#hub stuff

preface: i genuinely don’t understand why people get so upset at being banned from pluralhub that they feel the need to make callouts/etc over it. i really don’t

disclaimer

anyways, moving on

i’m gonna say “we” and “our” a lot in this, and since we’re a system, i want to clarify- when i say “we” i typically mean we as a staff team in terms of plural hub. if i mean we as a system, as in only the Grey Skies, i’ll say “we as a system” or “we personally” or “we (gs).” hopefully this helps some confusion for people seeing this who think that we as a system are somehow the masterminds for everything that goes on in PH ever (even when we aren’t staff, bc lord that’s happened multiple times now)

also, on that note: no, we personally aren’t on staff anymore. we haven’t been on staff for a couple months now, and that’s the same for the blossom server in case that comes up. even before we officially left staff we weren’t that active- we only did bans bc we were the ones that organized the info the best. that’s it. now we’re only around because we run hubbot

here’s how bans work:

someone does something that another person feels is bad enough that it warrants a report

the report is made. the form requires the user’s discord name and ID, the reason for reporting, and some form of evidence. reports are not acted on without this, and the form physically cannot be submitted without something in this field

unless extremely urgent (eg. the report is about an ongoing or about-to-begin raid on hub) the staff team reviews it. evidence is looked through, and several members of staff decide a verdict based on our reporting and banning guidelines.

information is organized into a ban log (”receipt”). once this is done, the ban is carried out. a few commands are used and then the reps in the hub are notified of the ban

at this point in time, absolutely none of the ban info is actually public. the ONLY people that have access to bans logs are hub staff members and users that have listed servers. this is still considered relatively private, and the majority of people who do have access to ban logs likely won’t even pay attention to it. (this is ignoring potential for the initial reporter or reps to spread the info; that’s another matter)

the only thing that’s happened so far is:

someone thought you did a no-no

hub agreed with them and removed you from the server

that is it. that is the bare basics of a ban. person do bad, person get boot. 

some people like to argue that getting removed from plural hub means getting removed from ~the entire discord plural community~ or what have you, but this isn’t true in the slightest. why, you ask? well, for the simple fact that

hub doesn’t enforce bans.

i feel like i need to emphasize that because people don’t really.... know or understand it. genuinely

anyways, i’ll break it down a bit more. in order for you to be banned from a hub-listed server, this chain of events needs to happen:

when you’re banned from hub, reps get a notification. if they have hubbot in their server (which... very many don’t), they’ll also get a popup in there- but only if you’re in the server, or if you join after the ban goes out. there is no enforcement of banning.

the closest there is to ban enforcement is the fact that banned members can’t be staff in servers listed with us, but c’mon- it doesn’t really make sense to partner with a server that’s represented by someone you banned. that’s the only reason it’s a rule. also the whole “being listed is a partnership” thing is important but that’s for another post

someone thought you did a no-no

hub agreed and banned you

a rep seeing the report also agrees and bans you from their server

that’s three different people that need to agree on something. actually, it’s even more than that, because several staff members need to agree before the ban is carried out to begin with AND it’s ignoring each server’s staff- but for simplicity’s sake, let’s say it’s three. three people need to say “oh yeah, that’s pretty bad” in order for you to be banned from hub and one listed server

when people say that being banned from hub means being banned from the discord plural community, they’re asking for an extremely unlikely chain of events to occur. heck, even saying that they’re being banned from a “large portion” of it is just blatantly false. there are so many servers that aren’t partnered with the hub and have never heard of it

do you know how many people would need to agree in order to get banned from ALL the servers listed in hub? how about half? a quarter? just, like, 5?

too many. a lot of the reps in the hub think similarly due to the nature of the community, but not enough for one ban to ripple out to every single server listed in the hub, unless it’s an EXTREME case. every server has its own rules, its own method for handling bans, and its own staff team to review the logs we give out.

oh, and since i’m here: callout posts are more public and easily shareable than hub-created logs will ever be. just keep that in mind i guess

edit: oh! also! unlike many other hubs, we actually have a ban appeal process that’s both easy to access and doesn’t rely on messaging a staff member directly. most situations are also an automatic appeal approval (hehe triple A) after 3-6 months since the ban, as long as no other incidents have occurred and someone can vouch. i’ve also talked about this before, but we personally love unbanning people, because it means they’ve grown and changed and man does that give me hope for other huamn beings