I figured we might want to discuss the Gutter-related bannings at MTGS once and for all and present the available evidence in a setting where there will be no censorship or punishment for voicing out our outlook/opinions about what happened. This before we move on to better things, what this site means for us.
As for the outlook, well, you can imagine it isn't positive. ofc these views are only my own, but there are other banned members here (most notably Kijin and kpaca) which might wish to provide their oversight on this.
For those of you not familiar with what the Gutter was on MTGS: The Gutter was a subforum which existed since 2005 in MTGS, where the rules for posting where significantly more relaxed (slurs and hazings were accepted among others) which helped the forum foster a specific culture with its ups (people were less forgiving about &
quot;annoying" people, leading to more mature or tongue in cheek posts with an above to average noise-to-signal ratio) and downs (some of the people which would get gutterbanned for meeting the standards would get annoyed). Truth be told, the subforum always had a shaky relationship with different incarnations of the staff, but positive steps were made in normalizing relationships after the stepping down of extremeicon and during the tenure of Azrael as an administrator. However, things started devolving again once rianalnn replaced Azrael as an administrator.
At some point, about 4 months ago, it was announced that The Gutter was scheduled to be shut down, as it no longer fitted the "vision" the staff had for the site. The thread discussions led it to become the biggest thread in the whole history of that forum CI, and at the end it was agreed that negotiations would be started in order to
have the Gutter conform with the "vision" the staff had for the site.
Discussions were tedious and lasted for months. Everytime one issue would be agreed upon and things seemed to be reaching near resolution, another additional issue would be raised by the staff, leading us to the starting point. About the same time, prominent members of the Gutter started to be targeted by infractions and even suspended, for things that would not have been an issue in the past. People were suspended for posting jokes in the Gutter (something that never had happened in the past 7years of life of the subforum), and I got suspended for reposting a joke kpaca shared with me in AIM at a time he had some bogus suspension from MTGS. The reason put forward was that I was "posting on behalf of a suspended user".
At a point, I lost faith in any negotiations and in the appeal that I had been encouraged to make in MTGS CI. I made two snarky posts there and announced in the Gutter that I was retreating from any
policy discussions because I had lost faith on the site. A few days ensued with me just posting in my own subforum. After a few days passed by, I got a retroactive infraction from Sene for one of these snarky posts. At about the same time, I got contacted anonymously by someone by IM messaging claiming that there was a plan to retroactively find some offending posts of mine, infract them, getting me suspended, and upgrading it to a banning for disrupting behavior. He claimed that the staff was waiting for me to make a misstep, but that my recent decision of removing myself from conversations had led to this change of plans. I dismissed him as a troll, and went on with my life. However, the next day I got slapped by yet another retroactive infraction by Sene, and I immediately knew that the person who contacted me was speaking the truth. Fortunately he got in contact with me again, and explained me that these moves were happening because MTGS was in negotiations for being bought by Curse corporation, and that
they demanded some changes to the Gutter rules, as they were not pleased with his current incarnation. Knowing that my time was counted, I moved on to share this informations with my friends in the Gutter, so that they would know what was up, and what this meant in the scope of the negotiations process in which we were trying to save our community.
The rest is history. This site was created by the collective effort of people which were (for some) disgusted at the general turn MTGS was taking, or which were aiming to have a different community (for most of them), and they offered to host our community here
Fast forward to a month ago when there was a barrage of bannings at MTGS, leading to the demise of the Gutter subforum. As you may know, so many people got banned that the Gutter essentially died over there (hence being now called "Zombie Gutter"). Fortunately this site was already up, and we managed to make
a smooth transition in here. We shared our information, and it turned out that more material from the staff mod lounge had been leaked:
Here is what we got:
nWhich means that the negotiations had been for naught, since Curse wanted the Gutter gone, once and for all. Even worse, they wanted to make it look like this was the staff decision.Okay guys. This has been in discussion with the Globals for about a week, and a small selection of you that would be directly affected have been contacted for opinions. This is now being opened up to the rest of you.
About a week ago, the admins got in touch with our Curse liaison. This person will be directly above the admins when the deal goes through, so we're already establishing a working relationship. Fabien, our liaison, took a tour of the website with rianalnn while discussing things with us. He got access to many areas, including the Speakeasy and the Gutter, and we asked him his opinion.
The first is the biggest news. The Gutter cannot stay, even with the sanctions we've currently put in. Curse will not allow such a place on our website. The hazings, the slurs,
basically many of the liberties the Gutter has, they have no place on the Curse network. Curse has told us that we have to get them in line in any way we so choose. Kill the sub or cauterize the bits that stick out of the box, they don't care. But here's the important thing: We may not say that Curse said so.
