Why do we ban?

[Black Widow]

Before I get into this: I would like to prefix this by saying that I do not intend to unduly diss the efforts of those who literally waste hours of their lives trying to keep this place up and running, and that in a state of actual playability. The admin team, as well as the developers, the moderators and the faction leaders are all gears in the clockwork who keep this place running and I am more than grateful to any single one of them for giving me and others the opportunity to play and have countless hours of fun here. You should therefore keep in mind that anything I criticize in the following text is something I do because I love this place. I met a sizable number of awesome people here, had a good amount of very memorable gaming experiences and even engaged in friendships that I believe will survive even the inevitable end of Discovery. There is exactly zero interest in rustling feathers, belittling the effort that is being put into the server by those responsible for it, or in any other way maliciously disparage their work. My interest lies purely in the health of this community and I want to make suggestions as a concerned user to give you something to maybe, just maybe, consider when you are handling players.

My premise: In the following text, I am going to argue that the way sanctions, and especially the punishment of a ban, is being crassly misappropriated in one concrete case. I do not insinuate any malicious intent — far be it from me to accuse you of such. In order to truly understand the gravitas of what I am trying to convey, it would be a good idea to read the spoiler I put down below. While not necessary, it will help you put what I say into perspective. If uninterested, simply read further below it.

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What is the point of punishment?

What is the point of punishment?

The purpose of punishment is fourfold. In lesser developed cultures, the principle of an eye for an eye may work well, though in ours, this would quickly devolve into madness and mayham. This is why this so called absolute retributive theory of punishment is not practiced in its most pure form in any of our cultures, though retribution/vindication plays a part. Against this rather cruel and barbaric way stands the more nuanced approach of modern judiciary systems, which follow the so called relative theories of punishment more than they do the retributive ones (they do combine them to a certain part but that would lead us down a rabit hole you and I are not interested in here). One of these relative theories of punishment is the prevention theory. It makes four statements, two of which address the community of a jurisdiction and the other two the perpetrator of a crime in that jurisdiction. They have positive (outward) and negative (inward) effects.

There is positive general prevention, which wants to strengthen the community's trust into the jurisdiction — in our case, that would be the server rules. The subject of the jurisdiction sees that the laws are being upheld and therefore learns to obey them, lest there be punishment. In our community, a case of such positive general prevention would be the infamous heavy decision, a case in which the administration wanted to show that the rules were being upheld and to publically send a statement to the Discovery Community, hence the extra announcements instead of separate sanction threads. Needless to say, this had a significant backlash, without wanting to pass moral judgement at this point.

This way of punishing also has an inverse effect, the negative general prevention, whose purpose it is to prevent future crimes from other (!) people using the threat of harsh punishments as deterrent. That this approach is fallacious should be clear to any one of us who has compared numbers regarding committed crimes in US states where the death penalty is permitted and in those where it isn't. You will not find that the fact that a harsher punishment is possible for murderers is a cause for lesser numbers of this crime committed, hence this approach is, today, largely rejected by most scholars.

What about the perpetrator, though? If I were to simply look at the above, I would wonder where the perpetrator is in those thought processes. Surely, the community cannot be the only one who is being addressed when a crime is punished. The perpetrator is not simply a means by which the state can demonstrate what happens when the law is violated. In Germany, such a justification for punishment would violate Art. 1 Abs. 1 GG of the German Constituation, the corner stone upon which our society functions, because the perpetrator would be degraded as a mere means to an end of the state, and not be treated as and end in itself. This is why the punitive system also takes the perpetrator into consideration when chosing and imposing punishments.

In addition to the points raised by the general prevention, the special prevention is added, wanting to take into consideration the perpetrator and trying to find a balance between the needs of the community, the need for the jurisdiction to prevail over injustice committed by the perpetrator, and the dignity of the perpetrator that is inate and inalienable to them because they are human. Again, there are positive and inverse (negative) sides to this theory. The positive special prevention puts the aspect of rehabilitation and resocialisation into the foreground. The perpetrator is to be re-added into the community using positive sanctions (praise, rewards, awards for their progress away from their wicked ways), those that make them reflect, think, really grasp the gravity of their committed injustice. Now you may say that there are people who simply cannot be rehabilitated, and that is certainly a very valid criticism to have. However, if you compare numbers of crimes committed in countires that employ such methods in prison (Sweden, Germany) with those prison systems who simply want to punish (negative special prevention), you will find that the former are doing much better in terms of repeated offenders — This method works. The Discovery equivalent for this could be putting a user on probation after a ban as means to re-introduce them to the community at least in a controlled way.

