The Stocks - Why You Got Banned

ozymandiaspoem has been banned:

ozymandiaspoem

Reason for being banned: Ozy was rude (and sometimes flame-y) on several occasions (such as here), and he was often spammy on several others (such as here). He didn't show any remorse and he refused to admit that his actions were against the rules.

Kirbster

Reason for being banned: Kirbster has been misbehaving on the chat for a while now, and she recently decided to bring it on the boards. She got a permanent ban from the chat a while back for a lot of drama she caused (like when she defended a person who was harassing a rape victim), but that ban was undone because of the move to a new chat server and it hadn't been reapplied. Recently she started a huge batch of drama where she trolled everyone on the chat (you can see a log of this here). After she was re-banned on the chat, she started harassing Boalt and ArtisticDuckie (via VMs and on usernotes), intentionally trying to upset them on a few occasions. She was given probation for this, but she then reported one of Boalt's VM replies, and accusing him of flaming her. Since even a probation wouldn't stop her from continuing this (and since she's acted up sometimes in the past), we decided to ban her permanently.

Updating with a month ban we gave the other day and didn't add to the list:

Benno

Promotion and discussion of pornographic content.

Zappo09 (Ends May 29 2012)

Reason for being banned: Zappo has continually posted incredibly spammy posts, and then he posted a picture with some very inappropriate content without giving people a warning about it. We've been very lenient with him but he's finally earned a ban.

LB Edit: Just to make a note here... He kept getting infractions and got 10 points with his latest, and thus a month long ban.

New addition:
Gero9377

In a nutshell, banned for being a troll and a jerk.

Updated with Ness, just for those of you who've seen the WRPG vs JRPG thread.

Joseph Yoshi has been banned, for sharing several attributes with a previous banned user, Kirbster. In other words, an alternate account of a banned user.

Update

GigaNerd17

Reason: Abuse of someone else's personal problems for his own gain in the election. Drawing a picture of someone hanging themselves and quoting an admission of a suicide attempt to make yourself look good in a fictional election isn't cool. Wildly disrespectful and absolutely the most repugnant thing that we've had happen here since last summer's unpleasantness, without hyperbole. You don't abuse other people's personal issues for your own gain, we have zero tolerance for that.

Because quite a few people are getting misconceptions about this and choosing to draw their own conclusions...

With Giga, this isn't a first time offense. He's received a fair few infractions and caused a handful of problems in the past. We didn't just do this arbitrarily, past history was taken into account here. The sheer volume of times that he has guilted people by getting melodramatic when things weren't going exactly his way (and this was a case of that; his entire reaction made zero sense and he essentially got offended by someone asking him to actually explain his ideas rather than just spewing a lot of nonsense) is a pretty bad trend that's happened several times now. People keep getting really worried about the guy, and thinking they did something wrong, and blaming themselves for the multiple "I'M LEAVING THE SITE FOREVERRRRRRRRRRRRR" incidents he's pulled. Frankly he's been creating a pretty toxic environment with that alone; you can't just keep doing that to people, making them feel bad because you're not getting your way or feeling bad. I understand that he may have been feeling down, and while I can sympathize with that I cannot condone hurting others under any circumstances. A large number of people have worried for him and, apparently, shed tears for him thinking they would lose their friend forever without knowing why. Point is, he's hurt quite a few people. He's been quite a nuisance in that regard and that's been on our minds for quite a while now.

I personally believe that he had good intentions. I can't speak for the other mods, they might not think that for all I know, but that is my stance. That said, what he did was absolutely inexcusable. You don't just make light of someone else's personal problems for your own gain like that. Some have tried arguing that he wasn't doing it for his own gain, but the fact of the matter is that he wouldn't have done that at all if he wasn't trying to strengthen his case. He didn't have permission to abuse personal issues to say "this is why I would be a good president!". I believe that he wanted to do something good, but he went about doing that in the filthiest way possible; that drawing of a stick figure hanging himself was terrible on so many levels. To then go and quote an entire story of such an issue (WITHOUT PERMISSION) to further bolster his own candidacy is even worse. It's clear that Giga didn't even read anything about the election, where we said stuff like "debate Sonic's personal preference of shoes"; that doesn't sound like a real election, does it? Our policies on moderators have also been public for quite some time; we don't elect or nominate people, the staff itself selects people. It was a pretty huge assumption to think that we were doing a serious election with serious implications when that wasn't said anywhere and what WAS said was quite contradictory to that viewpoint.

