JLove,
As someone who has worked on three administrative projects over the years, overseeing both the interactions of sighted and blind players, and also as a long-time gamer, I agree with you. Merely banning someone for being an asshole is not necessarily the best course of action. I don't think any good admin would agree with this precise reasoning. But, there is a difference between being an asshole and being toxic. I was thinking today about how banning isn't a science. It is an art. No case is the same, especially when it comes to players who are perceived as extremely disruptive. You may make decisions, as an admin, that are controversial when it comes to how you manage your player base. You'll see a situation and think, well someone could easily reason this way. However, difficult though it may seem, I'm going to take such and such stance. And here's why. In other words, although Dentin has taken a certain stance, he could privately reason that your opposite opinion is just as valid. But ultimately, administration involves making a decision and then observing what happens as a result of your decision. Sometimes you like what you see; sometimes you don't. Only time will tell what will happen as a result of these two bannings. Another thing which I was thinking about today is that in an ideal world, an admin would never have to ban a player. As admins, we like people to coexist peacefully. We try to take preventitive/warning measure before banning a player. I believe that most admins want to accommodate the needs of their players if at all possible. So banning someone, regardless of the reason, is never an easy decision.
It's hard to comment on this particular situation without seeing logs, given that the dynamic of Dentin's player base is different. And therefore, what he sees in his logs will be different. So my response to this question could only be from a devil's advocate point of view. I just don't have enough data to give a definitive answer on why this particular situation is okay. But, I'll do my best to explain, based on the data which I have purely as a player, to explain how someone could have reasoned that banning Ignotus was fair. Let's say, hypothetically, that Mike, the senior admin who I primarily worked with, had come to me and said, I have a feeling this player is becoming toxic, but I don't have time to read through his logs. For the sake of this scenario, let's say Mike, a guy I've been friends with since 2008, runs AA, and I'm looking into Ignotus's situation for him. Let's say I don't know Ignotus at all as a friend.
The first thing I'd do is look at where my veteran/long-time players primarily hang out. As I've been playing AA for three years, I can tell you where they mainly hang out, "private" channels. These channels may be private, but they have lots and lots of players. Veteran players often find moderated/public channels to be annoying and useless places to chat. They get tired of newbies asking what they perceive to be stupid questions. And they have less tolerance for these questions because they may not be acquainted with most of the people who post on these channels. It could also be argued that although these channels are private, some are, or have been, in a sense, semi-public. That is to say, what is said on them is not expected to remain secret. Passwords are only put in place to make sure that channels are not moderated and that newbies and "idiots" can't get in. To explain why some veterans are annoyed by the moderation of public channels, I will show you the standard message which shows on every publicly moderated channel:
This is a Moderated Channel -----
- don't spam
- don't troll
- don't start or continue flamewars
- no sexual topics and content
- no screen reader noise spam
Channel Disclaimer --------------
- don't use color overrides or channel color aliases
- limit profanity
- don't piss off avatars
- don't recruit for your clan or troll other clans
- don't recruit for other games
- no chatbots unless they're explicitly approved by Dentin
- don't be mean
Note that this channel is not a public channel. It is a private
channel owned personally by Dentin. You have no right to use this
channel and can be banned for any of the above, as well as a host
of other reasons.
If you feel you have been banned or disconnected inappropriately,
please send a note to Dentin explaining the situation. Be clear
and specific or your note may be ignored.
In an effort to remain objective, I will point out that Dentin's channel disclaimer does not appear on every moderated channel. It is only the messages before his disclaimer which appear atop of a moderated channel's info. However, any moderated channel reserves the right to use and/or enforce any of Dentin's rules for Gossip. They shed some light on how Dentin and his moderation team prefer to have moderated/public channels be run. Not every such channel enforces these rules. For example Boom, which is run by someone who is a veteran player, has seen sexual topics discussed on a number of occasions. But veteran players typically don't want to worry about which channels enforce these rules and which don't. It's much easier to join a private channel which remains completely unmoderated.
