Closure of the Gutter/Bannings at MTGS: A personal outlook

Col. Khaddafi · Postby **Col. Khaddafi** » Mon Oct 22, 2012 1:13 am

Hello everyone.

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:

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.

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.

As it has been explained by one of the banned members:

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

We further learned that the negotiations with Curse had started exactly when the shutdown of the Gutter was initially announced, circa late June 2012.

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"?

Originally posted by Arcadic on MTGS

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.

Well here's the thing: This was all a façade.

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.

Zionite · Postby **Zionite** » Mon Oct 22, 2012 1:53 am

Thanks for laying it bare; it's been informative.

The primary reason for my support was the restriction of free speech. In some cases, it is necessary to limit some speech in order to filter the crap out of the legitimate discussion at hand. In this case, it was purely enforced just for the convenience of the staff. Instead of taking responsibility for their own leaks, they lashed out at those who spoke out. When that happens in a nation/state/citizen relationship, it's called a dictatorship. I'm in staunch opposition to any such kind of behavior, not just from my government but from anyone. Nothing good comes from quelling conversation. Good/bad ideas are only identified through discourse and are only polished through civil argument. Their attempt to shut up anyone pointing out their own mistakes infuriated me. That was my reasoning for posting the rumor to reddit and dealing a huge blow to the site. I took it down on good
faith, thinking they got my message and would be unbanning everyone. That's even what the Curse representative lead me to believe. Obviously we know now that's not what they were going to do.

The second reason was because I'm sick of good Mafia players disappearing for things completely unrelated to Mafia, and it's been choking our community there for years. Good players get banned for reasons that may or may not be legitimate, and even if they are, they have no bearing on our games and don't affect their ability to play faithfully. I'd rather have a community where we come to play Mafia and get banned for cheating.

Guardman · Postby **Guardman** » Mon Oct 22, 2012 2:22 am

I agree. There is a lot of non-kosher stuff going on with the staff of Sally as of late. I don't think this will cause a News style exodus, because there is just too big of an userbase that doesn't give a shit. It's one of the reasons I started my Mafia website, because for how much I love the mafia community on Sally I don't think it is going to last. There are too many people being banned that play there for bs reasons and there are a lot of people leaving because of the drama.

If nothing else someone could write an article on it and probably get some good run on some of the big gaming websites as Curse is one of the largest gaming companies around and this would be really bad PR if it was widely known.

Col. Khaddafi · Postby **Col. Khaddafi** » Mon Oct 22, 2012 4:40 pm

Truth be told, I'm sure that many of the regular mods were sincere in their willing to strike a compromise, even some of those who were not appreciative of the Gutter. Its the higher-ups I have not an ounce of trust in. Then again the fact that the regular mods are regularly (pun intended) kept in the dark about key aspects of that site management is symptomatic of where the tree's rotten apples lie in.

Thrillho · Postby **Thrillho** » Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:49 pm

Hello friend,

I used to be known as Kijin when I decided that a title I got from an early issue of the U.S. Shonen Jump would be less cool than a still-funny classic Simpsons reference. I was a staff member of MTGS for over 7 years, if you include moderating the Gutter as a staff-level position, or 6, if you don't. I used to be in charge of Extended while that was still a format, and eventually joined on as a moderator of the Market Street Cafe financial discussion subforum. I was brought onto the Gutter-staff around the mid-point of the Gutter's existence, but had been a Gutter member from the time it was still known as "The Room with a Moose."

I, like the site I used to work for, have grown in my time since I first joined MTGS. An unfortunate reality is while I've grown towards adulthood, the site I used to curate had shrunk towards adolescence, if not childishness. The best analogy I can make is MTGS is that
kid who invites you over to play cowboys and indians, but then creates a bunch of nonsensical rules that make it impossible for you to do anything except play a game where the cowboys win, such as making portable photon shields and bombs for the cowboy sides, and also being able to dodge arrows.

My final days on MTGS started when I was removed from staff for commenting that the forum populace was comprised of adult children and neckbeards when a small segment of the forum users decided that their subjective life experience was the best advice that could be dolled out to a user who professed harboring violent ideations about classmates who had victimized him, in addition to a later taunting comment that took an attacking, aggressive tone with a potentially volatile user. I protested my staff removal not because I thought that my comments wouldn't be deemed insulting (though, if you take a bigger-picture look at what we do as Magic players and still consider yourself a paragon of adulthood and maturity
while saying with a straight face that you play a game where you act as an all-powerful Planeswalker dueling other all-powerful Planeswalkers for supremacy of the Multiverse, 10/10, you're a master), but because my attempt at putting how dangerous the advice others gave this user in perspective and subsequent removal from staff for it was seen as more violently important than closure of the thread, contacting the user in question, and facilitating some form of punishment or at least warning for users prospectively playing a very dangerous game with what could have been an entire school of people's lives. It was at this time I realized that there was no work I could do to make the forum a better place if those were the priorities the staff had in order, brought this issue of judgment to light on the main forums, and was quickly dismissed and forgotten about.

