Ban Appeal

[stkal]

[Ban Appeal] - StKAL

When: 10/4/2011
Who: Kattoo
Reason Given: None (initially)

Kattoo logged on and saw me tearing down what turned out to be his build. I didn't know this at the time (and had been asking who the owner was for about 24 hours), but in the end it doesn't really matter. I was also on IRC at the time and so switched over to see what he had to say, and basically he banned me because I should know the rules by now.

I do know the rules - first time griefing is warned at least 3 times before a ban, and a kick usually falls in there somewhere as well. There was no warning, there was no asking my reason, there was simply the fall of a banhammer.

You'll notice that I'm not getting in to details; that's because they don't matter at the moment. I was banned for something that is supposed to warrant a warning. Whether I was griefing or why isn't (or at least shouldn't be) part of the discussion.




One final request: Kattoo said several times on IRC that " could appeal the ban, but that [he] would deny it." That being the case, I would ask that someone other than Kattoo make the ruling here, since it's fairly obvious that he's not interested in anything I might post about the incident.

[Sanjar Khan]

I do know the rules - first time griefing is warned at least 3 times before a ban, and a kick usually falls in there somewhere as well. There was no warning, there was no asking my reason, there was simply the fall of a banhammer.

That would have been the case if you were a guest, and Kattoo a veteran. However you were a builder and Kattoo is a trustee. As he said, builders are expected to know the rules, that is why we treat builder grief very serious.
Now try to come up with a reason why you chose to grief a building, instead of moving it for example.

[stkal]

I can't move things. SMP builders are guests with a colored name.

[Sanjar Khan]

You still haven't explained why you griefed.

[stkal]

That's very true. I haven't explained it because no one thought to ask before I was banned, which is the problem I'm addressing here.

Furthermore, as a guest, builder, veteran, or even op on SMP, the only way to move a build is to tear it down brick by brick and rebuild it somewhere else. Without asking what's going on, that would look like grief, wouldn't it? But with //copy and //paste the same effect is achieved, it's just instantly done.

Whether that's what I was doing or not isn't something that was asked until after my ban was administered.

As I mentioned above, why I griefed isn't the issue; the fact that I was banned without appropriate measures beforehand is the issue. As one of the other players mentioned while I was watching on IRC, had this been done to anyone's build but Kattoo's the result would have been a different one. That's a problem.

[Sanjar Khan]

bladiebladiebladiebla, this is still a ban appeal. If you want to be unbanned, you are going to tell me why you think you were allowed to grief.

As I mentioned above, why I griefed isn't the issue

As I mentioned above, you don't decide that. You griefed, that's a problem.

[stkal]

You want the long story, so be it, but with a response like "bladiebladiebladiebla" it's pretty obvious that I'm wasting my time.

So from the top: I was on freebuild for a few days working my ass off to build the best stuff that I possibly could; not because I was interested in ranking up, but because I thought a chatbox would be a nice addition to my single player work. When I got builder I began working with bigger and bigger builds, using commands to help speed things up. Again, I wasn't particularly interested in a rank, but eventually some folks came to see my work and were impressed, recommending I apply for Mason as soon as I hit veteran. I never griefed anyone's work, was never accused of tunneling, or was even suspected of coming near to breaking any of the rules.

I realized that the only requirement left for me to fulfill to become a vet was to let time pass, and figured it would be a good time to get familiar with beta.

The first thing I did was to re-build one of my structures from fb and build a railway to it from spawn, hoping that I could shuffle people who wanted to build away from where most of the griefing happens. This proved unsuccessful except that I would be bothered by visitors wanting to help me build. This began to become annoying, so I moved another 2,000 blocks away from spawn. After a few days passed, I eventually got more neighbors, but they kept to their own mountains and were much less in the way than before. We co-existed rather peacefully.

An important note here: both of my new neighbors were in creative mode and had built with material like diamond blocks, diamond ore blocks, iron blocks, etc. Despite the fact that I was in survival mode I continued dying in the mines for my ore rather than grief builds which would be repaired within minutes.

At some point some happy griefer came through and did destroy all the blocks of value though, and all 3 of us moved even farther away. The two neighbors moved somewhere around 5,000 blocks away, I moved about 1,000 and simply covered my tracks. None of this was secret and at every point along this story there was extensive chat going on about what had happened and why we kept moving. Every time someone asked where I had moved, or asked whether they could help me build, I told them I didn't want neighbors, but that if they wished they could come help me gather sand. As planned, this discouraged people from staying near me for more than an hour or two, and everyone who happened upon me soon moved on to lands of their own.

Another note: The build I was working on required immense amounts of sand for sandstone, and I had left the cacti intact as a sort of measuring stick for how far down I had taken the desert floor. I had removed as many as 6 levels from roughly 66% of this desert over the course of a week or so. The entire server, especially those who could teleport, were well aware of this build and of the amount of sand required for it. It was no secret that I was busting my ass to gather the materials I'd need for this build.

Now for the meat of the story - on Sunday or Monday night I noticed an immense building front made of stone-type blocks with a hammer and sickle flag on top. I sort of ignored it, asked whose it was (nobody knew), and went to bed. The build annoyed me, but I figured I'd find out who the builder was soon enough and ask an admin to move/remove it. The build itself didn't bother me, but it was sitting right on top of the last layer of thousands of blocks of sand, with several layers of thousands of blocks of sandstone below. In mining terms, I was 1 block away from the diamond veins after dozens of hours of work, and was finally getting ready for the payoff.

