Denied zestym3m3s Ban Appeal

Punished account name: zestm3m3s (zesT)
Platform or server punished on: Economy
Ban message if applicable:

Do NOT make threats towards other community members such as adding them to a "hitlist". We take the protection of our server VERY seriously. Please read our rules and appeal.

7 day ban.

Have you read the rules? Yes
Do you think this punishment was incorrect? Yes
Why should you be unbanned?

I don't believe that Bree was wrong to ban for threats like this, but I think she misunderstood the circumstances. Offline had just put up 8 netherrite scraps on auctionhouse for nearly double their accepted value, and he egged people on when we called him out for it. Here are the screenshots.









At this point I ignored him, the messages you see are on my alt account. I will not rejoin from it until my appeal is accepted or my punishment is complete.

-update for inflation"



This kind of thing on eco needs to be discouraged since it's super common for people with a lot of money to accidentally waste it on crap deals like this without knowing the true value of the rare items. Also, people see that price and start assuming its the going price and try to sell for it without knowing that its not.

Honestly, it's eco, people will sell for whatever they want to sell for, but if someone who has played a lot tries to take manipulate the value of rare items for personal gain and take advantage of people who don't know the accepted value of an item; I will call them out for it. My statement was crass, sure, but I'm not going to act like I'm the problem here. My statement was intended as an insult to anyone who would be stupid enough to buy his scrap, not as a direct threat to anyone. I wouldn't even know who bought it, so why would that be an actionable threat?

Its frustrating too, since anytime I make jokes about offline, even when he's actually doing something bad, I get a dm by staff in the next few hours. At this point, I don't like offline, but that's because he's not a likeable person. He often causes problems and acts like a child whenever people get upset with him. Then he goes to staff acting like a victim without ever trying to accept responsibility that maybe he should've done things differently. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a violent person, but I will always make it known when I'm upset with someone's actions. Since staff are never on eco it feels like all we can do is discredit people as punishments.

Overall, I don't disagree that threats should be treated seriously, but anyone who read my message knew that it wasn't targeted and it wasn't actionable, so it shouldn't be taken seriously.

Keep in mind, scamming is against the rules, and SaintOffline and his alt SaintOnline are definitely scamming people who don't know better. "Scamming is the act of one player suggesting a trade to another and either a) taking the items and leaving or b) completing the trade, but having ripped the other player off." in this case b is the rule he is breaking by trying to act like the price he's setting is the normal price even though he's just profiteering. Him acting like its the normal price is proof that he's trying to swindle people.

Please list any other times you were punished on Skyblock:
I've only received warnings.
If you know, tag the staff member that banned you:
Novembree
Do you understand and accept our rules and code of conduct?
Yes.

 

To tell you the truth I don't believe that you understand. If you aren't active on economy for more than 15 minutes it's hard to understand any of the stuff that's going on there. I already mentioned when I said:

"Honestly, it's eco, people will sell for whatever they want to sell for, but if someone who has played a lot tries to take manipulate the value of rare items for personal gain and take advantage of people who don't know the accepted value of an item; I will call them out for it."

I would clearly define what Offline did as being troll-y and scamming when he said "thats normal price" and "scam, where?". He's dodging the fact that he's trying to inflate the price of scrap for personal gain, and I fully disagree with your assessment that you try to keep an eye on it. This type of /ah inflation has been happening for weeks. Everyone called him out for it, yet I'm the one who gets hit with some grandstanding because you took a bad joke out of context.

As for your second argument, I'm not going to act like what I said was perfectly okay to say on the server. I wouldn't want someone saying that I'm on their hit list. But remember, I literally cannot see the names of who bought anything off auctionhouse unless I was the seller. You can argue that "its a threat" all you want, but if you asked any of the people on eco at the time if they think that's a threat, you'd see how alone you are. There is nothing I can do to anyone who buys them, nor would I care since I don't even buy scrap. I'm just looking out for the health of the economy by discouraging people from using predatory anticompetitive profiteering, we do this all the time because staff don't know how to enforce scamming unless its with dp heads. Also, I immediately ignored him after I realized he was trolling. Why would you see that and think I'd ever hurt someone? If you aren't spending time on economy long enough to get to know any of us, you shouldn't be so quick to ban over a bad joke.

