2016-AT-15: Re Rufus Shinra

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Squishy

Squishy

Merciful Director
Director
Good evening, @Council;

After a brief discussion about @Rufus Shinra, we've decided to indefinitely suspend him.

There really isn't a 'big issue' in play here, and we aren't trying to make any particular point. Equally, we don't believe that there's something outrageously wrong that he's done.

What it boils down to, essentially, is that he doesn't do anything on Sufficient Velocity other than troll. In November, he posted two posts in an appeal which were simply an abuse of the appeals system - you can see both of them - a profile updated which taunted other users and which spawned three comments, one of which was just a complaint about the forum and who of which were responses to other users responding to his profile post; and three posts in assorted threads, all three of which were nothing but mocking other users.

Before that, his last activity was a profile post in April saying he wasn't on SV, and then June of 2015.

In short, it seems that Rufus only comes over to SV when he gets banned from SB and decides he needs to stir up trouble.

Now let's be frank. The reason we have these reviews is because an indefinite suspension is the most severe punishment we can levy. But it's severe because it prevents someone from ever rejoining the community. For someone who wants to be here, that's a big blow. Some of our users post ten or fifteen times a day, every day, and have built up friends and community networks and a social circle here and cutting them off from that mean something.

We don't have these reviews when we use the spam cleaner on spambots, though. Why not? Because the downside of forcibly disconnecting a spambot from the community is zero. The spambot does not want to be here. It has no social circle, no friends, no community networks, and nobody mourns its banning.

When it comes right down to it, Rufus Shinra is more like that spambot than he is like like most other posters who come up for review. Some of the posters we've permabanned in the past have caused a great deal of trouble, but for the most part they have at least wanted to be here. We've had to make a judgement call and decide whether the benefit to the integrity of the community outweighs the individualized harm of the suspension.

For Rufus, though, that call is easy, in my mind. Rufus has made it as clear as he can - both through explicit statements and through his behavior - that he doesn't want to be here, and doesn't want to participate in the community. There is no harm to the suspension, and therefore any benefit to the community - however marginal it might be - is sufficient to justify it. Just like using the spam cleaner on a porn spammer.
 
Thank you for demonstrating the hypocrisy of your rules. This is pretty impressive and hilariously predictable. But first, let me tell you an old story.

It takes place in an old empire, where the emperor was a bit whimsical in his rules and their application, and our characters are a troop of soldiers walking in the forest. The centurion, as they get in a clearing, looks at the Sun and tells his soldiers to stand at attention. He asks his XO:

"Julius, what is the punishment for mutiny?"

"Death, sir!" answers dutifully the XO.

"Good, you know The Law. Julius, what is the punishment for being late?"

"Death, sir!" answers dutifully the XO.

"Good, you know The Law."

The centurion then turns to his men and says:

"Soldiers! We are late."


So...







These pics are pretty damning. Oh, sure, you can make up some pretty reasoning, but the facts are there, in their superb glory: thoughtcrimes are punished hard and retroactive punishment is not only a policy but is validated by an administration that claims to stick by the rules. The really, really wonderful thing is that you permaban right away, so please tell me why I should listen to you anymore? There are, on internet, mods and admins who I honestly respect and when they tell me that some stuff should not be done, I will obey.

You? Well, you just demonstrated that your rules are baseless and SV is nothing more than a safe space. Have you thought about buying an orange toupee?

Though, I must admit your dehumanizing of me was pretty nice: "When it comes right down to it, Rufus Shinra is more like that spambot than he is like like most other posters who come up for review."
 
Rufus Shinrai has made... eight posts in the last year, not including a profile status in April telling people not to contact him anymore because he was on Spacebattles.

Of those eight posts, half were status updates or profile messages, half were actual posts, and literally all of them were nothing but trolling. To clarify – I mean, deliberately trying to provoke a negative reaction from other users for his own amusement, not just "saying things I disagree with". So in effect, from June 2015 – November 2016, the forum output of Rufus Shinra has been 100% trolling.

I don't know Rufus Shinra from Adam. I haven't really gleaned much about his character from his appeal, either, which is an incoherent rant laced with rhetoric about "hypocrisy", finding the rules "hilarious", and so on. So far, he looks like a troll, posts like a troll, and whines like a troll. Still, I dug deeper into his posting history – permaban is a big step, and not one to be taken lightly.

