didn't agree with, which is why he never tried to argue for me when I made it. He pointed this out in the thread itself-)
but making bad arguments and stonewalling are entirely different things. I have since went on to change my mind and now disagree with the argument I made back then.
I made approximately ten posts, none of which were any major essays but small ones with one to three sentences. When I was debunked, I dropped the topic. You may confirm it for yourself, here-
https://vsbattles.com/threads/marvel-cosmology-downgrade.146443/post-5428547
It would have been stonewalling if I tried to push the argument for pages. It shouldn't be considered stonewalling if I only pushed it for a few posts and later stopped arguing.
So Deagon basically listed a single example of me making a bad argument, falsely stating I was stonewalling, then generalized this to many posts by Transcending, Xearsay, and me myself. I am sure you can see the problem with this.
Saying we weren't productive is false. I will list some of the things Transcending achieved from being on the wiki-
1: Had PC Bane downgraded
2: Added a few abilities to characters like Batman
3: Gave Superman Void Manipulation and got a CRT accepted to split him into keys. I never managed to finish applying the split though, I was banned before I could
4: Got Post-Flashpoint street levellers upgraded to 8-C from 9-B
5: Got a good amount of DC cosmic characters upgraded to 1-A from Low 1-C
6: Got a few abilities like High Godly Existence Erasure and Healing added to them
7: Removed Superboy Prime's Death Metal key
8: The thread where points 5, 6, and 7 occurred ended up removing Plot Manipulation from Mandrakk. This caused a chain reaction where people changed the standards of Plot Manipulation to get Mandrakk Plot Manip back
8: Had Trigon downgraded
9: Upgraded Batman, Lex Luthor, and Batman Who Laughs' intelligence
10: Indirectly caused Parallax's downgrade
Etc. I assisted him in doing many of these contributions.
Another important point is that the discussion for our ban basically considered both of us as the same people. While we do have some similar opinions, we have some dissimilar ones as well, and we live in entirely different continents. So violations done by one of us should only be applied to that person, and shouldn't be applied to the other. So if I stonewalled somewhere, Transcending shouldn't be punished.
It should also be noted that we were never topic banned or even warned for the supposed stonewalling. Ant did say we stonewalled but this was never taken to the RVR and officially proven. In fact, this matter was never taken to the RVR. As for a warning, we haven't actually received any for any reason (well, once when Transcendihim said Deagon committed the "Argument from Pigheadedness" fallacy, DDM asked me to not do so but he never said that was a formal warning). So the permaban was pretty much instantaneous, no warning or topic ban, jumping straight to not just a full on ban but a permanent one. As for our previous offense of Vote Manipulation, that was decisively not done after the 3 month ban as you can see in the one CRT ITranscending created after getting unbanned-
https://vsbattles.com/threads/trigon-downgrade-and-nabu-and-the-batman-who-laughs-upgrade.148717/
All people who agreed with him, have other verifiable identities proving we did not manipulate the voting. And further, him and some other guys like LuciferX and AndrewBennet diasgreed with each other on some other topics in the wiki itself. Some other guys like Vasco only agreed with him on specific parts of the CRT while agreeing with Deagon on others. So we clearly don't manipulate votes as of now.
Now let's move on to the stonewalling itself. As I have explained before, we may not know of the full evidence used against us but we do have evidence supporting us not stonewalling. To start with, in the Trigon thread I linked previously, after arguing with Deagon for a portion of a page, Transcending said this-
After that, he stopped trying to argue for that point with Deagon until Ant came, at which point he tried to talk with Ant. He showed behavior that's the exact opposite of stonewalling. He tried to reduce stonewalling and cluttering.
Later in the thread, he said this-
He again stopped arguing with Deagon and explicitly mentioned this was so stonewalling wouldn't occur in the thread. He then tried to continue the discussion with Firestorm. As before, he tried to prevent the thread from getting clogged.
Here's another example-
https://vsbattles.com/threads/dc-comics-the-legendary-dc-heralds-upgrade.147343/page-7#post-5457381
Transcending and Deagon had a short argument here and Ant soon (soon enough to not count as stonewalling, in our perspective) after said we were stonewalling. Here, you can see that we stopped the discussion and let Deagon have the last word in. So again, no stonewalling. If we wanted to stonewall, we would have kept on arguing with Deagon for pages rather than just a few posts.
I think I can provide more but for now I think this too should be enough-
https://vsbattles.com/threads/dc-comics-lucifer-abilities.148297/post-5521224
We had another short argument, and once people disagreed with us, we dropped the topic rather than continuing to argue with Deagon. If we wanted to stonewall, the people disagreeing with us wouldn't be of any relevance to us and we would have continued pushing our opinion.
I think that should show we don't stonewall. If we could see the full evidence for us stonewalling, assuming more was provided in the PM created by Ant, we shall address them as well.
Now I want to show we shouldn't have been perma'd with precedents. I will start with this post right here-
This post is important because it establishes that if you have a prior history of a 3 month ban, and you do something comparable to what got you this original ban or even worse (that is, something that would have originally given you at least a 3 month ban), you would get a ban of at least 6 months.
Now, is stonewalling worse than or even comparable to vote manipulation? In our opinion, no, and neither is Qawsed's, who says it's only deserving of a warning
Hell, even then Qawsed said "maybe a warning" which means the necessity of a warning itself was not 100%. So something that would normally get you a ban of 3 months coupled with a previous history of a 3 month ban equals 6 months, but something that normally, at best gives you a warning, combined with a previous history of a 3 month ban equals perma? The math doesn't check out.
This is significant too-
Deagon said there are categories of offenses, and that a prior offense from one category should not result in a harsher punishment for a future violation from a different category. Ant agreed with this.
With this in mind, our supposed stonewalling should not get an increased punishment due to vote manip, as both are from completely different categories. The stonewalling part, even if correct, should only be penalized as a first offense. Link-
https://vsbattles.com/threads/rule-violation-reports-new-forum.107529/post-6046902
Let's move onto some double standards now. I am sure you can think of some of your own but for the purposes of this appeal, I will provide two.
1:
https://vsbattles.com/threads/rule-violation-reports-new-forum.107529/post-5946415
Those are the offenses by cloudyagami. In total, he got two warnings, a one month ban, a two week ban, a three month ban, and finally a perma but only because he sock puppeted. Along with that, he got numerous other editing related warnings. Is what we did in any form or shape worse than what cloud did? We only got a 3 month ban along with something maybe deserving of a warning. His ban duration before getting perma'd for sock puppeting equals 4.5 months, along with many warnings. So his case was handled much
much more leniently.
2:
https://vsbattles.com/threads/rule-violation-reports-new-forum.107529/post-5950611
These are the offenses by WeeklyBattles. He got a one year ban, numerous warnings, and the new thing he was reported of was worthy of at least a few weeks ban
https://vsbattles.com/threads/rule-violation-reports-new-forum.107529/post-5950435 I will also note that one of the things he got a warning for was vote manipulation that went in a similar way to us, except he got a warning while we got a 3 month ban. Regardless, one year ban+many warnings+a few weeks ban=2 years, while for us, a 3 month ban+something that at best deserves a warning=perma.
The math doesn't check out. To clarify, we aren't saying Weekly should get any longer ban or anything, only that we should get a shorter one, if necessary.
(Cont.)
