Standards for off-site behavior (Staff only)

[Greenshifter]

Because of the recent discussions about off-site behavior on the rule violations report thread regarding certain Sonic and Bleach fans and if said behavior is punishable, I decided to make my own thread about it. The goal of this thread is to establish standards for what is and is not punishable behavior off-site.

My opinion is that said behavior should only be punishable when it directly affects the wiki such as trolling, doxxing, heavy insults on-site (which originated off-site and escalated) and other malicious practices and even then one should preferably look at what happened on the site itself and use off-site sources as a source of information on who did what but for instance not ban people for them saying they were going to do something malicious on-site unless one is very sure they were actually going to do it. Bringing drama to the wiki should also be prevented but one should look at how severe the drama that is being brought to the site is and the extent of the drama on-site (how much of the discussion was actually visible on-site).

 

[Agnaa]

I'd also like to add my opinion, that off-site behaviour should be punished if it directly affects other members or the wiki. Such as directly harassing other members, doxxing other members (even if those details are released in private), or conspiring to disrupt the wiki.

 

[Elizhaa]

I am not highly familiar with the offline drama topic but currently I think the points in the OP and Agnaa's points are fine.

 

[GojiBoyForever]

I highly agree with Agnaa.

 

[Ogbunabali]

I also agree that off site behavior should only be punished if it directly affects wiki members. I don't think someone just saying "x person is r-word" in dms or something should get a person banned.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

that is a different thing than Agnaa said before

If it affects the wiki, the wiki should be within its rights to take action.

 

[AKM sama]

I have a stricter mindset regarding this. If we factually know the people are nothing but a problem for the wiki and its members, the wiki should have every right to take preemptive measures and get rid of them before they have the chance to harm anyone. The source of the evidences don't matter as much as the evidences that show their intentions.

 

[Starter_Pack]

Considering the whole Discord controversy a while ago, I totally agree with this.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

I have a stricter mindset regarding this. If we factually know the people are nothing but a problem for the wiki and its members, the wiki should have every right to take preemptive measures and get rid of them before they have the chance to harm anyone. The source of the evidences don't matter as much as the evidences that show their intentions.

I can see the sense in this. I think it could also become a slippery slope but yeah.

 

[AKM sama]

I can see the sense in this. I think it could also become a slippery slope but yeah.

I mean that's what we already do, right? If we know a new user is a troll account by their username, we ban them before they post something bannable. This wouldn't be much different.

 

[Antvasima]

I agree that issues that directly affect the wiki and its members should be punished if deemed serious enough.

 

[Greenshifter]

I accounted for that in my OP by saying banning can be warranted if one is very sure someone is going to do something malicious and Agnaa also mentioned this when talking about people conspiring to disrupt the wiki.

The thing is that very sure needs to be almost 100% which is almost never the case and if it is the case then there would be no controversy in the first place.

 

[Ogbunabali]

I mean that's what we already do, right? If we know a new user is a troll account by their username, we ban them before they post something bannable. This wouldn't be much different.

I mean, not really. Unless they have a very obvious username or a profile picture yeah (like some of the recent waves of trolls), but if it's just a questionable username they're contacted on their wall in order to change it, and if it turns out they're a troll they get banned, if they were just unaware they change it and move on.

In any case, I'm not really ok with that type or orwellian thoughtcrime route, personally.

 

[KLOL506]

I'm in league with Agnaa as well.

 

[Mr. Bambu]

My thing is it can be a slippery slope in that taking pre-emptive measures means we can theoretically dish out harsher punishments for lighter crimes if it seems likely they'll just get worse. I agree that the wiki would be within its rights to do that, I just dunno how deep that rabbit hole goes.

 

[AKM sama]

I mean, not really. Unless they have a very obvious username or a profile picture yeah (like some of the recent waves of trolls)

That was an example and I was obviously talking about such usernames like Ogbunabaliisa****

 

[Celestial_Pegasus]

I agree if the behavior affects the wiki, it's punishable.

 

[Antvasima]

@Ogbunabali

We only ban people by their usernames in extremely clear-cut trolling cases, such as what we have seen the last few days.

 

[Crabwhale]

I also agree with Agnelf.

 

[Assaltwaffle]

If the behavior directly pertains to the Wiki, we should be able to move against that individual. Even if it doesn't and the person just happens to be deplorable, as revealed on another site, I still think that we should reserve the right to freedom of association.

 

[Ogbunabali]

@Ogbunabali

We only ban people by their usernames in extremely clear-cut trolling cases, such as what we have seen the last few days.

I know, I said that in my post.

 

[The_Calaca]

I'll give two cents and unsubscribe afterwards.

Some years ago I was part of a group conformed by ex staff members of a forum that quitted or were fired from their positions. Most of us because the heads of the staff were incompetent and relied too much on other staff members, pressuring us the mods to get most of the work done.

We had a Skype Group where we talked about anything. We were a bunch of friends who shared a common place. Naturally, we talked about the site and the administration without meaning any harm as we were off site talking about it without "polluting" regular members with our experiences.

