Ban reason: Metacomms
Length of ban: Appeal Ban
Events leading to the ban: An investigation/audit of discord I am a member of. It was conducted, and I was provided some screenshots of messages that I have sent, which may be viewed as problematic, especially considering a lack of context, which I hope to provide below. Firstly, I wanna address how, after viewing thousands of messages, I was provided only 4 screenshots, all of which were within a two day period near the infancy of this discord server. These messages are now over a month old, and I think the lack of recent messages speaks to how we have made a serious effort to follow the rules. I believe that most, if not all, of my offensives stem from a misunderstanding and a lack of clarity about acceptable behavior. I hope the admin community feels the same way and will approach the situation with nuance and understanding. Below, I have directly addressed all the messages that I have sent that are deemed inappropriate for server conduct.
John Hawkness 1/1/2024 9:56 AM
going for cargotech i feel im going get drafted for HoS
This was the first of my four offensive messages. I believe this is a simple misunderstand I sent this message while the lobby was active and the round was starting. I’m merely informing the other members what role I’m currently desiring, something that is readily available info, both through a PDA at round start and while in the lobby, by looking at the crew manifest before role selection. I was led to believe that this conduct is allowed and not against meta comms rules.
John Hawkness 1/2/2024 7:54 AM
4 clowns just mobbed the medbay im so sorry purp
this is terribl
I believe this was a comment I sent either after the end of the round or after I was sure everyone who had access to the channel had died. I think this was one of Purp’s first command rounds, which had ended terribly with an early round remove for him, and I was merely expressing sympathy. A few days later, Discord had a conversation about messages like these and how they could be conveyed as metacomm even if we are all dead within a round. While this scenario did occur over a month ago and a lot of context has been lost due to time, I think it’s clear how I should have taken a more diligent approach to avoid any perception of impropriety.
John Hawkness 1/2/2024 8:36 AM
me and ash died with 2 other people all staring at bomb. Im pretty sure ash was the only one doing anything
This was me discussing a shuttle bombing at the end of the round. I have attached a screenshot below where you can see me discussing within 4 minutes the role I am desiring for the next round. I believe this should be enough context to dispel any impression of meta comms.
https://gyazo.com/13fb9885c13b8a3cda1c6a0f9a7f189a
John Hawkness 1/2/2024 11:05 AM
suddenly really happy i decided to now play HoS
cap being ssd and robbed seems like a terrible round start
This one I believe I was discussing a previous round and being sarcastic. Particularly, this was me discussing my first round back on the HoS spree after learning medicine. If I’m correct, I believe the servers update at the same time every day, and the time I sent this message would have been within 2 or 3 minutes into the round. While it is possible, I really doubt that I would have committed such a clear rule break, especially so early into a round. I hope that the 100’s of rounds i’ve played and the thousands of messages I’ve most likely sent since the second of January would help corroborate this belief and allow me some benefit of the doubt.
Reason the ban should be removed: I believe that it’s clear that my actions were never meant to be malicious and that the offenses addressed were in the infancy of our server when we were still developing what we felt would be an appropriate code of conduct. I understand why this conduct was deemed unacceptable by the rules and am ready to move past any of these mistakes and continue to work with the moderation team to ensure my actions and the actions of others in our discord align with acceptable behavior by the rules. While I understand the diligence of the admin team and the need for some punishment, I do hope the admin team considers lenacy given the non-malicious nature of these events when combined with my extensive playtime and good play record.