Ooooh Oooooh! I wanna see public lynchings! Yeeee haw!

Ooooh Oooooh! I wanna see public lynchings! Yeeee haw!

I'm with Saitou on this one :P

I miss the option "Only in case of expulsion or when the accused agrees."

Seems like old Tibs trial has made waves to the extent were we are asking members if we should be allowed to view DB trials and punishment! in my honest opinion we should let the mistakes of others be a warning for all!

( In Character)

ooohh, i'm in the history books. Like Hitler....only less severe. You will all remember my name ( Tiberius Tang'va), long after my character has turned to dust and vanished. If that is all I achieve, I am satisfied.

( Out of Character)

But seriously, i believe that an opition of display must be awarded. And another thing, regarding the letter of repremendation. Is that permanent or will it dissapear after a few years, if i last that long.

I think option 2... but the full casefile should be stored in the backend of the website, accessible to those involved with the case and the DC/AoC.

The CoJ's decisions need to be scruitable, but I also wouldn't want gory details of unfounded 'trials' put on public display.

I agree....make it public, make an example of them.

I trust that by archiving, one could also be allow the use of Stare Decisis, in terms of stating innocense or guilt?

grumble I hate this bloody thing...

I trust that by archiving, one could also be allowed the use of Stare Decisis, in terms of stating innocense or guilt?

Otherwise, what would be the point? The reason of making an example of others is asinine at best: if mockery is what you're after, make a stupid remark around me and I'll be happy to indulge your prediliction.

Well, Yacks already knows my oppinion as I stated this right back when we first reinstituted the Chamber of Justice... but... for the purpose of public knowledge.

I totally disagree with the publication of past crimes in any sense. We are not about mocking, humilating or otherwise trying to demonise individuals who made an offense.

The Chamber of Justice should be about reform. If we simply want to have a Most Wanted list and demonise everyone who walks through the doors of the Chamber then we may as well just make expulsion the staple punishment, as that is what you achieve in the end once the person has been mocked so much that they leave anyway.

I know that you all want justice, but, is that why we are here? The Chamber is about ensuring that justice is done, it is not about fulfilling some petty primeval, Dark Age attitude that those who commit crime should be publically shunned for the rest of their careers.

That is how the High Court of Inquisitors worked. We hated it for it. We do not want to make the same mistake here.

We should work far more on trying to reform the individual, than continuing to dig up parts of history. Look forward, don't keep looking to the past. The more you draw attention to the times when the person acted as a fool the more likely they are to keep doing it.

And this, is coming from somebody who knows the High Court all too well. For a lot of you probably don't know that I got demoted on my third month in the Emperor's Hammer. I had to carry that around with me for the rest of my time, with my name up in lights as a 'criminal'. You wouldn't even begin to believe the number of ignorant morons who saw that as some reason to forever penalise me, to forever hold it against me and to forever mock and condemn me as something beneath them.

But, forgive me now for sounding a little self righteous, I'm living proof that somebody can quite easily reform and go another way, in that I have achieved far more than most would even dream of after having been convicted for disrespect.

That said, I still do not approve that my name, to this day, continues to be publically posted on the High Courts site as if I'm a criminal and should forever be treated as such.

If you want to make a public mockery of somebody, just go and expel them to begin with, if you give them probation you are asking them to repent and to learn from their mistakes, so forcing others to draw attention to those mistakes is not going to make their reform any easier.

Of course having a private archive for the Justicar is understandable. But does it really need to be public?

We're not living in the Dark Ages. We don't publically hang people in this society. Justice is about reform, it isn't about appeasing the public bloodlust.

Oh, and I always think that the more you draw attention to punishment the more people are likely to do it. I would like to think that these days we are above the need for 'scare tactics' to try and stop people from committing offenses. I would hope that instead we try and teach people how to live in a modern, civilised society, rather than take the literal approach of Tarkin and just try and force people to behave through fear of reprimand.... the Emperor's Hammer might act like that, I would like to think we're above that kind of attitude.

Having just gone and voted I have to say... I'm disappointed, very disappointed with the results so far. And I'm being honest here, as the amount of you who clearly want to continue the style of the HCI really does stir up some emotion.

