Do you have the authority to do that, Ramsus? Nobody voted you as the site Arbiter, and so, unless ZeaLitY appointed you, you wouldn't have any standing to ban the site owner. Even if you have the technical means, it'd be a pretty severe abuse of power.
(Edited for clarity.)
That would be by my authority as a friend, which I wouldn't consider myself if I let him ruin the very community I helped him build, or if I let him become unruly and tyrannical slave to his own cult of personality simply because he was surrounded by too many yes-men or he made the mistake of removing everyone who'd be honest and frank with him. I know he's better than that -- much better, in fact -- and so I'll never sit idly by and quietly let him become the object of his own disgust.
And ultimately, even I am accountable -- if not to Zeality, then to the visitors of this site and to the sense of fairness and justice naturally ingrained into all social beings.
For the most part though, I want members to openly air out their grievances where the admins and all the visitors can see them. Nothing is worse than only hearing the praise people give you and none of their criticisms. I want them to understand that people aren't banned here for dissent, even if that means I have to use up all my free time outside of work addressing the same complaints over and over again.
She risked the entire Chrono Compendium and the personal well-being and financial weal of myself and Agent 12. She nearly made it so no one could enjoy the Compendium: not me, not you, not lurkers, not random visitors stopping by for a quick piece of information. And she's been banned. How can you people support such an incredible breach of ethics and justice by doubting the validity of a ban given for an action that endangered the entire site and threatened two people with extortionate fines?
I guess people want to forgive her because she is a very well-liked and was a very important member here. Also, she's very young and impressionable. I think that she really didn't think through what she was doing because she didn't know the harm in it. I guess she figured it out afterwards, but it was too late then. She is sorry about it, and even if you think what she did was inexcusable, I think it's more important that nothing became of it.
And no doubt, a lot of people have forgiven her, but that doesn't remove her from having to face the consequences of her actions. When it comes to the Compendium, being banned is not related to how popular or well-liked you are, but rather the level of your decorum and the nature of your crimes. The day that changes is the day I leave.
She risked the entire Chrono Compendium and the personal well-being and financial weal of myself and Agent 12. She nearly made it so no one could enjoy the Compendium: not me, not you, not lurkers, not random visitors stopping by for a quick piece of information.
Well, that's only if you think there was a good chance Square would sue you and take down this site over an alpha leak by someone that wasn't you guys.
Her betraying your trust was a legitimate reason to ban her (and the other leakers), but I'm still skeptical that the alpha leak put you or this site in any danger. It misrepresented your work (another good reason to ban the leakers), of course.
I still think the leakers deserved the banhammer, and the important thing is what you perceived the danger level to be, as the risk was yours and not mine.
I'm not on a first-name basis with our hosting providers, or even on a person-to-person basis with them. I've never physically seen the machine I administrate, and I've never even visited the city it's collocated in. If they got a nasty, corporate letter asking them to take down our server due to an intellectual property violation, would they really know any better? And how hard would that be for SE? It'd just be a 5-minute address lookup and a 30 minute typing job, if not that.
And no, you don't have to sue someone to send out a take-down request to their hosting provider. We've had hosting providers pull out servers from people hosting some of our files, because they were copyrighted MP3s. No warnings, just gone -- the entire server too.
Also, if it seems like I'm always playing out worst-case scenarios here, it's because that's how you judge situations when you have something to lose. Planning along the path of what's probable or most likely is what you do when what you have to gain outweighs what you have to lose, which is common enough, but in cases where the opposite is true that kind of decision making leads to your eventual failure in the game of survival. You have to also consider what's possible in that case and plan accordingly, which is why we do monthly backups now that we run a dedicated server. After all, it's more than possible that we'll get hacked (I've seen a few friends' servers get hacked before), but it's not very probable.
Basically, it's kind of like playing poker. You have to consider what kind of hands he could have before considering what the most likely hand he has is, and then account for what the two of you are willing to gain or lose. Then you have to consider just what kind of person the other player really is -- what's his nature, his character. Then you make your bets and play your cards.
It's not as simple as always playing the odds.