I don't know the circumstances that led RS to leave SV in early 2015. He attributes it to the forum being a "douchey echo chamber", but I can't find any reports he might have made regarding upsetting behaviour aimed against him. Presumably he just didn't find the atmosphere to his liking, so he left. That's his right – this forum's climate isn't for everyone. Skimming through his 2015 posts leads me to believe I wouldn't have any problem coexisting with the RS who was posting back then. I might disagree with some of his politics, but I'm nowhere near the most die-hard liberal on this website, and I'm quite happy to talk with people I disagree with. The problem is that RS no longer seems to want to talk to anyone.

The comparison to a spambot is, perhaps, a little charged – but it's also very accurate, at this point. Rufus Shinra's return to SV seems to have been entirely motivated by perceiving an opportunity to heckle and throw fruit. If he'd made even one non-trolling post, in any forum – an opinion on a movie, a rebuttal of a political point, a Jojo reaction image, whatever – I'd dismiss this immediately, out of hand. Instead, his output is indistinguishable from a spambot, and so banning him becomes a very obvious and prudent decision.

If it's how he means to go on. Every bit of evidence suggests that it is, but I must extend the olive branch and ask @Rufus Shinra directly:

Do you actually intend to SV as a forum, instead of a darts board? Do you understand why your current pattern of behaviour is unacceptable?

Or have you started as you mean to go on?
 
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So in the interests of full disclosure, I'd like to say I think there was a staff miss-step around the infraction and appeal Rufus complains about.

Rufus's post here, made November 11, was reported November 12. Rufus was warned on an unrelated matter on November 12. Because the report system does not show the time/date stamp of the post being reported, the 4-5 moderators involved in reviewing that report did not notice that in fact the post was made November 11, before the warning was given.

On November 24, Rufus was given an infraction for violating Rule 4, which was doubled to 50 points because of the prior warning.

This was clearly an error; the warning referred to post-dated the action being infracted, so an escalator clause couldn't be justified based on it.

Rufus then appealed that escalated infraction on November 30. Unfortunately, he neither set out the date of the infraction nor really explained what had happened, and Pale Wolf, reviewing that appeal, assumed that the infraction was given contemporaneously with the post having been reported - i.e., around November 11/12. Based on that assumption, he concluded the appeal was about 3 weeks out of time. Rufus never bothered to inform him otherwise, and because the appeal was, even setting aside the delay, not in accordance with the Four Corners principle, dismissed the appeal.

Obviously, it would have been better had Pale Wolf reviewed the infraction and caught that error, but let's face it, that's what the four corners principle is for - to force appellants to actually do the legwork themselves - and Rufus didn't do it.

I don't believe this is directly related to the current proceeding; Rufus was not permanently banned for having made that appeal, or for anything really related to it. But he's brought it up, and so we're discussing what, if anything, needs to be done.
 
Foreword:
As usual in a permaban tribunal, it falls to us to examine the staffs argument for it, and see if the users conduct matches that argument and warrants the permanent ban.

In this tribunal, we ought to consider whether @Rufus Shinra previous conduct - before his 17-month absence - should be figured into the assessment of his overall conduct. To elaborate:
The last regular post by @Rufus Shinra was on the 18th of June 2015. Until the 11th of November 2016, he posted nothing at all anywhere on this forum or on his profile (other than a short "please don't contact me here") message).

This gives us, in my opinion, a very good argument to disregard his previous conduct and just look at the current one.

Just as a quick opener, more later.
 
Right.

So, erm @Rufus Shinra... here's the thing, it's clear that you're angry/fustrated/something/dot dot dot as they say butthurt or salty. That is not the ideal state to post in. Doubly so, when it's an appeal.

But let's go with this.

Sufficient Velocity, much like Space Battles, Questionable Questing, The Fanfiction Forum, or one of the numerous other forums out there, is a community.

To use bad analogies and metaphors, imagine a village, people live in it, they do things... then you get this guy who leaves the village to go abroad for a year, who upon returning to the village proceds to take a crap in the middle of the streets. That's you, right there.

I'm sure you can see the issue, yes?