But, seeing as how the public need to satisfy its lust for justice will prevail, I guess I best make a further suggestion, as everything I have just said will no doubt now go on ignored, seeing the results of the poll so far.

Give them a six month limit. If you must persist with this public "name and shame" attitude then I strongly recommend you not keep it online for longer than a certain period.

Most of the members of this club are teenagers, they're going through a lot of natural changes, and as of such do mature after time. Take that into account.

Also take into account, you give a member probation. According to terms of probation ONLY during the probationary period will they be treated any differently should they break the law. That means there is little reason to keep it up beyond that period, for if you expect the offender to have grown up by the time their probation is over then I should hope that we expect the Brotherhood as a whole to have matured beyond the incident as well.

At the very least, if it needs to be online, strike the names out so it is only for people to see how the system works. But, even then... WHY?

This club is about having fun. What possible reason do any of you have in wanting to draw attention to the bad eggs? You're here to have fun, why do you even want to think about the bad parts of the Brotherhood?

We split from the Emperor's Hammer for a good reason. The attitude of the High Court of Inquisitors was one of them. Don't make our sacrifice in vain.

Please.

I completely agree with Goat. Even now, we have cases of people banning someone just because he is banned in another channel, as "preventive measure." How much worse will this get over time if everyone can put their nose into other people's unfortunate past`? THINK people. Remember the HCI crap, those of you having been around... we don't want history repeating itself.

While I tend to think that full details of cases should be confidential unless the accused wishes them shared, I must say that we NEED the workings of the CoJ to be able to be examined.

I don't think we need to make an example out of anyone, but I think that the membership deserves to know what is happening, and why a decision is being made. It seems counter to our philsophy to have a closed justice body where the accused is "protected." Sure, it sounds nice, but the truth of the matter is that such a thing also protects the accusers and those who make judgements. If we hide such things we run the risk of losing accountability.

Everyone's saying "Remember the HCI crap! Hide the case information!" err...

That is what the HCI did, people... I seem to recall a lot of anger from various people about the fact some documents in HCI cases were "classified." But maybe I'm wrong.

But I think it would be a good idea to have case files only viewable as long as a members probation exists. Past that time, leaders of a member should have to request them from the CoJ, and such documents would be considered largely confidential.

Anyway, I want accountability out of the CoJ, but with limits. We can't always expect to have the luxury of a fair and balanced Justicar and Chamber. I'd prefer we go with the cases being open to all as long as the probation exists, but becoming closed afterwards.

Darn it, Mav. I was going to say that. :P

Any kind of established justice system is in place to protect the society it was created by. But if that society doesn't have access to the information as to why that justice system is making its decisions in a certain way...well....that's what the HCI became.

I agree with Mav that the CoJ documents of a members offenses should be publicly available, but only for the duration of the probation. After that it becomes confidential again. This isn't about demonizing anyone. It's about protecting all of us by making sure that the CoJ doesn't start heading down the road of the HCI.

I was one of the "case and verdict only" votes, because I believe it too much to have complete logs out there. The logs of the HCI contain huge amounts of completely unrelated data, yet they are published unedited. If I want information about the behavior of a never convicted or even accused channel op, CON, DC member in a crisis situation or whatever, I go there and read up on them. Hardly the intent of a justice system. The HCI site has a good log of who shouldn't be in the channel if you want to get nasty. (and a good log of who is most likely lenient). Not a good thing.

Editing logs isn't a good idea either because you'd never know what was edited out. I agree with making the evidence available to DC and the member's CON at the time of verdict - i.e. you come into the DC later, you can't just go and look up the dirt on every member. So basically, it should remain for review by DC and the Clan's CON/PCON for a few weeks, one month at most. If they haven't taken an interest by then, they likely won't.