For those of you who missed the implications of that, the Staff must pull a 180 here. We must, saying it was our idea, tell the Gutter that the past four months were all for naught and that we still have to change things entirely.
I'll get to our options in a few moments.
Slightly less of a problem is the subject of the Red Zone. The Speakeasy is safe, but each of the NSFW sections will probably have to go. No real big loss in most cases. NSFWCW will probably become a censor-off sub, but no more sexual content. NSFW Debate will probably become 'Hard Debate' or something similar so the more adult or controversial debates (the Unconscionable Position rule threads, for example) have someplace
to go.
For the Gutter, there isn't much we can do.
Option 1.) Kill it. I'm saying this to get it out of the way. I would rather not do this, as it will sacrifice all credibility that the staff has. We go back on our word, and because we can't cite Curse as the reason, we're doing it for no reason.
Option 2.) As I said before, cut off anything that doesn't fit in the box. Hazing, slurs, making fun of other members, all of that? Gone. The Gutter essentially becomes an invite-only clan in its own private sub that just so happens to have its censor off. All threads except TBGTE (and maybe even that one) get moved to a private read-only subforum that can only be accessed if you have the direct link, for archival purposes.
If you guys come up with other options, let me know. But that's about all I can come up with.
For Talore, GR, Teia, this isn't going to be fun. Sorry guys. Our hands are tied here, and I'm not going to enjoy this any more than I assume any of you will.
As it has been explained by one of the banned members:
We further learned that the negotiations with Curse had started exactly when the shutdown of the Gutter was initially announced, circa late June 2012.here's the real down low: they were going to shut us down/postpone the pegging talks because they were waiting on confirmation from Curse on whether or not we'd be allowed to stay open (re: harping on the use of hate speech). the final word came in and it not only said we couldn't use hate speech but also we couldn't stay open the way we were -- to quote "some person": Some Curse executive browsed the whole Salvation alongside rianalnn and the veredict is that the Gutter is a no go. They will only accept a censorless "clubhouse" for an "overclan" or some ****. And the fun part... there is a fun part... Curse is wants to force the admins to make it look like it's their thing and not
Curse's
The first big conclusion of this sordid, sordid, sordid affair was this:
The Gutter was to be shutdown as part of the Deal with Curse corporation, but in view of the outrage and turmoil that this unprovoked decision caused, it is evident that the higher staff (because let it be know, I believe that some of the lower echelon members were sincere in their wiling of getting an agreement striked down that would allow our community not to be nuked) used the negotiations process as a stalling technique before handling out the final blow to the Gutter. More importantly, it seemed that they chose to strike hard at prominent members of the Gutter with infractions and suspensions in order to keep them in line and establish an atmosphere of Terror.
But the worse is still to come:
[
quote="Senori"]I mean, obviously a lot of Gutter people spam the forum for a while, which sucks, but you can delete those posts or ban those users pretty easily.[/quote]
Not content with this, the higher staff apparently decided that the best route was to go Option 3. Remember Option 1 and 2 from the previous post of Nai? Well Option 3) was actually getting the major members of the Gutter in the conditions of being banned, at which point the Gutter would be effectively dead.
Remember the discussions that ensued in MTGSalvation after the rumor of the sale was posted in Starcitygames forums? Remember this post of Arcadia labeling me and other people as "Scumbags"?
It was an unverified post off of these boards. The gutter was already aware of the potential sale when N_S was banned, because he was leaked details of the sale by an unknown coward. N_S proceeded to do what he always loved to do, undermine the staff and leak the
information to his gutter pals. Some other scum of the earth leaked the most recent news to them, and the bannings were once again thrown out as the gutter leaders decided that undermining the staff was way more important than the community they always say they care about.
The only reason this got leaked is because of two staff members, one possibly former, decided that 50 users well being and communtiy was far more important to them than the community and the site they volunteered to protect and serve and maintain. Unfortunately, this is the internet, where cowards and scumbags have infinite tools to flow information and be kept secret.
The only malicious act here was that Nai took upon him (possibly with the OK of the higher-ups Sene, ER, and rianalnn, we don't have this info) to leak information to kpaca and Kiin, knowing that they would protest in the open (together with additional people), and giving the staff
excuses to getting them banned (as it occurred in fact). Kpaca and Kijin will be able to confirm this if I'm not mistaken.
Here are the facts and the truth from this sordid, sordid, sordid story. They can't be deleted or hidden as the staff in MTGS has frantically and unsuccessfully tried to do. I'm sure that kpaca and Kijin will be willing to add some more insight to this.