Next up, your appeals. Generally, appeals tend to go along the lines of "no, I didn't do anything wrong, here's why.", occassionally, you get the throwing on the mercy of the staff with appeals that go along the lines of "I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to do this. Please forgive?"

I will note that the staff are very forgiving and willing to work with the members of Sufficient Velocity, it's just that the majority of it doesn't show up due to appeals being quiet and discrete until it gets to the @Council tribunal level.

That said, your infraction...

You posted on November 11, you were warned on November 12, you were infracted on November 24, and then a week latter, you posted an Appeal on November 30.

You know that appeals have to be done within 72 hours of recieving it, you could have asked for an extension, you could have approached one of advocates (or PM all of them in a group PM to ask for help).

Instead, a week after the infraction, you post this.

Rufus Shinra said:
Infracted for violating a mod warning. Date of the post: 11 november 2016. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/the-outer-chatroom.24920/page-4639#post-7244531

First infraction for well-deserved hilarity: 12 november 2016.

As a PhD in Physics, I am nowadays the first time-travelling warning violator ever. Woooohoooo! Oh, sorry, I meant "Hon Hon Hon!". Or is it that, in preparation for January, warnings are retroactively applied? In which case, I would like to definitely congratulate this administration for a job well done.




:)
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Your appeal was dismissed because you didn't do it correctly, didn't put it in time, didn't ask for an extension...

Rufus Shinra said:
Happy to see that this forum is already doing well into adapting to the new working rules. Let's hope these time-travelling rules against political crimes will Make Sufficient Velocity Great Again. :) Hon hon hon!
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And then you replied with this.

I honestly don't know what to say beyond having to ask if you are even willing to adhere to the rules of Sufficient Velocity.

That's the crux of the matter, @Rufus Shinra. Do you honestly want to even stay on Sufficient Velocity?

Because if you do, you kind of have to adhere to the rules of the forum, just like you have to on other forums. The rules may be different on any given forum, but it usually comes down to "Don't be a jackass".

You're not being permabanned because of your nationality, ideology, politics, religion, sexuality, gender, or even ethnicity, let's be clear about this. Rather you're being permabanned because of the manner you post on Sufficient Velocity and interact with the other members.
 
You know, my attachment to SV isn't that big. I've been chased away by people who were acting as if they had some semblance of moral high ground, realized after taking a step or two away from the whole stuff that the whole board has become barely more than a hugbox. Pretentious pseudo-intellectual behaviour and a hilarious circlejerk of a "tribunal" which is, let's be honest about it, lawyer LARPing. Debates are intellectually dead as unpopular opinions are chased away by groupthink, and when someone points out the whole thing... well, it's easier to permaban than to realize that this wonderful vision of yours doesn't reflect reality.

So, yes, I am laughing. I am laughing right now at the salt. I will laugh even harder around May or June when this forum will be even more closely-tight in its safe space and its certainty of being right.

And right now, I am bent over laughing because I just demonstrated that your wonderful administration considers it fair game to do retroactive lawyering to punish unpopular targets. And before you start posting a rant on "waah, correct forms, waah, fill the paperwork in the right case", you have to realize that a lot of people do not give a single fuck about that, and that the screenshots of this are already on their way, perceived as a final demonstration that SV, well... isn't worth it.


So now, I will be permabanned. Not a problem, it's not like I went here for more than schadenfreude (not alone in this). What you will do will be to have a vote that will reassure you that you are doing this within the proper forms and standards, as civilized beings. Then you will go back to your "debates", where you will have very nice circlejerks where most of you agree perfectly with each other about how the outside world is really awful. And I will be forgotten. As well as the people who will take a look at these screenshots and decide that, in the end, why should they follow the rules when the administration doesn't follow them. So they will not come again, because it's not worth it. They will be forgotten.

And so will you. SV is already a joke on SB, a place where people afraid from being contradicted fled to, a safe space all alone in the night.


What you will not do is wonder why so many of the debaters from SB you do not agree with (and I talk about the actual debaters, not the run-of-the-mill trolls who see an easy target in you people) either did not come or gradually left despite still being highly active on SB. This would require questionning your forum atmosphere, your administration policy and your debating standards. What you will not do is wonder how useful or effective this whole circus of a show that is the "tribunal", outside of assuaging the desire of power of some. What you will not do is to refrain yourself from posting a page of pseudo-legal jargon and masturbatory reasoning explaining how wonderfully right you are. What you will not do is ask yourself why the only remotely active part of your forum is the Quest one.