As to the verdict, this should stay viewable to everyone during probation plus some reasonable period thereafter (to ensure that there are no "Yay, I'm out of probation, now I can misbehave again" cases). I'd say 3 months beyond probation would be a good time. After that, any verdict should be anonymized, leaving only the crime and the sentence (but not the name of the convicted). In the most recent case, this would be: "Cheating: 4 cases of distributing Shadow Academy answers - demotion from GRD to APP, 4 months probation, loss of all SA courses". This keeps a comparison base for future verdicts to ensure we don't accidentally change our standards over time.

So, this is the long version. Not quite a Goatham in length, but hey :)

Well, this is where we get into a number of conflicting beliefs, at least as far as I go, as there are positives and negatives about the different approaches:

1. Online for duration of probation:
   
2. Not permanent.
   
3. Makes it harder for them to actually reform during the probation as people will be holding prejudice against them, during probation they should really be treated as fairly as possible.
   

Drawing from my own past, when I was on probation there were a couple of people who for some reason thought I was expelled and thought it would be nice to ban me from any channels I entered. That somewhat made the whole probation thing a long harder, and does lead the person on probation to just want to leave. Not an inherent problem of the approach, but means that the leaders also need the same level of maturity to not provoke the person.

1. Trial more public
   
2. Not permanent.
   
3. Not public during probation.
   
4. Potential to make judgement unbias.
   

This is another approach I would consider. As this way you do not have any need for a public archive at all, you just make the details of the actual Trial more public. The danger here of course is that public attitudes may influenec the decision.

1. Full Trial details disclosed once trial is over
   
2. Not permanent
   
3. Not public during probation
   
4. Not easy for public to understand workings of Chamber.
   

This is actually more or less how it has been in the Brotherhood this past year. No attention drawn except when the actual verdict is reached. This is my preference as it means you're not publically shaming the person for the rest of their career, nor making it harder on them during their probationary period, you're just reprimanding them at the time of the incident.

The problem this system has is that it is harder for people to know the way the Chamber of Justice actually works, as it means that the information is not easily available.

What I would like is to keep the basic system we have been using up until now, of not drawing attention to past crimes except when the verdict is released, but just- to appease the other side of the argument- releasing more details at the actual verdict. That way the record is not permanent, but we also can release more details to the public. As, I do accept that another of the main two faults of the High Court of Inquisitors was that it was a very closed system that never disclosed its workings all that much.

At the same time though, think about it the way I am. Why do we want to draw attention? How many people sit around in #db and start asking questions about the way the Chamber of Justice works, now compare that to how many will start asking questions if you have a public list online?

Public lists are public, people read them, people also then comment on them. To this day people still read through the High Court lists, something that is no longer even relevant to our club, and discuss it on IRC. What does that create? Well, it starts people questioning the system, questions that otherwise would not happen if you did not disclose the information to begin with, as if the information was not there they wouldn't even care about the judiciary system, and would get on with having fun.

Now, I'm not saying don't disclose anything, as I accept that the system cannot be that introverted and secretive. But I am also saying don't go and make it as public as possible, as thats just asking for people to critise it and start finding problems that are not all that much of a problem. It is a fine line. The more an issue you make the Chamber of Justice the more it dominates peoples lives, when I would rather they be trying to find matches for the current Ladder competition, whatever it may be, rather than discussing some trivial nonsense as past judgements laid down by the Chamber.

At the very least, use a real life example. Not everything gets put on public registers, often it isn't even specifically attached to the crime, but often the length of the duration of a notice on a public register is actually a part of the sentencing. So yes, if the crime is substantial enough then perhaps having the pursecutors name on the public register for longer makes sense.

But also remember this. Most of the time the only reason we have public registers in real life is for our protection, not our vindication. You make the names of paedophiles, rapists and murderers public so that you can protect the public from them. The idea is not so that the public can mock them and throw food at them.

Likewise, if we must insist with having a public register, it needs a purpose, not just 'because people want to know'. As law is not all about being open and having everyone know everything, thats half the reason why the Jury are suppossed to have their votes remain secret. That alone is an example of how parts of the law are suppossed to remain unknown to the public body. Likewise, the way it works in real life should be reflected here.

At the very least, we should not even think of the High Court for ideas when considering this, as the High Court of Inquisitors was designed to operate as a court martialling system. In an online gaming club the entire concept of such a thing is ludicrous. We may be a Dark Brotherhood, but this is also the real world.