Months later after much quiet, the aforementioned threat of Gutter closure was raised seemingly for no cause or reason, other than a very broad
assertion that the subsection was not what the staff was looking for on the site. Seeing the hypocrisy of this issue after knowing full well the staff harbored a thread specifically for bashing users, one of the reasons we were threatened with closure, as well as a spam thread similar to the one we had, I raised this issue on the main forums. This was quickly forgotten but granted us a chance to appeal the threat of closure through tailoring the Gutter to better fit with what the staff had in mind for the forum. I spearheaded much of the discussion, quickly drafting a comprehensive set of rules for the formerly lawless Gutter to give the staff something to hold us to so that they wouldn't be perpetually tongue-tied when issues arose with individual users or us as a usergroup. To me, at the time, it made a lot of sense to include this, even if not all Gutter members liked it. Ending the almost constant threat of deletion through a written armistice was a lot better than being in a perpetual cold war.

nAfter three or so months, a suspension on dubious grounds, many of the facts now out in the open started coming to light: Curse, the attempt to turn the site into a "family friendly place," the coup against the current three gutter mods, the delay tactics while Curse determined whether or not the subsection could even stand the crossover, the lack of communication, cloak-and-daggery, rules for the sake of rules, the enforcement of rules for the sake of punishment, the endless CI threads, the empty dialog and unanswered questions... it was all a drawn-out, time-consuming game of messy cookie that had non-staff stationed behind waist-high sneeze guards. We had an era of communication, community building, and forward movement and had regressed to a more backwards point in time than when our administrator thought that it would be quaint to keep banned users in a subsection where they could only talk to themselves. The staff acted out policies to bolster their position while complaining that they werent appreciated enough. In effect, they carried out the same policies they ridiculed the Gutter for following with more whining and power reigning and less of a focus on the community as a whole to keep their positions secure.

My last act of protest against this bloated beast of a community head I once fought for and with and worked hard with Azrael to better was to lay out the secrets the staff had tried to keep from the community and put it in the context it needed: your site is changing, to many for the worse, because your rulers are building a tower to spit on you from, and they'll be doing it to a profit.

I hope to carry on here what I started on MTGS -- creating and maintaining a great resource for anyone who needs it within an community of active and informed contributors. Also, I'd like us to not take the Internet so seriously.

Azrael · Postby **Azrael** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 3:25 am

Here is what we got:

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.
Which 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.

I can confirm that this post comes straight from Nai within the mod lounge, and I know where to get screenshots as well as a PDF file of the entire thread to confirm.

I would like to note that although a number of mods were ready to give in to Curse on this, Nai changed his mind, stood up to Curse, and refused to lie to the userbase.

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).

Not sure this is a fair shot at Nai. I've seen the inside of the ML in more detail than some of you may be aware, and of all the people on staff right now, Nai is the most vocal and persistent in pushing the staff to put the userbase first. I don't think he planned to bait you, Kpaca, or Kijin to do anything.

From what I can see, the worst parts of the staff are mostly concentrated at the lower tiers. And as a large bloc of them have become increasingly vocal, the administration has become reluctant to take stances which contradicts such a sizable and militant faction of the staff. Admin themselves, and a few other voices from time to time, are on the side of good sense more often than not, but they're allowing their least wise and capable personnel to govern their course and dominate the thread of conversation. And at this point, the remaining voices speaking in opposition are worn out and mostly silent.

One of the few still fighting hard, is Nai.

jonnyjonski · Postby **jonnyjonski** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:14 pm

So this in what E_R posted today at 6:30 this morning:

A number of our members have been sent a PM from multiple gimmicks, a PM that reads as follows:

The first quoted post was made by Nai, as an opening post to a thread specifically to find a way to not have to close the Gutter, to not have to ruin that community. The admins had talked this over for some time, trying to find a way in which we would not have to act in a manner against our ethics and honour. We had said we weren't going to close the Gutter, and each of us wished to uphold that promise. After discussion in the Admin Lounge, discussion in the Global Lounge, we brought it to the moderators.

The various mods debated back and forth, discussing and searching for alternatives to closing the Gutter, or to neutering it. We had committed to work with the Gutter in lieu of closing it, and none of us were comfortable rescinding that promise. After
increasingly frustrated discussions that could not find a good solution, the admins decided that we would rather resign than go back on our word. We decided that the best course of action was to contact Curse and ask them to reconsider their closing requirement. They informed us that we took the suggestion too seriously, that it was up to us to close or not; there had been a simple misunderstanding about the nature of our business relationship. Unfortunately, the entire discussion was blown out of proportion due to a lack of understanding about the nature of these discussions and whether they were up for debate or not.

Unfortunately, we have had a multitude of leaks over the past two months. Some of them may have been made to better the site and simply made a mistake. Some of them may have been made to hurt Salvation. But as far as we can tell, all the poor ramifications of these leaks have come from lack of context. From non-final decisions being leaked that later changed, to details being removed from
context or purposefully twisted. This is one of those leaks. The poster tries to twist the first quote to mean exactly opposite of what it means. Same with the second. Furthermore, they've taken an out of context post from another moderator in an attempt to paint them in a bad light. They are actively trying to harm our website and, while we are flattered they care that much, we must respectively decline their invitation for a pissing contest and ask them to leave us in peace. With that said, we would like to thank all those recipients of this PM who stepped forwards to inform us that someone was attempting to harm this website. They believe in us, and they're our heroes for that. We'll see you guys around the site.

Azrael · Postby **Azrael** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:27 pm

I thought it was very interesting that the staff has chosen to openly pass the buck to Curse on this debacle/pin it on a misunderstanding.

Thrillho · Postby **Thrillho** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:23 pm

We should really look into getting this "Misunderstanding" character banned.

sqruee · Postby **sqruee** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:07 pm

on the bright side, if you've been infracted/suspended/banned on ugly sally you now have the perfect staff-sponsored defense!

nevermind whatever damage you've done, it was all a misunderstanding!

Kaitscralt · Postby **Kaitscralt** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 11:34 pm

My name is Madding. I am not an animal!

Mogadishu Jones · Postby **Mogadishu Jones** » Wed Oct 24, 2012 1:00 am

I havnt had time to be at a real comp to type up the type of appeal thats necessary for these twats, but i had an aim convo with nai laying all this out and his response was "well the admins agree with you but the lower mods vote yes to you being banned so your sol sorry"