Oh, and since thoughtcrime leads to proper dehumanization... 0110100001010010100001010011100

Au revoir, et à bientôt. A très bientôt. Hon hon hon. :)
 
Rufus Shinra said:
Au revoir, et à bientôt. A très bientôt. Hon hon hon. :)
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I would like to quote Sartre -- et si tu es aussi Français comme tu pretends de l'être, camarade, tu sais exactement de laquelle de ses belles phrases je parle -- but I suppose that would be against the spirit of what we are attempting to do here.

In any case, I've heard all I needed to hear to make my decision.

The (Terribly) Appealed Infraction:

@LordSquishy has laid out very concisely what led to you receiving a far greater infraction than the usual twenty-five points: you were infracted for your behaviour in two different threads -- once for your behaviour is one of CA's now regrettably common Trump threads on November 11, for which you were explicitly warned by @notthepenguins here not to violate any other rules, and once for your behaviour within The Outer Chatroom, also on November 11.

Let me quickly just reproduce them here for the record:
Article:
I know what I will do, people: keep laughing at all the lessons-givers here who were all about how their system was better.

My sincere congratulations. Enjoy your President.

Article:
Heh, guess you guys should have had a better electoral system and a media one that doesn't encourage this kind of speech. :)

Rufus Shinra said:
I don't care, they come from UK. The Brexit reduced my plushies' cost 20 %. Trump's election is gonna boost European competitivity against the US in unbelievable ways.

And I get the last laugh on all these nice UK/US posters here who dogpiled me claiming their vision and their system was better.

What a wonderful year. The year I laughed last.
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You were infracted for your behaviour in the Trump thread on November 12, and for your behaviour in the Outer Chatroom on November 24.

Now, I just want to clarify that the reason why you got a more severe infraction for your second posts is that it is very difficult without additional effort to tell when a specific post was made in terms of specific hours and minutes if they occurred on the same day, and as @LordSquishy said, the report system does not automatically display the exact time a post was made. [We should probably get someone to fix that, but I think deserves rest and also to use his time on better projects than this.] The commentary by staff members on your report makes it clear that they genuinely believed you had violated in contravention to a mod warning, and they acted accordingly.

Your appeal was probably one of the worst appeals I've seen in my time as both a mod and Councilors. It was impossible to tell what the fuck you were actually appealing, you were incoherent, you acted with a complete and utter lack of dignity, you refused to use the appeal template laid out by the staff (the "Four Corners") -- a template which was created to reduce the workload of Magistrates and give appellants a better chance to succeed -- and you were also late.

I have no major issue with either of the infractions you received. They were part of the same pattern of behaviour, but were in completely different parts of the forum. You came in to rudely gloat and crow about the discomfort and anxiety of people you dislike, and previously randomly entered a chat thread to do the same. The funny thing is that you have nuggets of good arguments in there that I would have welcomed in CA. But unfortunately, you were rude, uncivil, and intentionally trying to rile people up. So I have no trouble upholding both of your infractions.

The only issue was the initial error in the magnitude of your second infraction, which was doubled based on the assumption that you had contravened a mod warning. Your appeal was correctly thrown out as invalid, but we should be willing to correct clear mistakes even if the infracted poster is a complete failure at explaining himself.

Thus I recommend that your infraction be

[X] REDUCED TO TWENTY-FIVE POINTS

in the spirit that we should correct mistakes we've made because it's the right thing to do. It's what I would recommend if the same thing had happened to anyone else. Your complete incompetence at defending yourself is really not a factor for me.

Do You Want To Be Here?

@Revlid pretty much laid out your previous behaviour as concisely as possible, and I'll be damned if I put more effort into this than I have to. You clearly haven't.

And you've repeatedly said you have no more interest in being here, and have announced your intention to continue taunting posters out of Schadenfreude (btw, it's a noun, thus capitalised). Kinda petty, but at least you're honest.

No, you don't want to be here.

Do You Deserve A Permaban?

