2024-AT-04: Staff and Evilchumlee Upheld

Fey'lya

Fey'lya

Advocate
Location
Coruscant
Starting the discussion thread with a bang!

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2024-AT-04: Staff and Evilchumlee Upheld

Hello, I have started this appeal after discussing with Advocate @Fey'lya We have agreed on a course of action and will post ASAP. Thank you.
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(For what it's worth my original draft of the appeal had a link to the infracted post but it didn't survive the transition to thread. Mea culpa!)
 
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... Can you post a few lines about which one is which? Or link the tribunal in question?
forums.sufficientvelocity.com

2024-AT-04: Staff and Evilchumlee Upheld

Hello, I have started this appeal after discussing with Advocate @Fey'lya We have agreed on a course of action and will post ASAP. Thank you.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com forums.sufficientvelocity.com
Is the one where evilchumlee requests a reduction from 50 points to 25 points for an infraction for disruptive behavior.

There. Now people can tell the threads apart.
 
And then proceeds to try and re-litigate the same argument that got them infracted in the tribual.

That is not usually a winning strategy. For some reason the "But I Was Right" defense doesn't work so good.
 
Given that those posts (... and some other people's posts along similar veins) are a major reason I have chosen not to participate in that thread, I definitely think the conclusion was correct here.
 
Probably should have just made one thread for both tribunals, imho. Other than the thread in which Evil received an infraction, they were more-or-less interchangeable, what with not conforming to Four Corners rule, relitigating the issue that got infracted in the first place during the tribunal, an unanimous vote to Uphold, and The Letter K motivating her vote by bringing up the other thread's topic instead of the proper one.

Which, gotta admit, was a pretty clever bit.
 
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samdamandias said:
And then proceeds to try and re-litigate the same argument that got them infracted in the tribual.

That is not usually a winning strategy. For some reason the "But I Was Right" defense doesn't work so good.
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When your defence argument is "I know that my posting was unacceptable, I am very remorseful so can you please lessen my punishment" subsequently going on to insist "but also I'm not apologising for this bit because I was in the right and everyone who disagrees with me is wrong" demonstrates that no, you weren't really sorry.
 
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the concept of a poster named evilchumlee getting infracted for stuff around cnc is pretty funny when you consider that the real life chumlee who they are named after, and apparently more evil than, got arrested for sexual assault and drugs and guns
 
I...uh...I really don't know how he thought he can get reduced points over this. Like... yeah, I just don't know how.
 
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Arcus said:
When your defence argument is "I know that my posting was unacceptable, I am very remorseful so can you please lessen my punishment" subsequently going on to insist "but also I'm not apologising for this bit because I was in the right and everyone who disagrees with me is wrong" demonstrates that no, you weren't really sorry.
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I'm not so sure, my read was that he was VERY sorry.

Very sorry everyone got so upset over the reasonable positions he was taking, maybe. Very sorry the mod team didn't like his post, perhaps. Very sorry we can't see how right he is and how wrong everyone else is, surely.
 
I think part of it also may be the failure to distinguish between "I think that is wrong, I'm not okay with fantasizing about that" and "I think that is disgusting and there's something wrong with anyone who has those fantasies, they are bad people".

Like, it's possible to maintain that you're sorry for your behavior even though you haven't changed your mind, because you shouldn't have personally attacked and insulted people over it. But immediately going and framing that exact same attack (if impersonal, rather than personal) is... not that.

I can sympathize somewhat with evilchumlee being unable to tell why this subject is being treated differently than other subjects. But it's not being treated differently. It's not "X fictional bad thing is fine, Y fictional bad thing isn't", it's that you can like or dislike any fictional bad thing you want, some people will disagree. Forum rules get involved when you start slinging out serious personal attacks or stuff like that; if somebody said anybody who liked Warhammer was a fascist or fascist apologist, I sure hope they'd be infracted.

The answer to why forum culture weighs these things differently is that forum culture is not homogenous and there's no consensus list with "Fascism in fiction bad, rape in fiction fine" written on it. There's no single answer to that phenomenon possible. Different people have different opinions and different threads attract different groups of people, that's all.
 
DoobleDeeDooble said:
-words-
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This was my read on it as well, for what it's worth - I think evilchumlee means well, but uh, very clearly does not quite get what it means to do well in these kinds of situations. I'm very sympathetic to that (for truly who among us has always managed to assimilate into a new poster's paradigm) but as was pointed out to him, this isn't a finishing school. The onus for figuring out how to fit in is ultimately on the poster, not the community they're trying to join.

