Undoing some old bans regarding the Sera situation

[AKM sama]

As you all know, the situation regarding Sera EX was cleared up recently, and given that several members were banned in 2018 for "doxing" Sera, the HR group decided to review the matter and we have reached the following conclusion.

The following members were banned primarily for "doxing" Sera. And while there were other issues, like bad behavior and such, for some of these members, we have decided that the 3-year ban already makes up for it. These members are getting unbanned:

Fabtastic Glasses
Bluetrekking
Fllflourine
Frantzy12
UniteMyRice/Golden Void

We are not giving them any staff positions back since it has been a long time and we don't know whether they are still fit for the role. This doesn't mean they will never get any staff position even if they are deemed suitable.

We deeply apologize to the above users for the inconvenience caused due to the entire state of affairs.

---

However, to avoid any confusion I need to state that the following members had other major reasons besides "doxing" Sera, which they got banned for. Hence, we are not unbanning these members:

KamiYasha: banned for threatening to beat up an admin who allegedly lives not far from his house
Thebluedash: banned for encouraging sockpuppetry to harass a staff member and telling people how to purposefully mess with calcs
LordAizenSama: banned prior to the controversy for having horrible conduct onsite and had been using multiple sockpuppets since
Grudgeman1706: banned for encouraging sockpuppetry to harass a staff member
Arigarmy: banned for leaking private messages in 4chan along with LordXcano for mocking purposes targeted at a bureaucrat

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Thank you for all the hard work on the analysis.

 

[PrettyFearMachine]

Glad to see my boi Flo back uwu

 

[Starter_Pack]

Welcome back everyone, and for what it's worth, I want to apologize on the behalf of all of us here for the hardships caused by Sera that you have endured.

We look forward to working with you once more, if you so choose, and hopefully a situation like this will never come to pass again.

 

[Crabwhale]

Welcome back bitches.

 

[KingTempest]

I never met any of y’all but welcome Nd nice to meet ya

 

[The_real_cal_howard]

I'm glad above all else that at the very least this happened. More steps need to take place but this is a good start.

 

[I'm_Blue_daba_dee_daba_die]

Welcome

 

[Newendigo]

What goes around, turns around and comes around.

Really funny how the tables has been flipped with some pieces still un-flipped.

It makes you wonder sometimes if what you are currently doing is the right thing.

 

[Antvasima]

Welcome back everyone, and for what it's worth, I want to apologize on the behalf of all of us here for the hardships caused by Sera that you have endured.

We look forward to working with you once more, if you so choose, and hopefully a situation like this will never come to pass again.

I strongly second this.

 

[StrawHatArslan]

I’m new to this wiki compared to other members, but hopefully everyone who got banned unfairly, can come back to the wiki, and be treated positively

 

[joshpiece]

I never met any of y’all but welcome Nd nice to meet ya

I’m new to this wiki compared to other members, but hopefully everyone who got banned unfairly, can come back to the wiki, and be treated positively

^ Hopefully y’all forgive the people who made the mistakes

 

[ProfessorKukui4Life]

Or why would that be an option in the first place? As was already said, the members that are staying banned are banned for things that have absolutely nothing to do with Sera and are most definitely still worthy of the bans they have.

 

[ProfessorKukui4Life]

Probably because the schism between the discord group and the rest of the staff who sided with Sera during those times happened primarily because of Sera's so-called "stories" in her blog (most of them deleted btw) that was meant to divide the current staff roster at the time into two halves, maybe?

And, again, so what? You're missing the actual point here that these bans were not issued because of Sera, but because of other ban-worthy violations that they themselves committed and are punished for. Sera has nothing to do with those offenses.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Actually, plenty of former staff and banned users have been doing horrendous things not related to Sera and over statistics ratings of their preferred verses among other things. And motive or not encouraging the making of socks just to telling people to kill themselves warrants a permaban. It's even worse than what Sera did.

