Because this was obviously going to get a whole lot of questions, so we might as well deal with it right away.
We recently got hold of information which shed some new light on the situation surrounding Break's ban, and the actions of a few forum members in provoking and encouraging his behaviour. We were shown a conversation in which this group discussed their actions; after looking into it, we found BL posts confirming the the basic facts of that conversation and the intent of those involved. After the usual rounds of discussion and votes, we decided on the measures below for the serious offenders:
Break remains banned.
We had lots of different reasons for deciding on this, sometimes while rejecting each other's views, despite agreeing on the actual result. Broadly, the strains of thought were that:
1) He might have been provoked, but he wasn't provoked badly enough to justify his rule-breaking; the offences therefore stood, and so would his ban.
2) The ban was agreed on for a repeated and compulsive pattern of behaviour. Even if we took away that one offence, the whole pattern was still very much present. Relatedly, Break was actually offending too fast for us to keep up, with even more infractions occurring during the debate which led to his final perma. In short, this wasn't a matter of a final straw breaking the camel's back: Break had several more straws than were necessary to kill our poor camel. Taking that into account, he should probably be perma-banned even without us considering this one occasion.
3) Having banned Break, there wasn't any real point in unbanning him when it seemed clear that he would continue. If all the warnings and even the last-ditch ultimatums didn't stop him, we doubted that a reversed perma would be able to do it either.
Strife is given a public warning and a week-long ban.
Strife goaded Break the most directly of the merrie band. Although the final decision was that he hadn't done anything so bad as for us to put more than a single formal warning on his record, we really wanted to underline that this kind of behaviour is not on. You don't get to troll people, and certainly not in an attempt to use the mods as your personal beating stick. Because of that, he gets a special extended holiday to go with the warning.
Christemo is permanently banned.
Christemo also prodded at Break alongside Strife, and was the one to press the report button as soon as he could, which some of us found especially unpleasant. This being (more than) his third warnable offence while on a second permanent strike, he's at last stretched our patience too far. As per the rules, he gets his perma.