I logged in the next day and continued asking whose build this was, but no one on the server had any idea. I continued asking periodically throughout the day, and the result was the same.

Yet another note: I made a fairly impassioned post in the thread about whether to allow communist symbolism on freebuild. Since it was no secret that the build next door was mine, I began wondering whether someone was messing with me.

At some point, all of those stone-type (I think stone bricks, but I can't remember) blocks magically changed to sand and sandstone. Once again, I can't help but think that a massive communist building edited to be made of sandstone was someone making fun of me. This was compounded by the fact that almost the only way to find my little patch of land was to teleport to me, meaning that whoever had built the monstrosity, as I began to call it, knew full well whose build they were beside. It was compounded yet again by the fact that, 24 hours later, no one would admit the build to be their own.

At the 24-ish hour mark, I decided that my suspicions must be correct and that someone had pasted and edited this build to make fun of and/or annoy me. (This did have precedent - someone built what I believe was called an "anoyotron" with dozens of pistons on a clock circuit directly underneath spawn.)

So I started dismantling it. This was not simply "grief" where some asshole goes romping through a house destroying whatever he can reach - I built to the top and started taking it apart brick by brick, becoming more and more angry that someone had decided to waste so much of my workspace just for a few laughs. Nonetheless, just in case I was wrong I carefully stored every brick I removed in a couple of chests so that if I was making a mistake I could rebuild it for the aggrieved individual(s). I did this even though whomever had built the structure obviously had creative mode, and gathering blocks was a non-concern. I didn't have creative mode, and knew that I needed to be able to re-build everything if the situation arose.

After removing 3 or 4 rows of sandstone and the communist flag, Kattoo logged on, cursed at me, and issued a ban.

If you think that I, or likely anyone else, would waste dozens of pieces of their ore cache on "griefing", you need to turn your creative mode off and re-evaluate what people will do on SMP. People don't waste multiple diamond picks just to annoy someone else.

I'm not saying my decision was the right one, and in fact the opposite is clearly true, and at this point even if by some bizarre turn of events I were to become an fcraft op+, I wouldn't touch someone else's build. Sennec is obviously the person for that anyway.

I am saying that this was not just random grief by some jerkoff who was trolling and looking to piss someone off. After 24 hours of no one owning up to a build that looked in every respect to be built specifically to piss me off, I finally began removing it like a swastika on freebuild.

Lastly, I admit that asking a trustee to move the build did not occur to me. I wish it had, and regret not having thought of it.

tl;dr: gigantic build on top of my work area with inflammatory elements and no apparent owner after 24 hours.


Yes, I made a mistake. No, I won't make it twice. Yes, I regret the decision.

Banning without asking for or giving a reason remains inappropriate, and I've seen people on multiple occasions get demoted for kicking without a reason.

[Ollieboy]

You're referencing rules you don't understand. Kattoo did nothing wrong, whether it was a miscommunication or not. You don't get the grace of a warning when you know better, and kattoo sure as fuck doesn't get demoted for 'banning without warning'.

(Inb4 this ban doesn't concern me) it does.

[stkal]

I figured this might come up - I'm not saying kattoo deserves a demotion, or any other sort of punishment. period.

But if guests get the courtesy of warnings and grace periods and etc. etc., it stands to reason that ranked members should at least be asked what they're doing before getting slapped in the face with a ban.

I did what I thought was right, so did Kattoo. Kinda. Turned out I made a pretty hefty mistake. But that's all it was - a mistake. This wasn't intentionally breaking the rules, which is what bans are made for.

[kattoo]

After removing 3 or 4 rows of sandstone and the communist flag, Kattoo logged on, cursed at me, and issued a ban.

This is not the issue. I asked what you were doing and waited for 20 seconds why you were still 'dismantling it'. After getting no response and watching you continue to merrily flail your pickaxe I decided to do what I have done.

In mining terms, I was 1 block away from the diamond veins after dozens of hours of work, and was finally getting ready for the payoff.

You could have dug out the sand from beneath of my structure - tearing it down when there was still a lot of sand in front or behind it is a decision I just cannot comprehend.

I was not aware of a discussion being held about the communist symbolism, should I have had more time to visit sections of the forum other than 'Staff', I would have never built it in your proximity. I only did so because I've noticed a flat area that seemed to have been perfect for my structure. I thought you'd have benefited from my proximity, since I could have supplied you with easily obtainable resources. Obviously I have been mistaken.

Banning without asking for or giving a reason remains inappropriate, and I've seen people on multiple occasions get demoted for kicking without a reason.

What Ollie said - you should have known better since you were a mason. If you were a guest, I would have only warned you and kicked perhaps.

However, I've given this matter some thought, I don't want to be regarded as a bigger jerk than I usually am, so I'm going to unban you and if you behave, after a week or two, you'll most likely get your rank back. Let's just hope this is the last mistake you've made.

[stkal]

Yes, I made a mistake. No, I won't make it twice. Yes, I regret the decision.

That about sums it up. That, and thanks.