Summary of Recent Events

Author: bsh1

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Here I will summarize recent events and investigations relating to Wylted and Hammer. These summaries are accurate, complete, supported by cited evidence, and straightforward. They represent my final word on the issue.

I. Wylted

A. Wylted's Transgressions

Based on screenshots which were originally sent to me by a trustworthy party, I concluded that Wylted was actively campaigning for Supa's induction into the Hall of Fame despite rules prohibiting that kind of electioneering. On the basis of those screenshots, I referred the case to Castin--the Assistant Moderator for Special Cases--to further investigate. I am personally recused from moderating Wylted, and therefore stepped back to allow Castin to perform her investigation as she saw fit.

She reported back to me with the conclusion that Wylted had in fact been pursuing such an illicit campaign on Discord. She was able to confirm the validity of the screenshots with a different party (not the person who originally submitted the screenshots), and on that basis recommended a 4-day extension of Wylted's temp-ban. This was pursuant to the MEEP giving DART moderation authority over activities on Discord. When the campaigning persisted, despite Wylted being informed of this ban extension, Castin referred the issue to Discord moderation for further review.

Wylted knowingly violated the rule against campaign twice. Once when his ban was originally extended, and again when he continued to campaign despite having had his ban extended. A statement was made during the Hall of Fame voting phase stating these findings and making a ruling on the validity of certain votes cast in light of what had transpired.

B. Moderation Involvement

While some moderation figures (Supa, Vaar, and Virt) did vote with Wylted's campaign and were exposed to it, I said explicitly in a later statement that "I have not punished any user for voting with a campaign so long as they were not actively a part of the campaign." Virt also denied that Wylted's outreach had influenced his decision. No users was punished for voting with a campaign so long as they themselves were not actively doing the campaigning. No special treatment was given to these mods. Moreover, I reached out to each of these users to discuss the seriousness of their oversights. Moderation cannot be perceived to be breaking the rules it sets. I acknowledge that there choices were problematic, but, again, they received no special treatment.

II. TheHammer

A. The Beginning of the Inquiry
 
Hammer made a thread alleging that he had, in coordination with others, "pushed most of his early nomination votes." Having heard these allegations, I was concerned. I was initially inclined to believe Hammer's allegations in part because his cadre of friends had attempted to violate the rules of the last Hall of Fame election on DDO. I therefore needed to verify what was going on. I did not want to treat the Supa/Hammer case differently from the RM/Wylted case if indeed the situations were alike.

In my very first message to Hammer, I asked him who he had campaigned with. I also said, explicitly, that "if they were unaware of the rule, they will not be punished. I would just like to be able to verify your math." Hammer had already publicly stated that "most of them didn't even know about the no strategizing rule."

Given Hammer's admission that most were unaware of the rule and my assurance that they would not be punished in that case, I believed that Hammer would comply. Instead, Hammer consistently refused to provide me any names or other evidence with which I could corroborate his story. I either needed names of users, so that I could conduct interviews to back up his assertions, or I needed screenshots that verified Hammer's claims.


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B. Receipt of Contrary Evidence

It was at this point that a third party contacted me informing me that Hammer was lying and that no such coordination had taken place. This third party requested that I maintain their anonymity--a request I have every intention of respecting. I judged this third party to be trustworthy, and was able to match parts of their story with Hammer's, further persuading me of the potential truthfulness of their account. Both parties, for instance, provided me with the same number of people in the group chat--an unlikely coincidence if they were not both in fact a part of said chat. This information was publicly disclosed by me in my announcement regarding the validity of Hammer's allegations.

Now, with credible testimonial evidence directly contradicting Hammer's allegations, I felt that it was even more necessary that I obtain evidence from Hammer in order to establish his probably guilt or innocence. I informed him that I needed a screenshot to verify Hammer's allegations. I said that he could redact any personally-identifying information from the image(s), so that no one's IRL identity or facebook profile was disclosed. Together with the visual evidence and the usernames, I could establish the truth of the matter by comparing those users' testimony to the visual evidence. At the very least, I would have needed just some DART usernames. But, as I noted, Hammer refused to provide me with even usernames. I repeatedly stressed to Hammer that in light of me receiving evidence contradicting his account, that I needed him to provide me with something which indicated his innocence.