Shouldn't we be looking for critique from the members, though? Sure, there are those puerile individuals who will criticize everything over little provocation; however, comments shouldn't be completely discounted, unwanted or ignored.

And, so long as the charges, verdict and reasoning were available, I'd see no reason to make every aspect public. This would allow precedence to be made, and like Mav earlier stated, allow us to track the progression of the Chamber and Justicar's decisions over time. In effect, granting the membership a check by allowing them to refer to how past cases (as appropriate) were handled: incorporating this into their defense. Unless, of course, Yacks just says "guilty" on everything. In which case, we don't have to worry about any defense being made - it would be asinine.

Ok, here's an idea; just start a thread on the message board about this. Or, better yet, keep replies to two paragraphs and under. :P Just kidding, Goat, you know we love you. Heh.

Since I don't have the history with the EH that many of you do, perhaps my views on this are a bit naive; however, I do think some valid points have come out of the discussion. While I originally voted to keep the info 'hidden', perhaps keeping a repository where certain 'public record' info would be advisable just to keep the CoJ 'honest'.

I very much disagree with the concept of posting info regarding a persons offenses and punishments on the public 'news' board unless there is something in the punishment that I need to know (so and so should not be challenged in battle or some similar nonsense).

I guess the problem I have with the 'public record' idea is that there's no reason someone couldn't go in and 'fix' a mistake. Perhaps if this info could be archived 'statically' (say burned off to cd somewhere) so that there is a history, but it's not available unless someone needed to 'audit' the CoJ and then you'd need to agree up front on who was involved in that process.

two cents from a relative newbie

I'm not sure I follow most of the reasons you guys have listed. These people who have been sentenced by the CoJ have usually gotten here by cheating. Why would you want to protect cheaters? If there's one thing the DB doesn't need at all is people who ruin the fun for the rest of us by cheating. In my opinion probation is a rather weak punishment, although this was just cheating with the SA so it didn't directly "hurt" anyone.

And yes, I remember it as Mav did. People didn't want to be left out of the decisions made my the HCI that was like the whole basis of the CoJ - to not be like the HCI. It's not like we have Most Wanted Lists or people sneaking around trying to dig up logs, etc on other people, but it would be nice to see how the Chamber is working and why they've made their decisions the way they did.

Cheating is a slightly more serious offence to the run of the mill offence however. I'm sure there are a lot of things that pass through the Chamber's doors, don't feel the need for a full Trial, might give the person a slap on the wrists and a minor reprimand to not do it again.

But, if you want everything public, even such minor things as that would need to be public.

Cheating is a different issue, for cheating undermines our existance as a gaming club, for through cheating you cheat the other members of their enjoyment and as such should be thankful that you don't get publically named, shamed, expelled and whatever other punishment we can think up.

But, the run of the mill case isn't usually cheating. The run of the mill case is usually somebody just swearing at somebody else, and that other person running around digging up log files, hording them all and then passing them on to Yacko when they think they have enough dirt to get the other person in trouble.

As I said, at the end of the day we should base it on real life. I agree that we need to look at the faults of the High Court of Inquisitors, but not to the extent that we try to avoid all its faults, and misplace them for the benefits some are. For their secrecy was not an inherently bad thing, it was their corruption that was wrong.

A Court needs secrecy, it cannot operate in an unbiased fashion without a certain degree of secrecy. But, like I said, the length of time the person is publically named and shamed should be something that is part of the sentencing, as that is how it is done in real life. If somebody is put on, for example, the sex offenders register it is not always a permanent thing, and the duration that their name remains on it often is part of the actual punishment, for if it is a serious offence it may remain there forever, if it was a very minor offence it may only remain for a few years until the court considers them to have sufficiently reformed themselves.

Arania made the best point when she said "Only for expulsion or when the accused agrees." At least as far as permanent fixings go, that should be true.

And cheating would probably be expulsion most of the time anyway, at least cheating in respect of competitions, falsifying pilot files, hacking a Jedi Knight match, or something like that.