Then he jumped in headfirst into the Hamas thread and doubled down on arguing with the Council about the sex thread thing. Oy.
 
This was a deeply doomed defense, but in several different ways.

First, the advocate's defense is...not merely not worthwhile, but arguably made things worse. The framing of the argument as about board norms is both incorrect (this discussion is not something you will typically see reflected in the output of user fiction) and was actively injurious before the arbitrator, who correctly pointed out Evilchumlee's join date, and could also have pointed out their more than a thousand posts. (As Omicron ultimately did.) In arguing that Evilchumlee has yet to "get it" across either sixteen or eight months, and over a thousand posts, they de facto argue that Evilchumlee will never get it. This is the opposite of an argument for leniency. I do not know what possessed the advocate to make it.

Then the infracted member...basically decided to rehash their infracted behavior in full and dared somebody to ban them for it. And I don't mean their arguments. I mean derailing the thread with an extreme and thoughtless statement. Because of the limited participation numbers and the fact it's a tribunal it didn't go so well but it still happened.

That this has not resulted in an escalation of their punishment seems primarily attributable to the fact no one on the Council thought to pick up that gauntlet.
 
Fey'lya said:
This was my read on it as well, for what it's worth - I think evilchumlee means well, but uh, very clearly does not quite get what it means to do well in these kinds of situations. I'm very sympathetic to that (for truly who among us has always managed to assimilate into a new poster's paradigm) but as was pointed out to him, this isn't a finishing school. The onus for figuring out how to fit in is ultimately on the poster, not the community they're trying to join.

Then he jumped in headfirst into the Hamas thread and doubled down on arguing with the Council about the sex thread thing. Oy.
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Yeah, it kind of feels like, evil has this thing where he comments on something that he thinks he knows about, but doesn't really knows at times, and it leads into something that can lead into an argument. Like, it can be read negative, and whenever that is pointed out to him, he either doubles down, or he just apologizes for it, and plans to stop talking.

I don't know if the guy has not come across discussions like this before, or he just never heard or read other perspectives before.
 
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Night said:
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No, I knew all that going in. The defense put forth was due to two factors - one, we disagree that evilchumlee will "never" get it, he has been making progress and at least wants to improve. Not everyone picks these things up with a swiftness and the Council has historically been sympathetic to those who are putting forth a good faith effort to improve. I suspect it may have flown further if he hadn't melted down mid-Tribunal, but that's not the world we live in.

Two, there is of course the old adage; "If you have the facts, pound the facts. If you have the law, pound the law. if you have neither, pound the table." There was never any question that evilchumlee broke the rules, hard, and if this defense on compassionate, affirmative grounds didn't go very far, one based on "we didn't break the rules actually" might have actually left a crater. Highlighting his eagerness to follow along tied with an inadvertent failure to do so was the only thing we could really put forward.

Was it a fantastic defense? No, but we'd long since left those behind and everyone deserves someone in their corner when dealing with SV's legal system, perhaps especially those having a hard time with it.
 
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I believe there is a possibility of the appellant may be/have been unable to understand the separation of fantasy from reality that many people he is disparaging, who belong to the bdsm community, have. The entire community is based on consent, and yes there are assholes in there too-- let's not pretend everyone in X community is a saint just for the sake of argument-- but the baseline agreement is that everything done is fantasy. You separate that shit from real life, from what you do outside, when you "touch grass" as people say these days. It's what allows people who are into LARPing and acting to not be actual supervillains who sacrifice babies to Tiamat or morb out irl.

From an advocate standpoint, this could have been a possible path of argument. Maybe the appellant was just unable to understand that people can have a separation from idealization, roleplaying, and committing the act on someone who doesn't want it happening to them. However, that would have further exacerbated the problem of the site having a requirement that users have a certain level of maturity when posting. So, the winning move was to not play, imo.

I also share Night's amazement at none of the Council escalating this, but this just shows the wisdom of the Council we have elected. It's a mercy that the Council unanimously decided to not increase the infraction, one could say. I just hope that everyone can learn something from this experience that can better themselves as people. This has improved my database of advocacy references, at least.
 
Plausbius said:
I also share Night's amazement at none of the Council escalating this, but this just shows the wisdom of the Council we have elected. It's a mercy that the Council unanimously decided to not increase the infraction, one could say.
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It's for the best they don't, I.M.O. - I've spoken with two people so far who declined to file a Tribunal appeal for fear of getting smacked even harder, and I've only been an Advocate for a month. They didn't even want to, direct quote, "take the risk".

