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Whether or not the following gets me banned, I could really care less, because I'm not shutting my mouth without defending myself.

"Banned or not, there is no justification for defaming, insulting, or talking down to another person."

I wasn't defaming with what I said. Dictionary.com says Defaming is "to damage the reputation, character, or good name of by slander or libel." There are a few more definitions, but are just rewordings of this one, so I won't post them. Nothing of what I said was slander or libel, so I was not defaming. The way that Ryan has behaved with me, I don't see that anything of what I said was damaging a reputation, character or good name, because in my eyes, he had none.

I was insulted and talked down to various times by Ryan, and nothing was said to him, or at least not publicly as it was to me. His insults were not using derogatory words, but he was trying to humiliate me and infuriate me nonetheless: Where it all started. I do admit that in this thread I was being a little bitchy by saying "I don't give a s**t", but it was not directed at Ryan, as is the obvious, and Ty, you know I sent you a pm wishing you a happy Gaiaversary.


"Their ability to respond to your messages does NOT reflect on whether you're able to make such derogatory comments about that member."

This is flawed. Because then this means that I can say derogatory comments about people who aren't members, but cannot say anything about someone who was a member but is banned, or doesn't log on anymore. The statement is flawed. If someone is banned, they are no longer a member. It is no worse to talk crap about my own mother than it is to talk about a banned member. Neither is an actual member, so it is not against the ToS.

"Refrain from future repeats of this behaviour."

I clearly apologized, or did you forget: "I'm sorry about it anyway. It won't happen again." If I apologized and said it wouldn't happen again, one could assume I wouldn't need you to be an echo.

I realize that Ryan is a friend to most or all of you, but I refuse to sit back and be harrassed/told off by someone who means nothing to me, and who pretty much started messing around.

Like I said at the beginning, I do not care if I am banned for speaking up for myself. And although it will sadden me not to be around you guys, I will not stand for this.


BTW, I'm back. rolleyes

heart

[ Message temporarily off-line ]

There's really no need to squabble like this, but I suppose it'd be rude of me to not respond...


You're underestimating your position here. You're quite welcome to respond to a moderator's actions, but assuming you'll be banned for doing so is a generalisation. Please do NOT make such a generalisation.


Mm, yes, but that was just a small portion of the flame you'd dealt. You were slandering him, but much more than that too.

And see, that there is another example of your behaviour. Whether you think poorly or not of another member does not instigate you the right to insult them!


You were, yes. If I were to say how I really feel about the lack of moderation over this issue, I'd be contradicting myself and flaming pretty much my entire crew. The entire crew, including myself, is at fault for not taking care of this earlier, and I apologise for that.

However, I'm not seeing how the message you sent me is relevant to the thread. o_o;

I have to go. We'll continue this when I get back. ^_^; Crew, please don't say anything until I return. Thanks.

Sorry about the generalization.



Slander/libel (in this case, libel) would mean spreading lies to damage his rep. Nothing I said was a lie, except for maybe calling him a f**, but I'm gay, so no one should assume I was calling him gay. (it's like saying a black person cannot say ******). I apologized for it all either way.



See, I wasn't saying that the reason why my words were justified was because I thought poorly of him. The reason why what I said was justified is because he wasn't a member any longer. So it wasn't flaming, because he was no longer a member. BTW I still don't understand why anyone fails to see that he wasn't a member at the time of what I said. And it's not against the ToS to flame people who aren't members.

Plus, I was just retaliating to prior insults. Which as you have already apologized for, were not acted upon at all. I know that his actions toward me do not give me the right to flame him, but since no one was doing anything about it, I obviously made the mistake of taking it upon myself to respond.


It's ok that no one took action. I know that he has been around longer than me, and would understand why no one would take any action against him. Either way, we're all capable of making mistakes. Hence why I had already apologized.


PS. I don't know which message you're talking about.. Was it the MSN message or the pm?

What you don't see is that the Terms of Service are barely a minimum requirement for us to enforce; we have our own set of rules, which bar any sort of personal conflict. Now, as far as they go, any Gaian, whether banned, newbie, rich, or stupid, will not be subject to a series of flaming or trolling within the guild.

Perhaps "defaming" wasn't the right word to use here. Rather, insults or attacks are what we don't accept.


I was referring to how you stated you'd sent me a Gaiaversary greeting.


Even if all of us have read a particular thread, we're capable of entirely missing an important post altogether. For these things, we rely on the aid of other members, who contact us directly to inform us of a problem. However, sometimes even those cases are overlooked, and in the end, nothing occurs. Remember that staff aren't perfect.

It's not your place to argue though! I own the guild, and I alone decided on the rules. If you disagree with a rule, you're always free to contact me about it, however responding on the basis that you were warned for infringing that rule isn't even remotely near worth my attention.

The lack of action against his behaviour is a fault that's long since passed, and pretty much can't be reprimanded right now. Do remember, though, that he was banned, not only from the guild, but from the entire community.

We didn't do anything about it, but Gaia did, so we needn't act any further.