You've been behaving terribly in different ways in different parts of the forum in pretty much record time. You've gotten suspended faster than even @king arthas and @Dayton3 managed when they entered a discussion on CA. I would applaud this impressive feat, but much like the Annual Most Punchable Face Award, there's really no admiration to be had at such a feat. More amused pity, I suppose. At least those two were interested in discussing matters, they were just incapable of doing so. You're just boringly annoying.

I'm also amused to note that your glorious return to SV coincided with getting suspended from SB -- and I bet that if I cared enough to look deeper into it, I would find that you were suspended for the exact same kind of behaviour that led us to discussing your ban. It seems that even your friends got sick of your shit and kicked your ass out for a bit, and you ended up on SV much like an asshole friend would turn up at midnight to crash on the couch, taunting the people living there even as you expect them to tolerate your rowdiness, and acting offended when they react appropriately to a lack of common politeness.

@LordSquishy's comparison of you to a porn- or spambot is somewhat mean, but I cannot find it in myself to fault it. You have said yourself that you have no attachment to this community, you have said yourself that you despise the current community and culture of SV, obviously have no respect for its rules and standards as a community, and you post like a trollbot.

I'm surprised we even need to discuss permabanning you. If you really loathed this community so much, you could have easily asked for a permaban of your own. You could still do so now, honestly. The fact that you didn't and this ridiculous posturing in this thread makes me think you do care. If only to make a point. What the point may be, I don't quite know. In any case, I don't particularly care about it and I'm not interested in having you sleep on the SV couch whenever your SB waifu kicks you out of the house when you're being an asshole.

I see no reason not to show you the door, and if reading the room right, I'm not the only one. I thus recommend that we

[X] UPHOLD THE PERMABAN

and that you go back to SB to bask in your Schadenfreude.

Mind, I wouldn't be surprised if you were asked to leave over there as well within the next year or so. That's the thing about feeling pleasure at other people's pain and being smug about it -- inevitably, even the people that like you can't stand you anymore.

At least you won't have the key to our door to annoy us anymore. I call that a victory.

What did @Ralson say in his great wisdom? "Hey, there's a troll. Let's ban him."
Rufus Shinra said:
*checks the list*
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Also, as a petty parting shot and to wrestle in the mud on your level: my list is waaaaaay longer than yours. :V

Also, appropriate music:
 
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So, just to clarify, @Rufus Shinra.

You hold no great attachment to Sufficient Velocity, in part because you felt you were bullied and thus, you needed a 'safe space' from people with a different point of view.

You didn't bother to ask for help or report them, instead you retreated. And when you returned, it was to basically post in a manner that would get a rise out of the other members.

When you get infracted, your appeal was done in a manner that wasn't exactly clear.
And when you get brought in for the talk that says you're on the cutting board, you choose to double down in, what people would reasonably call, a passive aggressive hutthurt manner.

So, why did you even return to Sufficient Velocity if you had no attachment to the community?
 
Biigoh said:
So, just to clarify, @Rufus Shinra.

You hold no great attachment to Sufficient Velocity, in part because you felt you were bullied and thus, you needed a 'safe space' from people with a different point of view.

You didn't bother to ask for help or report them, instead you retreated. And when you returned, it was to basically post in a manner that would get a rise out of the other members.

When you get infracted, your appeal was done in a manner that wasn't exactly clear.
And when you get brought in for the talk that says you're on the cutting board, you choose to double down in, what people would reasonably call, a passive aggressive hutthurt manner.

So, why did you even return to Sufficient Velocity if you had no attachment to the community?
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To make a point. Not for me, but for many people who were wondering various things about SV.

And once this joke of a "trial" is made public, they will have the answer they were looking for over the past few months. Making the whole affair visible will be enough for them.
 
I - Timeline​
Initially reported for behaviour in the First 100 Days of Trump Administration thread here and here, on the 11th of November.

Infraction issued by @notthepenguins on the 12th of November, with an explicit warning that if he were to continue with his behaviour of riling up other users to get a reaction out of them, future infractions would increase in scale.

Rufus acknowledged this warning.

He also did this on his profile on the 12th of November, though it is, due to the limitations of SV's timestamps, hard to tell whether this pre- or postdates NTPs warning. If @notthepenguins has anthing to say on the matter I'm all ears.

This post, made on the 11th of November was processed eight day laters due to the post-election crunch in reports (so, so many). By the time of its processing the escalating punishment warning was already in force and as such it was infracted with 50pt.

