I think that the fact that some players feel the need to publicly claim, OOC, that those who were victims in this case were actually conspiring to smear the culprit, who was as lily-white and unstained as new-fallen snow, shows that, at least on some level, the message has not been received by the players.
I think this is a serious problem, and that it is caused, at least in part, by the same willingness to take IC conflicts OOC, and view the player as being as much your enemy as the character is your character's. Thus, sometimes over a number of years, people who might otherwise be perfectly reasonable begin to form a view of certain other players in the game as being deeply untrustworthy, and willing to go to any lengths to "win".
The result is the sort of thing we have all seen in this case—not only the incidents that actually led to the case being filed, but also a number of the public interactions surrounding the case.
And frankly, whatever you think of the outcome of this particular case, whether you think that Atanamir should have been punished or praised for his actions, I would think that everyone should recognize that the level of OOC antagonism represented here is terrible for the game, and needs to be toned down in general.
I think that harassment cases in general are often full of shades of grey and that reasonable people can often reasonably disagree over whether something is harassment. I don't believe that everyone who disagrees with this verdict is doing so in a bad faith manner. Different people are bound to interpret these things differently. That's part of what makes these cases particularly difficult. Some people obviously thought we didn't go far enough in the verdict, while others seem to sympathize more with the defendant. It's worth noting however that there have been recent cases that were even more controversial than this one was, and all we did in those was hand out warnings. Talk about a slap on the wrist, and yet some people acted like we were perpetrating the greatest injustice in the history of the game.
Ultimately, our mission as Magistrates is in part to preserve the friendly, "playing a board game with friends" atmosphere to the best of our ability. To that end we'll certainly hand out punishments when we feel its necessary, but as I've said elsewhere, one should always make a good faith effort to work things out with the other player before one resorts to filing a Magistrate case. If it comes to us we will do our best to resolve the situation, but keep in mind that our first priority is in fact to maintain the atmosphere of the game, not to punish people who make mistakes. We'll enforce the rules, but we're really not in the business of ban-hammering people. Players of good faith shouldn't need much more than to be told that they are in the wrong to make adjustments to their behavior, and by and large that's what we've seen happen in our cases; the guilty party accepts the judgment and apologizes, and we all move on. Which is as it should be.