One of the channels Ignotus was co-owner/admin of (and I can say this because I am connected to this channel as well), sees way more traffic than the main public channel of AA, gossip, ever sees. It has 65 allowed characters. I'm pretty aware of which characters are alts of other players. If we subtract those, we get 52 players. Let's say 50, assuming that I could be unaware of one or two alts. Pulling up channel stats reveals the following:
Creation date: Sun Feb 16 12:49:04 2014
Usage count - current: 7414
Usage count - total: 1834174
Minimum to-use level: 0
Now, people have stopped posting on this channel, we'll call it KC for short, because many are chatting on a different mud instead, using a channel owned by the exact same person with the exact same name. Let's look at this channel's info for a more accurate current usage total:
Creation date: Sat Nov 11 15:48:23 2017 EST
Usage total: 28684 (7527.3 KB on disk)
Keep in mind that this usage total can be added to the 7714 messages in the previous section for a more accurate current usage total. Also, these numbers show just how active a channel can be at any given time. Almost 29,000 messages in 11 days is no small feat. I will delve into current usage more later in this post.
Now, let's look at the stats of the "Gossip" channel, which is AA's highest used public channel:
Creation date: Sat Nov 3 18:37:26 2001
Usage count - current: 12414
Usage count - total: 3780736
So, the private channel in question, kc, has been around 3 years, vs. Gossip's 16 total years. And in three years, or 1/5 of Gossip's channel existence, this KC channel has racked up more than 50% of Gossip's total message count. Some veteran players can and do assert that other channels see far less activity. Let's take these two well-known private, popular channels as examples.
Channel name: Tr***e
Creation date: Thu Oct 16 15:42:19 2014
Usage count - current: 1385
Usage count - total: 195912
Minimum to-use level: 0
Channel name: B***
Creation date: Wed Dec 7 22:59:18 2016
Usage count - current: 856
Usage count - total: 30728
Minimum to-use level: 0
These numbers may be low, but it's also worth noting that private channels come and go on AA. They are active as long as their main owner is active. The moment a channel's main owner goes inactive for a significant span of time, that channel will go inactive and remain inactive, for the most part, until when or if its main owner returns. And if a channel has been inactive for a long time, it gets deleted. So there are two things to keep in mind here.
1. Certain channel stats/numbers are hidden from player view because said channels have become inactive and were thus deleted. These channels may have been highly active at one point. But just because they've gone away does not mean that new ones can't and don't take their place eventually. Often, these new channels are composed of the same people. They have new names and are run by different administrators, but overall, said groups of players are just picking up where they left off when their previous channel was deleted. So tracking true numbers for these well-known veteran groups can be hard to do. From an administrative point of view, compiling true numbers may involve piecing together data from various sources. So although an admin or moderator may have seen patterns of negative behavior, it can be difficult and time consuming for that person to explain using numbers as the basis for their explanation. This is not an excuse. It is simply an explanation of why this behavior occurs.
2. A channel's total usage count isn't always the most important factor in determining a channel's true activity. Because, in a given month, a previously inactive channel can become extremely active when its owner becomes active again. The channel will then die down again when its owner goes back into hiding, figuratively speaking. (See my KC example above for an explanation on just how active a private channel can be, even temporarily.)
To determine whether a player is toxic, I would then ask myself,
1. How much influence does this player have? How many private channels does this player talk on? How many public channels? How active are these channels?
2. Who is this player trying to influence? What is their agenda? Are they continuously consulting with a certain type of player? Veterans? Newbies? If so, a significant subsection of my players could be affected by his comments.
3. How are players responding to what this player is saying? Or, what impact are this player's comments having on a certain subsection of players?
4. Is anyone complaining privately to me, or other staff members, about this player? If so, why?
5. How do other staff members view this player? If their opinions of this player are negative, why are they negative? Are the negative opinions based on feelings, or are they based on solid facts?
In researching the answers to these questions, I would, undoubtedly, begin to form a complete picture of this player's usage patterns and interaction style. Often, while perusing through private logs, I find statements which will significantly impact a judgment I had previously made regarding a player. There were times when I said to myself, this player isn't really that bad. Why are people complaining? Their complaints are unjustified. And then I find statements in their logs which can be very concerning. I can only conclude that whatever was in these logs was so compelling that Dentin saw fit to ban Ignotus. But as for defending this particular ban, I don't have enough data to condone or condemn it. I can only guess as to why it happened.