No. This is a serious situation and nothing about these posts reflects an appreciation for that. The level of hypocrisy in your posts also suggests either a lack of understanding of core community values, or serial irresponsibility with regard to the consequences of your actions. I will expand on what I mean below. Should you have the patients to read it I suspect it will be useful, if only to satisfy a delusion that I am infact a hypocritical tyrant who leads like-minded snowflakes around the Internet in a pervasive ego-stroking frenzy, accidentally stumbling upon mild-success every few months at the hands of some poor soul who we end up banning out of incompetence.
I will start with the events on September 11th just because I need somewhere to begin to unpack how complex this decision actually was.
Making jokes about 9/11 in public is never appropriate. It doesn't matter what your political beliefs are about what happened before, during, or after the event. I doesn't matter what your relation is to the event or anyone involved. The fact of the matter is that people died in the towers and people continue to die because the towers fell. Everyone grieves differently in private, but in the general public grieves with solemn silence, especially on a marked anniversary and following the events in Afghanistan over these last few months. This is a moment of global and national introspection. Remember that next time before you make a joke and before you announce to the public that you are going to make such jokes in your private life. Taking action and telling someone you are going to take action are not the same, but can be equally as offensive and thoughtless.
You talk a lot about respect, though I would argue in name only. Respect is not an unconditional excuse for self conceit. Respect is a bi-directional, disjoint thing which is earned overtime. I think this definition of respect is well exemplified in our policy on swearing. Swearing is allowed, but if you are asked to stop, please work something out like /ignore, /msg, /group or chats to accommodate what is a totally reasonable request. Alternatively, just use another word. It's called code switching. We all do it. The policy itself is simple, but the implementation is complex and done on a case by case basis. These are the same expectations we have for any behavior on the server. I will explicitly note that I am now talking about your 'dark humor.' Joking about 9/11 is not core to your being. Violating the trust of a confident while they are offline is not core who you are. Volatile verbal outbursts, DMs included, do not build respect nor should they be expected to maintain it.
Now I know that we have said we make an effort to not overstep our domain and only hold people accountable for their behavior on the server. I know that many of the incidents I have in mind about the above happened off-network. That said, in the nearly nine years this server has been up I can not think of another user who has been involved in more private reports of emotional distress, manipulation, backstabbing, or general drama. I will not pretend to know all of the details for those cases. I am not saying you don't have a right to defend yourself or that you have to just lay down and take this same behavior from others. What I do know and am saying is where there is smoke, there is a fire and I've never had anyone try to tell me where the fire actually was so I am left only with correlation to find my way.
Continuing with correlated conclusions, I need to talk about taking responsibility. First me. I need to take responsibility for something. IP addresses showing up in ban messages. I am sorry this happened. This is a public apology to the dozens of others who were IP banned while offline and may have had their IP address leaked. It shouldn't have happened. We messed up. I've since located the bug which has somehow existed for years on hundreds of servers and I am fixing it. Rest assured, it won't happen again.
Now for the rest of the smoke in the room: your taking responsibility. In none of the situations which I referenced above, or the public incidents which I've dealt with on the server do I recall you taking responsibility for what happened. Even in this ban appeal you blame everyone else for being too sensitive and myself and the involved staff of being serially incompetent. Apologizing for making an insensitive remark about a terrorist attack on a Minecraft server is the bare minimum for things that should get an automatic apology. The fact that I have to say that is so absurd I feel it necessary to reference my points above just to ensure that it is clear that this situation shouldn't even arise - ever. I have had people message me and say they will leave the server if I even consider un-banning you. That has never happened before. Take responsibility for your actions. You need to be introspective and thoughtful. Thinking that just because you aren't offended means that it is overly sensitive for someone else to be offended is the epitome of selfishness and one of the most basic levels of empathy I hesitate to say it even counts.
This last bit is a bit of a more introspective note that I've decided to include to explain why this ban appeal is different than most others. Usually I will pull chat logs and make an effort to be objective, judging on a mostly quantitative framework. I don't think that works here. First because so much of what this decision is based off of was relayed to staff in confidence that I could not go into adequate detail. Second, about every 6 months we have to make a difficult ban decision. Most of our rules are straightforward and can be proven broken with material evidence. This appeal, as those 6-month cases tend to do, falls in the more subjective area. These decisions are hard because usually there is not one single thing we can point to and say 'this is why you were banned.' The 9/11 stunt actually cleared things up significantly, but most of this response wasn't really about that. Saturday just gave me an easy framework from which to explain this decision. Instead, it was about all the little things that have afflicted many members of the community over the last many months. I know you have friends who are supporting and will continue support you through this. Being your friend is not defined by PCN, the events I have described here, or your 'dark humor' on Saturday. As I said, respect is complicated, but they have decided that you are defined by more than just what I know about you which honestly seems like a difficult decision to make. For that and their loyalty I commend them. Contrary to delusional belief, no one will ever be banned for reason "defended iDeluxe." This decision is instead for all of the people who don't know you, but do recognize the obscenity of what I've described either intrinsically and the people who do know you and these obscenities because they experienced them. This decision is a statement certifying that I recognize this behavior is absolutely unbecoming of someone I'd want welcoming new players into the community and would be embarrassed to have known about and done nothing when I had the chance.