@Rufus Shinra appealed this. The appeal was dismissed on account of general incoherency and failure to adhere to the basic rules for appeals.


II - Conclusio
​
Everyone on staff is a volunteer, and we can only ask so much of them. I believe that Rufus' 50pt infraction was an ultimately unfair mishandling of the situation, being punished post facto for something he had posted a day before the post that triggered his warning. With the post-election crunch in reports, it is understandable that this mistake happened, it does not, however, make it any less of a mistake.

However, Rufus has given every indication I need to believe that he holds SV, our rules and our community as a whole in contempt to almost Habeedian levels, and as such I must strike my suggestion that his 50pt infraction be downgraded to a 25pt infraction and instead support his permanent ban.​
 
Given his obvious contempt for anything going on here, well...

[X] Permanent Ban.
 
Rufus Shinra said:
To make a point. Not for me, but for many people who were wondering various things about SV.

And once this joke of a "trial" is made public, they will have the answer they were looking for over the past few months. Making the whole affair visible will be enough for them.
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You know, you're really not make it easy in any way to be sympathetic.

Doubling down, being butthurt... it never helps.

I think I might be like the most sympathetic of the @Council members doing this tribunal and your posts are doing wonders to make me go "meh.... if he doesn't want to stay, I'm not going to try and stop the permaban".

Thus... on that note.

[X] Uphold the Permaban.
 
Biigoh said:
You know, you're really not make it easy in any way to be sympathetic.

Doubling down, being butthurt... it never helps.

I think I might be like the most sympathetic of the @Council members doing this tribunal and your posts are doing wonders to make me go "meh.... if he doesn't want to stay, I'm not going to try and stop the permaban".

Thus... on that note.

[X] Uphold the Permaban.
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Do not worry. You are not the desired public in this exchange. Never was.
 
I was going to make a relatively matter-of-fact post going into why your original infraction was mishandled and whether or not that should infract these procedures and to what extent, @Rufus Shinra. But then your "defense" piled up upon itself and the task became risible.

You are a living embodiment of the offensive stereotype that has been shadowing me since I first set foot on an international forum. I am some rando on the Internet; I am a jerk sometimes, I'm arrogant or condescending sometimes. That's just who I am, not where I'm from. I don't take nationalistic pride in being an asshole. I don't spend months away from a forum only to drop in just trolling American and British users because they got screwed over in politics. I don't drop random foreign sentences throughout my posts just to make it clear I'm so flippin' French.

Arrogance doesn't make you look cool, Rufus. Arrogance just makes people look petty and confused about their priorities. Arrogance is a character flaw. When you, or I, or any other Internet rando of any nationality let arrogance consume us, we don't look like martyrs and grandstanding avengers. We look like what we are: some idiot typing away at his keyboard like his account on a sci-fi forum bears some essential truth of his character and his moral strength. It doesn't. That's just pride fucking with you.

I just want to be clear, Rufus: you've been gone for so long, and your activity was so sparse and geographically restricted within the forum before that, that I've seen Councilors express that they had no real idea who you were or what was the deal with you, or that they knew you of name and had no opinion on you before you "returned." All you're being judged on is showing up after a blank of inactivity and posting literally nothing but trolling, down to this disgraceful appeal. If you'd actually shown any real intention of changing your behavior you'd probably have been off the hook.

You haven't actually made an appeal. You're just trying to use this thread as a soapbox and an excuse to take screenshots and share them around to a handful of people who already agree with you. That's kind of pathetic, honestly, but more importantly it shows you have no willingness to interact with the system or to take a held out hand.

Reduce Rufus's mistimed infraction to its original value for recording purposes, then permaban him.
 
Omicron said:
You haven't actually made an appeal. You're just trying to use this thread as a soapbox and an excuse to take screenshots and share them around to a handful of people who already agree with you. That's kind of pathetic, honestly, but more importantly it shows you have no willingness to interact with the system or to take a held out hand.
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If only. :)
 
See, the question you should have guessed the answer already instead of complaining about me not playing along your silly tribunal game is the following one:

Why should there be any respect for people who claim impartiality to be the most important value while they react to a slightly snarky comment about a logical absurdity by... permaban? There's the joke for you.
 