I leave it to the Council to decide how they want to handle appeals being seen as "risky" - though to be fair the current council has been great about that. See above :V
 
Fey'lya said:
It's for the best they don't, I.M.O. - I've spoken with two people so far who declined to file a Tribunal appeal for fear of getting smacked even harder, and I've only been an Advocate for a month. They didn't even want to, direct quote, "take the risk".

I leave it to the Council to decide how they want to handle appeals being seen as "risky" - though to be fair the current council has been great about that. See above :V
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Yeah, but that sounds like a rare thing for the Council to do though, yeah? Because I have been on here close to a year, but I don't know much about the history of the Council. Is it a rare thing for them to increase infractions?
 
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Kingcrusader said:
Yeah, but that sounds like a rare thing to Council to do though, yeah? Because I have been on here close to year, but I don't much about the history of the Council. Is it a rare thing for them to increase infractions?
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It doesn't happen a lot, but that it happens at all is enough to put fear into people who are already nervous and stressed from being put through the system. Also, the council is theoretically empowered to reach whatever conclusion they see fit - which includes ( unless this changed with the last reform?) the power to increase punishment.
 
Plausbius said:
I also share Night's amazement at none of the Council escalating this, but this just shows the wisdom of the Council we have elected. It's a mercy that the Council unanimously decided to not increase the infraction, one could say. I just hope that everyone can learn something from this experience that can better themselves as people. This has improved my database of advocacy references, at least.
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The only escalation possible here was user review, and I don't think there's any reason to tie that to those tribunals if the user meet the bar for it. I don't think the infractions in question were really deserving of more than they got, though the appellant's attitude in the tribunal could definitely justify a pirate principle user review.
 
Fey'lya said:
It's for the best they don't, I.M.O. - I've spoken with two people so far who declined to file a Tribunal appeal for fear of getting smacked even harder, and I've only been an Advocate for a month. They didn't even want to, direct quote, "take the risk".

I leave it to the Council to decide how they want to handle appeals being seen as "risky" - though to be fair the current council has been great about that. See above :V
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I have also encountered this in discussions with users who are considering escalating to Tribunal.
Kingcrusader said:
Yeah, but that sounds like a rare thing to Council to do though, yeah? Because I have been on here close to year, but I don't much about the history of the Council. Is it a rare thing for them to increase infractions?
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It happens pretty rarely, but the times it happens are pretty memorable? It happened in the very first Tribunal of this term, in fact: user appealed an infraction, Arbitrator reduced it to zero points but kept it as an infraction, user was unsatisfied and appealed to Council, Council raised it back to 25 points (you may argue about whether this counts as an increase or an uphold, but Staff tagged the thread with Increased rather than Upheld, so clearly Staff considers it an increase from the status quo ante).
 
Now this is what I'm talking about, talk about a double feature

Asking for contrition and promising reform then immediately pivoting to "I will never change who I am"? Trying to restart the debate that got them infracted inside the appeal thread for said infraction? Having it repeatedly and clearly explained to them how their behavior earned them a timeout and assuming it's because of their Politics?

These two have it all

Kudos to anyone who genuinely takes them up on the PM offer, patience of saints
 
picklepikkl said:
It happens pretty rarely, but the times it happens are pretty memorable? It happened in the very first Tribunal of this term, in fact: user appealed an infraction, Arbitrator reduced it to zero points but kept it as an infraction, user was unsatisfied and appealed to Council, Council raised it back to 25 points (you may argue about whether this counts as an increase or an uphold, but Staff tagged the thread with Increased rather than Upheld, so clearly Staff considers it an increase from the status quo ante).
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To be clear, that call wasn't made by some nebulous "Staff", it was made directly by me. While I could have just gone with "Uphold" as a "The Council upheld the original decision.", I ultimately felt that the spirit of it was an increase from the Arbitrator's call, which was a decision of "Yes, this broke the rules, but I feel it was marginal and thus some clemency is allowed here." (which is a perfectly fine judgement to reach, SV staff has long held the position of "do the least harm possible" when it comes to rule enforcement).

Frankly, I could have made an argument for either way and convinced myself it was correct.
 
Always entertaining to see the defence degenerate into 'Fuck You I'm Right And I'd Do It Again, You Evil Rapists'. Definitely makes the poor advocate's tack seem, uh, unwise, given it's basically saying 'just permaban this guy already as he is incapable of learning'.

But then you can't exactly control your client even in real life, let alone in SV; it doesn't reflect on the advocate, here (but failing the Four Corners absolutely does, to be clear).
 
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