Fact of the matter is, the stuff he did in regards to a member who opened up to the community that he tried to commit suicide were inexcusable. No, we didn't discuss matters with him; however, the turn of events was that I infracted him and then a half hour later he was banned by SNF. Think about that a moment... the PM was there a half hour before he was banned. He never once made an attempt to defend himself or explain himself; but I guess that's on us, huh? I guess we just "rushed into banning Giga" while "acting purely on emotion" and "never giving him a chance to provide his case". Sorry, I can be a bit sarcastic at times... but that's to highlight the sheer inanity of some of the claims lobbied at us. I was watching his page like a hawk, he read my PM and then shortly afterwards chose to simply leave the site while seemingly not attempting to write a response to me at all. He had a half hour to respond to a fairly brief infraction message; that apparently wasn't even an option.

We didn't rush into banning Giganerd. We discussed the situation constantly during that time period. I think Giga had good intentions, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What he did was wrong on so many moral levels. And even if he did respond, what more could he have told us that we didn't already know? "I won't do that again"? That's what everyone tells us, and like most others he kept repeating the same mistakes over and over. This year alone he's opted to "leave forever" what, 5 times now? And each time he hurts various members of the community and he's back in around a week. We received no indication that he ever learned from his prior mistakes, and judging by how horrendous what he did was this time... even if he did learn his lesson there, that was just too despicable for us to sit on.

This is the worst thing that has happened to this community since the revelation that Hypes was a pedophile. People were calling for Giga's head, we received a ton of complaints by many many people who were disgusted by the things that he did. Quite honestly, he probably wouldn't have ever been welcomed back into the community if he even DID come back; people were that reviled by this situation, and the possibility that one of our own may not even be alive right now further exacerbates that. Let me be clear that we mods do not get swept up by a mob or act as their puppets - the three of us do what we feel is right on our own terms and only our terms. This situation alone is something we believe would be a bannable offense for any member - I'm sorry but you don't make light of someone's suicidal tendencies to make yourself look good - but even in the case that it wasn't, him remaining unbanned would have led to even more problems than you can imagine. Part of our job is damage control; I personally have taken it upon myself to be the bearer of bad news for quite a few things (including Hypes last year). I know I have quite the polarizing reputation and no matter what I do that doesn't seem to be alterable, I just grin and bear it nowadays. This wasn't going to be a popular decision, but realize that this entire situation is one massive emotional minefield. There was no easy way out for this situation; this was the simplest and most effective route we had at our disposal. No matter what we did, there would be a reaction... we considered other options but the possible outcomes to those seemed much worse for quite a few reasons. I'd rather take some heat on myself than let issues fester and have the entire community fracture; I can take it, and I'm not so sure that many in our community can.

Ultimately, due to the overwhelming severity of this particular situation, we could not allow Giganerd to remain on this website any longer. I wholeheartedly apologize to those of you who are saddened that a friend of yours is no longer allowed at this community; I myself have been in a similar position in the past. But instead of cursing us for banning Giganerd, I urge you to get in contact with him in some other fashion (email or whatever other outlets he uses). Thus is the nature of the internet; you can always remain in contact with him. Don't take out your frustration that he's separated from you on us, we're only doing our jobs. Before you decry us as unfair tyrants (and I know there are a handful who relish painting me as a self-absorbed tyrant), remember how much we try to actually do for the community at large. If I'm apparently so self-absorbed and egomaniacal, why is it that I've spent so much time over the years providing stuff like the Trail, Winterday, Polloween, LPTW, and all my totally fictitious conspiracy topics designed to let people laugh a bit and goof off with a slightly lessened imposition of the rules? Why are we even holding this forum election in the first place? I don't do it to feel good about myself and I know SNF and Eltro don't either; hell, I didn't even really enjoy the Trail last year, if I were doing this for self-gratification then I would have just cancelled that entire event. Would you still curse SNF and myself under your breath if you knew how many hours we devoted to contacting British law enforcement when all hell broke loose with Hypes last year? We're not on some crazy ego trip; there's a reason we've been mods for so long, and it's not because we get off on holding a position of power on a small website. We care about this place and the people in it, that's our job and we're passionate about it. If you want to get mad with us for doing our jobs (and I know many many other forum moderators who would have done the same exact thing as we've done), then so be it; I hope you have fun in the real world where you don't always have leaders who devote their entire job to going at bat for you.

Just updating to say that JK Riki has been permanently banned. Just based on the sheer volume of complaints we've received about him (literally hundreds), I think this will come as good news to quite a few of you.

Updating with Quote/Quest.