You know, you could just utterly be non-political online and save me the trouble of having to think this through. Like, this isn't a defense. But it's fine because I reckon I understand that the point you're trying to make is that everything is made-up make-belief on a forum, which thus has no worth in your eyes. It's fine for you to see it that way, so I'll just do the same and be done with it for the time being.

And on Thursday nights, I usually go out to play Dungeons and Dragons.

So, no ball is gonna roll and I'm not going to steal the wind from your sails or the thunder of your stage.

I've got GSes to average.

[X] Uphold the Permaban on the grounds of myself having better things to do tonight.
 
Heya Refus, how ya doing today? I hope you are doing well and since you say you are laughing I'm glad to hear you have a smile on your face. It's hard times for everyone so some cheer is a welcome sight.

Speaking of role playing, if this were a play, you would be in the role of the fool. I am not saying you are dumb, far from it, you're the bothersome gnat that reveals the weaknesses of kings. The boy who points out the naked emperor. That's the role you like to think you are playing, right? The thing with the fool is that initially the cast treats the fool as a mere idiot and nothing more but in the end the fool is the wisest man in the room. My point is, I believe you are doing a good thing. Yes, your language is inflammatory but I don't mind it at all. Getting blustered over words is meaningless, the meaning behind it is all that matters. Honestly, I feel you're doing this to help SV out rather than hinder it. I'm not so sure if you're familiar with US Politics but I feel the reason why Trump won when everyone said Hillary was going to win is because they rejected dissenting opinions. Silencing anyone who didn't think the way they did. While I don't think you were being very polite, I absolutely refuse to ignore your claims. As a Councillor, I serve as the mediator between the people and the Staff. What does it say about myself, what does it say about us if we refuse to listen? Hardening our hearts to legitimate criticism just because it's wrapped in an unappealing package?

I said you were the jester, weren't you? The one who makes the court laugh and that's a good thing. Every governing body, from book clubs to governments, should be able to look at each other and laugh at their flaws. Regardless of the way you put it, you took the effort and time to post this. Nothing is done for no reason and I believe you came here with noble intentions. So tell us, share with us your wisdom.

How can we, as you said earlier, "Make SV Great Again"? This is your platform, isn't it? So please, tell me, how would you improve SV? What changes will you make? What will SV look under you? What would you like for us to do? Don't shrug this off as we won't listen or we will just ignore you. Yes we might do that, but remember: You can make this Tribunal public. You want to make change? You can do it! Use your words! This is your chance! Everyhing you said was wrong with us, you can fix it. It's all on you, this is your platform, we are not your sole audience, the entirety of SV will be. So don't be afraid to speak your mind, great music is composed with different instruments. Even if they may be hard pills to swallow, we must take them if we are to mature so do not be afraid. Speak up!

With that in mind, I choose to:

[X] Reduce to 25 Points

and

[X] Overturn Permaban

Please, let us help you. We will listen, if not us then I will then. Feel free to PM me if you wish and we can talk about how SV's terrible and how we can improve it. I trust in you, Rufus! Come, let's make SV great again, together!
 
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My Finals are coming up, so I'll make this brief.
When we are asked to preside over a Permaban, it's really the responsibility of the user in question to convince the Council that the punishment is unwarranted. We can do the legwork ourselves, but honestly there isn't much investigating that I can do, since Rufus's presence on this forum is close to nonexistent. Going into this I was roughly expecting to overturn simply because I didn't consider Rufus to be all that bad.
But after reading Rufus's inane soapbox grandstanding, I am completely and utterly convinced that the Directors and Moderators had the right of things.

[X] Uphold Permaban

It's clear that you don't like this forum and you don't want to be here. So farewell.
 
Rufus Shinra said:
Why should there be any respect for people who claim impartiality to be the most important value while they react to a slightly snarky comment about a logical absurdity by... permaban? There's the joke for you.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I'm not sure anyone has made the claim that impartiality is meant to be the most important value. That said, my understanding is you're facing perma-ban proceedings not because of a shitty joke, but because you decided to be the second coming of Dayton. Given that we kicked him out, what's the value in keeping you?

[x] Uphold or however we're phrasing it.


Also, like, for someone bitching about SV being a hug box? You sure stormed out of here when people didn't hug you over your various "Fuck Greece" rants.
 
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