C. Evidence Falsification

Hammer eventually sent me an image that I am confident was fabricated. I am confident that it is fake for at least five reasons. First, none of the first page votes were solely for RM. Second, LordLuke, who cast the only one-off RM vote, has no known ties to or interaction with Hammer, whereas RM is one of the few people with which LordLuke does have established ties or known interactions. This suggests that the vote for RM was genuine and not prompted by Hammer. Third, LordLuke's vote was more than a vote for "just RM." While RM was his only user vote, he did take time to vote for threads, which suggests that his vote was more than a just an auto-vote for RM. Fourth, the anonymous third party searched for any RM vote solicitations and denied to me that there were any. Finally, and importantly, LordLuke himself has since denied being contacted via a Facebook group chat about voting for RM in the HOF election. He told me (quoting with permission): "But no, nobody told me to vote for RM. I voted for him because I like that sort of personality. I used to be a lot like that when I was 13. That kind of person who's always right, etc."

D. Other Evidence

There were also a number of circumstantial factors at play. Known friends and associates of Hammer--namely, Thett3 and ResurgetExFavilla--both voted at roughly the same time Hammer did. If Hammer had in fact been coordinating the vote early in the process, it struck me as unlikely that all three of them would have voted essentially at the same time later in the process. Moreover, Hammer alleged that he was attempting to get RM inducted into the HOF, yet of those three, only Thett voted for RM. In fact, the only common vote among those three was Supa. This was at the same time, of course, that Wylted was actively campaigning for Supa's induction.

There was also a telling post from ResurgetExFavilla after the events which indicated to me that I had reached the correct conclusions. His post implied that had someone not snitched (i.e. my anonymous source), the ban would have been avoided. Snitching is distinct from lying or from setting someone up; it implies breaking a code of silence with truth. This indicated, of course, that my anonymous source had pointed me in the correct direction.

Finally, I reached out to Thett, who acknowledged that he was a member of the group chat in question, but denied any knowledge of any vote campaign. I explained to him that if Hammer were telling the truth, his ban would be reduced (this is true, his ban would have been reduced to match Wylted's). I then asked Thett to pass on any exonerating evidence he might encounter, to which he replied that (and I am paraphrasing): "examining the early votes, it doesn’t appear that Hammer was telling the truth in his post." Based on this remark, it seemed to me unlikely that the early RM voters were a part of the group chat in question.
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E. Conclusion

Ultimately, I came full circle--from tentative belief in Hammer's admission to believing that it was probable that Hammer had lied. And not only had he lied to DART, he lied to moderation, and he falsified evidence to perpetuate that lie. Since most moderation decisions (except perma-bans) are made on a probability standard, the evidence was, in my view, sufficient to support a temporary ban.

This finding of probability rested on my assessment of the trustworthiness of my source, Hammer's outright and total refusal to provide any genuine evidence of his innocence (particularly usernames), and various situational factors which, taken together and with the other evidence, indicated that Hammer's post had likely been fabricated in an attempt to troll the site. And he has managed to successfully troll the site, allowing more drama to continue to be dredged up and providing fodder for a number of specious accusations and conspiracy theories. And as for the length of Hammer's ban, that has already been explained. Indeed, this whole Hammer saga was already fulsomely addressed. But just keep this in mind: at rock bottom, if you want your innocence to be believed, you have to provide some evidence for your innocence, esp. when evidence of your guilt already exists. Codes of silence cannot be legitimate tools to protect against violations of the rules.

It is time now to move on from the drama and to proceed with the regular goings-on of the site. The Hall of Fame is over, and the official thread will soon be updated with our amazing inductees' information. The trolling really does need to end at some point, and I think now is that time.

========

This thread will be locked in 3 hours to prevent it becoming a locus of drama or flaming. It is, as I said, time to move on. Nothing about this thread being lock however will prevent users from citing it elsewhere.


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I will be coming out with a Discord standing on this as well, again since I was the "Uncle Sam" for this fiasco that unfolded regarding A of bsh1 forum post

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It is one thing for baraka, a child discord mod to be complicit in this plot, it is quite another for virtuoso a grown man and a mod on the official site to be complicit. He needs to publicly apologize and the public needs to weigh I  on whether they can trust him or not
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Not does any of this address the extent of the punishment on the Hammer. I wanna also believe you just made a typographical error when you stated that I campaigned for Supa after my ban was extended. Once that extension was notified to me, I stopped campaigning. 
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@bsh1
To be clear, I apologize for my actions. I should have given a brief explanation for why I think Supa should have been in the HOF. The reason why I ultimately voted for him is that I believe he is the unsung hero of DART. Not only does he work tirelessly to keep the discord server running, but has also kept mafia alive on DART and has contributed significantly to the forums and to the rap battle with bsh. 
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I have no issue with you having your mind changed for the record. It is reasonable to be persuaded. What is unreasonable is that you allowed me to be punished while you sat in silence. This apology needs it's own thread so it doesn't get buried, and so it can be the sole focus of discussion at some spot on this site
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Also for the record I just now learned when trying to reply that virtuoso has me blocked merely for being a whistleblower
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Stand up for your beliefs virt instead of allowing bsh1 to be the alpha. 
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@David
:)

