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Emoticonius/thechurchofsatan has been banned from all Wintreath platforms as of several days ago.

In his time in Wintreath, CoS has usually been a laid-back member of our community in good standing. However, he has now twice shown the same concerning pattern of behaviour that involves losing his temper and flaming people while leaving the community. This statement goes into the details of both incidents to demonstrate this pattern, which we feel warrants a ban from the community given the severity of both.

Recently
Last Monday, CoS was part of a debate on gun regulations when he stated that liberals don't know the process for purchasing a gun. This went against our debate guidelines against stereotyping any group of people, but when that was pointed out he doubled-down on it by saying liberals wanted mandatory background checks that already existed. This in turn drew in others who showed that due to loopholes background checks are not actually universal. When another member mocked his original claim that liberals don't know what they're talking about, he accused them of flamebaiting, then immediately afterwards flamed them and left the Discord. Coming from a former senior Discord op, this is extraordinarily bad behaviour.

Evidence: Gun Chat

At this point, the Discord ops team decided to ban CoS from our content-warning channel due to this and his past struggles to keep his anger in check. When this was communicated to him by Dawsinian several hours later, his response was to flame a separate op entirely unrelated to the incident because he confused them with the person he had flamed before.

Evidence: Response to Dawsinian

Given his history, this led to a discussion on banning him entirely. As the ops team were deliberating, I reached out to CoS to get his perspective on what happened. Unfortunately, he mostly blamed the person he flamed for his actions and again accused them of flame-baiting. He also blamed the ops team for the "misstep" of contacting him only a few hours after the incident, feeling that the team should have waited longer for him to cool down. He finally requested his own banning, but asked that a public statement not be made as to why. By this point I was so disillusioned with his responses that I stopped replying back.

Even if he were right about being flame-baited, the correct response would have been to report it to the ops and definitely not use it as an excuse to flame somebody. Obviously it's not alright to stereotype a group of people, and when an op points this out to you it's a good idea to reconsider what you're saying, or to at least remain silent. Finally, we have made public statements on all permanent bans of regular members throughout the history of Wintreath. CoS knows all these things since he was once senior Discord op and both handled similar incidents and made similar public statements in that capacity, which was another factor considered in this ban.

Less Recently
If this were a single incident, I doubt we would be taking such strong action. Flaring tempers over politics is hardly uncommon these days, even in a community that's otherwise as close-knit as Wintreath. However, these events bear a remarkable resemblance to those in 2020 that led to his termination from the Discord ops team, his banishment from the ops area (usually old ops retain their access as ex-officio members), and ultimately temporary muting on the Discord. Then as now, he proved unable to control his temper and allowed anger to cloud his judgement. Then as now he flamed multiple people both before and during his departure from the community. Then as now he largely blamed others for his own behavior.

These events took place during what's known as the bob incident in our community, which was sparked when another Discord op renamed a number of people to 'bob' as a joke, unknowingly including a transgender member who had their pronouns in their name. This sparked an outrage in our community in part because of CoS's response to the initial incident and his increasingly antagonistic responses as the incident dragged out, which in turn led to demands for his removal. Days later, he was indeed removed, not because it had been demanded, but because of his deteriorating behaviour since then. Within the span a few days afterwards:

1) He was reprimanded for joking in the ops channel that he wanted to wring a member's neck.
2) He was terminated from the ops team for putting out an inflammatory forum statement, editing it only to "avoid hurting their precious revolutionary hearts", calling those members children and assholes in the ops channel (and rabid dogs in the statement), and overall showing exceptionally unprofessional behaviour. Far from regretting his actions, he attempted to credit them with ending the incident.

Evidence: Taking Credit for Ending the Incident

3) His ex-officio status was revoked after he put out another forum statement claiming that he was speaking for the ops team and publicly revealed information that had been told in the ops area in confidence, then misrepresenting it to make a member look bad as explained by trader at the link.

He was also muted for 24-hours. In response, he flamed the op who muted him, flamed another member to me personally, and then flamed that member directly over DMs.

Evidence: Response to Being Muted, as Reported in the Ops Channel

Closeup of CoS's Message to Chanku

At that point the ops team seriously discussed banning him then and there, but opted not to because he had already left and had stated that he would not ever be back, something that had been forgotten by the time he returned. Given that he did return and within months lost his temper, flamed out and left in nearly the exact same manner, the ops team has now decided to level that indefinite ban from our community.