[Resolved] Ban Appeal

[aarom]

I'm sorry I didn't provide information

aarom	No Demos
Steam ID	STEAM_0:1:596994748
Steam3 ID	[U:1:1193989497]
Steam Community	76561199154255225
Invoked on	06-11-24 00:45
Banlength	Permanent
Expires on	Not applicable.
Reason	Transphobia/Brown Hat Rule
Banned by Admin	B. Comet
Banned from	Please Wait...
Total Bans	No previous bans
Blocked (6)	aarom, aarom, aarom, aarom, aarom, aarom

I'd like to appeal for my ban on the Vault F4 servers. My steam account name is aarom, you've banned seven accounts under the same name as me, and you've also banned the wrong person even though you successfully banned me as well, you banned an English man, I'm from the United States. Now for the reasons I've gotten banned, I did not practice any transphobia, in fact I think the reason I've gotten banned was because of an interaction with a Transgender woman who goes by the name "Wendy". I've asked if this "Wendy" was the same Wendy who was trans gotten offended after someone made a comment on their voice, but apparently according to the mod that has banned me, that's transphobic. And for the "Brown-hat" rule, I do not know what this means but I do take off my cowboy hat when I'm inside. (EDIT: The mod who has banned me marked this has not helpful, kind of biased of them)

 

[VintagePC]

you've banned seven accounts under the same name as me,

No we haven't. That just counts your attempts to enter our servers after the ban was logged.

and you've also banned the wrong person even though you successfully banned me as well, you banned an English man, I'm from the United States.

No, we haven't. You appear to be using a VPN and for whatever reason the GeoIP data used by SourceBans to show the country flag resolves to the UK. Addresses often change hands and it can take a bit for lookup information to be corrected.

As for the actual nature of your ban itself, your appeal has been received, we will review the details of the ban and will get back to you shortly with more information and a final decision, usually within 2-3 days.

 

[aarom]

No we haven't. That just counts your attempts to enter our servers after the ban was logged.


No, we haven't. You appear to be using a VPN and for whatever reason the GeoIP data used by SourceBans to show the country flag resolves to the UK. Addresses often change hands and it can take a bit for lookup information to be corrected.

As for the actual nature of your ban itself, your appeal has been received, we will review the details of the ban and will get back to you shortly with more information and a final decision, usually within 2-3 days.

Alright! I apologize for being mildly rude, however I feel that this was a false ban for I was not being transphobic.

 

[aarom]

No we haven't. That just counts your attempts to enter our servers after the ban was logged.


No, we haven't. You appear to be using a VPN and for whatever reason the GeoIP data used by SourceBans to show the country flag resolves to the UK. Addresses often change hands and it can take a bit for lookup information to be corrected.

As for the actual nature of your ban itself, your appeal has been received, we will review the details of the ban and will get back to you shortly with more information and a final decision, usually within 2-3 days.

Hey can you give me information regarding my ban, I'm still pretty upset about this ban for it was false and I was not attempting to be transphobic.

 

[VintagePC]

Hey can you give me information regarding my ban, I'm still pretty upset about this ban for it was false and I was not attempting to be transphobic.

I told you in my reply it could be up to 2-3 days before I get back to you. This community is not my day job and therefore I have a limited amount of time I am willing and able to devote each day to dealing with community matters such as ban appeals, and priority goes to those that have been waiting longer than you have. Reviewing ban appeals is not a trivial process and takes time for one to assess the information, interpret it and provide a detailed response to the person making the appeal.

Now, to the matter at hand - I've reviewed the information available to me, and our staff took issue with two specific things.

You were initially given a temporary ban for what they suspected to be an intentional mis-gendering of a trans person; first you ask if they are "the trans girl" and then follow up with "aren't you the guy"; regardless of how they identify one of those two is going to be offensive to them. You obviously know they're trans by your own statement.


This is also something that falls under the Brown hat rule in our server rules:

Don’t be an asshole. This is a catch-all rule used as necessary to maintain the “spirit” of our servers. We call it the "brown hat" rule, AKA "don't be scumbag Steve". This rule includes, but is not limited to:

• Intentionally starting drama or bringing up controversial subjects to start arguments (aka trying to “trigger” people)

We can't really think of a good reason to bring up this line of discussion out of the blue unless you're trying to start drama of some kind, especially when the event in question is (per the below) almost a month ago.

What tipped the scales to a permanent ban is that on review of your chat history, the following was found:


Telling someone to "shut the fuck up" for standing up for themselves and trying to make them to accept an apology, especially when the issue appears to be someone attacking them in a personal way is wholly inappropriate. If you aren't interested in what they are saying, mute the parties involved and move on.

Either of these alone would probably have been met with a temporary punishment, but both of them together strongly suggests that what you were doing on June 11th when you brought up that topic again was calculated, and in our book that constitutes targeted harassment of the individual.

As such, I'll direct your attention towards the sub-clause of server rule #3 on this matter, which states:

Anyone caught harassing another player on our servers on basis of race, sex, disability, gender, gender identity, or sexuality will be permanently banned. Appeals for this kind of ban will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

While this may not have been blatant transphobia (such as calling them slurs), it is nonetheless a form of discriminatory and inappropriate behaviour towards someone in a protected class of people and therefore unacceptable per our community rules.

Given the above explanation for your ban, you may certainly provide whatever additional commentary you think would be helpful to your case here and we will take it into consideration, but based on the information I currently have the ban reason is not inaccurate and the duration is in compliance with our posted rules. Do note, however, that in most cases, for our permanent bans we are willing to consider an appeal and offer a second chance once at least one year has elapsed from the date it was issued.