May 2016 Ban

Summary

• On May 15, 2016, three prominent community members, Kurt, noby and hPerks, were banned by IsraeliRD.

• Shortly afterward, after discussion among staff, an announcement was posted on the forums, explaining why the ban happened and the plans going forward.

• hPerks was unbanned directly before this announcement went up. noby's ban lasted 3 days, and Kurt's ban lasted a little over a week.

Details

• For a while, the webchat had a secret Adult Chat only accessible to people over 18. The chat was intended as a place to talk about mature topics, but in the eyes of some became an unhealthy way to talk about members behind their backs. Staff decided to get rid of the chat, a decision which many people disagreed with, notably the three members in question.

• Around this time, hPerks started making jokes about a possible run for staff along with Kurt, and posted this thread on the forums. Unbeknownst to hPerks, the staff had been seeing Kurt as a legitimate threat, due to his occasional derisive treatment of staff (especially during the Adult Chat debate), and the thread thus had some bad associations. It was taken down by Matan shortly before the ban, with a warning to keep the Kurt/hPerks jokes away from the forums. hPerks obliged, and began creating the Kurt/hPerks for Staff 2016 document, which he shared privately within the Skype group.

• Later that day, Matan banned Kurt and hPerks, along with noby, who had also been causing trouble with excessive spam and filter evasion.

• Many members were taken aback by this seemingly sudden course of action, and Matan took some time to explain himself in webchat before posting the official announcement. He said that the members in question were not as nice as they seemed, and that he had been compiling chatlogs of them mocking everyone behind their backs, and would make them known to the public. He ended up not following through on this.

• While the three were banned, Daroachie recommended the creation of a Discord server to chat in instead. noby created the unofficial "webchat without mods" server as a place with no mods and very few rules, and it eventually became more popular than webchat and lasted for over a year, before the official server replaced it.

• After being unbanned, hPerks responded to the announcement thread, and also posted a longer written response from Kurt on his behalf. Check the thread for that exchange. He also got permission from staff to continue the Kurt/hPerks jokes, and the document soon became what it is today.

Further Reading

• "Admin Abuse" (scroll down on the document)