The thing is, the 90% of the group were banned from the forum over a rumour that we were attempting to hack the forum in that group. Something completely false, of course. Only two or three of us avoided the ban (including myself) while the rest of them were forced to leave a place where everyone have a lot of things, including close friends that they lost contact with because the staff not only banned them but put them on a witch hunt, making them look like terrible people who were constantly commiting abuses of power.

All of this happened without having a single evidence. Just someone inside spying our conversations and taking everything we said out of context.

The Point is, off-site behavior should be evaluated even more than on-site behavior. We need to prove our accusations and not blindly point fingers at someone who might just be doing something bad or saying shit about us, which is not a dangerous attittude imo.

 

[Agnaa]

that is a different thing than Agnaa said before

Wait I have? I basically copy/pasted it from my RVT post, and our earlier conversation in DMs was about demoting staff for beliefs expressed off-site, which I still disagree with.

sorry if this was meant to be sarcastic

I have a stricter mindset regarding this. If we factually know the people are nothing but a problem for the wiki and its members, the wiki should have every right to take preemptive measures and get rid of them before they have the chance to harm anyone. The source of the evidences don't matter as much as the evidences that show their intentions.

I don't think showing people talking shit about other members off-site means that we know they're "nothing but a problem for the wiki and its members". These people usually contribute extensively to CRTs and versus threads with little to no toxicity. I kind of believe the opposite of you, that that sort of evidence shows that they're good for the wiki even if they internally have shitty beliefs.

 

[Sera_EX]

Off-site behavior is completely irrelevant except in cases of:

• Actions that lead to the destabilization of the site (such as videos, forum posts, Discord chats, etc. that create drama), whether or not it was systematic.
• Threatening someone off-site, be it a threat of violence, hacking, doxxing, sexual harassment, etc.)
• Engaging in online criminal activity (and no, piracy doesn't count).

 

[Agnaa]

@Sera Eugh, I almost agreed, but I don't like the vagueness of "create drama". I feel like I've seen a lot of innocuous actions done by myself and others that people never got reported for, but that could still be framed as "creating drama".

 

[Sera_EX]

I meant if it destabilizes the wiki, not just on its own.

 

[Ultima_Reality]

I largely agree with Agnaa and Sera as well.

 

[Agnaa]

Ahhhh I still don't quite know exactly what you mean. Could you give some examples, historical or theoretical? Some behaviour that would barely be considered destabilization, and some that would barely not be?

 

[Sera_EX]

The individual act itself doesn't matter so much that it's more about the consequences of that act. The Discord drama (2017) led to the near breaking down of the site, the staff's trust in each other almost crumbled apart and the disturbing nature of the entire fiasco left a permanent scar that anyone who's been here long enough will remember as a very low point in the community's history.

Meanwhile the Discord drama (2019) was a lot less damaging. The only that happened was a couple RVTs got flooded with drama that was no one else's business but those who disagreed with each other in the first place. It didn't affect the site in any significantly negative way unlike it's 2017 predecessor.

Both of these incidents are quite similar, involving a group of VSBW members (be they staff, non-staff, or both it doesn't really matter) that engaged in some highly toxic behavior offsite (in this case Discord) with said toxicity being screenshotted and leaked, mostly to those who were the unknowing targets of said toxicity. However, the consequences of these incidents are much different as explained above. This was mostly due to the severity of the former outclassing that of the latter, especially since various staff members were involved with the former.

Despite both being relatively the same, the 2017 incident affected the site in a negative way while the 2019 iteration didn't exceed the average drama we unfortunately deal with every now and then.

It's like discovering a close friend you thought you trusted took very embarrassing and personal photos of you or your friends and shared them publicly out of sheer spite, compared to being told that someone you went to school with has been talking mad trash about you and a few of your buddies. One is going to reap more severe consequences than the other.

 

[Agnaa]

Alright that's fair. I'd agree with your criteria then, yeah.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

I'm in AKM Sama 100%. I obviously agree we shouldn't be banning people for a few petty school yard insults. However, doing illegal stuff such as doxxing, sexually harassing, threatening people or their family, and especially encouraging people to commit suicide is definitely grounds for permanent blocks. And plotting to destabilize the wiki is definitely grounds for ban worthy.

However, it appears there are loose ideologies of what "Plotting to destabilize the wiki" actually means. So I think it might be a good idea to list what examples of what plotting to destabilize the wiki are. Sure wanking or downplaying a wide variety of verses and dog-piling to get them accepted might be considered minor examples. Though, attacking anybody who opposes the upgrade or downgrade in large groups could also be interpreted at that. Vandalism is definitely a strong examples of that. Other examples would be giving out false reports to get other users banned or staff members demoted. I would also say that deliberately trying to make the staff here's job as miserable as possible to the point where nobody even wants to get any work done would also qualify.

Also, I think people even trying to normalize serious crimes should also be held accountable.

 

[ShakeResounding]

Let"s not dance around this, then, because we all know what this sprouted from.

