For the first post of our informal "moderator blog" let me again reiterate the purpose of these posts:
We do not want to shame or harass the member in question. In this case, the member named themselves in public, and publicly challenged the moderation team to provide "proof" or "evidence" to substantiate the decision to ban. In order to improve transparency and to prevent disinformation, we are complying with the member's request here where we can easily post screenshots to help with the explanation.
Relevant reddit thread here:
The member, "Abrams" claims they were banned "for no reason" so here we will attempt to establish a timeline.
TLDR; This user was banned for repeatedly harassing creators with negative feedback and insistent personal requests, would not take no for an answer, was warned multiple times, and finally was banned and then created several fake accounts to try to circumvent the ban, before finally giving up and trying to whitewash the whole incident with a ranting post on Reddit.
We are using actual account names for this user as they have publicly requested transparency.
This person joined as "Vinger" one year ago. They established a repeating habit of giving critical feedback towards creators when they didn't like a scene, typically making several posts reiterating their criticisms on the same discussion thread. As we can see a history of posts for each user, it was clear this person was, well, "kind of a jerk" honestly.
Here are some examples (in no specific order):
Here Vinger insults the creator with phrases like "you're clearly not a newbie". Notice the two back-to-back posts criticizing the creator. This is a trend that continues.
Here is another example of random criticism, two posts in a row. The creator comes back with a great response, saying "It's for me - as most things are and then I share for whoever might be interested". We warned Vinger at this time to please be respectful of other creators.
Here's an example of one of their other habits, demanding personal requests and then arguing when they don't get what they want. This is the definition of harassment.
Here is another example:
Here is another example, in which we responded:
In the following example, Vinger continues to harass the same creator about a media item because he wants a copy of the scene, which the creator explained cannot be done because the scene contains paid content. Vinger did not take no for an answer, and was eventually given a warning:
Some of these members reported the harassment to the moderation team:
We issued official warnings after Vinger made it clear he would ignore our polite reminders in the threads:
Vinger reported @VaMRainey for "harassment" in retaliation!
Finally, we sent a conversation message warning of a potential ban. Notice his "angry" emoji reaction:
This is the point at which we banned Vinger.
Within 24 hours, he rejoined as "Svante", went back to the creators he previously harassed, and continued the criticisms.
We banned Svante, and he rejoined as "ShturMan" and continued to harass creators.
Here he outs himself:
And then sends another obsessive rant at the moderators again:
We banned ShturMan, then he rejoined as "LoverVam" and we banned and rejected the user registration:
This time, he waited a few days before rejoining as "Abrams". We put the account on monitor, and within 48 hours he couldn't help himself from criticizing another creator. This time, it led to the creator deleting their content.
Finally, he made the post on Reddit that we linked at the beginning of this post.
We hope this provides some clarity on what it's like to be a moderator and our decision processes. I did not link the relevant TOS or Policies here in this post, and I may do that in a follow-up edit. Suffice to say that this is not a person you would want in your community.
This was a special case in which we were able to share more information than normal because of the "public calling out" nature of the Reddit post. We welcome any feedback about our decision process here in the interests of transparency.
We do not want to shame or harass the member in question. In this case, the member named themselves in public, and publicly challenged the moderation team to provide "proof" or "evidence" to substantiate the decision to ban. In order to improve transparency and to prevent disinformation, we are complying with the member's request here where we can easily post screenshots to help with the explanation.
Relevant reddit thread here:
The member, "Abrams" claims they were banned "for no reason" so here we will attempt to establish a timeline.
TLDR; This user was banned for repeatedly harassing creators with negative feedback and insistent personal requests, would not take no for an answer, was warned multiple times, and finally was banned and then created several fake accounts to try to circumvent the ban, before finally giving up and trying to whitewash the whole incident with a ranting post on Reddit.
We are using actual account names for this user as they have publicly requested transparency.
This person joined as "Vinger" one year ago. They established a repeating habit of giving critical feedback towards creators when they didn't like a scene, typically making several posts reiterating their criticisms on the same discussion thread. As we can see a history of posts for each user, it was clear this person was, well, "kind of a jerk" honestly.
Here are some examples (in no specific order):
Here Vinger insults the creator with phrases like "you're clearly not a newbie". Notice the two back-to-back posts criticizing the creator. This is a trend that continues.
Here is another example of random criticism, two posts in a row. The creator comes back with a great response, saying "It's for me - as most things are and then I share for whoever might be interested". We warned Vinger at this time to please be respectful of other creators.
Here's an example of one of their other habits, demanding personal requests and then arguing when they don't get what they want. This is the definition of harassment.
Here is another example:
Here is another example, in which we responded:
In the following example, Vinger continues to harass the same creator about a media item because he wants a copy of the scene, which the creator explained cannot be done because the scene contains paid content. Vinger did not take no for an answer, and was eventually given a warning:
Some of these members reported the harassment to the moderation team:
We issued official warnings after Vinger made it clear he would ignore our polite reminders in the threads:
Vinger reported @VaMRainey for "harassment" in retaliation!
Finally, we sent a conversation message warning of a potential ban. Notice his "angry" emoji reaction:
This is the point at which we banned Vinger.
Within 24 hours, he rejoined as "Svante", went back to the creators he previously harassed, and continued the criticisms.
We banned Svante, and he rejoined as "ShturMan" and continued to harass creators.
Here he outs himself:
And then sends another obsessive rant at the moderators again:
We banned ShturMan, then he rejoined as "LoverVam" and we banned and rejected the user registration:
This time, he waited a few days before rejoining as "Abrams". We put the account on monitor, and within 48 hours he couldn't help himself from criticizing another creator. This time, it led to the creator deleting their content.
Finally, he made the post on Reddit that we linked at the beginning of this post.
We hope this provides some clarity on what it's like to be a moderator and our decision processes. I did not link the relevant TOS or Policies here in this post, and I may do that in a follow-up edit. Suffice to say that this is not a person you would want in your community.
This was a special case in which we were able to share more information than normal because of the "public calling out" nature of the Reddit post. We welcome any feedback about our decision process here in the interests of transparency.