Thank you for the kind words
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I see literally nothing here that I didnt already know. Hammer kidded around and got absolutely overpunished for a fucking joke, forced to give a screenshot to "prove innocence" he decided to fake one in an obvious way, what kind of idiot asks for a screenshot to prove innocence? He didnt plot to get me in HoF, it was a fucking joke. Get over yourself bsh1, you're not some well-respected supreme arbiter of justice here, you're just the one Mike gave undue power to. Wylted, spacetime and even Vaarka, were all directly doing what suited their drama-inducing agenda. That's why they pitted Virt against Supa many, many hours (over a whole day)after Wylted began campaigning for it. They were sandwiching Virt against Supa with Mike kept safe to give Ramshutu the chance to get revenge with an overturn of his Virt vote. Supa getting in instead didn't matter to them, they just wanted fireworks to go off.

The fact you think REF was referring to a snitch shows ignorance of his humour or ties to the situation. The Tekashi69 image shown referred to Hammer snitching on himself with a completely exaggerated semi-lie, like Tekashi did in his raps, that somewhat resembled the truth but had a lot different (like me being their target to get into HoF). It referred to if he had said nothing or not dared make a bold joke or exaggeration about what he did, nothing would have gone down (this is not entirely the case for Tekashi69 but whatever, the resemblance was via that).
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@RM

I can not read what the hell you are saying cause of those typos
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If the website was properly configured for Android keyboards, there'd be a lot less typos.

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How the hell is RM the voice of reason here. Get your shit together site administration 
Vader
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Why use android? There software is laggy with a slow response time and unsupported for many applications with a subpar play store and terrible camera quality
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@Vader
I have a Samsung. Fuck off. 
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For a more I  depth summary that this merely pulls from please read the following https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/2967/the-wylted-commission-the-official-report-on-the-hall-of-fame-election
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@bsh1
"Virt also denied that Wylted's outreach had influenced his decision" 

Bsh1 this is provably a lie. I am sure you don't care but screenshots of just my portion of the conversation and the timeline prove influenced Virt's decision. The screen shots I believe are still up on discord but I am sure I can send them to you another way. 

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@bsh1
Why was this a thing in the first place (I mean, it did make for MEME-QUALITY 👌🔥💯 threads, but still)?

RM had enough legit votes to handily place him in at least the top 3, if not higher.
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@PressF4Respect
Why was this a thing in the first place (I mean, it did make for MEME-QUALITY 👌🔥💯 threads, but still)?
Ahhh..

Well, I think I made a mistake in prohibiting campaigning and vote coordination. That allowed a lot of the drama to occur. Next time, those rules won't exist, so hopefully we can have a drama-free HOF.
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@bsh1
What was the reason to prevent campaigning and vote-coordination in the first place?

I mean:
  1. Real life elections contain a LITERAL BUTT-TON of campaigning. It would actually be better for the voting process since candidates and nominees can state exactly why they think they should get inducted into HOF
  2. People will vote with their buddies for someone they like anyways, and IMPO there is nothing wrong with voting as a group. Interest groups lobbying behind a candidate happens all the time in real elections.

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@PressF4Respect
What was the reason to prevent campaigning and vote-coordination in the first place?
Sure. I think that's a fair question.

So, I don't conceive of the Hall of Fame election as a regular kind of election. I think that the HOF should not be a popularity contest. Despite it's name, I think it should be about making a clear-eyed decision regarding who actually deserves entry. At the start of this process, I said: "This process is about awarding those with merit or importance, and not about awarding those who can cajole the most voters." The HOF should be less about people tooting their own horn, and more about the community making a smart call about who has actually had the biggest impact on the community. I still think that's true, but I grossly underestimated people's capacity to troll.
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The Wylted report conclusively proves that TheHammer should not have been banned and that moderation has repeatedly interfered with the investigation into moderation's banning TheHammer.  

An impeachment inquiry must be opened. 
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This thread will be locked in about 30 minutes.
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An impeachment inquiry has commenced. 

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here before lock
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@Vader
Lol.
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@bsh1
You got the facts right


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@AvoidDeath
You got the facts right
Thanks.