Genuine question - why are Butternut banned? The reason I've been heard is association but not all Butternutters are banned. What gives? I think this deserves a serious amount of scrutiny by the broader player base and the admins should have to justify their decision to ban an entire group of people at the time they did.

1. When you ban an entire group of players off of the server for "association" right as some conflict kicks off that is obviously going to set my bullshit meter off immediately.

2. Given I've heard that various people have been compiling shit for a while and the head admin who seems to make all the decisions is Icenian that further sets off my bullshit meter.

3. The Icenians have had how many VPN accounts playing with them so far? Bullshit.

4. How is it that the very obvious and well known bannable offenses of some Icenians goes unbanned on this server and Icenia is not all banned for associating with that sort of person? This is my bullshit meter

So yes, I'll say it, there is obvious admin bias and as long as the kinds of behavior that I've seen from Icenia continue I have no sympathy for them. There are people in Icenia who played another server which shall not be named which I can only presume is the reason for the ban of the Butternutters. Even more importantly and concerningly there are those in Icenia who have taken things far out of the scope of the game and should be banned permanently on the scale of any of the RI bans, and if they are not banned permanently pearled for their conduct which I am almost certain the rest of them knew about. If harassment of people is unacceptable to the admins and against server policy and associating with people who are harassing people is against server rules, why are Icenia not all banned as a result using the same metric as the Butternut ban wave?

The state of CivMC/Bancraft warfare is to compile evidence into a dossier and hold onto it until something important happens and get as many of your enemies banned as possible it seems which is unfortunate. In previous iterations of Civ servers the admins would use bans as a scalpel, banning players for serious harm and actual citable offenses and now it seems we just blanket ban entire groups (despite other groups playing that same server) based on "association" for playing the wrong server or talking to the wrong people outside of this server or anything related to this server specifically.

In addition to all of those observations, let me just make another one:

Why are the admins telling me who I can and cannot "associate" with at all? Who are they to tell me who to talk to? How enforceable is that while not even utilizing their services? I don't play with certain people or talk to certain people if I can help it because I just don't like them or their attitude and find them off-putting or downright deplorable but I am a grown ass adult and I don't give a shit if some Minecraft admin tells me I can't play their server with a dwindling population hanging on by a thread on a nearly moribund genre which in the grand scheme of things doesn't even amount to a genre on the scale of towny or factions or even some lame bullshit like Stoneworks.

If Minecraft is a whale, we are the barnacle on the ass of that whale, not even barely noticeable on its own and banning entire groups of players for associating with certain people doesn't change that fact and actually diminishes any minimal influence or potential for growth this community may have. Banning entire groups for "association" while not banning the same group that very clearly is supportive of that ban for the same offense is obviously bullshit and not banning that same group for associating with even worse offenses really makes you wonder what is actually going on behind the scenes.

FreeButternut