[Initial Public Statement: 9/18/22]:
The SMS Community Mod Team has come to the decision to ban Shoutplenty from all community forums.
This course of action was unanimously agreed upon among the team members, excluding Jeff who abstained from discussion & voting regarding this decision. This ban will last a minimum of 9 months, after which it can be appealed with demonstrable improvement in behavior.
As a reminder, if you are suffering from abuse by any community member, past or present, do not hesitate to raise your concerns to any member of the moderator team. We are here to aid you in whatever way we can
[Secondary Public Statement: 9/19/22]:
Following the community's request for additional transparency regarding our recent ban of shoutplenty, we felt it necessary to put out a clarifying statement about the situation.
[Allegation of private abuse redacted pending investigation; The ban remains due to behaviors that deeply troubled members of the community. 5/26/24]
We can, however, provide more details on how his public behaviors contributed to this case. Shout has leveraged multiple public forums to raise issues that he feels exist within the community. This, in and of itself, is not an issue. The mod team welcomes any and all feedback and suggestions, no matter the source or shape. However, where it crossed the line into abuse, is the nature of what was written and how it was presented. In the (multiple) most recent cases, the claims made are based entirely on speculation, utilizing harmful accusation with tenuous basis in fact to attempt to publicly slander individuals he does not agree with. To pretend that the moderation team did not evaluate any and all of these claims is false. It is in the judgment of not only the mod team, but other neutral consulted third parties, that shout's repeated behavior of attributing malice and intent to abuse, to rational actions performed by third parties he disagrees with, constitutes an issue grave enough to contribute to removal from the community.
We also take issue with the characterization that this is both out of the blue and that shout was not afforded any opportunity to defend himself. Countless individuals, both moderators and not, have engaged in public, semi-public, and private discussions with shout regarding his behavior, and it has resulted in no visible changes and continued behavior. In addition, in June of this year, the moderation team created a safe, moderated space to work through both shout's issues with others, and other's issues with shout. The channel #community-reconciliation stands as a testament to our desire to find an amicable solution, but as time progresses, we see more and more that there is no such solution. No other individual in this community's history has been afforded so many opportunities, second chances, and good faith, which makes the end result all the more difficult.
In addition, we did provide behavioral issues in the notice that we sent shout regarding his ban. These details were never included in the public announcement, and perhaps that may be a mistake on our part. Regardless, here they are now, from the message sent directly to shout informing him of his ban prior to the public announcement:
Specifically, our ban is based on numerous examples of unacceptable behaviors, including the following.
These and other behaviors have resulted in a community that is less safe and in undue stress for multiple non-directly involved parties.
In short, we hope this helps to further clarify our reasoning. We understand that we are asking a lot from the community in terms of faith in this process, and we appreciate the faith that's been shown, and empathize with the desire to know more. We ask that you, again, understand that the moderation team, together, came to this decision unanimously, and with due consideration of all factors. We hope this statement can help provide more reasoning as to our decision.