[gouty] newsta - "Reasonable suspicion of metacomms"

[NewSta3]

#31306

Byond account and character name: NewSta; not sure, I change it too often
Banning admin: gouty
Ban type (What are you banned from?): server
Ban reason and length: "Reasonable suspicion of metacomms"; perma
Time ban was placed (including time zone): 2017-08-14 20:48:53
Server you were playing when banned (Sybil or Bagil): Sybil
Your side of the story: So, someone posted a discord link.
Bored me joined it, and checked out the voice section. I had the mic off.
The only thing I heard was a guy playing PUBG and commenting it. No ingame related communication.
Then I listened to music.
And then, I saw a ban.
Why you think you should be unbanned: I did not participate in metacommunications, and quite frankly, did not and do not intend to. Gouty himself did not check out the voice channel not even for a second as far as I'm concerned, and thus I have no reason to believe this ban is reasonably substantiated.

[feem]

Was this your first time in that channel? Where was it posted?

[NewSta3]

Was this your first time in that channel? Where was it posted?

Yes. Literally the first hour in it.

OOC.

[feem]

I suspect you may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Looking into this and it's not my ban, but I feel like it should probably be lifted.

[Gouty]

I'm not comfortable with raising it.

You were in game, and in the voice chat in the discord server "M3tasquad" with other people that were in game, or were in game recently. We don't moderate that server, admins have no presence there, we cannot monitor voice comms for metagaming, we were not even aware of it's existence before today and now I have (unsurprisingly) been kicked.

The ban required the input of a headmin and I think the appeals definitely do too.

[Cobby]

Was there anything that made it look like they were actually metacomming ingame?

[NewSta3]

I'm not comfortable with raising it.

You were in game, and in the voice chat in the discord channel "M3tasquad" with other people that were in game, or were in game recently. We don't moderate that channel, admins have no presence there, we cannot monitor voice comms for metagaming, we were not even aware of it's existence before today and now I have (unsurprisingly) been kicked.

The ban required the backing of a headmin and I think the appeals definitely need their input too.

Well yes, from your point of view it can definitely seem extremely suspicious, but as I said earlier, I joined it after it was put into OOC, and during that time, I neither heard nor engaged in any meta communications.

Considering the nature of the ban and the situation, I, personally, see no reason to extend this ban any further.

Was there anything that made it look like they were actually metacomming ingame?

Aside from the (hopefully) sarcastic name of the channel, not that I am aware of.

[Digdugxx]

I have (unsurprisingly) been kicked.

I kicked you because you refused to talk to us and told us to use the forums instead so uh.. whats the point in keeping you around, so far its only lead to grief.
Secondly NewSta joined the same way you did and has nothing to do with this so leave him out of it

[Nilons]

Lizard metacomming server that has a channel labelled for metacomming run by lizard players who ban admins because they expect them to make an appeal and wont discuss bans in unlogged formats. How is this appeal even being considered

[oranges]

I have (unsurprisingly) been kicked.

I kicked you because you refused to talk to us and told us to use the forums instead so uh.. whats the point in keeping you around, so far its only lead to grief.
Secondly NewSta joined the same way you did and has nothing to do with this so leave him out of it

You realise this makes it look way worse right?

[feem]

Lizard metacomming server that has a channel labelled for metacomming run by lizard players who ban admins because they expect them to make an appeal and wont discuss bans in unlogged formats. How is this appeal even being considered

While I generally agree with you here, I think this particular individual may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[PKPenguin321]

Focusing on just the person appealing: As far as I can tell, unlike our previous batch of discord metacomm bans, there was nothing indicating any form of a planned raid or any kind of round info shared or any actual metacomm action being taken ingame. With this person in particular, assuming their story is true, I think this ban is fine to lift and hopefully they won't go back to discords like that in the future.

[Digdugxx]

I'm not trying to be all secretive or anything, I've had people like unloved rock, pillz (both of which dont like me by the way) and tonnes of other randoms who i don't personally know in this discord before. If i was trying to hide something, why would i allow random people to join. However, if you're going to join and immediately perma ban everyone in the discord then why the fuck should i keep you around?

[Gouty]

I kicked you because you refused to talk to us and told us to use the forums instead

I did not want to talk in any official capacity through an unofficial channel, it's not visible to others that would need to see, nor is it logged, retained or administrated in the same way.

[PKPenguin321]

Please try to discuss just newsta's position in this situation while in this thread.

[Gouty]

This does look like a case of wrong place wrong time.

The decision to ban people came after some lengthy discussion and under advice. In hindsight I should have stayed and looked for confirmation of metacomms, however this would be an impossible task and not one we should have to undertake, if I had joined voice chat of course metacomms would stop.

General consensus of the headmins now is that the bans should be lifted due to no positive proof. So I will unban all involved.

If there is one thing you should take away from this though is stick to the official channels, every time you messaged me through IRC or Discord I was aware of the updates to the thread, your messages did not influence or speed up any decision they just served to irritate.