 

[AKM sama]

We have already considered all those cases. Whatever may be the reason, it doesn't excuse their actions and the effects. The reasons for their ban are not related to doxing Sera and completely unacceptable under any circumstances.

 

[Antvasima]

I agree with Kukui, AKM, and Medeus.

It is very unfortunate that several of the old Discord group members behaved in such a very bad manner at the time, as it would have been much easier to believe them regarding Sera otherwise.

It is also very unfortunate that I am almost certain that Fandom denied my request for an IP check on Sera quite a while earlier than the bans were applied, but what is done is done, so we simply have to try to do the best of the current situation.

 

[Crabwhale]

@AKM sama @Antvasima @Promestein

Maybe you should consider actually trying to patch things up with the ppl that got affected the hardest by that incident instead of trying to twist the knife further into their old wounds?

The people who were affected most by this situation were the people who trusted "her", not the people who saw through it and certainly not the assholes who would have gotten banned irrespective of "her" existence.

 

[Purgy]

I can imagine that part of the reason why some of them acted and behaved the way they did around the time of the bans was because you (meaning the leading staff members of that time) ignored their claims on Sera and promoted "her" and such after the fact, that would probably make some people a bit mad, and while I can't say that excuses the way they behaved entirely, it certainly lessens it in my opinion, especially since they've already been banned for over three years which is more than enough for almost any offense.

Regardless, three years is plenty of time for people to mature and change, does what they did warrant what is essentially a permanent ban? I thought permanent bans like that were solely for trolls or people whos sole purpose for being here is to destabilize the wiki, not for things like making sock puppets to get around a ban you know is completely unjustified or mocking a bureaucrat.

Not that it really matters, I'm sure most of them don't care about the site anymore, I definitely wouldn't after being unjustifiably banned for three years.

Spoiler

The above is just my opinion of course and I don't expect any of you to care or change your minds, but this is an open thread, so I thought I'd post it.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, the group as a whole was also engaging in organised harrassment of staff members. Several major problems were happening at the time and stressing us out, and it was hard to sort out what was really going on through the entire mess.

 

[Newendigo]

Not that it really matters, I'm sure most of them don't care about the site anymore, I definitely wouldn't after being unjustifiably banned for three years.

This is right to be honest.

We are pretty late in the game to send apologizes, it has been years and a lot of blame has been put on this people in the meantime of those years.

The wiki also changed a lot since then, many notable users left, while the newcomers have no idea who are them, and probably manage things way different.

 

[Coolboy6]

Never met you guys but welcome back bois

 

[Wokistan]

"I thought permanent bans like that were solely for trolls or people whos sole purpose for being here is to destabilize the wiki, not for things like making sock puppets to get around a ban you know is completely unjustified or mocking a bureaucrat."

Socking is technically a perm ban, but has been considered as you've outlined beforehand. However, these socks don't really fall under that.

TheBlueDash/Grudgeman sock was used to harass someone who had been going through some mental health problems.

LAS got banned for unrelated reasons and made something like four socks that were found when we started being able to see emails, but the important bit here is that he was already banned by the time the discord stuff could have gone down so he wasn't really up for unbanning anyways.

 

[Darksmash]

The people who were affected most by this situation were the people who trusted "her", not the people who saw through it and certainly not the assholes who would have gotten irrespective of "her" existence.

I don't think there should be a comparison there. Being manipulated is bad sure but so is being unjustly banned and feeling helpless to do anything.

 

[KingTempest]

Let's not converse about who was more hurt. This is just a thread to notice who has been unbanned.

 

[Psychomaster35]

What was that incident?

 

[Antvasima]

I remember that I wrote a public announcement blog post about it at the time. A massive amount of drama was happening at roughly the same time, and I was being almost overwhelmed and quite confused by it.

 

[TOAAPRESENCE1]

Not that it really matters, I'm sure most of them don't care about the site anymore, I definitely wouldn't after being unjustifiably banned for three years.

No kidding