I don't believe this is fair at all.
What is more important than IR is the social contract that, "We expect you to play the game as you would play a board game with good friends, and to value fair play above any victory or power." Please ask yourself if this is how you deal with someone who breaks the rules in a board game. If you said yes I don't think you would have good friends so I guess you've never experienced this.
Perhaps the punishment is disproportionate, perhaps not. As you can see from Chenier's post, there was a significant split in the voting. The three-day lock was chosen by a plurality, not a majority. It is something we will probably discuss further, though for this case, the judgment stands.
The Magistrate system is not representative of the player base. Perhaps look for trust medals and recruit on an invite basis.
Trust medals were considered in the selection process, and I suspect that if you were to check you would find that all of the Magistrates have a significant number of them. We are, after all, all veteran players.
There are no guidelines for punishments. This is a serious oversight.
Which is intentional. Tom's vision for the Magistrates is for them to find their own way for the most part. Please keep in mind that this system is relatively new.
There is also no guidelines on defence, making the process completely one sided. Sure I could have replied here but there was never clarity on whether it would even be looked at and what the timeframe is on the case voting etc. I suggest that it should be recommended to make a statement in the thread within 3 days and that the magistrates must make a response to that.
...Why wouldn't it be looked at? We are here, in this thread, discussing the case, so we are obviously reading it. If you'd bothered to look at it before the verdict, you'd have seen that, but clearly you didn't. Your suggestion has merit however, so I will ask Tom if we can add that information to the notification.
Please note that I've chosen not to quote the more overheated parts of your reply. You raise some important questions, but I strongly suggest you revisit what you wrote and tone it down some.