You completely misunderstand why I included those screenshots too. I'm not trying to argue that what I said was right. I'm trying to argue that what I said was #1, not an actionable threat. #2, in response to someone doing something that should be discouraged on the server, and #3, that you and other staff should really avoid over enforcing rules without being active in the eco-community. Eco has been upset lately that staff aren't active when they need to be. There have been so many toxic people on the server in the last few weeks, yet the most enforcement we get is staff showing up 50 minutes late to tell us "stop" and then go back to skyblock. I'm very disappointed that in response to the toxicity, staff thinks it's "good" to warn and ban for weird things like this instead of tackling the real problems.

I will gladly sit out my week ban. If you don't realize that this was a mistake then you need to reevaluate how staff operates between servers and start putting some effort into finding dedicated economy staff. I don't think it's excusable to have nearly all active staff be only active on skyblock, and I don't think it's fair to the people on economy who are constantly dealing with toxicity to the point of quitting. Please figure it out.

Thank you for your time.

 

Hey Bree,

Because you keep avoiding my argument that a "threat" without a target should not be considered a threat, I'll repeat myself. If a threat is targeted at someone it makes sense to punish them because they're expressing the intent to cause harm to that person. If I was banned for saying something like "This guy is on my hit list" I wouldn't even argue since that's an obvious threat.

If a threat is not targeted and has no possibility of being followed through on, it should not be treated with the same severity as a targeted threat. You should not punish these as strictly because they do not have a direct recipient and are essentially meaningless as threats. I wouldn't be as frustrated if it was a day ban or something, but your dedication to "fairness" is silly if you're going to also ignore the context of the situation.

Anyone would agree that threats should be punished harshly. However, I will continue to argue that my comment was a bad joke and it was intended as hyperbole. If I replaced my sentence with "if anyone buys this guys scrap they're no friend of mine" it would mean the exact same thing as my "threat". Simply pulling the term "hit list" as a threat without reading the context is unhelpful moderation because it's ignoring the cause (scamming on /ah) to target some misinterpreted reaction (my comment). I have no "hit list" and it's bonkers to me that you're acting like my comment should be treated the same as a genuine threat when you have stated that you know I wouldn't act upon it. This makes this whole appeal feel more like a circus to get me to apologize than an actual discussion.

You've seen where this mentality has gotten eco, why do you think things are going to change if there is no recourse for misbehavior. The first thing you can do to help is figure out what you as staff can do to make it easier to report and have regular staff presence on economy.

I would like to comment shortly on your philosophy of moderation. As a former server owner I understand the role of staff and their relationship with players. While I don't disagree that staff should be impartial, I do think that some subjectivity is important for anyone trying to maintain a healthy community. If you've ever seen robocop, you'll know that being too strict scares people and makes them question your judgement. If you cherry pick when to punish, that does even more damage. If you want to look at a real life example, look at judges. They acknowledge the facts of a case and come to a punishment that fits the person being punished based on their history, their appeal, and their crime. If you are only looking at the crime, you're doing a third of your job. Do you want to be a good judge or do you want to be an objective judge.

I do not. I believe that a week ban for what I said is not a fair punishment. I would not have argued with a 24hr ban since I agree that it is important to discourage those kinds of things from being said, but because it was so obviously not targeted it makes no sense to be treated like a genuine threat with a weeklong ban. Your lack of nuance and inability to reliably crack down on the rest of the rules in section 4 of the code of conduct give me more reason to believe that I'm being unfairly punished.



Sidenote:

Wandering traders sell 2 netherrite scrap for 500k every so often. That's 4.5m profit if the price goes up. I don't know who you asked but they're crazy if they think that its not outrageous. The previous price at ~3m was already pretty high. My screenshots show that people are upset about how obnoxiously high the price Offline set is, and he tried to act like it was normal even though he knew it wasn't. If he was selling just one for 5m that's whatever since he's not really setting the price; but when he buys out people's 3m scraps and tries to overload the auctionhouse with 5m scrap it is obviously bad and he's hoping to make a quick buck off of someone while also artificially increasing the value of his investments. Any older player would notice and avoid it, but you know the next person to try to sell netherrite will see it's worth 5m and try to list it for 4.9m until that's the new price.