The inverse side, the negative special prevention puts the need to protect the community from the perpetrator into the foreground. The perpetrator is punished in order to prevent them from committing wrong again. Like a child, they are being educated into accepting that they have done wrong. The punishments are mostly negative ones, like reproach, lawsuits, prison sentences, fines, or in the most severe cases, being permanently locked away because they are just too dangerous. The equivalent of this for Discovery, would be a permanent, indefinite ban. Think about this for a moment.

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Discovery is based on a rather old game. It shows pretty much in every aspect when we play, be it performance or gameplay-wise. Players are becoming a rather rare commodity the older it gets. It is shown in the way the player count of the server goes down over the years. Yes, there were times when there were 200 slots and you spent a good amount of time trying your hardest getting one of these precious things, but as the game got older, so did we. People moved on, either to other things in life or other games. It is therefore that any player that we currently have is, and should be treated as something precious. We are insufferable brats at times, some more than others, but we are keeping something alive that has brought us all frustration, joy, and (I would wager) even wonder at least at some point. We are playing a game that is so old, and still having our fun with it.

The sad fact is that more people are moving away from us than joining us now, however. It is completely normal for a game this old and has (I would postulate) not more to do with the people than it had many years ago. It should, however, drive home the point that nobody is being done a favour if people are also being punished harshly with bans. You cannot do this with a community that has more people leaving it than joining it!

Am I saying that I am against bans in general? No, I am absolutely not. What I want to argue for is a more social way of handling wrongdoers. The sanction system, and especially the appeal system after a ban, ought to be tailored towards an approach that focuses on rehabilitation and resocialisation into the community rather than serve as a method of ousting those who have done wrong permanently without giving them the means to even prove (!) that they can do better, i.e. denying appeals. No means for recourse should, at least in my honest opinion, only be given in cases of cheating or this type of behavior.

Am I saying you aren't doing that already? Again, no. There are countless examples of people who have been sanctioned a lot of times with the intent to show them that they did wrong and should adjust their behaviour. And yes, such attempts can fail. I will now attach a list of people I want to use as example in this.

List of Sanctions - Chuba, Snak3, Toris

http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=128275 - Snak3 First Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=138232 - Snak3 Second Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=138151& - Snak3 Sanction
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=127803 - Snak3 Sanction
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=123258 - Snak3 Probation
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=122594 - Snak3 Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=118702 - Snak3 Warning
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=117233 - Snak3 Ban

http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=138988 - Toris
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=138636& - Toris pt.2
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=136170 - Toris Probation

http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=138356 - Vulk Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=138371 - Vulk Ban

http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=117014 - Chuba Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=122425 - Chuba Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=123438 - Chuba Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=123914 - Chuba Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=133583 - Chuba Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=137067 - Chuba Ban
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=137144 - Chuba Probation
http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=137199 - Chuba Perma

http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=140802 - Laz Ban

This brings me directly to the example that I said I would use in the beginning of this text. I believe we can all agree that what Laz did was pretty bad. Not only did he take the Core shareds (together with another person, who was never punished for it, because Laz covered you), but he also had them unlocked by obtaining the Core blue name using a deception and continued to distribute them to certain people who then either sold or kept them. What ensued was a confused, childish tirade over the forums. Now the question: Was any of that really as bad as what has been banned for before and since, considering even that Laz made it up to those he initially wronged and who pushed him into this state of confusion?

The ban in the initial case was a well justified means of telling him off, that he cannot do these things. I, however, have to admit that I cannot claim complete innocence of the ensuing tirade on the forums either, because I went to Laz afterwards and abused him mentally in a severe manner that caused this distress in the first place. I posted his appeal after the period of six months during which a member needs to stay away from the community in order to be considered for an appeal. He and I talked it out, we all reconsiled about what happened over the Core/Zoner drama in Summer. Who is being protected from him? It's clearly not us, the Core, because we have put our differences aside, talked to each other and became friends again. It also isn't the community, because forum outbursts that become abusive have been punished with way less before.

The ban serves no purpose anymore. Nobody is being protected. The punishment has been delivered. Laz has seen what he did wrong and apologized, earnestly and without any ulterior motives. Ergo, denying his appeal is a disproportionately harsh means by which to achieve the ends (protection, punishment).

Laz is still young. If his appeal might have sounded dumb, it was because he does not have the verbosity to make it appear as grovelling as others could've written it. That does not mean that he did not truly mean that he was sorry and won't do such things again. Please, I urge you to reconsider your choice regarding him. Please, just put him on probation and if he does commit any transgressions again, it would only take a marginal effort to ban him again.

Because the day we stop giving at least second chances is the day we stop caring altogether.

TL : DR

I always asked why people unbanned only to come back and do the same things again?

We need to ban everyone that gets out of line. No debate, No question, No compromise.