ShadowWarrior1999 should be unbanned. I'm not gonna bother bringing up anybody else, but look at what you all have said about what actions should and shouldn't be bannable. He fits into practically nothing of what you guys have listed. I think his ban has been dragged on long enough for no reason, and I made it known in the RvR thread. I'm not talking about anybody else, just Shadow.

 

[Antvasima]

I agree with Sera.

@ShakeResounding

This is not the right thread to take this up. It is supposed to be a staff discussion about our general standards.

 

[Greenshifter]

I also agree with Sera, it is a good summary of my OP and is easy to write down somewhere.

 

[DarkGrath]

Lost my post. Damn mobile.

Well, if I'm being honest, ShadowWarrior is fair to mention, at least. He's one of the most notable and well-known examples of a user being blocked for off-site behaviour, so he's bound to come up in this discussion eventually. We shouldn't derail about him though; this is still regarding our general attitudes towards these situations and not any singular users.

As for my opinion on things; it's time to pop out Ye Olde Philosophy Logic book (to put it in eloquent terms). In a situation like this, we need to find out and evaluate exactly why we block users for off-site behaviour in the first place. The main reasoning, as far as I'm aware, is that a user should be blocked for off-site behaviour if it would explicitly cause the wiki to be less safe with their presence (such as if the user had committed notable online crimes) or if their off-site behaviour demonstrates that they have no intention of being a productive member of the community (such as if they explicitly harass other users off-site).

Neither of these seem unreasonable to me; so they should be fine to enforce. If there are other notable and reasonable ways in which off-site behaviour would be deemed blockable, then they should probably be mentioned and enforced as well. We shouldn't stretch any further beyond these boundaries though.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, actively conspiring to deliberately create problems in the wiki together with others should qualify.

 

[DarkGrath]

Yeah, that would probably fall under "clearly demonstrating no intention to be a productive member of the community". Though to quite an immense extent.

 

[AKM sama]

I don't think showing people talking shit about other members off-site means that we know they're "nothing but a problem for the wiki and its members". These people usually contribute extensively to CRTs and versus threads with little to no toxicity.

Depends on the context surrounding the conversation. People talk shit in the wiki, or in the unofficial discord server too. Nobody's gonna get banned for simply talking shit off-site, that was never my point. But the "talking shit" part should not be seen as completely unrelated to the context surrounding that conversation.

Person 1: Let's stir up some drama in the current revision thread so the UserX will lose his cool and do something stupid.

Person 2: UserX is really a ****. The whole site is filled with ****.

Person 1: If we do that, the thread will be closed and the revisions won't go through. UserX might also get banned.

Person 2: AdminY clearly has a love boner for UserX. They're both ****.

If we only had access to Person 2's comments who only talked shit about some users or the wiki, it wouldn't necessarily lead to a ban if that's all we had as evidence. But the context surrounding that conversation makes Person 2's involvement in the whole thing much more obvious even if they never said anything in direct words.

Well, actively conspiring to deliberately create problems in the wiki together with others should qualify.

Agreed.

 

[Sera_EX]

I definitely agree with AKM sama.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

To be fair, the stuff people say offsite regardless of whether he never said it publicly or I wasn't physically on the server to here a single one of those slur words, I think offsite or private behaivor is supposed to be viewed as an indication of their true intentions. If they act rather polite, or reasonable onsite, but constantly say horrible, disgusting things offsite. I believe the offsite behaivor should be viewed as the highlight of someone's "True character". Because that's basically the place were people have no reason to hide anything. For example, I was always good friends with Fllflourine as he's always been so friendly in chat, but considering what he did (He was the one who posted images of Sera's family and Cal); he deserves the permanent block.

So with all that being said. I know ShadowWarrior was brought up, and I know he may not have said any slur words on Fandom or to my face, but the same thing could be said about KamiYasha and he still got permanently blocked. But anyway, it's not about either one of them. I don't care if two African Americans who are friends called each other the N word offsite, or if a gay couple called each other the F word in the same context. But I mean, calling a "Strait, White, Christian Male who's been home-schooled most of their life and who's ancestral background has always felt very strongly about their religious viewpoints and words in scripture" all of those things is a really bad predestine. Not saying that ethnicity or beliefs is relevant, but the point is. You need to consider preference of the person you never met IRL before calling them a bunch of things they aren't. Two or more people role-playing with friends or each other isn't so bad, but keep everyone who doesn't want or need to be involved in said RP out of it.

I mean, nothing's wrong with having "Autism", but constantly calling people you disagree with that solely because they said things you didn't agree with isn't a sane human being practice; it doesn't even matter whether or not people actually have that. Using names of mental illnesses as a slur has no right to exist. And the worst part is, it's really sad that debating the statistics of fictional characters which was supposed to be nothing but fun in games has apparently turned into something to start political and/or spiritual warfares over. I don't care or even mind how much people disagree with our statistics ratings, it's using your disagreements as an excuse to say horrendous things that only a genocidal maniac would ever say out loud. Or even defending people who've encouraged people to commit suicide, isn't something we should consider a sane action.

I know these things are very common practices, because "People are human." But, a lot of horrendous things are commonplace, including innocent people getting wronged.