MrManson/Acyria has been banned from all Wintreath platforms, effective immediately.
Earlier this evening, Jarl of Foreign Affairs Ruguo received a telegram from Sylh Alanor, the delegate and Councilor of Foreign Affairs in Refugia, that contained claims about Acyria: that he had joined Refugia's Discord server and identified himself as our Thane of Regional Affairs, then began pushing toward sexual topics in their public area, advertised Wintreath, and discussed his involvement in a private 18+ server in a way that sounds incredibly bad. Ruguo forwarded the matter to the Joint Moderation Group, which is a panel that deliberates on OOC issues and policy and is composed of the Discord ops team, former ops, and Jarls. The Group launched an investigation that found evidence verifying what had been said, and then made the decision to ban him. Unfortunately, my internet was down while all this was going on, but I concurred with the decision once I was able to read through what happened.
There is one specific thing that I would like to address:
Several weeks ago, Michi and I decided to start a private 18+ Discord server (which has a SFW and a NSFW section that members can opt into) as an experiment with an eye toward eliminating the adult community in Wintreath. We felt that spinning that area into its own independent project would provide a more secure, comfortable, and safe area for its members, open up participation to people outside of Wintreath, and eliminate an area that takes a good deal of time and effort to run appropriately as a subsection of a general community like Wintreath.
It's a server for private discussions, but I wanted to clarify because while I don't know what "blacklisting reasons" are, I know how bad that sounds. All members of this server are indeed adults, and the same content rules that apply to Wintreath's adult area also apply to this server. Acyria was aware that this was a private server not to be discussed outside of it, given that he then said people don't know it exists unless they're invited and jokingly said not to discuss it. However, he then proceeded to violate that privacy anyways by bringing up his own involvement in it. For that reason, he has been banned from there as well.
This was some very poor judgement displayed by someone who was a rising star in our community. In his time in Wintreath, he impressed many of us with his knowledge, interest, and ideas in many aspects of regional affairs. For that he was appointed to the position of Thane of Regional Affairs, a decision that Stigya consulted with many of us on and that we concurred with enthusiastically. In the role, he did a great job of moderating the RMB and participating in the various roleplays that went on there. He also took part in our gaming revival, hosting a number of successful Among Us games. He quickly earned the respect, trust, and faith of this community, and beyond being banned it has left many of us feeling deeply disappointed that he displayed such poor conduct as a guest of another community.
On behalf of Wintreath, I deeply apologize to the community of Refugia for the conduct of our former member while he was on their server. I regret that his actions have reflected on our own community in such a terrible way. I would also like to thank Sylh Alanor for bringing this matter to our attention so that we could investigate and take appropriate action. Without knowing and having the opportunity to look into it now, this could have become an even bigger problem down the road. Finally, although this has been an entirely disappointing situation, I want to say how proud I am of the Joint Moderation Group for so quickly, thoroughly, and decisively handling this matter in my absence. Our handling of OOC matters has vastly improved over the last few years thanks to this group of people, and this incident shows once again what an asset they are to our community.
