Haven't read everything:
Thanks to everyone for how you handled Ghostface. That's how it should be done. I've threadbanned him from a few threads, including this one. I've asked to see if we can get him to not post in the section at all but that will take time.
On Beta, as I said to Ekko privately and publicly - I do not trust him enough to let him come back here. Take one example I discussed with Ekko. He was repeatedly tagging Watson until he was asked to stop multiple times. That's harmless, right? Well maybe. It certainly can be harmless. But it would be disingenuous of me to not also consider that this is a very common tactic for a stalker who is harassing someone. Because their goal is to make their presence felt by the target. Stalkers are rarely the caricature, looking through the window type. I'm sure those do exist but they're not the realistic type. To use a real life scenario similar to what we face here, if you have a shared friend group, and one guy is stalking a girl in there, mentioning them constantly would be like saying "what do you think, (x)" or "what about what (x) has to say".
These things, on the surface, are completely innocuous. And maybe they are. After all, they "just" want her to have her opinion heard or they "just" wanted to make her feel included. From the outside looking in, that's what it looks like. That's the idea, to be able to maintain plausible deniability. That's how the manipulation works. But between the girl and the stalker, there is a dynamic that only they know and understand fully that is at play and the goal of this is to press the buttons, just lightly enough to not get thrown out, to make the target uncomfortable because they enjoy that feeling of making someone uncomfortable. It gives them a power trip.
So how do we tell when it's innocent or not? Well we can't know for sure. But when I read the surrounding context - him needing to be told multiple times, his history there (presumed), the fact he's supposedly a needless changed man... well let's just say I begin to have my suspicions. I am a cynical man by nature and do not easily trust people. So maybe I'm not charitable enough to Beta here. But in this case I'm okay with that, because the alternative, that is, allowing this damaging behaviour to go on without recourse, is far worse than Beta being banned from playing here. To me.
So for a number of reasons I don't believe Beta has changed and even if you have a good compromise solution, I'm unwilling give him another chance here. I can't say this will never change - I don't even know if I'll be alive next week after all, but I can say that I don't see my mind changing any time soon. I didn't want to give him a chance because I didn't believe he had changed, I've seen him do this before. And then I see his actions and I know he hasn't changed. Maybe in 2 years he does change? Who knows, I'm not going to say it's impossible, but I'm not going to say I believe it will happen either, because I don't. Your solutions here then Ekko are thus; you can petition to have me removed as head of the section and replaced with someone more favourable towards Beta, like yourself. That's an option. You're more than welcome to explore that, that's fair. Or you play with him elsewhere. Because, I'm not interested in relaxing his ban whatsoever and that's how it will remain for the foreseeable future.
I'm just going to call quits you win this roubd
